Donald Trump lies a lot about his excellent health but any person with eyes to see and ears to hear can observe his aging health is deteriorating

Echo opinion letter published in the Florida Sun Sentinel:

It should be painfully clear that since Donald Trump took office, he has displayed serious deterioration both mentally and physically. 

He will soon be 80 years old. (In fact, in the press conference post the illegal invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia Floes, Donald

Trump invoked a slurred reference to the "Donroe Doctrine" rather than the Monroe Doctrine. Perhaps it was deliberate but, nevertheless, his sloppy mispronunciation quickly became a euphemism for wrong minded American colonialism. Nevertheless, his slurred reference, intentional or delusional, was stupid)

It’s both alarming and troublesome for an American president, as leader of the free world, to be in such a condition. He’s not running the country as he should, and he’s ranting and raving about menial subjects while insulting and demeaning reporters who ask him relevant questions that he refuses to answer — or doesn’t know the answer to.

Congress must perform its constitutional duty and challenge this president, who continues to damage the country, which will take years to repair, if that’s at all possible.

From Sandy Shuster, in Boynton Beach, Florida

Donald Trump and maga Republicans only want money from antiquated Venezuelan oil fields- people & poverty be damned!

Echo letter to the editor published in the PenBay Pilot in Rockland and Midcoast Maine.

Why invade Venezuela?  Sun, 01/04/2026  From Jim Merkel "Venezuela and Iraq, for that matter, will sell us their oil, but they demand a portion of the profits to alleviate poverty at home. Some of America's conservatives and corporate democrats can’t tolerate that idea. Under Donald Trump, we’d rather kill than pay a fair price."

As Trump🤢 justifies an illegal invasion of Venezuela under a guise of fighting fentanyl, it is a distraction. (In fact, fentanyl is produced in Mexico❗)

Our opioid epidemic was actually caused by aggressive pharmaceutical marketing, a Congressional failure to regulate this industry, and ongoing American poverty. An inside job. Coast Guard seizure data do not show any fentanyl coming from Venezuelan-linked maritime routes.

The USA is under no threat from Venezuela.

To the contrary, the USA conducted a covert war against Venezuela for decades to attempt to control their oil. And they resisted. I say this not from ignorance. I once held a top-secret clearance and well understand the motives of US national security — to defend corporate interests.

Some among us view another nation’s labor, land and resources as ours, robbing from the poor to give to the rich. I left being a ‘desk killer’ for that very reason. Unfortunately, wealth inequality data backs up this claim.

Venezuela and Iraq, for that matter, will sell us their oil, but they demand a portion of the profits to alleviate poverty at home. 

Some of America's conservatives and corporate democrats can’t tolerate that idea. Under Donald Trump, we’d rather kill than pay a fair price.

How can the USA accuse others of human rights abuses while we maintain one of the highest per-capita prison population on earth, mostly people of color and the poor? Corporate prisons are run by a similar bunch as the world’s war profiteers, who are in the business of misery. U.S. military sales accounted for 43% of total global arms exports. We are the leader in prisons and weapons of mass destruction, while our multidimensional poverty rate of 13 percent is a global embarrassment.

Imagine being huddled with your children waiting for the bombs, then glass, blood, deafening thunder, cries and death.

This isn’t Avatar, people, this is America, now driving a new global arms race, as war criminals like Trump, Putin and Netanyahu show the world that they don’t care. The scary thing is that no one will stop us. There is a media and internet machine that will sell the necessity of war. This, alongside a mildly educated populace, makes the probability of bending the arc towards justice in 2026, seem impossible. But, I’m a father, and a world spinning into more violence, and cruelty is unthinkable, and compels my action and resistance.

Could 2026, be the year the USA is forced to end colonialism, poverty, racism, homophobia and the abuse of women❓

Could “America First” shift to seeing other’s needs as more important than our own — being our sister’s and brother’s keeper❓ (Genesis 4-9: "....am I my brother's keeper❓'

As unlikely it is, I still believe humanity has the capacity to be extraordinarily kind and altruistic — kindness breeds kindness, violence breeds violence.

Jim Merkel is a former military engineer who lives in Belfast, Maine.

Donald Trump violates and tramples every law he can to create more power for himself but aggression in Venezuela is unjustified

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by David French:

“War,” the Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “is a mere continuation of policy by other means.” 

If there is one line that virtually every Army officer learns from Clausewitz’s posthumously published 1832, book, “On War,” it’s that description of the purpose of armed conflict.

Those words were among the first that popped into my head when I woke up Saturday morning to the news that the American military had attacked Venezuela, seized its dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and brought him to the United States to face criminal charges.

The reason those words occurred to me was simple — the attack on Venezuela harks back to a different time, before the 19th century world order unraveled, before two catastrophic world wars, and before the creation of international legal and diplomatic structures designed to stop nations from doing exactly what the United States just did.

One of the most important questions any nation must decide is when — and how — to wage war. It’s a mistake, incidentally, to view General Clausewitz as an amoral warmonger. He wasn’t inventing the notion he describes; he was describing the world as it has been. His statement is a pithy explanation of how sovereign states viewed warfare for much of human history.

When a strong state operates under the principle that war is just another extension of policy, it is tempted to operate a bit like a mob boss. Every interaction with a weaker nation is tinged in some way with the threat of force — nice little country you have there. Shame if something happened to it.

This is not fanciful. In a telephone conversation with The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer, Donald Trump threatened Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president. “If she doesn’t do what’s right,” Trump said, “she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

But the Clausewitzian view isn’t the only option for nations and their leaders. There is a better model for international affairs, one that acknowledges the existence of evil and the reality of national interests, but also draws lines designed to preserve peace and human life.

Carl von Clausewitz, meet Saint Thomas Aquinas (b. 1215- d.1274)

In Summa Theologica, written in the 13th century, Aquinas outlined three cardinal requirements of what came to be known as just war theory.
Diplomacy and economic pressure are almost always still a first resort for powerful nations, but if they fail to achieve the intended results — well, you can watch footage from the American strike in Venezuela to know what can happen next.

Second, the war must be based on a just cause. National self-defense or collective self-defense are obviously just, for example.

Third, there must be a just purpose, namely the advancement of good and the avoidance of evil.

One way to think about the shifting patterns of warfare is that humanity seesaws between Clausewitz and Aquinas. Strong nations impose their will on the weak and then — eventually — try to impose their will on each other. When catastrophe results, as it invariably does, they turn back to Aquinas.

You can actually see the results of this shifting approach across the sweep of history. An analysis of global deaths in conflict shows that
war is always with us, but its intensity waxes and wanes. Periods of extreme suffering and death are followed by periods of relative quiet, followed again by an age of horror.

Consider history since World War I. After the ongoing slaughter of trench warfare, the world attempted to ban aggressive warfare and to establish an international institution — the League of Nations — to keep the peace.

The League failed, in part because the United States refused to join, and, after an even more horrible world war, the world tried again, this time under American leadership.

Echoes of Aquinas are all over the U.N. Charter. Article 2 of the United Nations Charter bans aggressive warfare (taking away a key tool in the Clausewitz toolbox); Article 51 permits individual and collective self-defense to keep great powers in check; and Chapter V established a body (the Security Council) that’s designed to keep the peace.

No one would argue that the system is perfect. We’ve seen wars of aggression since World War II, but the system has achieved its primary goal. The world has been spared total war. The Aquinas model, however, has to fight two foes — the will to power and the loss of memory. 

Just war theory demands restraint from the powerful. It asks great powers to forgo imposing their will — even to the point of subordinating their short-term national interests to the long-term aspiration of international peace and justice. 

That’s where our loss of memory comes into play. Restraint is more persuasive when people actually remember a world war, and the people who built the United Nations and NATO had been through two. In that sense, the moral argument against aggressive war has practical application.

In fact, the world saw what happened when the will to power dominated world affairs. World leaders know (or should know) that the most catastrophic conflicts can start from the most modest beginnings.

When Gavrilo Princip took aim at the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, for example, and Austria-Hungary mobilized against tiny Serbia, how many world leaders grasped that more than 16 million people would die in the war to come❓

When memory fades, the Clausewitz model grows more tempting — in part because it can achieve quick results, just as it did in Venezuela early Saturday morning.

Not even the angriest opponents of Trump’s intervention in Venezuela should whitewash the rule of Maduro. He was a corrupt and violent dictator who impoverished and oppressed his people.

The economic numbers tell one version of that story. In 2012, the year before Maduro took power, the gross domestic product of Venezuela was more than $372 billion. In 2024, it was just under $120 billion — a terrible collapse.

He retained power only by defying democracy. In 2024, election observers believe he lost his bid for a third term by a more than 30-point margin. His opponent, Edmundo González, won more than 65 percent of the vote, and Maduro won just over 30 percent. The official tallies, however, gave Maduro the victory.

But, talking about G.D.P. numbers and vote totals seems inadequate when addressing the pure human misery caused by the Maduro regime. Since 2014, almost 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country to escape poverty, corruption and oppression. This represents more than a quarter of Venezuela’s population before Maduro was president.

Nevertheless, even so, the ends do not justify the means.

The Trump administration — acting entirely on its own and without seeking congressional approval — decided it was in the best interests of the United States to remove Maduro from power.

But Donald Trump struck Venezuela, he violated every principle of just war.

First, Trump acted unilaterally, turning his back on the sovereign constitutional requirements of American law. He did not consult with Congress. He did not secure a declaration of war. He simply attacked a sovereign country on his authority alone.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has argued that the administration’s action wasn’t an act of war, but rather a “law enforcement operation” and that the Defense Department merely protected the arresting officers.

This defense is laughable. Under that reasoning, any president could transform virtually any war into a law enforcement operation by indicting opposing leaders and claiming that the large military forces needed to secure the leader’s arrest were simply protecting law enforcement. That’s not an argument; it’s an excuse.

Second, Donald Trump struck without a casus belli, without just cause recognized by international law and the U.N. Charter. 

Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard and a former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel under President George W. Bush argued in a post on his Substack, the attack “pretty clearly violates the charter,” even if there is no clear way to enforce the charter’s commands.

Third, while removing a dictator from power can be a just end, Trump’s decision to turn his back on the democratically elected opposition is profoundly troubling. That the remaining elements of a corrupt regime still govern the country — subject to American demands to negotiate oil deals with American companies — risks perpetuating corruption and oppression at the expense of freedom and democracy.

Nothing here is new. In a sharp piece for The Free Press, the historian Niall Ferguson argued that Trump’s attack on Venezuela was a piece of a much larger whole, the restoration of the politics and diplomacy of 1900, — the years before the catastrophe of the First World War.

The gunboat diplomacy of the Gilded Age certainly meant that the United States dominated Central and South America. It imposed a quasi-colonial reality on the region. Each nation developed under at least some degree of American oversight. Every nation was only asTrump’s attack on Venezuela didn’t take place in a vacuum, either. In December, the administration released its National Security Strategy paper that put the Western Hemisphere first.

The document addressed the Americas before it addressed Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and it declared that the United States will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

The president already has a name for his revival of 19th Century American foreign policy: the Donroe Doctrine.

At the same time, the paper created a dangerous distance between the United States and its European allies. It declares that Europe must “stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense.”

In isolation, that statement isn’t terribly problematic. The nations of Europe are rich enough and strong enough to shoulder most of the burden of collective defense. American allies, though, contribute more than many Americans may think. According to a recent RAND study, America contributed roughly 39 percent of the total defense burden by 2023 — a number that has dropped substantially since the end of the Cold War.

Trump has embraced the "Donroe Doctrine" (was this a slur or intentional❓) enthusiastically. He’s engaged in economic warfare against Canada and Mexico. He’s said that Canada should be America’s 51st state. He has designs on Greenland, part of the sovereign territory of Denmark, a NATO ally.

That brings us back to the fatal flaw of running the world through spheres of influence and the amoral approach to war as an extension of policy. Smaller nations don’t want to be dominated by the strong, and strong nations don’t want to see their rivals get stronger. So they make alliances. In 1914, Serbia had Russia, and Belgium had Britain. In 1939, Poland had France and Britain.

That’s exactly how regional conflict turned into global war.

If Americans wonder why any South American regime would seek closer ties with other foreign powers, perhaps we should ask what their history has been with the United States and what the people of South America think about an aggressive revival of the Monroe Doctrine. (Donald Trump either slurred, or intentionally, called it the "Don-roe Doctrine❗)

There are better and worse ways to argue about Trump’s approach.

The worse argument is to say that Trump set a precedent with his intervention in Venezuela — a precedent that nations such as Russia, China and Iran will be eager to follow in their own respective spheres of influence, and we will have no standing to object when our adversaries take the same approach to countries in their spheres of influence that we took in ours.

But Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China and revolutionary Iran have never had the slightest concern for just war theory or any moral argument. They’re held in check (to the extent they are) by deterrence, or, when deterrence fails, raw military force.

The better argument recognizes that there will never be a unanimous embrace of just war theory. It recognizes that the U.N. Charter is doomed to often be more aspirational than operational.

This argument recognizes that the world order doesn’t depend on every great power for its existence, but it does depend on the greatest power — the United States. Put another way, our national commitment to Aquinas keeps Clausewitz at bay.

We can barely keep the world order together when only three of the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, Britain and France — comply with the U.N. Charter and international law. But, if the United States joins Russia and China in their approach to armed conflict and international relations, then the Western postwar consensus is truly dead.😡😢

America First isn’t necessarily isolationist — there’s nothing isolationist about arresting the leader of a sovereign nation and pledging to “run” it, but it is myopic.

It pursues the sugar high of national power at the expense of justice and peace. You can see that Trump is on that sugar high right now. On Sunday night, NBC’s Sahil Kapur reported that Trump was still saying, “We’re gonna run” Venezuela. “If they don’t behave,” Trump added, “we’ll do a second strike.”

But ,wasn’t just thinking about Venezuela. “Colombia is very sick, too,” he said. Cuba is “ready to all.” 

Moreover, Donald Trump also threatened to strike Iran if Iran kills protesters and brought up Greenland again: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.”

If there is anything that could decisively wreck NATO, it would be an attempt to annex Greenland. Annexation could conceivably empower Denmark to invoke Article 5, the collective self-defense provision of the North Atlantic treaty, against the United States.

But, there’s even a further problem: The true international norm is that when the strong dominate the weak, the weak try to become strong.

That can mean alliances with enemies. That can mean global rearmament. That can mean nuclear proliferation. It can also mean that a foolish world once again endures the high cost of forgetting what it’s like when great powers go to war.


David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).

Remembering the Heroes of the January 6th Capitol insurrection and calling out the Republican cowards

 What January 6 in the US Capitol Taught Me About Courage and Cowardice. Published in Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper.

Adam Kinzinger

Seated to his right is Congresswoman Liz Cheney who said "Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy," and that the former president "spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down to the Capitol and subvert American democracy." Addressing her Republican colleagues directly, Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) said that those who "are defending the indefensible, there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."

Former representative Adam Kinzinger reflects five years later on resilience, resolve, and the Americans still choosing to defend democracy. By Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger January 03, 2026 Architects of Change

Five years ago today, I walked into the U.S. Capitol with a knot in my stomach that I still struggle to describe. 

In fact, I had served in that building for years. I knew its rhythms, its quiet corners, the way the marble echoes when the halls are empty. January 6, 2021, shattered all of that. It didn’t just break windows or doors. It broke an illusion many of us had carried—that the foundations of American democracy were so solid they could never really be shaken.

I remember standing there afterward, surrounded by debris and disbelief, thinking: "This is not who we are." And yet, it was. Or at least, it was a part of us we had long refused to confront.

On the fifth anniversary of January 6, the memories are still raw. Not because of the violence alone, but because of what it revealed. The anger. The lies. The willingness—by too many in positions of power—to light a match and walk away while others watched the fire spread.

I often think about fear. Not the fear I felt that day, but the fear that drove people there in the first place. Fear of losing status. Fear of demographic change. Fear that was carefully cultivated and weaponized by those who knew better and chose ambition over truth. That fear didn’t come from nowhere, but January 6 exposed how dangerous it becomes when leaders refuse to challenge it.

What stays with me most, though, is not just the mob. It’s the aftermath. The silence. The rationalizations. The quiet deals made in the days and weeks that followed. I watched colleagues—people who knew exactly what had happened—decide that the safer path was to move on, to minimize, to rewrite. I learned then that democracy doesn’t just die from violent attacks. It erodes when cowardice becomes policy.

Leaving Congress forced me to reckon with that reality in a deeply personal way. Public office teaches you many things, but one of the hardest lessons is this: institutions are only as strong as the people willing to defend them when it costs something. January 6 clarified the price of principle. For some, it was too high.

I’ve been asked many times if that day made me cynical. The honest answer is complicated. It stripped away naïveté, certainly. It ended any lingering belief that norms alone will save us. But cynicism implies detachment, and I feel anything but detached. If anything, January 6 bound me more tightly to the idea of this country—not as a myth, but as a responsibility.

I think about the police officers who stood their ground that day. About the staffers who barricaded doors and texted loved ones, unsure if they’d make it home. About my wife, who learned all too personally that being in politics includes the whole family. About the election workers across the country who kept counting votes despite threats. They didn’t have cameras or applause. They simply did their jobs because they believed in something bigger than themselves. That, too, is America.

Five years later, the danger hasn’t vanished. The lies haven’t evaporated. Accountability has been uneven, and the temptation to “just move on” remains strong. History teaches us that forgetting is often more comfortable than learning. But comfort is not the same as peace, and denial is not unity.

What gives me hope—real, grounded hope—is not the absence of threats but the presence ofresilience. I see it in young people who refuse to accept that politics must be cruel or corrupt. I see it in Republicans, Democrats, and independents who understand that democracy is not automatic. I see it in veterans who know that loyalty to country is not loyalty to a man, and in citizens who show up, again and again, to vote, to organize and to speak.

January 6 was a moment of national trauma, but trauma does not have to define the future. It can clarify values. It can sharpen resolve. It can remind us that the American experiment has always been fragile—and that its survival has always depended on ordinary people choosing courage over convenience.

Five years on, I still believe in this country. Not because it is perfect, but because it is unfinished. 

Because each generation is handed a choice: to inherit democracy passively, or to actively defend it. January 6 reminded us what happens when too many abdicate that duty. The years since have reminded me that many more are ready to pick it up.

The work ahead is not glamorous. It won’t always be televised. It requires telling the truth when it’s uncomfortable, rejecting lies even when they flatter us, and remembering that losing an election is not the same as losing a country. Democracy asks something of us—not just every four years, but every day. It asks us to make an alliance with people we normally wouldn’t, because when we are threatened, small political differences become meaningless.

On this anniversary, I don’t feel despair. I feel resolve. The same resolve I felt walking out of the Capitol that night, determined that violence and lies would not have the last word. Five years later, they still haven’t. And as long as we are willing to learn, to stand, and to choose country over self, they never will.

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Donald Trump and maga Republicans are responsible for high health care insurance costs harming middle class Americans

Health care costs skyrocket, courtesy of cruel Trump Republicans By Oliver Willis https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/2/2361065/-Health-care-costs-skyrocket-courtesy-of-cruel-Republicans

Millions of Americans had their health care costs significantly increase as of Januaray 1st—a direct result of the “One Big (Fake❗) Beautiful Bill” 😡💢passed by Trump Republicans and signed into law by Donald Trump.

On the first day of the year, subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which were protected under the administration of former President Joe Biden, were allowed to expire. 

This means millions of people currently receiving government help with their health insurance costs will no longer have that assistance.

#SenatorSusanCollinsAlert ❗ Check my substacks link here

An analysis of the situation in September by the nonpartisan health policy group KFF estimated that, on average, the loss of subsidies will increase health care bills by 114%. 

Sadly, the new higher costs will affect more than 24 million people who buy insurance on Obamacare exchanges.

Republicans refused to include language retaining the subsidies in their “One Big (Fake❗) Beautiful Bill.” Following the bill’s passage, Republicans also rejected efforts by congressional Democrats to bring back the subsidies. In November 2025, the Senate Republicans blocked a bill backed by Democrats to restore the subsidies.

The party’s position is far out of touch with most Americans. A November poll from KFF found that 74% of respondents favored extending subsidies, including 76% of independent voters—and even 50% of Republicans.
“Make no mistake, the blame behind the skyrocketing health💲 care costs millions are facing today is squarely at the feet of House Republicans, and the American people know it,” Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Politico.

Democrats intend to campaign during this year’s midterm elections on the key issue. 

Republicans lost multiple elections last year in races where Democratic candidates highlighted the issue of affordability, including the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, along with the mayoral election in New York City. 

Nevertheless, during the same time, Trump has falsely argued that affordability is merely a “hoax” offered up by Democrats.

But, in addition to increased health care 💲costs, tariffs imposed by Trump have increased the price of goods for millions of people—most notably for grocery staples.

Republicans spent years using cost-of-living grievances to attack Biden, only to take steps and support measures that have increased costs ever since they took power. Now, Republicans face the very high likelihood of payback from voters in this fall’s 2026, elections.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must stop the stupid intention to build another Navy battleship

 So, stupid Donald Trump wants to build the world’s biggest battleship, named after himself, naturally. 🙄 

❗

We all know that Donald Trump doesn’t like to or want to read very much,f so the lessons of history are completely lost to him. 

Donald Trump has no idea about how to build ships. His idea of a new battleship will cause his stupid design to sink.

Opinion letter published in The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington: Apparently, the others in the dumb Trump administration are all in the same boat. By Terry E. Viertel, in Vancouver. "Trump ships doomed to sink". 

They all don’t have any knowledge about the two largest and most heavily armed battleships of the 20th century, the Yamato and the Musashi purported to be unsinkable. They were both sunk in hours by the relatively crude, from our current perspective, airplanes of the time. The Trump boondoggle will face far more sophisticated and deadly aircraft and submarines. It will be lucky to last hours. I wonder ❓how much 💲money the Trump family will skim off in awarding the contracts and then during construction if it ever gets built.💢

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must reject evilism spewed by Tucker Carlson and antisemite Nick Fuentes

"Tucker Carlson is fog," writes John Mac Ghlionn in this interesting political analysis published in the Boston Globe.

John Mac Ghlionn contributes regularly to US News & World Report, Spectator World, and The Hill.

Tucker Carlson recently chose to interview the evil Nazi

Nick Fuentes, a man loathed by most of the American left and by a substantial share of the American right. Fuentes is widely understood, across ideological lines, as toxic. 

Fuentes has spoken admiringly of figures like💢 Hitler and Stalin, flirted openly with antisemitic ✡️conspiracy theories, rejected the legitimacy of liberal democracy, argued that women shouldn’t have the right to vote, and spoken approvingly of political violence and ethnic nationalism. None of this is ambiguous. None of it requires interpretation. Fuentes has said disgraceful things. Full stop.💢❗

But, politically speaking, the evil Fuentes is a much easier problem for Republicans to handle than Carlson is. 

Fuentes is an threatening evil flare 🔥in the night sky. 

Evil, crude, and easy to track. Everyone knows where he stands. He doesn’t pretend to be a loyal party man. He has withheld support when it suited him, including refusing to back Trump in 2024. He attacks Trump directly, in plain language, without deflecting blame onto lower-level figures.

So, it allows the maga Republicans to say, “That’s not us,” 🤥and (sort of❓) mean it.🙄 Fuentes functions, in this sense, as a kind of ideological quarantine zone. He is visible, legible, and — crucially — containable.  (Except that Fuentes continues to attract attention making him dangerous. "Evil is as evil does". His evilism is like an evil magnet that catches metal nails.) 

Carlson is weirdly different. Not because he is “worse” in the moral-ranking sense people enjoy arguing about online, but because he is more structurally dangerous to the GOP. 

Fuentes is outside the house, shouting. Carlson is inside the house, rearranging furniture, insisting he is only “asking questions” while he does it.

Before going further, I should be explicit about where this criticism comes from.

I write this as a conservative who regularly watches Carlson — his YouTube clips, his long-form interviews, his podcasts. This is not the view of a drive-by critic or a partisan adversary. It comes from sustained exposure. And that exposure has become increasingly frustrating. 

Carlson says one thing and then does another. (Ugh❗ "who  knew"❓) He gestures toward restraint and then indulges provocation. He flirts with accountability and then retreats into ambiguity. When viewers notice the contradiction, he waves it away — cackles, shrugs, insists they’re imagining things. What he sells as misunderstanding is, in fact, gaslighting, and any attentive viewer can see it.👀

There’s an old principle here. The better enemy is often the one you can see. The threat you can name. The real trouble is the fog that rolls in quietly and convinces you it’s just “weather.”

Carlson is fog.

He is the kind of “dissident” who wants insider access and outsider swagger, Establishment proximity and anti-Establishment theatrics. He throws stones from behind the wall and then acts surprised when people notice his name etched into them.

This isn’t an abstract concern. In late December, more than a dozen senior staffers left the Heritage Foundation to join a new group founded by former vice president Mike Pence. Their exit followed internal turmoil sparked by the growing influence of right-wing media figures pushing antisemitic and extremist narratives. Carlson became a central flashpoint because he occupies a uniquely powerful position within conservative media — powerful enough to force institutions to choose sides.

The rupture was not really about Carlson alone. It was about what he represented, and what defending — or refusing to defend — him signaled. Editors, donors, board members, and allied organizations faced an uncomfortable choice: Was Carlson still an asset to be shielded or a liability to be contained? The fracture followed those answers. Some closed ranks around him, viewing criticism as Establishment overreach. Others stepped back from him, driven less by ideological disagreement than by their instinct for institutional survival.

The Heritage Foundation bombshell came shortly after Turning Point USA’s annual youth conference — intended as a unifying celebration honoring Charlie Kirk — devolved into a public brawl over the future of Trump’s movement. Ben Shapiro used the stage to deliver a scathing attack on Carlson and his allies, calling them “grifters and charlatans” trafficking in conspiracy theories and falsehoods. 

Carlson took the stage soon after and fired back, escalating the confrontation before thousands of young conservative activists. That moment mattered because it revealed real fault lines in the conservative coalition. Internal division creates opportunity, especially for figures like Carlson, who thrive on provocation and plausible deniability.

The pattern was evident in Carlson’s recent trip to Qatar, when he headlined the Doha Forum, interviewed Qatar’s prime minister, and then announced he was buying property in Qatar “to make a statement,” insisting he’s “an American and a free man” who will live wherever he wants. That’s a remarkable posture for a man whose brand is built on warning Americans about hostile ideologies, foreign money, and the slow-motion sabotage of the West.

Qatar is not some harmless foreign backdrop for a trolling gesture. Rather, Qatar is a hostile regime that has long operated as a banker, broker, and diplomatic shield for Islamist terror networks, including Hamas and Hezbollah. It hosts Hamas’s political leadership, funds aligned groups, and functions as a key back channel in conflicts that have spilled Western blood. Whatever one thinks about Israel, Gaza, or Middle Eastern politics more broadly, Qatar sits at the center of the reality being ignored.

The problem becomes clearer in Carlson’s treatment of Israel and Jews. This is not a defense of Israel or of Christian Zionism, both of which are legitimate subjects for debate and criticism. The issue is Carlson’s insistence on having it both ways. He regularly says he “likes Israel” even as he repeatedly singles it out for scorn, derides Christian Zionism, and peppers his commentary with remarks about Jews that are clearly designed to provoke. 

In the eulogy for Charlie Kirk, Carlson likened Kirk to Jesus and invoked shadowy “people in power” conspiring in lamplit rooms, “eating hummus,” to silence truth-tellers. 

The implication was unambiguous, even if it went unnamed. When challenged, Carlson retreats behind the claim that he isn’t antisemitic  ✡️. It’s a familiar routine: push the line, gauge the reaction, deny intent.

Fuentes, by contrast, dispenses with pretense. He calls himself an antisemite ✡️ and means it. 🤢 His views are abhorrent, 💢but they are unmistakable. He doesn’t hide behind irony or implication. Republicans don’t have to guess where he stands. With Carlson, they are invited to 

pretend there is nothing to see. This is why Fuentes is useful as a foil and why Carlson is the real bellwether. The test isn’t whether conservatives denounce a 27-year-old shock merchant. That part is easy. The real test is whether conservatives will confront Carlson’s far more consequential pattern of deception and evasion.

This is what makes Carlson dangerous in a way Fuentes isn’t. Fuentes doesn’t have institutional leverage. He can’t tilt committee staffers. He can’t normalize a new foreign-policy fashion among influencers who actually shape the party’s mood. He can’t blur the line between “America First” and “Qatar First” while still being treated, by many, as a serious man.

Tucker Carlson can. He has a second kind of leverage, too: family adjacency to real power. His son, Buckley, works for Vice President JD Vance.

That doesn’t mean Carlson dictates policy through his son. It means Carlson’s ecosystem overlaps with the governing ecosystem. The “outsider” is not outside. He is in the wiring. He is close enough to touch the current.

And what does Carlson do with that position? He almost never fires cleanly at the top. He rarely, if ever, says “Trump is wrong, and here is why.” Instead, he attacks the perimeter: appointees, advisers, agencies, “neocons,” “globalists,” nameless operators — anyone who can be blamed without forcing a direct break with the one man whose coalition he still wants to influence.

It’s how you remain “inside” and “against” at the same time. It’s how you get to market yourself as a martyr while still dining at court.

I have grown disillusioned with the right — fed up with evasions, with the Epstein nonanswers, with the reflexive closing of ranks whenever accountability might cost something. This isn’t the opposition talking; it’s disappointment from someone who once believed Trump could actually Make America Great Again. I was wrong. The second term has been more erratic, not less. The promised draining of the swamp never happened; power simply reorganized itself. Tucker Carlson didn’t oppose the marshy makeover. He learned how to thrive within it. And that is why he poses a greater danger to Republicans than Fuentes.

Liberals may be tempted to dismiss this as a family quarrel on the right. That is a mistake. Trump is already a volatile leader, and he still has three years left in office. Internal divisions within his coalition are widening, not narrowing. As Trump's political opposition pressure mounts, he lashes out more frequently, targets more erratically, and governs more impulsively.

Republicans will not win in the midterms in 2026 — and continue to govern after 2028 — when they  continue to blindly support Donald Trump like lemmings heading off a cliff.  Fuentes is an evil marginal figure who is easy to reject, but Carlson is ambitious, he aspires to be a powerful media figure who presents himself as a truth-teller while slowly expanding what the wrongminded Republican party is willing to accept, excuse, and blindly defend.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must support legal work permits policy to protect immigrant workers

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 2025, an incident in Glen Burnie, Maryland, involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents resulted in two undocumented men being injured.😠

Where is the sensible approach to immigration policy ❓

Echo opinion published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper:

If I were confronted by (evil❗ ) ICE agents, as were two unfortunate undocumented immigrants who were shot at in West Court in Glen Burnie Maryland, on Wednesday, I wouldn’t resist. 

If it were me, I would be confident in my safety and quick release because, as a U.S. citizen, I need not fear that I might face possible lifelong imprisonment in El Salvador. 

Sadly, if I were undocumented, like they were, my reaction would be very different. I would, like they did, make a break for it. To smash up several vehicles, to attempt to intimidate several ICE agents, to perhaps hurt someone or even to risk my own life, might well be the price I would deem worthy of paying (“2 injured as ICE agents shoot driver trying to run them down in Glen Burnie, officials say,” Dec. 24).

When an outrageous circumstance like this erupts, all of us should be asking two questions: What possible sense is there in our government’s articulating unseemly imprisonment punishments that encourage dangerous and excessive violence? And why do our legislators not enact a sensible guest workers program so that many of the illegals could be legal, and so that U.S. employers wouldn’t need to continue to be constantly skirting the law by hiring undocumented workers?

To answer the first question: Donald Trump's horrible personality has required that his pronouncements be "over the top" (stupid❗), because that enhances his preferred image as being (cruel😒), decisive and forceful. 

And, the answer to the second question, is that our congressmen and senators won’t act on the guest workers issue because they perceive that taking any stand at all on this might threaten their own re-election prospects. 

As long as our elected federal officials are hung up this way, there is no hope for badly needed improvement.

There is no indication, up to the present time, that either Donald Trump, or other elected federal officials, are about to change. Donald Trump is what he is, and most everyone else now in Congress is, for some reason, fearful about how speaking out will affect their careers. (Ugh❗)

So, it is up us, to the voters, to now to take charge and then vote in people who will deal with the issues. From— Jack Wickham, in Glen Arm, (Baltimore County) Maryland #VoteBlue

Donald Trump and maga Republicans talk the talk but failed administration's fuel and energy policies are a mess!

 A New Year’s resolution for Donald Trump: Stop🛑 ❗hurting Texas oil producers | Editorial published by the Houston Chronicle editorial board:  

If you tuned in to Donald Trump’s "yelling fest", he called it his "address to the nation" on Wednesday night highlighting his economic policies, you may have noticed a significant omission: nary a mention of oil and gas production. 

(The date of the Donald Trump address to the nation during which he was noted for yelling was December 17, 2025.)

Yes, Donald Trump, is the same president who promised during his re-election campaign to make the U.S. rich by drilling for “liquid gold”, but he could only muster a brief, tepid and inaccurate boast about his energy policy in the first year of his second term. 

Rather, he highlighted growth in power generation — though much of that came from wind and solar projects subsidized by federal programs, and Trump just slashed these funds — and claimed raises for coal miners. And prices at the gas pump continue to fall “now under 💲2.50 a gallon in much of the country,” he said.

But, what Trump didn’t mention is that the cheap gasoline is largely a result of the lowest crude oil prices in four years: 💲56 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate, according to recent data, a 20% decline from last year.

Texas’ flagship industry was already having a brutal year before the latest drop in oil prices. Tariffs left many companies, including majors, reeling. Thousands of workers have been laid off. 

With many expecting the pain to continue into the first quarter of next year, it's high time that Texas’ political leaders start pushing back against Trump’s incoherent and damaging energy policy.

For a time, it seemed oil and gas executives had already reached that breaking point. Some were openly critical of Trump and his advisers for cheering on oil prices as low as 💲50 a barrel and imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum that hiked the cost of drilling. These folks aren’t California environmentalists. They supported and bankrolled Donald Trump's re-election. Trump’s peeling back of environmental regulations and doling out billions in tax breaks could pay off for them in the long run, but right now they’re getting a lousy return on their investment.

Even so, the Big Oil C-suite hasn’t yet raided the Oval Office with pitchforks. Instead, there appears to be a numbing acceptance in the industry that the sluggish market will persist,😞  at least through the beginning of next year. The latest Dallas Fed survey of oil and gas firms in Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico struck a😒 pessimistic tone on the short-term outlook. If there’s a silver lining on the horizon for producers, it’s that global liquefied natural gas prices are perking up, positioning the U.S. to be a major player in that market.

“The supply-demand issues for natural gas are finally heading into a bull phase,” wrote one Fed survey participant from an exploration and production firm. “The administration’s trade policy is forcing balancing and many countries have to buy LNG to offset their trade deficits with America.”

This editorial board has supported LNG exports alongside sensible regulations that curtail methane leaks and protect fence-line communities. When done right, LNG can benefit our economy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in countries that burn coal.

Kirk Edwards, the CEO of Latigo Petroleum, an Odessa-based oil and gas production company, told the Houston Chronicle's editorial board that the explosion of data centers and AI companies in Texas also bodes well for natural gas production.

“The only way to get that sustainable power is going to be through natural gas turbine-driven electricity,” Edwards said.

Of course, that would be a lot easier if Trump eased up on tariffs. There are more than 100 new natural gas plants planned to go online by 2030, but tariffs on materials used to build the plants, combined with supply chain shortages, are jacking up the costs of construction. It’s also an open question whether the glut of future data center projects in the ERCOT interconnection queue will actually be built, adding to the uncertainty for natural gas developers.

While the spike in natural gas prices eases the pain for the industry, it’s hurting consumers’ bank accounts. (Yes❗💢) Americans paid $12 billion more for natural gas this year, owing to a 22% increase in LNG exports. The European Union’s recent decision to ban LNG imports from Russia next year because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, could boost U.S. exports – and our utility bills – even higher.

In fact, the Donald Trump administration's fixation on driving down the price of oil, while waging a trade war, simply isn’t sustainable. 

If there’s a New Year’s resolution we’d recommend for Trump when it comes to energy, it’s to do everything within his power to restore some semblance of balance to the market.

Oil and gas executives still want to believe in Trump. But, nevertheless, the instability and lack of policy discipline that has defined his presidency is trying their patience. And even worse, it’s undermining the workers.