Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said this morning that nearly half a million homes are without power after Hurricane Isaias hit land in the Florida Panhandle last night.
Isaias made landfall in Destin, Florida, last night as a Category 2 hurricane, bringing powerful winds of up to 105 miles per hour and heavy rain. The storm has since been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone as it heads north.
Fox Weather correspondent Robert Ray was seen fighting to stand up as the winds nearly took him down.
“Stand by, guys. I’m just going to catch my breath, and by the way, I’ve got a mouthful of water. That’s another thing that continues to happen when we try to report here,” he told the camera as the high winds pushed him back.
“This is a fight. It’s going to be a fight all night. Isaias, it’s a dragon; it’s got teeth!” he added as another powerful gust came his way.
WATCH:
During a press conference this morning, DeSantis provided an update on the aftermath of Isaias making landfall, revealing that hundreds of thousands are without power.
“448,000 accounts are without power, including 323,000 customers from FPL and 110,000 from various co-ops throughout northwest Florida,” DeSantis said.
WATCH:
FEMA announced on Friday that President Trump has approved an emergency declaration to make federal assistance available for the hurricane response.
It weakened overnight to a post-tropical cyclone as it moved inland, but it continues to bring heavy rain to the Florida Panhandle.
As of 5 a.m., Isaias’s center was about 25 miles south-southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, and about 105 miles south of Birmingham.
The system was moving north at 14 mph, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph.
Continued weakening is expected, but Isaias is expected to continue producing gusty winds well inland through Saturday even after it becomes post-tropical.
A recent event was set up at the University of Texas at Austin which featured far left, communist influencer Hasan Piker.
Thousands of people signed up to attend the event, but when the day came, only 300 people showed up.
What’s going on here? Were people on the left trying to inflate his numbers to make him look more popular than he really is? How else can this be explained?
Thousands signed up for Hasan Piker UT Austin event, only 300 attended
Left-wing political streamer Hasan Piker drew roughly 300 people to a highly publicized event at the University of Texas at Austin despite more than 2,400 people previously signing up or joining a waitlist.
Piker appeared at UT Austin on Sept. 30 at an event hosted by the university’s College Democrats chapter. The Austin American-Statesmanreported that the event attracted about 300 attendees to the William C. Powers Jr. Student Activity Center, which has a capacity of roughly 460 people.
At least two rows of seats remained empty, according to the newspaper.
An X post from DSA Watch also highlighted the disparity between the number of people who RSVP’d to attend and the crowd that ultimately showed up.
Benjamin Shrader, president of the Austin Young Republicans, helped organize a coalition of conservative groups that protested outside the event.
In an exclusive interview, Shrader told Campus Reform that he first learned of Piker’s visit through an Eventbrite notification and subsequently contacted the Texas College Republicans, UT College Republicans, High School Conservatives of America, Reawaken USA, Young Americans for Liberty, and other organizations.
“I see a lot of people complaining about this, but I don’t see anybody taking action,” Shrader said. “When nobody else is doing something, you’ve got to do something.”
Shrader said the protesters deliberately did not seek to prevent Piker from speaking.
“We made no move to cancel the event,” Shrader told Campus Reform. “We believe in Hasan Piker’s right to say his crazy stuff, and we believe that it’s critically important that our voices were heard as well.”
Look at the empty seats.
Hasan Piker was invited to do a speech at a University
The Corporate Fake News Media has reached a brand-new, shameful low, and this time, Disney-owned ABC News needs to be sued straight into bankruptcy.
On Wednesday, the radical hacks at ABC News published a completely fabricated, malicious hit piece targeting Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
The mainstream media propaganda outlet falsely claimed that the Trump brothers’ conservative venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, had taken a massive, multi-billion dollar stake in the defense technology company Anduril.
On Wednesday, October 7, ABC published a story under the headline “Trump sons’ investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election.”
The hit piece claimed that 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is one of six partners, had taken a “major stake” in defense tech company Anduril out of a $2.5 billion funding round.
It further asserted that Anduril went on to score more than $6 billion in lucrative Pentagon contracts directly tied to this investment, including a massive new shipyard deal, implying pay-to-play favoritism under the Trump administration.
“The company is one of the largest manufacturers to receive an investment from Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric Trump, but they are not the only one,” according to the now-deleted article.
“An ABC News analysis found defense companies backed by the president’s sons, including Anduril, have now raked in more than $6 billion dollars in active or promised government contracts since those investments were made, according to the government’s official contract reporting,” the outlet said.
Naturally, the Far-Left smear machine immediately went into overdrive. Radical California Governor Gavin Newsom and a army of unhinged Democrats quickly weaponized ABC’s outright lies, pushing the viral hit piece across social media to frame the First Family.
Screenshot
There was just one giant problem for ABC News: The numbers were wrong.
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, the entrepreneur who created Oculus and later built one of America’s fastest-growing defense companies specializing in autonomous drones and AI military systems, said Anduril gave the ABC reporter the correct figures before publication.
Luckey stated that 1789 Capital invested $50 million, not a controlling or “major” stake, in a company now valued at more than $60 billion. That is roughly one one-thousandth of Anduril. He also explained that most of the $6 billion figure consisted of contract ceilings (the maximum the government is authorized to spend), not money actually committed or paid out. These facts would have gutted the story’s premise.
ABC’s editors reviewed the piece, made only a minor edit, and stood by the reporting. Then the page disappeared. No correction note. No explanation. The link went dead.
Brian Stelter and other media figures later cited a source claiming the story was “published prematurely.” Luckey rejected that as a cover story. He described a timeline in which Anduril immediately contacted ABC, the network refused meaningful corrections, editors insisted the claims were accurate, the author went quiet (and reportedly deleted his X account), and the story was wiped without explanation. Luckey called it a coordinated influence operation rather than an innocent CMS error.
Luckey wrote on X:
ABC News continues to lie, this time privately to their friends in the press. This was a coordinated influence operation planted by our competition, not “premature publication”.
7:01 AM October 7th, story goes live. Within minutes, dozens of high-profile commentators, politicians, and news outlets are sharing it with tens of millions of followers. We immediately contact ABC and demand they correct their false claims – after multiple rounds of refusal, they finally make a single one-word grammar edit. The editors stand by the reporting and insist the false claims are true.
Finally, eight hours after I was forced to call them out publicly, they delete everything. The editors hide all the comments, the author deletes his X account, and the story is completely wiped from their website without any explanation, directly violating SPJ ethics standards and ABC’s own internal rules.
ABC is currently running a coverup operation, ignoring all of our requests for correction/retraction while telling their buddies to spread the word that this was nothing more than a CMS publication timeline error.
Late Wednesday, 1789 Capital spokeswoman Alexa Henning replied to former Wall Street executive Amy Siskind’s X post sharing the report, saying, “This post shows you have literally zero financial literacy. 1789 Capital does not have a ‘major stake’ in Anduril. It’s false to say Vulcan, Firehawk, and PsiQuantum are ‘backed by Don Jr and Eric Trump.’”
Vulcan Elements, Firehawk Aerospace, and PsiQuantum that Henning referred to were other companies mentioned in the ABC News report.
“Here’s a small lesson, that I also explained to ABC, the ‘reporter’ who is a complete idiot conflated raising funds with investment by 1789. Those are two separate actions. Meaning the ‘investments’ mentioned were actually the total number raised for a funding round, that MANY companies contribute to,” Henning continued.
“Another thing that the reporter buried the lead on was that many of these companies have gotten government contracts during Biden AND Trump, which completely negates the assertion by ABC that Don Jr and Eric Trump are doing anything wrong. Total biased hit piece that is not being regurgitated by dumb trolls on the internet.”
Donald Trump Jr. publicly noted the deletion, telling Newsom the article lasted “about as long as your presidential campaign would last.”
ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because it’s false. Sounds about as long as your presidential campaign would last.
On Friday, ABC posted a revised version under a softer headline about the new Maryland shipyard project and “earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest.”
An editor’s note admits the original “contained errors in the description of certain company investments, government contracts and event chronologies.”
The corrected article now states that 1789 invested $50 million as part of the larger round, that this represented a relatively small stake in the $60-billion-plus company, and that Trump Jr. is not on the three-person committee that makes investment decisions. It also notes that Anduril and other firms have won contracts across administrations.
The story, which was originally bylined by Nathan Lee, now has a “By ABC NEWS” byline https://t.co/J0TbinMUNi
People are now openly calling for ABC to be sued. On X and elsewhere, users are urging Palmer Luckey, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and 1789 Capital to take legal action and hold the network accountable for the false claims that were amplified before the quiet deletion.
Commie Democrat Darializa Avila Chevalier was pushed to the ground during an anti-ICE protest in New York City. She blamed the police.
Another Democrat winner who will soon be causing chaos in Washington DC…
Commie Democrat Darializa Avila Chevalier was pushed to the ground by police officers on Thursday during a violent anti-ICE protest in New York City.
Darializa was seen screaming at police and getting in their face.
Of course, she claimed she was innocent as a flower.
She discussed this alleged “abuse” on CNN on Friday. She pretends to be so innocent but you can see her rushing police and getting in their faces – like a true communist.
She admitted that she has been to several anti-ICE protests.
Watch the video below and then count the lies by Darializa that are highlighted.
CNN Host Erin Burnett: So I want to talk about ICE. I want to talk about the shooting. I want to begin with the video, though, that I just showed. It captures the chaos of that moment in the Bronx last night. People are pushing. People are shoving. Some police officers are pushed to the ground. And then you are shoved to the pavement by a police officer. So can you tell me exactly what happened in that moment?
Darializa Avila Chevalier: At that point in the evening, we had already, you know, left the scene where the incident had occurred. Where Oscar Belgal (violent illegal alien gang member) had been shot, where, you know, so many families were traumatized by the incident with ICE.
And we were outside of the hospital, standing with protesters. And before I even arrived, I could see from a distance that, you know, there was police already pushing people aside to make room for a law enforcement vehicle that was unmarked.
The only reason I knew it was a law enforcement vehicle was because of the lights, that, you know, These NYPD officers were pushing people aside to make way for that vehicle.
I don’t know who was in that vehicle. I don’t know whether it was ICE or whether, you know, Oscar himself was in that vehicle. But what I do know was what I saw and the kind of conduct that I saw the NYPD engaging in. When I was trying to de-escalate the situation, as police were putting up barricades, which were completely unnecessary, you know, they were pushing people to make space for the barricades and were getting in tug-of-wars with people. escalating the situation every moment.
And when I would try to reason with them to, you know, de-escalate the situation, to create a safer space for people to express their rightful outrage at what was happening, you know, they continued to just simply escalate to the point where, you know, myself and others were pushed to the ground. And it was just a very all-around concerning situation. And for me, as someone who is not new to protests, as someone who is not new to these— this kind of chaos, this was particularly alarming. I have never been thrown to the ground. I have been arrested 3 times in protest, and not once have I been slammed to the ground by a police officer.
What a perfect communist to represent New York City in the halls of Congress! Darializa earlier said she was excited to bring “black socialism” to Congress.
God help us!
100% of MAGA voters approve of President Donald John Trump!
CNN’s Harry Enton breaks liberal hearts with his latest set of Trump approval numbers.
Here is the transcript from CNN:
Harry Enten: MAGA GOP view of Trump: approve 100%. 100%. If you are a member of MAGA and the GOP, you approve of Donald John Trump. 0% say that they disapprove. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to know you can’t go higher than 100%. He is the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Now, there are some Republicans who disapprove of Donald John Trump, but they are not members of the Make America Great Again movement. The bottom line is this: if you are a member of MAGA, you approve of Donald Trump.
But, some people never learn.
According to Newsmax, FOX News is reportedly turning away from President Trump prior to the midterm elections.
This comes from CNN’s “media analyst” Brian Stelter, who apparently still draws a paycheck from the leftist outlet.
Stelter is certain that FOX News is abandoning Trump because GOP candidates are fretting over President Trump hurting their chances in the election.
Of course, that is insane. Any Republican running for office today would be wise to tie themselves to America’s most legendary president alive today.
Stelter noted that Fox largely bypassed five recent Trump rallies, including an event in San Antonio, Texas.
According to Stelter, the decision carries enormous political consequences for Trump, who has repeatedly demonstrated his frustration when the conservative network declines to broadcast his speeches.
“For Trump, it’s like being deprived of oxygen,” Stelter wrote.
Stelter suggested Fox executives may believe the president has become a political liability, particularly as his approval ratings decline and Republicans worry about maintaining congressional control.
“Perhaps the Murdochs believe the network’s opinion hosts are better messengers for the party than the president himself,” Stelter wrote.
FOX News is quickly losing trust from its most devoted audience base, the MAGA voters.
This mistake will only hurt FOX News. Donald Trump will be fine.
Tony Shaffer weighs in.
Fox News is CNN lite…
We do everything we can to fairly cover @realDonaldTrump and provide real news on @NEWSMAX – just leave Fox News now…
President Donald Trump has weighed in on the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Malik Hasan, saying he understands the decision to make it public so it can serve as an example.
Hasan, who infamously walked onto the Fort Hood military base in Texas back in November 2009 shouting “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire, slaughtering 13 innocent American heroes and wounding dozens of others, is finally facing the ultimate penalty.
When asked about the groundbreaking decision to make the military execution completely public via a livestream, President Trump didn’t mince words about the sheer brutality of Hasan’s crimes and the necessity of setting a firm example.
Trump: “They want to do that because they want to set an example. I wasn’t involved in that decision, but I understand the decision. He went in and killed 14 people; he badly, badly wounded 22 people — walked into a room, just started firing at everybody, screaming things that he shouldn’t be screaming. I guess they want to have it serve as an example, and I understand that very well.”
WATCH:
President Donald Trump is backing the decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon to livestream the upcoming firing squad execution of radical Islamist mass murderer and former Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan. https://t.co/ircH6slfC4
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Thursday that Hasan would be executed publicly by a U.S. Army firing squad.
During an interview with conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, Hegseth made clear that the military wanted Americans to witness the consequences of committing such a horrific act of terrorism against American soldiers.
Hegseth explained that the execution would be public so that Americans could understand the serious consequences of such crimes.
The Pentagon subsequently confirmed that the execution would be livestreamed.
And when Posobiec asked whether the convicted terrorist had made any final requests, Hegseth delivered a response that left little room for sympathy.
“Don’t care,” Hegseth responded.
“We’ll see him on December 3rd.”
The execution is scheduled for 1 p.m. Central Time, approximately the same time of day that Hasan launched his November 2009 attack.
The Milstein scandal shows the ambassador undercutting American policy and the express wishes of the president.
The New York Timesreports that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s senior adviser, David Milstein, suppressed an embassy report and obstructed efforts by our elected representatives in Congress to obtain information. That in itself is a scandal—but it’s the gravity of the information in question that makes this story rise to the level of demanding immediate and formal accountability to American citizens.
In March, U.S. senators wrote to Huckabee demanding answers about American citizens killed in the West Bank since January 2022. Among them were the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and Amer Rabee, who was just 14 years old. The senators said no one had been held accountable.
This cannot stand. These bereaved families cannot be asked to accept an embassy accused of actively working against their interests in order to protect the reputation of a foreign government whose soldiers and settlers killed their loved ones. And as their fellow Americans, none of the rest of us will accept it either.
No, Mike Huckabee must resign. And if he refuses, President Donald Trump must remove him from office.
The Times report cites 15 U.S. officials and dozens of documents, collectively pointing to a sustained effort to sanitize reporting about the government of the corrupt and unpopular Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The conspiracy went on despite officials elsewhere in the Trump administration—including the president himself—expressing opposition to Netanyahu’s increasingly radical actions. Milstein allegedly blocked a warning that settlement expansion could violate Trump’s opposition to West Bank annexation. Reporting on Israeli inaction against settler violence was at one point replaced with a propagandistic cable praising a crackdown.
This is much more than office politics. These are matters of life and death. When Washington receives a false picture of violence, the people enduring it lose another chance of protection in a region where time is now of the essence. Whether whole communities will remain in the land where they have lived for centuries can depend on their interests being accurately relayed to the rest of the world. Some of those communities are the ancient Christian towns of the Holy Land, where they have worshiped since the time of Christ’s ministry there.
But thanks to the corruption and double-dealing of Huckabee’s office, when our elected representatives asked about dead American citizens, we were denied a full accounting. Even more concretely: That means families lost access to justice—and to the rights afforded to us all as American citizens.
Huckabee denies the allegations, of course, expecting far more sympathy than he has any right to expect. While he claims to have no knowledge of the scandal, officials who spoke to the Times described instances when he helped suppress or recast reporting and others when he restrained Milstein—which, far from exonerating the ambassador, only suggests to me that he was that much more familiar with his aide’s mischief.
And “mischief” is hardly the word for some of the downright sinister actions now being revealed to the public. Responsible Statecraft reported last year that an embassy cable warning of looming famine in Gaza never reached Washington; Milstein instead sent favorable reporting about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Consider what that means for a hungry child: His suffering can become invisible to the very officials with the power to intervene.
Milstein, the stepson of neoconservative talk show host Mark Levin, also circulated a wedding invitation seeking cash gifts from a guest list including Israelis. Huckabee’s very mature response to the scrutiny included calling the reporting outlet, POLITICO, “Politicrap.” An ambassador entrusted with American lives should be capable of answering serious questions with the seriousness they deserve.
Perhaps if this were the first mark against Huckabee’s character and competence, I would be writing a different column. But there have been many red flags—failures of judgment that extend far beyond Milstein.
He also regularly lashes out at those—including foreign dignitaries—who oppose Israeli policies. And not just any Israeli policies, but the most contentious Israeli actions of all, including its internationally condemned backing of illegal settlements in the West Bank.
When Irish officials considered restricting trade with Israeli settlements, Huckabee reached for a drunken-Irish stereotype, asked whether they had fallen into a vat of Guinness, and ordered: “Sober up Ireland!” He wanted Ireland to apologize to Israel. American diplomacy had become a vehicle for abusing another country on the settlement movement’s behalf.
Then came his February interview with Tucker Carlson. Asked about a biblical entitlement extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing enormous stretches of neighboring Arab countries, Huckabee said: “It would be fine if they took it all.”
The remark drew a torrent of condemnations from throughout the Arab world, amounting to a serious international diplomatic incident. But Huckabee shrugged it off.
His posture cannot be excused as loyalty to the administration. Trump has explicitly opposed West Bank annexation, and Vance has reiterated that policy in Israel. An embassy that withholds warnings about violations of that position would be obstructing the president it supposedly serves—to say nothing of the will of the American people, which has increasingly soured on the brutal Netanyahu regime.
The United States needs an ambassador whose concern for Israeli security does not extinguish his concern for everyone else. Huckabee’s tenure has become an obstacle to his own office’s duties. He should go, all records should be preserved, and every allegation should be independently investigated.
The families of nine Palestinian-Americans have already lost someone they love. Neither they nor the rest of us should be asked to sacrifice the truth as well. In order to reassure Americans that our citizenship means something to our government, and that our rights will not be compromised if they run up against the interests of a foreign government, Huckabee must no longer hold any power over the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
For the past week or so, I’ve been in the Netherlands on vacation. And since my wife majored in art history, that has meant a lot of time in museums, soaking in the works of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the other masters of the Dutch Golden Age.
Every educated person has at least a passing familiarity with the Dutch Golden Age, of course: The period, essentially coextensive with the 17th century, when a tiny republic on Europe’s northwestern fringe not only blazed with artistic genius, but also invented modern capitalism, dominated the world’s maritime trade, and established a far-flung colonial empire.
But less well-known is the era that followed: the evocatively named “Periwig Period” (Pruikentijd, in Dutch) of the 18th century. Unlike the glorious 1600s, these were years of complacency and stagnation, during which the country lost its commercial dynamism, its naval supremacy, and its geopolitical importance. Dutch painting descended into pastiche, and the intellectual energy with which Amsterdam had crackled departed for other climes. Holland became comfortable, stable—and a backwater. “After 1700,” the great historian J.H. Plumb tells us, “the Dutch contributed little to the civilization of Europe. The startling beauty of their waterborne cities, so modern and so functional in the 17th century, acquired the patina of age,” and their inhabitants, he adds ruefully, “began to live in the past.”
More than three hundred years later, the fear of entering our own version of a Periwig Period increasingly grips American elites. Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio extolled the need for civilizational vitality in a speech in Athens, with the majestic ruins of the Acropolis as a backdrop. He lamented that many in the modern West had forgotten the example of their classical forebears, who exemplified “fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk, and glory.” Warning against the passive acceptance of weakness and decay, Rubio urged the recovery of an ethos centered on power and action, invoking the ancient Greek notion of θυμός: “the fire of passion, strength, courage, [and] pride.” America’s top diplomat exhorted us all, in other words, to stave off decline by living heroically.
Stirring stuff. But insofar as this ethos has served him as a guide to statecraft, it must be said it leaves something to be desired. Contra the careful attention to consequences and deft realpolitik that has characterized the most successful diplomatic minds of the Western tradition, Rubio’s read of the classics translates into a fundamental bias for action—however crude and destructive—over inaction. On this view, it is always and everywhere better to be in the arena than on the sidelines, even if all one is doing is flailing about and absorbing blows. With this comes an emphasis on force and domination, which leads naturally to an overindexing on military might, and a corresponding sense that the retention of power depends on its frequent exercise.
Yet is not the opposite more often the case? The story of our involvement in the Middle East, for example, is the story of the frittering away of American strength through its clumsy employment in the service of foolish, even impossible, ends. Likewise the tales of other powers that have toppled from the first rank—the embrace by Germans and Japanese of bloodthirsty militarism in the ’30s, Britain’s reckless plunge into the First World War, even France’s glory days under Napoleon. When all is said and done, embracing the libido dominandi tends rather to corrode than to strengthen one’s civilization.
This, at any rate, is what is happening in Iran, where the White House is squandering American lives, money, and munitions to pursue an unattainable goal and eliminate a phantom threat. One fears it may yet happen in Latin America, where we have enthusiastically embraced the notion that might makes right and elected to swing our big stick around with reckless abandon. Even in Europe, where the accomplishment of a truly heroic feat—wresting America free of its military entanglements on the continent—is still alluringly in prospect, we instead spend our time doubling down on ham-fisted efforts to shape the Old World’s domestic politics and compel its denizens to be based (Rubio’s speech, of course, being but the latest example of this).
An aversion to the fate that befell the Dutch is understandable. Gradually sliding into irrelevance—however comfortable—is something from which every red-blooded American should recoil in disgust. But a Periwig Period is only one way for societies to go down; nor is it clear that this is the likeliest trajectory for our own (hypothetical) decline.
And when it comes to the Dutch themselves, one can even argue they played their hand fairly well. A tiny country living in a neighborhood of ferocious, far-larger predators couldn’t sit in the top rank forever, especially given its citizens’ internal divisions and predilection for political liberty. Not that there was a lack of voices urging them on to ruin; these sturdy burghers had their own neocon-types to contend with, fanatical Calvinists who urged war to the death against papist Spain and France. In the end, though, cooler heads prevailed: the Dutch fought when they had to, and made peace when they could. Indeed, their realism even infuriated would-be allies like Cromwell, who sought to form a kind of Protestant International with Holland. (Informed of the latter’s rejection of the project, the Lord Protector thundered that the Dutch had “preferred gain to godliness.”) But had the hawks carried the day, the Netherlands probably would have been dismantled or swallowed whole by its enemies, its national life more or less extinguished.
America’s circumstances are vastly different, to be sure. Our means are gigantic; a gargantuan economy, a peerless—even if not omnipotent—military, and a hegemonic culture together seem proof against external threats for at least a few more decades. No, for the United States, a spectacular flame-out seems more likely than a slow fade. The combustion of our national resources and energies in a succession of avoidable crises is more to be feared, I think, than a long period of managed decline. And the Greek watchword here is not θυμός but ὕβρις—hubris.
Trump’s Roman Empire-Like Fall in Mideast Brings Opportunity
The Iran catastrophe could revitalize America First.
(ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP via Getty Images)
The resumption of tit-for-tat strikes between American forces and an emboldened Iran in early September shattered any illusion of a lasting lull as the conflict entered its seventh month. Meanwhile, the escalating situation in Yemen—where the Houthis have tightened their control over strategic regions surrounding the Bab al-Mandab Strait and struck key Saudi oil infrastructure—has not only sent oil prices soaring, but also fully exposed the Iran War’s regional scale and global implications. And now, Tehran has stepped up attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz as the U.S. tries to reopen the waterway.
But beyond the immediate news cycle, the tendency to fixate on shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and similarly tactical developments leaves Washington blind to the true historical significance of the current moment. The Iran War is a structural watershed as seismic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We are witnessing the logical end of U.S. overextension in the Middle East and the birth of a post-American West Asia defined by a new regional equilibrium.
The combined effects of the Trump administration’s incoherent military objectives, optics-driven approach, and chaotic prosecution of the war find close parallels in the overextension of the Roman Empire. In 260 AD, Emperor Valerian marched toward the rugged terrain of western Persia anticipating a swift, decisive victory over the Sassanid Empire. Instead, plague struck and his supply lines collapsed, leaving Valerian’s legions trapped. He was taken captive by his enemy, the Shahanshah Shapur I, and forced to live out his life as a prisoner of war in Persia. This development represented far more than a simple tactical defeat. Valerian’s downfall sent shock waves across the civilized world, exposing the hard limits of imperial power projection in a faraway land. It signaled that Rome was overextended, strategically exhausted, and no longer capable of maintaining an offensive posture along its distant frontiers.
President Donald Trump’s promises to end foreign conflicts, prevent World War III, and recalibrate America’s bloated Cold War alliances played a major role in his 2024 campaign. But instead of making good on these pledges, he launched a new forever war in Iran (despite multiple warnings from officials in his own administration), undermined U.S. military credibility, and proved even more bellicose than the liberal internationalists in DC he claimed to have vanquished. MAGA foreign policy has devolved into a form of “red-pilled globalism,” driven by arbitrary executive impulse, economic coercion, and unilateral military interventions. Predictably, it has run into a brick wall: The structural limits of American power in the 21st century are now fully visible to adversaries and friends alike.
Yet, the Iran War could ultimately prove a “Pyrrhic defeat,” a strategic chastening that also serves as a necessary catalyst for long-overdue structural adjustment and a grand strategic reset. By laying bare the futility of Washington’s ideological hyper-interventionism and permanent military presence overseas, Trump’s Valerian-style fall could be a blessing in disguise, forcing Washington to finally withdraw from the Middle East and adopt a realist, clear-eyed “America First” foreign policy.
For nearly five decades, American strategy in the region has been shackled to the Carter Doctrine. Promulgated in 1980, it declared that the United States would use any means necessary to prevent outside domination of the Persian Gulf and guarantee the free flow of Middle Eastern oil. Today, the underlying rationale for that commitment has vanished. The Cold War has long ended. The United States is the world’s leading producer of crude oil and natural gas, and it now has access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
Ironically, the ongoing war in Iran and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz have crippled global oil supplies and sent energy prices soaring, worsening inflation and raising the risks of a global economic recession. Operation Epic Fury failed to topple the Islamic Republic. Iran’s asymmetric strategy—leveraging the country’s highland geography, its web of underground “missile cities,” and mass-produced drones—has shown U.S. military bases in the region to be vulnerable targets rather than valuable platforms for power projection. MAGA militarism has proven that the continued pursuit of global primacy in a post-unipolar era destabilizes the world order and harms U.S. interests.
The shift in the distribution of power is probably irreversible. American bases and clandestine sites have suffered repeated and debilitating attacks from Iranian forces. Given the exorbitant costs and scale of the damage, the Pentagon is considering reducing the U.S. military footprint in the Persian Gulf after the war. The conflict has also consumed massive quantities of sophisticated U.S. munitions, leading to critical shortages in both stand-off offensive weapons (e.g., PrSMs, ATACMS, Tomahawk cruise missiles) and defensive interceptors for air defense systems like THAAD and Patriot. America remains an extraordinarily powerful country, but its failures against Iran demonstrate the essence of strategic overreach: not weakness in absolute terms, but a mismatch, worsened by the emerging multi-nodal world, between expansive commitments and finite resources.
The end of the Carter Doctrine in West Asia should not be mourned. Rather, it should be seen as a vital strategic correction that could yield immediate dividends, provided the transition is handled with prudence. Extricating the U.S. military from the Middle East would save tens of billions of dollars annually while halting the diversion of critical defense hardware from the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific.
Furthermore, removing the American security umbrella would force regional powers to confront their own security environment and negotiate a pragmatic balance of power. Indeed, the Iran War’s far-reaching repercussions are already driving a new security architecture through the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement among Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The framework could yet extend to Egypt and, perhaps, eventually Iran—creating a Nixonian concert of powers centered on these five dominant states of the Middle East plus Israel (ME5+1). A retrenched Washington could also transform itself into a neutral arbiter and reengage with the region as an economic partner, advancing its commercial ties and business interests across the greater West Asia without being dragged into local conflicts. The new equilibrium could thus serve both American interests and regional stability.
Most importantly, any path toward exiting the Iran quagmire also clears the way for an authentic, durable, and disciplined “America First” foreign policy—one properly understood not as a disguised ideology or an ephemeral political movement tied to a single personality like Trump, but as a tradition of sovereign realism rooted in the American founding and concrete national interests.
Like every great power in history, the United States faces geographical, material, and institutional constraints that cannot be wished away. America’s resources and hard-earned capital are too valuable to squander indiscriminately, myopically, or on a whim. A post-Iran War U.S. grand strategy must reorder America’s hierarchy of interests accordingly: defending the homeland and Western Hemisphere, rebuilding the domestic industrial base to ensure U.S. economic and technological competitiveness, maintaining a decisive balance of power in Asia and the Pacific by helping allies build up their capabilities to counterbalance China, and encouraging capable middle-tier and regional powers to assume primary responsibility for the peace and stability of their own neighborhoods.
The revealed hollowness of MAGA’s exceptionalist rhetoric and unilateral militarism may feel today like the reckoning undergone by Valerian, but ultimately it could unleash a sober America First realism that would remedy and revitalize American power. Still, ensuring that the Iran predicament is remembered as a “Pyrrhic defeat”—not a total loss for America’s global power and prestige—involves making a pivotal choice: Washington must forgo its hubris, resist institutionalized complacency, and adapt to the new systemic realities worldwide.
Alonzo Lunsford was one of the victims of the 2009 shooting by Nidal Hasan who lived and he is preparing to attend Hasan’s execution by firing squad.
This man really does not need to explain to anyone why he is attending the execution, but that’s just what he did today during an appearance on FOX News.
Lunsford was quite eloquent in his reasoning, and said that this is about closing a chapter.
More than 15 years after surviving several gunshot wounds during a terrorist attack at Fort Hood, retired Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford is preparing to watch the man who shot him be executed.
Speaking on “America’s Newsroom,” Lunsford explained why he wants to attend the execution, which President Donald Trump recently approved to be carried out by firing squad.
“You live by the sword, you die by the sword,” Lunsford said. “And the way that he went about doing his deed was a coward’s way because we didn’t have any way to defend ourselves that day.”…
Standing at 6-foot-9, Lunsford was shot several times, including once in the head. He believes attending the execution could bring closure to survivors and grieving families.
“It’s for two reasons. One is to give the families of the deceased a chance to close a chapter and also the survivors to close a chapter,” Lunsford said of the execution.
“And it sends a clear message that we will not stand for this activity in any of our armed services or in the United States,” he added.
Lunsford said that for him and others affected by the attack, even holidays are not the same, adding that families of the deceased will “never get a chance to cherish a Christmas, a Thanksgiving, an Easter” with their loved ones again.
Watch the video below:
A FORT HOOD SURVIVOR WHO WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD BY NIDAL HASAN SAYS HE’LL BE THERE TO WATCH JUSTICE FINALLY HAPPEN.
He took multiple bullets that day, and he says he isn’t going for revenge.
He’s going so the families of the fallen and the survivors can finally close this chapter… pic.twitter.com/gQ95doyqir
(@tspooky) 
(@GuntherEagleman)