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Glenn's Show Prep

Glenn interviews Texas Senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz

May 10, 2012
Wilson

Writer

Glenn has said before that he think Ted Cruz understands what the country is facing economically and, if elected, will help put a stop to some of the big spenders in Congress. Cruz joined Glenn on radio to discuss his campaign - as well as some attack ads targeting him that are so bad they seem like an SNL parody.

Transcript of interview:

GLENN: We're just listening to these amazing Ted Cruz, anti‑Ted Cruz commercials.

PAT: Oh, they're horrible.

GLENN: Here in Texas. You have to hear just one of them.

PAT: Here's one of them.

GLENN: See if one word sticks out.

VOICE: The competition Ted Cruz is also lawyer Ted Cruz. Cruz is helping this Chinese company put this American manufacturer out of business. Cruz's Chinese client stole American blueprints.

VOICE: The jury found them liable for stealing our blueprints.

VOICE: But with lawyer Ted Cruz's help, the Chinese keep counterfeiting and Ted Cruz keeps getting paid.

VOICE: There's too many people like Ted Cruz.

PAT: That's because he's a lawyer. Have you ever noticed how closely lawyer and liar sound?

GLENN: Many of the same letters in "lawyer" and "liar."

STU: (Laughing.)

PAT: Quite a few, in fact.

GLENN: Is it a coincidence that not only lawyer, but trial lawyer politician Ted Cruz.

PAT: Following in the footsteps of other trial lawyers like John Adams.

GLENN: John Adams was a lawyer.

PAT: Who tried to overthrow the U.S. Government.

STU: Traitor.

PAT: Call Ted Cruz and ask him why he's a traitor lawyer, lawyer traitor.

GLENN: Lawyer, politician trial lawyer.

PAT: Lawyer.

GLENN: Revolutionary lawyer.

PAT: Lawyer.

GLENN: (Laughing.) And this is all done by Dewhurst who is just ‑‑

PAT: A nightmare.

GLENN: ‑‑ a nightmare. Texas, come on, come on, you're better than this. Ted Cruz is on the ‑‑ lawyer Ted Cruz.

PAT: Thank you, Glenn. Lawyer. Ted Cruz, who's a lawyer.

GLENN: Have you noticed, Ted, how many letters in "lawyer" are also in "liar"?

PAT: And liar?

CRUZ: I've got to say y'all have a future in comedy and attack ads.

GLENN: Really?

CRUZ: That is right in front of you.

GLENN: Will you defend us when we're in court trying to put American companies out of business?

PAT: Call Ted's office and ask him, why do you defend people? Why?

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Why do you defend?

PAT: Is it because you're a defense lawyer?

GLENN: (Laughing.)

CRUZ: Well, we know it's silly season when we're 19 days out from the election.

STU: Yeah, we probably think this is a lot more funny than Ted does.

PAT: Probably.

GLENN: Ted Cruz isn't laughing when we call him lawyer.

PAT: So Ted, tell us about the Chinese company, the Chinese company and why you defended them.

CRUZ: Look, the ad that you played is filled with lies, and Dewhurst is spending $3 million saturating the airwaves with it.

PAT: Yep.

CRUZ: It's a lie.

PAT: I hear it every day, several times a day.

STU: All the time.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: I have to tell you I've met with people in Texas, I was for Ted Cruz but have you heard he's a lawyer?

PAT: He's a lawyer?

GLENN: He's a lawyer politician.

CRUZ: It is filled with lots of lies, the biggest one of which is they tell you that the opposing party in this lawsuit is, quote, an American manufacturer.

PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.

GLENN: What they don't tell you is 20 years ago, he moved his factory to China.

PAT: Oh, my gosh.

CRUZ: This is, in fact, a lawsuit between two Chinese tire factories.

PAT: Really?

CRUZ: Really.

PAT: That is conveniently missing from the ad.

CRUZ: They just omitted, he incorporated his company in the Channel Islands, a notorious tax haven, and he spends eight months a year in China running his factory there.

PAT: What was the underhanded technique that was used supposedly? Because one of them, one of them is that supposedly some underhanded technique was used to defend them?

CRUZ: Which is that the company filed an appeal, and there are actually three tire companies in the case. All three appealed, including the plaintiff, including the fellow in the ad. He appealed.

PAT: Wow.

STU: Wow, he used the same underhanded technique?

PAT: As lawyer Ted Cruz?

GLENN: There's too many people like you, Ted Cruz.

CRUZ: Well, and you know what's interesting, he also doesn't tell people that I didn't argue the case. I wasn't the lead lawyer. And if you look at a case I did argue last year in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Chinese counterfeiting. I represented a major manufacturer against a Chinese company that stole a U.S. patent.

GLENN: So let me translate. He was using his tricks again in a courtroom, as a lawyer.

STU: On the same topic.

PAT: Again, with China being involved.

CRUZ: It IS hard to argue with that.

GLENN: We can turn it against you any way you throw it at us.

GLENN: And you know what? If I were Dewhurst and I had millions and millions and millions of dollars, I would turn it against you every single way. I mean, it wouldn't matter anymore. "Do we have enough lawyers? Don't we have enough Dewhursts in Washington already"?

PAT: Boy, that's for sure.

GLENN: We do.

PAT: We do have more than enough Dewhursts in Washington already.

GLENN: Tell me about ‑‑ tell me why you should be there, Ted.

CRUZ: Because our nation is in crisis and we've got too many go‑along‑to‑get‑along establishment politicians to Washington. We need conservatives and with he need fighters.

GLENN: Are you a Club For Growth guy?

CRUZ: Club For Growth has endorsed me, Freedom Works has endorsed me, the five strongest conservatives in the U.S. Senate, Jim DeMint, Mike Lee, Rand, Paul and Pat Toomey, and Tom Coburn have endorsed me. And just an hour ago, you may not have seen the news, Governor Sarah Palin endorsed me.

PAT: Wow, that's nice.

GLENN: Now let me ask you this: Texas, what the hell is wrong with you! How are the poll numbers doing?

CRUZ: The poll numbers are great. It is a two‑man race between me and David Dewhurst. He is the moderate establishment. He is a tax‑and‑spend Republican.

PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.

CRUZ: And our numbers are surging because conservatives are uniting behind Tea Party activists, Republican women. And I'll tell you the Dewhurst campaign is terrified, after Mourdock's win in Indiana.

GLENN: They should be.

CRUZ: Because as you know, all the pundits said that the moderate incumbent there was unbeatable and the people rose up and said, look, we're tired of these spineless jellyfish that don't believe anything.

GLENN: But how do you honestly, how do you combat somebody who has unlimited funds that are running ad campaigns? I mean, these ad campaigns make you ‑‑ Ted, I don't know you well but I've met you several times. You're not a monster and you're certainly not the guy that is portrayed in these ads.

CRUZ: Right.

GLENN: And, you know, if I didn't know you and I was just kind of a casual person, I'd think... he's a lawyer.

PAT: A Chinese operative.

GLENN: I mean, I would think you were the worst monster on the planet. How do you fight this without a lot of money against a guy who has an unlimited amount of cash?

CRUZ: Yeah, he's putting a million bucks of his own money in. You know the answer is support from the people all over Texas and all over the country. We've raised over $5.2 million from 19,000 people. Every time I'm on your show, Glenn, I've got to tell you hundreds and hundreds of people all over Texas and all over the country come to our website, TedCruz.org. They contribute. And it's how we're keeping up because this is conservatives all over the country.

GLENN: But here ‑‑ hang on. Here's something interesting. I mean, here's a guy who's running for the Senate seat from Texas and again one of his dirty tricks: He doesn't spell "Cruz" the way you would normally spell "cruise." Another dirty underhanded trick. So if you're going the Website and you're trying to find "cruise" ‑‑

PAT: Yeah. TedCruz.org, you would spell it Ted Cruz, C‑r‑u‑z, if I'm not mistaken.

CRUZ: That is exactly right.

PAT: Isn't that the underhanded trick you're using?

GLENN: Underhanded trick.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: It's not "cruise" like, hey, I'm putting it in cruise control.

PAT: No.

GLENN: It's that kind of underhanded stuff ‑‑

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: ‑‑ that we've had enough of.

PAT: Tell us, what's the biggest difference between you and David Dewhurst? Why should Texas vote for you as opposed to him, the guy everybody knows?

CRUZ: I'm a conservative and I'm a fighter. I've spent my entire life fighting for the Constitution and fighting for freedom. As the solicitor general for Texas for five and a half years serving under Greg Abbott, we led the nation fighting for conservative opinions, we defended the Ten Commandments and won, defended the "Pledge of Allegiance" and won, defended the Second Amendment and won. And we stood up and fought the world court and the United Nations and the president of the United States defended U.S. sovereignty and won.

PAT: Against Mexico, right?

CRUZ: Mexico and actually 90 nations against us. Mexico sued the United States and the world court.

GLENN: You did that as a lawyer.

PAT: As a lawyer. Tell us about that case because that ‑‑

GLENN: I didn't know you were the guy who did that.

PAT: Yeah, that was an important case. Tell us about that one.

CRUZ: Well, it was a case that began tragically in Houston. Two teenage girls were gang‑raped and murdered.

PAT: 1993?

CRUZ: Yeah.

PAT: Yeah.

CRUZ: And one of the gang rapists and murderers was named José Medellin. He was an illegal alien. And he was convicted and what happened was Mexico sued the United States and the world court, and the world court issued an order to the United States to reopen the convictions of 51 murderers across the country.

PAT: And in my final straw with George W. Bush, he actually sided with Mexico on this.

CRUZ: It was heartbreaking. I think he received some very, very poor advice.

PAT: Yep.

CRUZ: And he signed an order that attempted to order the state courts to obey the world court.

GLENN: This is ‑‑

PAT: Unbelievable.

GLENN: This is ‑‑

PAT: That was unbelievable.

GLENN: This is where I really lost it with George Bush.

PAT: Me, too.

GLENN: When this stuff was starting to happen, this was when I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

PAT: What?

GLENN: What the hell was George Bush doing? And you're the guy who fought it and argued it in the Supreme Court?

CRUZ: Yeah, I argued it twice. And as you know, one of the things we need ‑‑

PAT: And won, by the way.

GLENN: Yes.

CRUZ: Is we need leaders who have the backbone to stand up not just to Democrats but to fellow Republicans when they go off the reservation and they are not honoring the Constitution.

GLENN: Thank you.

PAT: Exactly.

GLENN: Thank you. Okay, now look. Last Tuesday Indiana, the Tea Party and Freedom Works and everybody else got together and they got Dick Lugar out.

CRUZ: Yep.

GLENN: We're not fighting the Democrats. We're fighting the Republicans. Got Dick Lugar out. Now the eyes are going to turn to Texas. Can the Tea Party, can freedom lovers, can constitutionalists, can real conservatives stand and make it past somebody who has millions of dollars and deep pockets to smear this guy left and right? This guy doesn't have deep pockets.

PAT: An established, moderate establishment candidate in David Dewhurst.

GLENN: Big time. Big time.

PAT: That's who that guy is. I mean, "moderate" is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

GLENN: Big time. This is ‑‑ you know, this is another one of those RINOs, this is one of those GOP "I'll play whatever game they want me to play" and Ted Cruz is not. Running for U.S. Senate out of Texas. If you want to donate, if you want to help him, go to TedCruz.org, C‑r‑u‑z‑e. TedCruz.org.

PAT: C‑r‑u‑z.

GLENN: What did I say?

PAT: No E.

GLENN: Okay. Another dirty trick?

PAT: Yes. Still another one.

GLENN: Oh, my goodness. I don't know if I can ‑‑

PAT: It's a long U sound without the E at the end. How did he pull that off?

GLENN: He's being outspent 9‑1. Early voting starts on Monday all over Texas. Dewhurst needs 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff which would most likely be with Ted. Concentrate your efforts one at a time. We've got to take the Senate back and that means even taking it back from the Republicans. We've got to have people who understand what we're facing, and Ted is one of those guys. Thank you, Ted. I appreciate it, man.

CRUZ: It's always a pleasure. You guys are fighting for freedom and making a difference. And you know what? A lot of the media said the Tea Party was dead. Tuesday proved that wrong. And on May 29th, 19 days from today, Texas is going to prove it wrong. We're going to send a strong conservative and a fighter to the Senate. And you have my word: Texas will lead the fight to stop the Obama agenda, to defend free market principles, and to restore the Constitution.

GLENN: And you have my word that if you don't hold that up, you will... you'll receive the wrath, the wrath of this program and everybody who voted for ya.

CRUZ: And Glenn, I am asking you, hold me accountable.

GLENN: Oh, we will. You don't have to ask. It's our pleasure.

CRUZ: Because if I am anything other than leading the fight with arrows up and down my torso.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

CRUZ: I mean, Glenn, as you know my dad fled oppression in Cuba. I mean, he was imprisoned. He was tortured. Freedom for me is not an abstract concept in a book.

GLENN: Yeah, yeah. Is your dad still alive?

CRUZ: He is. He's a pastor ‑‑

GLENN: We'll get him on a plane and we'll personally have him punch you in the face if you start screwing around in Washington. No, I mean it. It will be your worst nightmare. I mean it.

CRUZ: I'm much more scared of my dad than I am of you.

GLENN: You should be.

CRUZ: Because I'd have to look him in the eyes if I didn't fight for freedom and help turn this around.

GLENN: All right. Ted, thanks a lot. I appreciate it, man.

PAT: TedCruz.org.

GLENN: Again is lawyer Ted Cruz.

PAT: TedCruz.org.

Patriotic uprising—Why 90% say Old Glory isn’t just another flag

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day began as a political payoff to Socialist agitators

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Hunter laptop, Steele dossier—Same players, same playbook?

ullstein bild Dtl. / Contributor | Getty Images

The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.