Glenn: Why do I care about the Middle East?

Why does Glenn care so much about the Middle East? Quite honestly, a lot of it has to do with the scriptures. Faith and family are the foundation of who Glenn is and why he does what he does. But it's not just Glenn - The Bible has been around for thousands of years and heavily influenced America and the Founders. Glenn explained why the Middle East and Israel are so important during a candid and powerful monologue to open tonight's Glenn Beck Program.

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As you’ll see in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to have some pretty frank conversations with you because my life is changing and needs to change some more. And I don’t think we’re all that different from one another.

What makes me different than most hosts on television is I’ll take you through the things that I’m going through because I don’t think we’re different. And I think they’re important. And tonight is a good example of the change in approach that I want to take on the program. I’m going to tell you why I care about things, not from a political standpoint, but why I care. And if you have a different reason, fine. But we have to be able to explain to people why things matter.

Before 9/11, I was a slug. I didn’t care about the Middle East. I didn’t know. I figured if it all went into a sinkhole…they want to blow themselves up all the time, whatever, I’m cool with that. I’m over here, they’re over there, whatever they want to do. But after 9/11, I admitted that doesn’t work, and there’s a lot that I don’t understand.

But I remember a listener called in and said what is happening to us? And I said I don’t know, but I vow to find out. And I will tell you, ever since that day, I’ve not stopped learning. I made a promise just as you did on that day, never again, and I’d figure it out. I’ve never stopped trying to understand the world around me, why the things are the way they are. That’s what led me to the idea of Progressivism and how bad it really was. And most importantly, not just why things are, but why I should care.

There are so many things that happen today, and you can’t care about all of them. So what is it that you have a gun to your head, what is it that matters to you? To me, what matters is my family and my God. That’s it. I like history because it teaches me what’s coming next, but the only thing that matters is my soul and my family.

So when it comes to the Middle East, I have something else I can look at, and you may disagree with it, but it’s important – if you disagree with the Bible that’s fine, whatever, but you have to understand the role it played in history, and why this matters. We are connected to Israel. We are wound in so deeply to Israel, and most people don’t even know it. The Bible and our own history shows us how, and I’m going to show you just a couple of things tonight.

And this is a history that I’m teaching to my own family because too many people no longer care about our history, no longer care about the history of, you know, God. They don’t care, and they’re trying to change our history to fit an agenda, and that’s what happened yesterday with Oprah Winfrey and now tonight with the Middle East.

Let me give you a little bit of history here, and excuse me, because I’m not the guy to go to on this, but in a real quick nutshell, biblical times, this is Israel. And Israel was split into two kingdoms, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The southern kingdom was Judah. That had Jerusalem, root Jew, right? The ten tribes were up here in the north. That’s the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Judah remained, and they were cut off from Jerusalem. They started worshiping false idols. They became spiritually bankrupt, and God says in Jeremiah, he’s like, you know, you’re becoming the whore of the earth. What are you doing? And you’re passing it around to all of the other nations of the earth. Stop it. And he tells Judah you tell them to stop it, and you two get along. And they don’t, and they’re warned – you’re going to be taken by the Assyrians, and you’re going to be taken into captivity. Well, that’s exactly what happened.

Judah remained, but the tribes in the north, they were taken, and they went throughout the Assyrian Empire. The Kingdom of Judah was not scattered. This is where the term Jew comes from, Judah. Assyria at the time was the most feared nation on earth. Their name was synonymous with atrocity. They skinned prisoners alive. They cut off body parts. They pulled out tongues and eyes. They put piles of skulls on display so everyone knew, don’t screw with us.

Here’s what I find very fascinating on who they were. When they were finally defeated, they had all of these, this tribe of Israel as captives. But when they were finally defeated, the Assyrians and the Israelites, they fled, and they went north. And they fled out of captivity through the Caucasus Mountains. The Caucasus Mountains are where you hear the word Caucasian, the Caucasus Mountains.

What’s interesting is the Assyrians who were very good, meticulous record keepers, and who were just brutal, they settled in Italy and in the Germany area and the Russian area where Fascism comes from. But the Israelites, the lost ten tribes, they went north, and they started to scatter the other direction, and they went to the coastlines, generally in the area where our pilgrims came from.

Judah kept the Torah alive. Those who were taken captive by the Assyrians, Caucasians over the mountains, and they started to populate the western part of Europe. All of Western civilization is based on the laws of Israel. And our entire history is directly tied to this moment. Our pilgrims thought that they were completing the journey out of captivity from Moses.

The Statue of Liberty reflects this. On her base, she’s got a broken chain. She’s carrying the tablets. She has the rays of light. That’s God’s light. She’s a symbol really of Moses, and she is depicting his descent from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, what keeps us solid, the Ten Commandments, the law of God.

Okay, that’s just one, but I contend these symbols are everywhere. And you can believe ’em or not. It doesn’t really matter to me. I’m talking about me, why I care. Let me show you this. If you’re anywhere around the president, Air Force One, or you’re sitting here in the office, you’ll see this flag. And we see this flag sitting behind the president a lot, but nobody really ever looks at this flag, and what this flag really means.

What’s on this flag? And I’m just going to show you a couple things. There’s more, and we’re going to get into it later. We know about the olive branch for peace and the arrows for war. There’s much more to tell about this. There’s 13 olives and 13 leaves, the 50 stars around the shield, from many one, but what’s this? And what does this have to do – why would I be telling you this when we’re talking about Israel?

Well, when Joseph from the Bible, when Joseph is with his brothers, he tells his brothers that he had a dream, and he said I had a dream where the sun, the moon, and the stars all bow down to me. You mean like the sun, the moon, and the stars? That’s what this is, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Nobody talks like that. Nobody says the sun, the moon, and the stars unless it’s biblical, so is the concept of unity biblical – out of many, one, one God.

There’s strong symbolism with the number 13 being represented everywhere, 13 arrows, 13 stripes, 13 stars, 13 olives, 13, 13, 13. Yeah, I know, well that’s the 13 colonies. That’s what everyone will tell you, and that is one answer, but there is another one that many people believe. Thirteen, what else is 13? Twelve disciples surrounding Jesus, but more importantly, I think, the 12 tribes of Israel.

Well, there’s only 12 tribes, Glenn. What do you do with 13? Hmm, except the tribe of Joseph split into Manasseh and Ephraim, and those were in northern Israel. That’s the northern Kingdom of Israel. That’s the 13 tribes. Okay, hogwash. That’s all garbage. Okay, you say that’s not what any of these symbols mean on this flag. Okay, that’s reasonable, okay.

Let me take you to not the Presidential Seal; let me take you to the Great Seal of the United States. It’s the same eagle, right? Except where you have the sun, the moon, and the stars, what replaces it? Well, it’s this thing here. I don’t even know what that thing is. You don’t know what that is? I know, that’s pretty hard. It’s 13 stars again but strangely 13 stars in the shape of the Star of David. Wow, why is that in the shape of Star of David?

Well a couple of reasons – one, Haym Solomon. He was the guy who helped us. We are bound; we owe the people of Israel – Haym Solomon, that’s why it’s in that triangle. Now, what’s this surrounding it? I don’t know. Well, when Moses led his people out of Egypt, what did they follow during the day? Oh, cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. That’s what this means.

By the way, you can find the image on the back of your one dollar bill, and if you really think that’s a stretch, if you really think okay, Glenn, that’s crazy, well, you’re right. That one was done in, I don’t even know when. In the late 1800s is when they finalized this, and then I think it was, I don’t know, Wilson or one of them that finally said okay, we’re really going to use this one all the time.

So let’s go back to the original seal, the one that Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and John Adams recommended. It wasn’t this. It was instead that one. Tell me that one, Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea by a pillar of fire. Hello? Look at the clouds around the fire in the center in exactly the same position as the eagle. Listen to me, the slogan that they wanted to have was opposition to tyranny is obedience to God, opposition to tyranny, to pharaohs, is obedience to God.

They felt Moses was the figurehead of America. So why am I telling you all of this? Man, I have been called an anti-Semite by everybody under the sun for the last six years. As soon as I started caring, the Muslim extremists started calling and writing, and we had to have security because Glenn Beck has gotta stop saying these things and stop saying that Muslim extremists are violent, or I will cut off his head myself. That was my favorite quote the FBI gave me from one extremist.

No, you’re not violent – you’ll cut my head off to prove that you’re not violent? Nobody wants to be a pariah. I didn’t care a few years ago, but after 9/11, I promised I would find out what was going on. So what is it? We are a nation that is based on Judeo-Christian values and the Bible, period. You might not buy into the olives and the branches and everything else. It’s fact. It’s fact. But there’s no way to deny that the majority of our laws come directly from the Scriptures, right directly from Deuteronomy.

And the Bible comes from Judah, not the northern tribe, the southern, Judah. They were supposed to preserve it, and they did. The people of Jerusalem, we owe our existence in many ways. We owe our laws to them. Do you really think that we – I am a religious guy. Others who are not will think this is hogwash, but I don’t care anymore. I haven’t for some time. I’m stating who I am.

We owe the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we owe our support and our allegiance, not blind allegiance, and I’m not talking about putting troops down on the ground. We have to be on not only their side but God’s side. When Thomas Paine wrote about his disbelief in God, Franklin felt compelled to write him, giving him a scathing critique. It was like father and son.

Here’s part of it. He said, he wrote to his adopted son, if you will, Thomas Paine, “I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?”

Samuel Adams wrote the same thing. He wrote, “When I heard you had turned her mind to a defence of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished, and more grieved, that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings, and so repugnant to the true interest of so great a part of the citizens of the United States.”

Here’s what he’s saying, how dare you? You have actually grown up, and you have benefited from a society that has Judeo-Christian values. You don’t have to go to church. You don’t have to like church. You don’t even have to like God. But to condemn God and try to say to the rest of society that’s nonsense, how dare you? The only reason why we exist is because of God.

I feel like I have to shake the shoulders of some of my friends and look ’em in the eye and say without the Torah, without the people of Judah, you have no law. Ours doesn’t exist. Our country doesn’t exist. Nothing exists. You get rid of the Torah, you get rid of the Bible, nothing works anymore. Then what are our laws based on? Opinion, man’s opinion. Oh, well that’s good.

This is why I care about Israel and what we’re going to do tonight. If Israel goes, if the Bible goes, you need an entirely new way to govern, because ours is nonsense then. And that’s exactly what all the powerful on the earth would like. I want you to take a second and look at what they want to replace our government and our system with. They’ll tell you right now well, we’ll just kind of wing it. Oh really?

When they really get down to it, they’re all saying that the State Capitalism, as they call it, Communist China, State Capitalism, the model of China, that’s what the future is going to be. May I remind you, may I beg you, that system has people throwing themselves off of buildings. That system is evil. And we have gone dead inside, and we don’t even know it anymore. I don’t want to live that way.

The other model that is currently out there and being talked about is sharia law. Oh, well that’s crazy. Is it? Not for a billion people on earth based on the Qur’an. I don’t want that either. The other model will be something that nobody really has articulated yet. Don’t be silly. We’re not going to do either of those. Well, give it to me, because I’ve never sold a house, even a crappy house, with absolutely no idea where my family is going to live. Have you? Because I haven’t. Until you can show me the address of where we’re headed, I’m not moving. What are we doing?

Sorry, one thing I don’t want to do is get my blood pumping. I want you to sit down with your kids, and I want you to teach them. I want you to teach them American history like we told you last night. Thank you, Oprah Winfrey, sincerely. Thank you for reminding us about Emmett Till so we could remind America who he really was. And then I want you to teach your kids biblical history, because it is our history, and it matters as I will show you tonight.

 

Americans expose Supreme Court’s flag ruling as a failed relic

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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

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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.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

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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

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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.