Why Is Sean Hannity Mad at Glenn?

On his radio program Tuesday, Sean Hannity expressed his frustration with conservatives who have not boarded the so-called Trump train, specifically accusing Glenn of "attacking" him "every day."

Business Insider reported Hannity saying the following:

RELATED: Behind-the-Scenes Photos of the ‘Contentious’ Meeting with Sean Hannity, Ben Sasse and Glenn Beck

"Well, let me just say to all of you. And that includes the commentator class. That includes the Jonah Goldberg class, that includes radio talk show hosts. Glenn Beck is like on a — it's a holy war for him at this point. I mean, he's off the rails attacking me every day. Blaming me for Trump. Well, no. I was fair to everybody, Glenn. Whether you want to admit it or not. I know I was fair. My conscience is clear. And I, frankly, I'm proud to pull the lever for Donald Trump with a clear conscience.

We checked the radio transcripts and compiled every reference Glenn made to Hannity during the month of August. What we found didn't sound like "attacking" and it certainly wasn't "every day," but we'll let you decide. Here's what Glenn had to say about Hannity all five times his name came up this month:

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11TH

GLENN: All right. I want to go over a little bit of what Sean Hannity said. And I'm actually going to agree with Sean Hannity on a lot of what he said. And he took people on from the G.O.P. that are standing against Donald Trump or at least not supporting Donald Trump. And there are some things that I don't agree, but a lot that I do agree. And I think I have a way where we can all come together, something where both the people who agree with Sean and the people who agree with me can actually come together and protect our country. And it's probably where we should begin to focus. And we'll get into that here in just a second. I don't want to do it an injustice by trying to cram it in here.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

GLENN: Let me go to Sean Hannity and what he said last night, because I actually agree with him on some things. Listen to this monologue.

SEAN: Is it time now for Republicans who refuse to endorse Donald Trump -- are they now sabotaging his campaign? Because if they continue to do what they're doing and Hillary Clinton wins, will they be responsible for supporting Hillary Clinton's radical left-wing agenda?

GLENN: Stop. Stop. Flawed thinking here.

PAT: And it's almost progressive thinking. That's exactly what Obama does: He sets up a straw man argument, and then he sets it on fire. Well, that's...

GLENN: Yeah. I'm not responsible for Hillary Clinton.

PAT: No.

GLENN: We warned --

PAT: We said it all along.

GLENN: We had to beat Hillary Clinton. And we warned -- if we weren't powerful enough to get Ted Cruz to be the nominee, we're certainly not powerful enough to have Donald Trump trailing by 13 points.

PAT: No.

GLENN: I mean, if we had the power of 13 points, Ted Cruz would be the nominee.

STU: You and your math.

GLENN: Yeah, I know. So it's not us. We agree, Sean, with you that Hillary Clinton is a disaster. And the idea that Donald Trump said was, I don't need those constitutionalists. I don't need them. And those are his words.

PAT: He should be talking to Donald. Not us. Not only does he not need them; he said he didn't want them.

GLENN: Right. And that's totally fine. His plan was, I'm going to reach across the aisle, and I'm going to get a lot of Democrats and I'm going to get Bernie Sanders supporters. Well, that's not happening. And one-fifth of the Republican Party doesn't want anything to do with Donald Trump. One-fifth. You cannot win with one-fifth of the Republican Party not saying that they won't vote for you. But his plan, as we said, won't work. His plan from the beginning is, I'm going to win New York. I'm going to win Pennsylvania. I'm going to win a lot of Democrats. Well, that's not happening. Okay. So go ahead.

SEAN: Time to name names. Bill Kristol. Former Governor Mitt Romney. Susan Collins. Jeb Bush. Ted Cruz. Ben Sasse. Lindsey Graham. Meg Whitman. And many, many others. Now, if they keep up their stubborn, their stupid game and continue to lick their wounds, well, this is what they will be responsible for.

GLENN: Okay. Stop. I'm not letting you two talk. (Laughter.) Not letting you two talk.

PAT: Well, again, it's just that, that's not the issue. The issue is not our wounds. The issue is not our feelings. And he knows that.

GLENN: Right. It's our principles.

PAT: And he knows that.

GLENN: And to Sean, I believe our principles are very much the same. He's just going towards those principles in a route that we disagree with. And we're going towards those principles in a route that he disagrees with. And there's nothing wrong with that. We have different ways of getting to our principles. And he -- you know, he knows Donald Trump. I don't. He knows him. He trusts him. I don't think that Sean Hannity is evil or anything else.

He knows him, and he's talked to me several times, and he's like, "Glenn, you're wrong about Donald Trump." And it's not any kind of game he's playing. He's not getting money or anything. He believes Donald Trump. He knows him. I don't. I don't trust him.

But that's just the difference between us. And it's not that we're licking our wounds. It's not. It has nothing to do with that.

SEAN: Give a few examples. Of course that would be the continuation of President Obama's disastrous economic policies. And did any of them happen to listen to Trump's speech?

GLENN: This is where we totally agree.

SEAN: We have the lowest labor participation rate since the '70s. Lowest home ownership rate in 41 years. The worst recovery since the 1940s.

GLENN: He's right.

SEAN: Clinton will simply continue that failed economic agenda of Obama. Enforces Obamacare.

GLENN: Absolutely right.

SEAN: Now, Donald Trump told me last night he will repeal or replace it and have competition. Clinton will keep it.

GLENN: Okay. Stop.

PAT: Donald Trump also told 60 Minutes, he wants -- and he doesn't care if it costs him votes.

STU: And he also said he knows it's not Republican.

PAT: Right.

STU: I want the government to pay for it.

GLENN: So the question is -- and this is, again, where Sean knows Donald and believes him that he's going to repeal and replace with free market. I tend to take a man at his word on 60 Minutes that he's going to repeal and replace with something that is 100 percent socialism.

PAT: He was adamant about it. In September.

GLENN: He was adamant about it. And that is his record of belief throughout his life.

PAT: Right.

GLENN: Sean may be right. But I don't know Donald Trump. And a lot of people don't know Donald Trump. And the Donald Trump we do know changes his viewpoint to wherever he happens to be standing. And so that's the difference between us. I don't believe him on this.

SEAN: Open borders. Trump promises a wall. Clinton wants open borders. So which is better for national security and the American worker? Now, the refusal to use the term "radical Islam." Donald Trump will mention it. Liberal Supreme Court justices versus the originalists that Donald Trump has said that he will support. He wants people like Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the bench. On this one issue alone, this will impact this one for generations to come.

GLENN: Absolutely true.

SEAN: Hillary, of course, wants a 550 percent increase in unvetted refugees. Trump promises to vet them all, or else not let them in. Top-down Common Core education. That's failing. Hillary would continue that. We have a dilapidated military. Trump will improve the military and rebuild it. And the list goes on.

PAT: When did our military -- when -- wow, that's --

GLENN: No, we are in trouble. No, we are in trouble with our military.

PAT: Are they dilapidated?

GLENN: No, we are in big trouble. We are in big trouble. He's right on that.

PAT: I would not call our military dilapidated.

GLENN: I will put you in touch with somebody who will tell you exactly what's happened over -- we are in big trouble with our military. So Hannity is absolutely right on those problems. He's absolutely right. I want you to understand clearly, for the record, we've been saying this for over a year -- actually we've been saying this for four years because we knew she was going to be it. But as this went on, this is why we fought so hard -- this is why I endorsed somebody for the very first time. I endorsed the Constitution, not Ted Cruz. I started almost every speech, "I'm not here to endorse Ted Cruz. I am here to endorse the Constitution of the United States." I am telling you now, Hillary Clinton is an absolute unmitigated disaster for the country. Disaster. I happen to believe that Donald Trump, A, cannot nor will he win. I also think he is a very dangerous man that could end up being a bigger disaster for the United States.

So how do we solve this problem? We can either sit here and go back and forth. Sean said that -- he went on in his monologue calling people crybabies, et cetera, et cetera. And I was very offended by that. But I immediately thought, "You know what, I've said things like that about the other side." I have said things and disparaged people on the other side. And I regret it. Shouldn't have done it. So how am I going to point the finger at Sean Hannity and say, "Hey -- no. I did it too. We should stop that. And start to understand that there is one thing that we can come together -- there is one thing I can stand with Sean Hannity on and will stand with Sean Hannity on. And it won't be who to vote for. Although, I have never said, "Do not vote for Donald Trump."

STU: Well, at least not since the end of primary. I mean, certainly --

GLENN: Yeah, during the primary. I have said since the end of the primary, I cannot, but I understand those who do. I really do. I understand why. Because Hillary Clinton is so bad. So I understand that. And I'll never say Sean is not a patriot for doing that. He's doing what he believes is right because we are facing two horrible, horrible options. However, here's where we can unite, the under ticket. If Hillary Clinton is president, the only thing that will have a chance of being a speed bump, not a stop, but a speed bump, will be a Republican Congress. And we know the Republican Congress will unite against Hillary Clinton. We know the press will throw in for her. You need a speed bump. It's not going to solve all of the problems of what she's going to bring, but it will at least slow her down and stop some of them.

So let's unite on the bottom of the ticket. You must go out and vote. Who you vote for at the top of the ticket is your business. Who I vote for is my business. Who Sean does --- his business.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17TH

GLENN: We have now lost Fox News. We -- Roger Ailes is out. By his own doing, but Roger Ailes is out. And Roger Ailes is now tying his wagon to Donald Trump. Sean Hannity, completely Donald Trump. Drudge Report, completely Donald Trump. Breitbart, completely Donald Trump. Much of talk radio, completely talk Donald Trump. In fact, one big radio network, which will not be named, is telling their hosts throughout the entire country, "You are not to say anything bad about Donald Trump, period." There is an edict. No more. Many of our talk radio programmers are telling their hosts and choking back up on the chain, and they're doing it, I think, because of ratings. But most of them are doing it because they're such strong believers of Donald Trump. There's no diversity. You do not talk ill about Donald Trump. And the Tea Party. Now, not all of the Tea Party. But some of the Tea Party. And if it's some of the Tea Party, all of the Tea Party now has been discredited.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 19TH

GLENN: So let me give you a prediction. If Trump wins, you're going to see Bannon as the chief of staff or the media arm and Breitbart and Breitbart web and radio, I think, will become his official media. He'll just -- you know how the White House now does all of their media and they're not letting the reporters in. They're just doing the media themselves, and you can get the pool feed? But they're producing all of these clips. And the press pushed back on Obama, but not too much because it was Obama. I think he's going to take it a step forward. Roger Ailes, I think, will be, you know, a consultant of some sort. And I think air talent like Sean Hannity, I think Sean will become press secretary. And I mean this sincerely. I think if he wins. Now --

STU: I mean, first of all, Sean would be great at that.

GLENN: No, he would be great.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24TH

GLENN: Sean Hannity. Let's play what we can of that one. Sean Hannity last night had Donald Trump on, and I want to take your phone calls. 877-727-BECK. And I want to hear from Donald Trump supporters, from people who are voting for Donald Trump, and tell me what you think about . . . he's softening his language on immigration and softening his policy and reversing some of his policy. Here's a little bit of what happened on Hannity last night.

SEAN: And this is where you seem to in the last week be revisiting the issue of sending everybody back that is here illegally. Tell us where you stand on that.

DONALD: We want to follow the laws. You know, we have very strong laws. We have very strong laws in this country. (Laughter.) And I don't know if you know, but Bush and even Obama sends people back. Now, we can be more aggressive in that, but we want to follow the laws. If you start going around trying to make new laws in this country, it's a process that's brutal. We want to follow the laws of the country. And if we follow the laws, we can do what we have to do. (Applause.)

GLENN: Stop. That's incredible.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25TH

GLENN: Now, here's the interesting place -- I want to play these three phone calls for you this hour and show you where I'm really confused with the Trump support right now. And we have to play some audio from -- that was cut out by Fox from Sean Hannity that shows, I think, how volatile this situation is. And the -- you can hear the volatility in this caller, where we start talking to him about, is Donald Trump betraying you? And he says no.

Featured Image: Fox News Host Sean Hannity speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2016 at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, outside Washington, March 4, 2016. (Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

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

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 EXPOSED: The Marxist roots you weren’t told about

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.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

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.