Is this Glenn's favorite show on TV?

One of Glenn's favorite TV shows is Pawn Stars, and this morning on radio, he interviewed one of the stars of the show, Rick Harrison. There is no question that Rick is a tough negotiator, but Glenn respects his fairness. Rick explained his business philosophy and revealed some of the incredible government bureaucracy his company has endured.

Full Transcript of interview is below:

GLENN: We are ‑‑ it's Friday and we're going to take a different tack today. We're going to talk about, I think if I had to name my favorite show on television and I watch such little television, I mean really I don't think I ever get a chance to watch a full episode of anything, my favorite show on television has to be Pawn Stars. I was a fan of Antiques Road Show but that was like, I don't know, I felt I had to wear an ascot and be in a robe.

PAT: Oh, this is so much better than Antiques Road Show.

GLENN: Yeah, but it's the same ‑‑ it's the same thing. They bring in really cool stuff and you get to see really cool stuff, but this one has an attitude to it.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And it's like for regular people. But the stuff that they show and the things that you see on the show are just fantastic.

PAT: What I like about it is Rick is a brutal negotiator. Somebody will come in and they will tell you their thing is worth, you know, "This is the original flag that George Washington rode into battle with against the British at Yorktown." Really? Okay. Uh, what do you want for it? What do you want to do with it?

GLENN: I want to sell it.

PAT: What do you want?

GLENN: $198,000.

PAT: Not gonna happen. I'll give you $12.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Usually gets it for 11.

PAT: Yes. And they wind up, you know, and you see them interviewed before they go in and, "I'm not gonna take a Penny under $194,000." "I'll give you $15." "Okay."

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: And I love the people who don't sell. It's usually the crap you wouldn't want to buy anyway because the crap ‑‑ and they're like, "I wouldn't take it. I'm not going to be insulted by him saying that it was a complete fake." It says ‑‑ it's the Declaration of Independence and it says made in China on the back.

We have Rick Harrison on the phone. Hi, Rick, how are ya?

HARRISON: I'm doing great this morning.

GLENN: Good to talk to you. I'm just such a huge fan and I actually, we spoke off the air, I don't know, a few weeks ago and I said to you ‑‑ because I watch your show and I'm like, man, I want to develop a relationship with Rick because I want to know when you get stuff like that in there, I want to be on your call list because we're putting together a museum and I want to know if you're getting really cool, unique stuff. But mainly the stuff, Rick, that most people, you know, you would never see it in a museum because people are like, "Oh, that's just, that's silly, that's..." and I've seen a couple of things where I'm like, this is one of the coolest pieces of history I've ever seen.

HARRISON: I actually think I bought probably the coolest thing I ever bought since I've had the pawn shop a couple of weeks ago actually. It was a ‑‑ it was a contemporary copy. General Lee from the South, his father was George Washington's main general during the Whiskey Rebellion, and George Washington wrote him a letter. You would ‑‑ once you see the episode, you will be amazed. He basically wrote him a letter saying "These are the powers of the government. You know, I have to go to Washington. I have to do everything in the government. These are the powers that should be the army, this should be the powers of civil court," and this general, you know, thought it was so important that he made a contemporary copy. It's not the actual copy by George Washington. That would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But this was ‑‑ he thought the letter was so important, that he made a copy for himself and put it in his own records.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: So ‑‑

HARRISON: So it's a pretty amazing letter.

GLENN: So Rick ‑‑

HARRISON: I'll send you a copy of it.

GLENN: I'd love to ‑‑ I'd love to see it. You have to come out here sometime. I know you're really super busy because you do more than that show. You also ‑‑ how many shows do you ‑‑ how many shows are you responsible for now on TV?

HARRISON: I work on, like, three other shows, I'm producing some other shows. Was going to ‑‑ was going to produce another show but the ‑‑ the BLM decided because of sequester I couldn't pay the government for a filming permit on government land, which is insane to me, but ‑‑

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

HARRISON: That's another story.

GLENN: Would you mind telling the story, Rick, about ‑‑ speaking about a control government, of your expansion? Are you willing to tell that story about your expansion of your business?

HARRISON: Well, it's everything. You know, I go to ‑‑ you know, over the years, you know, this show has just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger, more and more customers. I need to expand my showroom. Luckily I wanted to tear down a wall, okay? Because right behind that wall I had warehouse space to turn into the showroom. $400,000 to tear down a wall.

GLENN: What?

PAT: Jeez.

HARRISON: I mean, these are the things I run into. Put a new sign out in front of my building. 6 bucks.

PAT: To put a sign in front of the building?

HARRISON: Oh, yeah, because ‑‑

PAT: Is that for the permit process and all that nonsense?

HARRISON: The permit process and everything and they come back, well, you're on a scenic byway, you're in a historical district, you need to go in front of 20 different committees.

PAT: Jeez.

HARRISON: And, you know, "Oh, we're going to have to change your sign here, change your sign here, change your sign here." And it just never ends. I mean ‑‑

GLENN: When did we go wrong, Rick? When did we go wrong? When do you think we started going wrong?

HARRISON: Because every legislature and every congress thinks, oh, we need more laws, we need more laws, we need more laws. And it just comes to a point where it just grinds business to a standstill.

I wanted to produce a show in Southern California. It was on government land. It's a ‑‑ it was about off‑roading and stuff like that. People off‑road there every day. I went, you know, and ‑‑ you know, even a small reality show employs 100 people.

GLENN: Mmm‑hmmm.

HARRISON: The BLM comes back and says, "No, we can't issue a film permit because of the sequester." So I said, "Let me get this straight. I'm going to pay you $250 a day to film and..."

GLENN: You can't ‑‑

HARRISON: "‑‑ you can't do it because of budget cuts?"

PAT: Jeez.

HARRISON: He mean, this is what we deal with nowadays.

GLENN: I mean, you're in Nevada which, jeez, man, you have legalized prostitution. You would think that Nevada would be ‑‑ would be okay to work in. Is Nevada okay?

HARRISON: Nevada's better than most states. I have a lot of friends that make very good money. They're just packing up out of California and leaving. They cannot deal with it anymore.

GLENN: I know.

HARRISON: You know, I said, yeah, come on up. Help our economy out.

GLENN: I know.

HARRISON: I mean, it's government in general. I mean, all the way from ‑‑ where I was filming the television show was Southern California, but it was on federal land. But it's government on every level, you know. It's business, it's the EPA. The EPA would rather, you know, close down a factory in the United States that puts out some air pollution, okay? They would rather close that down and have the same factory open in China with ten times the air pollution. It's all the same air we breathe. There's no sense to it all.

GLENN: Do you ‑‑ I was in Washington D.C. this week and for the first time I saw a difference in the capitol police. I mean, we've always been friends with the police. We have ‑‑ I have good relationships. We do fundraisers for the police and the sheriffs and everybody else, and we have always ‑‑ I believe in a good strong police department. Rat the bad guys out. Don't punish all the police. Rat the bad guys out and get them off the force. And when I was in Washington, between the permits and the way the Department of Homeland Security and the capitol police treated people and even looked at the people that were standing there for the Constitution, I've never seen anything like it. And now when you start to say, "I don't know if I can trust the police" or "I don't know if I can trust the judicial system," I mean, you're in a different world, man.

HARRISON: Umm, it's all the bureaucracy. I mean, I have a close family member that something really bad happened to her. I'll even say his name. He's pleaded guilty to forceable sexual abuse in Utah. And this guy was charged four years ago; hasn't spent a day in jail because of all the bureaucracy.

GLENN: Wait. Wait a minute, wait. He pleaded guilty to forced sexual abuse, he pleaded guilty?

HARRISON: Yes.

GLENN: And he hasn't ‑‑ he hasn't spent a day in jail yet? Four years?

HARRISON: No, because he ‑‑ because he asked to have his psychosexual evaluation before they can sentence him.

GLENN: Oh, dear God.

HARRISON: And that was in February. They're saying it's now delayed until September. And mind you, he doesn't have to register as a sex offender until he's sentenced.

GLENN: Where in Utah is this happening? Who's the judge? Who's the judge? Where is it?

HARRISON: Okay, the judge is St. George, Utah. It's southern Utah. Wallace A. Lee. He literally let this person ‑‑ you know, I mean, you would think once he pled guilty, okay, we're going to remand you to custody until ‑‑

PAT: Yeah.

HARRISON: You know, until you're sentenced. So ‑‑

GLENN: Is Wallace A. Lee, is that the judge or is that the ‑‑

HARRISON: That's the judge. The ‑‑ well, I was going to call him ‑‑ we're on the radio. I'm sorry. I almost said something else.

GLENN: Well, no. He pleaded guilty to sexual ‑‑ what was it, sexual assault, sexual ‑‑

HARRISON: Felony sexual abuse. This was a plea bargain, by the way.

GLENN: Felony sexual abuse?

HARRISON: There was over seven felony assault charges against him and, you know, his name is Richard Burdette. The ‑‑ and I'm on the phone the other day to the prosecutor and I'm going, "What is the problem here?" And they go, "Well, they need this psychosexual evaluation to see if he's going to reoffend."

GLENN: The guy plead ‑‑ the guy pleaded guilty!

HARRISON: He pleaded guilty and they want him to talk to a psychologist to see if he's going to reoffend. You really think he's going to tell the psychologist the truth?

PAT: I mean, he's create sexual assault but he's not a liar, you know? These guys draw the line somewhere.

HARRISON: This is what you're dealing with where we have to ‑‑

GLENN: So hang on just a second. I'm trying to understand. This is ‑‑ what's the judge's name again?

HARRISON: Wallace A. Lee.

GLENN: Wallace A. Lee. So you're telling me that the judge in St. George, Utah, Wallace A. Lee, is actually saying, "Well, before I give him his penalty, I want to make sure that he ‑‑ that he's already learned his lesson." He's learned his lesson? You haven't even punished him yet. He's learning ‑‑ he is learning. Hey, judge, he is learning a lesson here. You're teaching him a very important lesson. So he's ‑‑ I'm going to listen to him, we want to talk to him, we want to make sure the psychiatrists talk to him to see if he's learned his lesson before we've given him any punishment at all. So then, what, he'll lessen the sentence? Is that the idea?

HARRISON: I have no idea. And you know we ‑‑ you know he's not going to go to a psychologist and say, you know, "I like having sex with children." "No, I'm all better." It's the insanity of our legal system. You know, a DUI is a very, very bad thing and I think those people should be punished, but he would have spent more time in jail if he got a DUI.

GLENN: Wow.

HARRISON: And there's other things too. I mean, you have young kids who do something stupid and you give them a ‑‑ you give them a record for the rest of their life, as opposed to what we used to do is, "Hey, put the kid in the military; he'll be all right." That's what they ended up doing to my dad and he ended up being a great person to society. So every ‑‑

GLENN: I don't think your dad likes you too much, though. I see your dad.

HARRISON: My dad is the greatest guy in the world.

GLENN: No, he really is. He really is.

HARRISON: He gets up ‑‑ even if there is nothing for him to do at work, he is there at 6:30 in the morning with a suit on.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: You know what's really great, what I love about it is you guys work hard, you're honest, you don't ‑‑ you're not cheating anybody. I've never seen anything where you're trying to get the leg up on a deal. And you're straight up with people. That's why, you know, Pat said you're brutal at negotiating. No, you're just honest: Dude, this is what it's worth; I have to resell it.

PAT: Well, and you've got to make money.

GLENN: I have to make money.

PAT: Have to make money.

GLENN: That's all it is.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And you win because of the two lessons I've learned from very wealthy people: One, never get emotionally attached to anything. You don't want ‑‑ you don't need it, you don't want it that much; don't get emotionally attached to something. It's just something ‑‑ something else will come along. And the second thing is, is just be straight‑up honest and be willing to walk away. Never bluff. Be willing to walk away from the table. How is that a ‑‑

HARRISON: Well, I mean ‑‑ yeah, I've always told ‑‑ I mean, I've told people this in a million interviews and people I know: The deal's not right, the deal's not right.

GLENN: Yep.

PAT: Yeah.

HARRISON: Just plain and simple it's not. And, you know, I own a small business and I ‑‑ well, the government considers me a medium business now.

STU: Congratulations.

HARRISON: And I've been in business for over 25 years and I really truly believe in that whole six degrees of separation you're honest and good to your employees, good to your customers, it's good for business.

GLENN: I tell you, Rick, I would really, I would really love ‑‑ I'm coming out to Vegas I think next week, I think we're doing ‑‑

PAT: Next Friday I think we're doing it.

GLENN: I'm doing some stuff with the people ‑‑ I don't know if you've ever heard fly‑by Foy but they are the people who do all the fly‑by wire stuff for Cirque du Soleil.

HARRISON: Okay.

GLENN: And they are working on a show with me, Man in the Moon, and I have to, they have to tear it all ‑‑

HARRISON: Are you going to start doing back flips in the air and stuff like that?

GLENN: You'd be surprised what you're going to see.

PAT: Oh, he's limber ‑‑ limber.

GLENN: Before they break it down, I have to go see it myself in Vegas before they ship it out. And so I'm going to be in town. I'd love to stop by and shake your hand and just stroll through your ‑‑ stroll through your place. But I'm not bringing my wallet.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: I'm not bringing my wallet.

HARRISON: Well, come by and maybe I'll bring you to lunch.

GLENN: All right, man. Thank you. Rick, I appreciate it. Keep up the good work. You guys are doing a great, great job. And let us know what happens. Let us know what happens with Judge Lee and the dirtbag.

HARRISON: I will. Talk to you later.

GLENN: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

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The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

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The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

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Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

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The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.