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Doc Thompson Questions Activist's Promise of Non-violence at Trump Inauguration

January 18, 2017
Staff

WRITER

One of the hallmarks of American democracy is the peaceful transition of power every four to eight years. However, liberal activists unhappy with the election results seem bent on disrupting Inauguration Day with protests and civil disobedience.

Doc Thompson from The Morning Blaze With Doc Thompson, joined Glenn's radio program to report his encounter with Lacey MacAuley, a leader of activist group Disrupt J20.

According to its website, Disrupt J20 is a "collective of experienced local activists" who are "planning a series of massive direct actions that will shut down the Inauguration ceremonies and any related celebrations --- the Inaugural parade, the Inaugural balls," paralyzing the city.

While MacAuley assured Doc of the group's dedication to non-violent civil disobedience, Doc uncovered additional information that directly contradicted MacAuley's claim.

"James O'Keefe and Project Veritas released their first video that seems to show they want something a little more than just civil disobedience, possibly some things that are pretty dangerous," Doc said.

In a second Project Veritas video, activists called for illegally shutting down the metro and punching people in the throat.

MacAuley brushed off these statements, saying it was a ruse for the interview.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: We have Doc Thompson with us. He does mornings on TheBlaze Radio Network. And you have been kind of taking my approach of, hey, let's listen to people.

DOC: Right. Right.

GLENN: And it has paid off in a big way. Tell us how.

DOC: I was following your other approaches in life, and those weren't working out so well for me.

GLENN: Right. Yeah, I know.

DOC: So this one -- so a couple weeks ago, we found about this J20. This is the Disrupt J20, where they're organizing all of the different little factions. Anybody who is opposed to some of our ideals, for whatever the little issue, abortion, gun control, whatever, to bring them all together in DC and do whatever they can to actually disrupt the inauguration.

On some level, to stop him from becoming president, which is a little nutty to me. We found out about it. My producer Chris Cruz said, "Okay. Let me try to get them on." And he amazingly got a lady by the name of Lacey MacAuley to come on. Apparently, she doesn't have access to the Internet to find out about me. So she actually agreed to the interview.

GLENN: But you were honest with her.

DOC: I was. I was. A lot of people think that by asking tough questions or that I'm satirical, over the top at times, that I'm going to treat them that way. And we didn't. We heard her out. She said some things that the audience objected to. Some things I did as well. I didn't debate every issue, but we talked about the Disrupt J20. And she said it's non-violent. They just want to disrupt. Civil disobedience. She used phrases like that.

And I said, "Listen, I will stand with you for your right to express your First Amendment rights. I will stand with you. But not for violence, not for breaking the law, anything like this."

So then James O'Keefe and Project Veritas released their first video that seems to show they want something a little more than just civil disobedience, possibly some things that are pretty dangerous.

GLENN: Is she in the video?

DOC: She is not in the first one. But they mention her in the second one, which was released late yesterday. So after the first one was released, the day before yesterday, we interviewed her yesterday morning, and she said basically that the people in the video that were calling for stink bomb, acid -- I can't remember the type of acid it's called -- to be put in the ventilation or the sprinklers off, that they knew -- and I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially they knew that the person that was talking to them was not one of them. And she said, we knew it was some sort of scam. We didn't know who. It could have been police.

GLENN: So you make it worse?

DOC: That was my question. I said, "Why would you incriminate yourself? They can use this as evidence." And she really didn't have a great answer for that. But she stuck to, this was all just a big ruse that they were putting on for whoever was interviewing them essentially.

GLENN: Right.

Uh-huh.

DOC: And then the video came out yesterday that seems to show a little bit more. So I have a clip if you want to hear it, of yesterday's interview with her, where she mentions a couple of things like that and then also talks about James O'Keefe.

GLENN: Okay. Here it is.

DOC: Once again, I'm going to offer you the opportunity to condemn any acts of violence or anything that would get anybody hurt this week in DC.

LACEY: Well, thanks very much, Doc. This is absolutely something that we articulate and reaffirm at every single one of the meetings of Disrupt J20. And, you know, this is a commitment to harming no one.

DOC: You believe James O'Keefe is working on behalf of Nazis, or he's doing the work of Nazis, white nationalists?

LACEY: Well, he basically is attacking our group, the DC anti-fascist coalition, and our targets are the people who are modern day Nazis.

DOC: They voted for Trump, they're looking for something different. But they don't necessarily stand with the Nazis. I mean, you understand the difference.

LACEY: Well, I think it's pretty clear to me that he's attacking a group that protests Nazis. So that puts him on that side.

GLENN: President-elect Trump until Friday. You don't think that he supports Nazi issues, do you?

LACEY: Well, I think there's basically a reason that these groups have been so celebratory of his policies.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

LACEY: Glenn Beck, your thoughts on that?

GLENN: Quite clearly misguided. I mean, I stand against fascism.

LACEY: Yeah.

GLENN: I stand against Nazis.

To tie Donald Trump -- actually tie him to Nazis is ridiculous. To tie Steve Bannon to the Nazi movement is not. But there is nothing in Donald Trump's history that shows that he is racist. Maybe the thing, Stu, that he went for the casino thing. That's probably the biggest mark of racist. But other than that, in his history, is he -- does he have that tendency that would show that he was a Nazi?

STU: Nazi, no. God, no. You know, even -- you talk about Steve Bannon, I mean, he -- there are obviously a lot of people in the alt-right that embrace those values and send people pictures of them in gas chambers and such.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: But most people --

GLENN: They've sent them to us.

STU: Even Ben Shapiro, who is an ardent critic of Steve Bannon's, has said he doesn't think he believes those things. He's using them for --

GLENN: Oh, I don't think so either. He's using them.

And I think that there is a case to be made that Steve Bannon is connected and using them. And Donald Trump was taking advice from Steve Bannon, but I don't think he's a Nazi.

DOC: It's funny though. There are so many subtle levels of this. Yes, clearly there are people in America that identify with Nazis. These people are crazy, right?

GLENN: But literally --

DOC: But there's many -- it's not everybody automatically in the alt-right, the right or whatever, is a Nazi just because we disagree. There's many, many levels that gets you closer and closer to that.

STU: Even a lot of the Nazis weren't Nazis as we think of them today.

DOC: Right. They were just, I got to do this, right?

STU: Again, that's horrible, but I'm not even talking about -- there were people in the party who didn't do all those things. Even back then, to assign -- it's true. It's true.

GLENN: No, I know it's true. You and I are both -- we're more well read on the Nazi movement than 99 percent of the Nazis.

STU: Right. And there's no reason to draw gray areas about the Nazis.

GLENN: Yes, right.

STU: They're all obviously horrible. My point though is even people who would today identify themselves that way weren't people who have killed 6 million Jews. This is why everyone gets so frustrated with Nazi comparisons. We all know how that ended up, so therefore everyone jumps to the end point of that. However, there was a lot of stuff early on, it wasn't so clear they were going to wind up killing 6 million Jews, even though Hitler very -- was very clear about his intentions.

GLENN: Again, people not taking him literally, but taking him seriously.

STU: Yeah, point is though, you can't compare -- I mean, obviously a comparison like that, where you're just throwing everyone -- half of this freaking country in the boat of Nazis is completely absurd.

GLENN: And to disrupt the inauguration destroys the main thing about America. And that is, we have a peaceful transfer of power.

That is one of the most stabilizing points that we can make to the rest of the world. Look, we strongly disagree. But we always have a -- a peaceful transfer of power. Even though -- I mean, we can compare this -- you know, the -- the Secret Service was not in effect with Abraham Lincoln. We didn't have a Secret Service.

Abraham Lincoln did not understand how divided this country was, until he made it to Baltimore. Most people don't know this, but there was a plot against his life, coming in for his first inauguration from Illinois. And he took the train to Philadelphia. And he was supposed to then take the train to Baltimore the next morning.

What people didn't know is he actually took a train -- he got into Philadelphia, and instead of saying, he went out the back door. And in the cover of darkness, went to -- I want to say like Hershey or someplace in that area. And then took another train in the middle of the night to Washington. And completely bypassed -- actually, no, it wasn't Philadelphia. It was Baltimore. He made it all the way to Baltimore. And it was the next morning they were going to kill him at the train station. So he took another train out and then rerouted to Washington. But it was in him walking, down the street to get out, where he heard all of the anti-Lincoln and anti-North sentiment on the streets. And he couldn't believe it.

He said later, "I didn't understand how divided we were as a country, that there were people willing to kill the people in the North. It wasn't just me."

I think we're close to that point again, to where we are so divided and the extremes on both sides have been so wound up by politicians, that they think now is their moment.

DOC: Imagine if they get what they want on Friday. It's like the dog that catches the car. What are you going to do now? What do you think is going to happen? We disrupted it. He didn't get inaugurated. Everyone is just going to go back to their life. Obama stays president. All hell breaks loose if they disrupt that.

PAT: And he's inaugurated anyway. They'll just go inside and inaugurate him. I mean...

DOC: And he gets inaugurated anyway.

GLENN: That's right. But that's what happens -- that's what people want. There are a great number of people now that want a crackdown. They want the chaos because they want the crackdown.

PAT: And we were such --

GLENN: She says she's anti-fascist. Well, what do you think -- how are fascistic states created? They're created by crackdowns because crackpots went and burned down the Reichstag.

DOC: I thought it was with marshmallows and rainbows. I thought that's how it was created. Wasn't it? Something like that?

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. It's really frightening to see the left -- and, again, the media has called a whole group of people Nazis. Not -- not what I said.

DOC: Right.

GLENN: These are Brownshirt tactics. And there's a difference between Brownshirt tactics and Nazis. While they were both Nazis, one is describing a person and a group of people. The other is saying, "You're using the same tactics here."

DOC: Did you see the second James O'Keefe video? The Project Veritas one? In it, at one point, one of the guys talking, he's like, oh -- this is one of the Disrupt J20 people. Let me call my comrade and see if he can blah, blah, blah.

GLENN: Comrade.

DOC: So you anti-fascist people are communist.

GLENN: Are communist. They're communist.

DOC: You think that's better?

GLENN: Right.

DOC: These are the people that believe that they are opposite sides of the spectrum. I do not believe that.

GLENN: No, they're not. That's total government. Doc, thanks so much for bringing that in.

DOC: Thanks.

GLENN: You know, your mom can fix those pants.

DOC: Okay. I'm flying immediately after this segment to DC. These are my TSA pants. Because, yes, it makes me uncomfortable when TSA touches me. But with these -- because I make them pat me down as part of my civil disobedience.

GLENN: Are they ripped in the butt or something?

DOC: Yes, they are. Right here. See right here. It's definitely going to make them uncomfortable.

PAT: Thank you for sharing that with me by the way. Thank you. That's okay.

DOC: That's for you, Pat. Rump shaker. Rump shaker.

GLENN: All right. Thank you. You've got to go off the set now. We're never going to get --

PAT: Don't you need to hit a flight?

DOC: I do. I got to go. I'm glad you said that.

GLENN: There are some things you can't unsee. And that's one of them.

PAT: I know. Yikes.

GLENN: But Tania and I were in Vegas this weekend, somebody would walk by, and I would be like, "You can't unsee that one." And she's like --

JEFFY: That's what makes Vegas great.

GLENN: -- "But you can replace it. Replace it with that one." And these people were -- oh, there was a woman that I saw at a really nice restaurant, dressed as a very nice hooker, I think. And Tania pointed out, "She might be." And I'm like, "Okay. Yes. I did see Pretty Woman. Maybe she is. But I don't think she was." You know how women go to Vegas and they dress like hookers?

STU: It's actually their city slogan.

GLENN: This woman was -- yeah, this woman was plump. And she honestly had a dress on. And she was probably 40. And she had a dress on where I could see the -- the cheek come down. Okay. I could see the cheek meet the leg.

PAT: Uh-huh. That's great.

GLENN: Now, she was standing with her butt toward me. And I said to Tania, "I'm torn. Because I want her to turn around to see how this works on the front." Because I said, "Just draw a mental line around." So I want to see how this works in the front, and yet I really don't want to --

STU: Especially in a food environment.

JEFFY: You have to see that.

GLENN: No, no.

JEFFY: You can't go to Vegas not to see --

GLENN: Again, there are things you cannot unsee.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

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

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

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.