GLENN: So in case you watched Monday Night Football last night, nobody is talking today about, you know, the Star-Spangled Banner, thank God. What they are talking about had nothing to do with football, had to do with a trailer that ran during the football game with Star Wars. Here it is.
VOICE: When I found you, I saw raw untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special.
(music)
VOICE: Something inside me has always been there. And I was awake. And I need help.
(music)
VOICE: I've seen this before. It didn't scare me enough then. It does now.
(music)
VOICE: Let the past die. Kill it. You have to. That's the only way to become what you were meant to be.
(music)
VOICE: You have spunk that will light the fire, that will burn the (inaudible) down.
(music)
VOICE: This is not going to go the way you think. Fulfill your destiny.
(music)
VOICE: I need someone to show me my place in all this.
GLENN: So that's the trailer. It comes out right before Christmas, for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
STU: Tickets are on sale now, by the way.
GLENN: Oh, my gosh.
STU: For December 15th. Steven Kent is with us. He hosts the Beltway Banthas podcast. And it is a -- kind of a mesh of politics and Star Wars, which is the perfect --
GLENN: It doesn't get any better than that.
Steven, how are you?
STEVEN: I'm doing well. Good morning, thanks for having me on with you.
GLENN: So, Steven, first of all, what did you think of -- what did you think of a little gerbil in there? I mean, is it another Jar Jar Binks?
STEVEN: Man, I think you're going to be very grateful for that gerbil. It's called a porg by the end of this movie. I mean, look at how dark this is going to be. I think we're going need to mountains of comedic relief and something cute by the end of this thing. So I'm on board with the porg. Let's do it. And it doesn't talk, so that's a plus, right?
STU: That's true. That is a very good point.
GLENN: I do have to stop and ask, what the hell -- have you ever kissed a girl? You know what the gerbil is called? What? Why?
STEVEN: Hey, hey, Mike Allen had it leading his morning playbook today. I think it's a legit thing to follow these porgs thing in all their glory.
STU: That was the big -- there are two takeaways from the trailer, it seemed. One that, you know, the -- the -- the young Back Street boy Darth Vader guy, and the Luke Skywalker girl are going to basically team up or have some sort of relationship, it looks like. And then, secondarily, there was a little hamster driving the Millennium Falcon. Those are the two things that I feel like Twitter took from the trailer. Is that accurate, Steven?
STEVEN: I think that's definitely what Twitter took from it. I think folks are looking at Rey and seeing that she's not going to have the typical hero's journey story that we're accustomed to seeing, at least from the vein of Luke Skywalker. I think what's notable after all of this, is that you have a villain in Kylo Ren and a hero in Rey, who are both very confused about who they are and where they are going.
And I think you're actually going to find a story by the end of the last Jedi, possibly going into Episode 9, where these two are in cahoots, doing their own thing, possibly going their own way. Rejecting both the dogma of the light and the dogma of the dark, and trying to find their own path. I think this will leave a lot of people confused, some people really excited. But I think most folks are going to look at this and go, this is not the Star Wars that I'm used to.
GLENN: This is a third party. They're starting a third party.
STEVEN: They're making the third party of Star Wars. I think that that is basically the tale of our time, is it not?
In many ways, these are two young characters who I think represent a lot of the angst and confusion of young people today, who are coming up and enjoying Star Wars. And also, just horrified by politics. Right? And they are going to try to chart their own path forward. I mean, millennials, you know, they are the non-religious generation. They are the increasingly independent generation when it comes to politics. And I just see in Kylo and Rey, this incredible reluctance that just feels familiar to me, as an observer. Politics as well. You see it in the trailer, where Kylo Ren is looking at his mask again, and he just looks disgusted at it. I mean, he just does not like what he has done and where he is. And I think that this is an incredibly compelling story. I'm quite excited now, after this trailer, after having been I think more than a little bit nervous of where this was going.
STU: I like to bring Steven on, because then I can act like I don't really care about these things. Let him be the smart one. I don't even know.
What's that -- the Darth, what? I don't even remember -- but it's true. There are so many parallels. And I don't know, Steven, is this intentional by them? Are they trying to make a good movie, or are they trying to reflect some political thing going on right now?
JASON: Well, Star Wars is always good, when it's reflecting some sort of political thing. We saw that in the original trilogy, you know, really echoing the 1980s, the sort of United States versus Soviet Union dynamic.
And then we also some hints of the real world, more than a few pop up in the prequel trilogy. Star Wars reflects the time that it's in. And when this -- when this trilogy got started, with the Force Awakens, I think I was with you, Stu. I looked at this, and I saw a lot of laziness and rehashing of old themes and old ideas.
But then we also know, as students of history, people who follow politics, that things repeat themselves. We are in a horrible place in global politics right now. And here in the United States with old ideas. Things like fascism and Naziism, looking us in the eye again.
And now I'm looking at Stormtroopers, I'm looking at this sort of cult that worships the empire called the First Order, these new movies. And I'm going, you know what, this isn't actually a rehash. This is about as real as it gets. This is what happens.
GLENN: So I have a great amount of respect for Lucas and what he did in studying mythology and everything else. He's crafted a brilliant story.
What kills me is Star Wars is -- is timeless. You're right that it does comment on the times in which we live. But I don't think it's necessarily intentional. It's -- it just is a timeless story. This is the story of mankind, always. No matter what time you're living in.
But it kills me that the people in Hollywood that made these things, they don't notice sometimes that they might be pulling for the dark side.
STEVEN: Sure. I think that is something definitely that we need to look at as well. And you're right, this is a timeless story. The United States is not the center of the universe, particularly when it comes to the battle between good and evil. Star Wars is a global franchise. It has a huge audience abroad. This is drawing from all sorts of political things that everybody can relate to. This is the human story. The light versus the dark. But with Hollywood. I think this is just what you kind of have to expect. There are certain things they ignore about their belief. But then I'm also encouraged sometimes when I see things like Star Wars and these ideas come out there.
You know, like with Saw Gerrera in Rogue One, he was sort of that Che Guevara-ish type rebel who didn't want to play by the rules of the mainstream rebellion. And while they could have romanticized that character and say, oh, this guy is great. You know, he's actually going the violent route. Really taking it to the empire, the empire's way, which is the wrong way.
They made it out that he was sort of the Darth Vader of the rebellion. He was half man, half machine. That's not someone who you want to be. You have to give up part of your humanity if you're going to fight evil with evil or fire with fire.
GLENN: So speaking of evil, when you saw Disney bought this, did you at all have a moment of, I don't know who could -- I don't know who would wreck this story line faster? George Lucas or Disney.
STEVEN: Oh, man. You know what, I actually -- I'm pro-Disney these days. Kathleen Kennedy who is helming Star Wars. I think she gets it, in a way that George Lucas might have not at a certain point as a creator. I think he had his -- I guess the goggles on or something like that. He didn't see at a certain point that he needed some challenge in the studio. And you know the prequels were made almost entirely by him, in terms of the screen writing, the directing, and the production. He had nobody to tell him no. And I think that Star Wars as sort of a collective project, where you have a bunch of different creatives in the room working on it, you're going to get much better outcomes than with the masterminds. He actually, you know, himself personally favored benevolent dictatorship, George Lucas. So I'm going to go with Disney on this one. George Lucas had his shot, and we saw how that went.
GLENN: Steven, biggest comparison to Star Wars in today's political realm?
STEVEN: Hmm. So I heard one the other night that I actually really liked. It's probably not the biggest. But I thought it was really compelling. It's something that I mentioned earlier, about Rey and Kylo as sort of the millennial story. And I know Stu likes to mention this all the time about how you have Kylo the sort of emo millennial Sith, and he's just sort of trying to be a Darth and he can't. And I think that this just -- this just feels like the story of our time.
This young man who thinks he is one thing, but it turns out he might be another. Identity. And sort of being confused about where you stand on the spectrum is part of the politics of our era. Everyone is trying to find out where they are, while the spectrum is being flipped upside down. So I think this is sort of what we look at, when we see the closest parallel, confusion about identity. Where do I belong? Where am I going?
GLENN: Steven, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
(music)
STU: Check out Steven's podcast, Beltway Banthas. It's that meshing of politics and Star Wars. We've seen that recently with sports. That's one of the things that entertains me. And I hate to bring it into that world, but he does it pretty well. And goes -- and, of course, he's obviously the ultimate Star Wars geek, as you can probably tell, by him identifying the hampster thing, driving the Millennium Falcon.
GLENN: It wasn't the hamster thing to him.
STU: No. It was -- well, you said it was a gerbil. I thought it was a hamster.
GLENN: Whatever. He thought it was -- no, he knew what it was.
STU: Exactly.
GLENN: He knew -- he knew what it was.
Something ugly is unfolding on social media, and most people aren’t seeing it clearly. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — one of the most constitutionally grounded conservatives in Washington — is under fire for a housing provision he first proposed in 2022.
You wouldn’t know that from scrolling through X. According to the latest online frenzy, Lee wants to sell off national parks, bulldoze public lands, gut hunting and fishing rights, and hand America’s wilderness to Amazon, BlackRock, and the Chinese Communist Party. None of that is true.
I covered this last month. Since then, the backlash has grown into something like a political witch hunt — not just from the left but from the right. Even Donald Trump Jr., someone I typically agree with, has attacked Lee’s proposal. He’s not alone.
Time to look at the facts the media refuses to cover about Lee’s federal land plan.
Over the weekend, Lee announced that he would withdraw the federal land sale provision from his housing bill. He said the decision was in response to “a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies,” but also acknowledged that many Americans brought forward sincere, thoughtful concerns.
Because of the strict rules surrounding the budget reconciliation process, Lee couldn’t secure legally enforceable protections to ensure that the land would be made available “only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.” Without those safeguards, he chose to walk it back.
That’s not selling out. That’s leadership.
It's what the legislative process is supposed to look like: A senator proposes a bill, the people respond, and the lawmaker listens. That was once known as representative democracy. These days, it gets you labeled a globalist sellout.
To many Americans, “public land” brings to mind open spaces for hunting, fishing, hiking, and recreation. But that’s not what Sen. Mike Lee’s bill targeted.
His proposal would have protected against the real land-grab already under way — the one pushed by the Biden administration.
In 2021, Biden launched a plan to “conserve” 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030. This effort follows the United Nations-backed “30 by 30” initiative, which seeks to place one-third of all land and water under government control.
Ask yourself: Is the U.N. focused on preserving your right to hunt and fish? Or are radical environmentalists exploiting climate fears to restrict your access to American land?
Smith Collection/Gado / Contributor | Getty Images
As it stands, the federal government already owns 640 million acres — nearly one-third of the entire country. At this rate, the government will hit that 30% benchmark with ease. But it doesn’t end there. The next phase is already in play: the “50 by 50” agenda.
That brings me to a piece of legislation most Americans haven’t even heard of: the Sustains Act.
Passed in 2023, the law allows the federal government to accept private funding from organizations, such as BlackRock or the Bill Gates Foundation, to support “conservation programs.” In practice, the law enables wealthy elites to buy influence over how American land is used and managed.
Moreover, the government doesn’t even need the landowner’s permission to declare that your property contributes to “pollination,” or “photosynthesis,” or “air quality” — and then regulate it accordingly. You could wake up one morning and find out that the land you own no longer belongs to you in any meaningful sense.
Where was the outrage then? Where were the online crusaders when private capital and federal bureaucrats teamed up to quietly erode private property rights across America?
The real danger isn’t in Mike Lee’s attempt to offer more housing near population centers — land that would be limited, clarified, and safeguarded in the final bill. The real threat is the creeping partnership between unelected global elites and our own government, a partnership designed to consolidate land, control rural development, and keep Americans penned in so-called “15-minute cities.”
BlackRock buying entire neighborhoods and pricing out regular families isn’t by accident. It’s part of a larger strategy to centralize populations into manageable zones, where cars are unnecessary, rural living is unaffordable, and every facet of life is tracked, regulated, and optimized.
That’s the real agenda. And it’s already happening , and Mike Lee’s bill would have been an effort to ensure that you — not BlackRock, not China — get first dibs.
I live in a town of 451 people. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, housing is unaffordable. The American dream of owning a patch of land is slipping away, not because of one proposal from a constitutional conservative, but because global powers and their political allies are already devouring it.
This controversy isn’t really about Mike Lee. It’s about whether we, as a nation, are still capable of having honest debates about public policy — or whether the online mob now controls the narrative. It’s about whether conservatives will focus on facts or fall into the trap of friendly fire and circular firing squads.
More importantly, it’s about whether we’ll recognize the real land-grab happening in our country — and have the courage to fight back before it’s too late.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
The United States has taken direct military action against Iran’s nuclear program. Whatever you think of the strike, it’s over. It’s happened. And now, we have to predict what happens next. I want to help you understand the gravity of this situation: what happened, what it means, and what might come next. To that end, we need to begin with a little history.
Since 1979, Iran has been at war with us — even if we refused to call it that.
It began with the hostage crisis, when 66 Americans were seized and 52 were held for over a year by the radical Islamic regime. Four years later, 17 more Americans were murdered in the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, followed by 241 Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing.
Then came the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 more U.S. airmen. Iran had its fingerprints all over it.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian-backed proxies killed hundreds of American soldiers. From 2001 to 2020 in Afghanistan and 2003 to 2011 in Iraq, Iran supplied IEDs and tactical support.
The Iranians have plotted assassinations and kidnappings on U.S. soil — in 2011, 2021, and again in 2024 — and yet we’ve never really responded.
The precedent for U.S. retaliation has always been present, but no president has chosen to pull the trigger until this past weekend. President Donald Trump struck decisively. And what our military pulled off this weekend was nothing short of extraordinary.
The strike was reportedly called Operation Midnight Hammer. It involved as many as 175 U.S. aircraft, including 12 B-2 stealth bombers — out of just 19 in our entire arsenal. Those bombers are among the most complex machines in the world, and they were kept mission-ready by some of the finest mechanics on the planet.
USAF / Handout | Getty Images
To throw off Iranian radar and intelligence, some bombers flew west toward Guam — classic misdirection. The rest flew east, toward the real targets.
As the B-2s approached Iranian airspace, U.S. submarines launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Iran’s fortified nuclear facilities. Minutes later, the bombers dropped 14 MOPs — massive ordnance penetrators — each designed to drill deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers. These bombs are the size of an F-16 and cost millions of dollars apiece. They are so accurate, I’ve been told they can hit the top of a soda can from 15,000 feet.
They were built for this mission — and we’ve been rehearsing this run for 15 years.
If the satellite imagery is accurate — and if what my sources tell me is true — the targeted nuclear sites were utterly destroyed. We’ll likely rely on the Israelis to confirm that on the ground.
This was a master class in strategy, execution, and deterrence. And it proved that only the United States could carry out a strike like this. I am very proud of our military, what we are capable of doing, and what we can accomplish.
We don’t yet know how Iran will respond, but many of the possibilities are troubling. The Iranians could target U.S. forces across the Middle East. On Monday, Tehran launched 20 missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar, Syria, and Kuwait, to no effect. God forbid, they could also unleash Hezbollah or other terrorist proxies to strike here at home — and they just might.
Iran has also threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the artery through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil flows. On Sunday, Iran’s parliament voted to begin the process. If the Supreme Council and the ayatollah give the go-ahead, we could see oil prices spike to $150 or even $200 a barrel.
That would be catastrophic.
The 2008 financial collapse was pushed over the edge when oil hit $130. Western economies — including ours — simply cannot sustain oil above $120 for long. If this conflict escalates and the Strait is closed, the global economy could unravel.
The strike also raises questions about regime stability. Will it spark an uprising, or will the Islamic regime respond with a brutal crackdown on dissidents?
Early signs aren’t hopeful. Reports suggest hundreds of arrests over the weekend and at least one dissident executed on charges of spying for Israel. The regime’s infamous morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, are back on the streets. Every phone, every vehicle — monitored. The U.S. embassy in Qatar issued a shelter-in-place warning for Americans.
Russia and China both condemned the strike. On Monday, a senior Iranian official flew to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. That meeting should alarm anyone paying attention. Their alliance continues to deepen — and that’s a serious concern.
We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell. But either way, President Trump didn’t start this. He inherited it — and he took decisive action.
The difference is, he did what they all said they would do. He didn’t send pallets of cash in the dead of night. He didn’t sign another failed treaty.
He acted. Now, we pray. For peace, for wisdom, and for the strength to meet whatever comes next.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
It only took 25 years for New York City to go from the resilient, flag-waving pride following the 9/11 attacks to a political fever dream. To quote Michael Malice, “I'm old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”
Malice is talking about Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens now eyeing the mayor’s office. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state representative emerging from relative political obscurity, is now receiving substantial funding for his mayoral campaign from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
CAIR has a long and concerning history, including being born out of the Muslim Brotherhood and named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. Why would the group have dropped $100,000 into a PAC backing Mamdani’s campaign?
Perhaps CAIR has a vested interest in Mamdani’s call to “globalize the intifada.” That’s not a call for peaceful protest. Intifada refers to historic uprisings of Muslims against what they call the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Suicide bombings and street violence are part of the playbook. So when Mamdani says he wants to “globalize” that, who exactly is the enemy in this global scenario? Because it sure sounds like he's saying America is the new Israel, and anyone who supports Western democracy is the new Zionist.
Mamdani tried to clean up his language by citing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which once used “intifada” in an Arabic-language article to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So now he’s comparing Palestinians to Jewish victims of the Nazis? If that doesn’t twist your stomach into knots, you’re not paying attention.
If you’re “globalizing” an intifada, and positioning Israel — and now America — as the Nazis, that’s not a cry for human rights. That’s a call for chaos and violence.
But hey, this is New York. Faculty members at Columbia University — where Mamdani’s own father once worked — signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas after October 7. They also contributed to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. And his father? He blamed Ronald Reagan and the religious right for inspiring Islamic terrorism, as if the roots of 9/11 grew in Washington, not the caves of Tora Bora.
Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images
This isn’t about Islam as a faith. We should distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a religion followed peacefully by millions. Islamism is something entirely different — an ideology that seeks to merge mosque and state, impose Sharia law, and destroy secular liberal democracies from within. Islamism isn’t about prayer and fasting. It’s about power.
Criticizing Islamism is not Islamophobia. It is not an attack on peaceful Muslims. In fact, Muslims are often its first victims.
Islamism is misogynistic, theocratic, violent, and supremacist. It’s hostile to free speech, religious pluralism, gay rights, secularism — even to moderate Muslims. Yet somehow, the progressive left — the same left that claims to fight for feminism, LGBTQ rights, and free expression — finds itself defending candidates like Mamdani. You can’t make this stuff up.
And if that weren’t enough, Mamdani also identifies as a Democratic Socialist. He blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone. But don’t worry, New York. I’m sure this time socialism will totally work. Just like it always didn’t.
If you’re a business owner, a parent, a person who’s saved anything, or just someone who values sanity: Get out. I’m serious. If Mamdani becomes mayor, as seems likely, then New York City will become a case study in what happens when you marry ideological extremism with political power. And it won’t be pretty.
This is about more than one mayoral race. It’s about the future of Western liberalism. It’s about drawing a bright line between faith and fanaticism, between healthy pluralism and authoritarian dogma.
We must call out political Islam the same way we call out white nationalism or any other supremacist ideology. When someone chants “globalize the intifada,” that should send a chill down your spine — whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, or anything in between.
The left may try to shame you into silence with words like “Islamophobia,” but the record is worn out. The grooves are shallow. The American people see what’s happening. And we’re not buying it.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
