Ryan: Trump and the Louisiana funhouse

Part 1

The police car sharked onto Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, strobing blue and red and white and wailing like a baby with a fever.

"I don't like it when they catch me," I said, slapping the dashboard. The same way President Trump slaps the dias at his rallies, glowering behind the decorous seal and the slanted glass teleprompters and the mayhem of a teenage nation.

This was outside Arcadia, Louisiana, about a potholed hour from Monroe, Louisiana, where we currently needed to be. Myself and fellow journalist Jade Byers, who needed a break from the story she'd just begun, an ethnography of Texas State Fair carneys.

Media check-in for the Keep America Great rally would end at 5:00 p.m and it was 4:00 p.m., and it wasn't the sort of occasion you could be late for, so in the afternoon pallor all I wanted was to keep driving, on and on and on past nowhere.

"Just slam the gas," said Jade, "ahead of that semi."

But life was no movie. Especially not in Louisiana, land of corruption and sky-high incarceration. And jail is awful. So we both shrugged, and I guided my white Subaru to the side of the bare grey highway.

We'd just been discussing the nature of justice. Was it a form of truth? Or an attempt to enforce it? I sensed that Louisiana was not just. Did you know that it has the highest murder rate in the nation? Later, Trump would bring this up, and, because Trump is a man of superlatives, it spun all the journalists into a fact-check scramble. Sure enough. Number One.

My mind had wandered, as usual. With a blink, I snapped back. This was no time for fanciful thoughts about justice.

The State Trooper pointed for me to get out of the car, then to the woody embankment 15 yards from the road. He pointed in that way that police could point but politicians are not supposed to because it sends the wrong message. Aggressive, capable of violence.

I loved it, every bit of it. Confrontation is lovely. So I strode to the cop in my white Birkenstocks and my stained white "Music for 18 Musicians" t-shirt and my white jeans, looking so much like a Millenial Big Lebowski.

The trooper had already started writing the ticket when he asked where we were going and why. His eyebrows sprouted when I told him I was a reporter for Blaze Media covering the Trump rally in Monroe, where, that very moment, Secret Service had begun letting the first round of rally-goers into the Monroe Civic Center.

"You work for Glenn Beck?" he asked. Then lowered his glasses and scoped me over again. "You're messin' with me."

At the sight of my press badge, he restrained a smile, as if fighting an eagerness to speak freely.

"I am not allowed to talk politics," he said, "being an guardian of the state and all."

Well I'd never heard anything like that and I suspected it was horseshit, so I smiled as he proceeded, unabashedly, to talk politics.
"Glennnnn-Beck," he said, ending with a "Hm." And, right on cue, "I listen to ole Glenn in the mornings, and Stu."

They're my bosses, I said. He liked that pretty well.

"You going to Shreveport too?" he asked. So I nodded and grinned and pretended to know what he was talking about. I smiled the way you smile when everyone around is speaking a language you've never heard and it's time to get going but nobody understands you.

Trump would mention Shreveport later. "I'm coming back here on Thursday, can you believe it?" he said. "I'm doing a double — I'm doing a double." Just six days after the Monroe rally, he would return to Louisiana, and so would I, this time with Jim Dale, an author and lifelong sailor.

Louisiana felt like a State Fair house-of-mirrors. Some kind of warp. Too much of yourself then none of you at all. A ghost following a helium-choked balloon. The homes seemed to rise from nothing, all shadows and grey shrub as if misshapen on purpose. And a wide shaggy green overtook the bare hills. Even the sky, the way it tilted, like a petri dish of glittery dark.

Much of America has untouched land and old-world buildings, but nowhere else I'd been left me feeling so indescribably odd. Not quite sad, but certainly not happy. Like when strangers in a dream know everything about you, and nobody acknowledges why or how.

*

The Trooper shifted in his tall shiny black boots. Was he still talking about Trump? Boy, I zoned out pretty hard. It was Wednesday and I could flip a coin for days.

"He sure has done a lot for the elections here," he concluded.

Then he gave me a rundown of the political situation in Louisiana. Explained how run-offs work, and why a Republican would be good for the roads and oceans or something, and how a majority was counted a little different in Louisiana. Something like that — I don't know. It was all so boring.

How long had we been standing there? Never in my life had I been so bored.

At the time, the big meme was "OK Boomer," which Generation Z used to disparage the Boomer Generation as part of a feud that popped up for no discernible reason, and which I hated because the joke was kind of mean and never funny yet all four generations kept repeating it and repeating it like big dumb squawking parrots. But in that moment, I understood it. And, may God forgive me, but I whispered that disrespectful phrase.

And I had to pretend to be interested, in case he got the urge to search my car. Whereupon he would find marijuana concentrate and sativa gummies. Paraphernalia. Not a ton. Not much, even. But enough. Some unopened beers, a flask. No guns, but a few knives. An ordinary amount of knives.

All of which would land me a night in the clink, no doubt.

And who had the time or the money for that. Not me, with a Trump rally to cover and a fiery career and a pregnant wife with our two dogs at home, waiting.

Then I felt rotten for getting bored while the guy was talking. The man risked his life every day just so he could protect the community. Never mind the exorbitant ticket. What was $300 when this guy risked everything every day?

You were supposed to listen to people when they trusted or admired you. To care. To give them a chance, no matter their rank or stature or political affiliation. Especially the police.

Before, in situations like these, I resorted to military-style salutes, gestures I had seen as a child in cartoons. However you were meant to signify honor. I was not a military type. But I felt a great reverence for them and their service and whatnot.

Turns out, that's not how they do it at all. The salute, the hard stomp down with the heel, the huge grunt, the serious face, the violent turns of the waist, the gibberish that sounded like military phrases.

So I didn't salute anymore, but that didn't make it any easier not to salute. Usually I boiled and boiled till all of a sudden I was shouting out a long-winded, hard-to-follow story. So I told him what it's like to work at Mercury Studios.

"We've got the Forrest Gump bench," I said. "For a while it was in the dining area and, one time, I saw an intern sitting on it, eating a burrito. We have the original Darth Vader mask, too. And Dorothy's shiny red shoes that were supposed to be silver."
His face spread in all four directions, like I was a child reciting Socrates.

"And the tree from Barney, you know, that dinosaur kids show? And JFK and Robocop and an Eric Clapton video and Guns 'N' Roses, all filmed there. And a few months ago Sean Spicer stopped by. Before all the Dancing with the Stars drama. Interesting people are constantly stopping by. Pat Boone told me that Elvis had stage fright. But, between you and me, I think Pat Boone has stage fright."

I don't care who you are, all of that is fascinating. So I yammered on about this election series and justice, ignoring the trooper's polite impatience. He'd stopped me so the least he could do was listen to my weird story.

Secretly, I wanted to rip the ticket from his gloved hand and wad it up and toss it into the grass below my feet. It was paper. I would litter. It would vanish and no harm done, anonymous among all the other garbage of Louisiana.

There are places where nothing is wasted. America is not one of them.

*

Jade slumped in the car, fidgeting. We'd never talked about it but I assumed she didn't like police all that much. I get it. Usually, when the police show up, someone's day is about to plummet. But I like them, personally. Which I made sure to tell the trooper again, as he blabbed about some recent mayoral election.

Then I laughed, because this situation had gotten pretty funny. There I was on the side of a highway named after former President Ronald Reagan, on my way to see current President Donald Trump, my hair dismantled by the violent wind of a passing semi-truck, as a Louisiana state trooper in a prim uniform gave me a civics lesson.

It was just barely November, and the cold had not descended. Not in the sunshine at least, all pale orange and soft still.

"Trump sure seems to be doing a lot of things right," said the state trooper. "Jobs, economy, all that. And as you know, he's a friend of the police."

Was that a wink? Best to wink back. WINK! A good one.

Oh great now my eye was twitching into rapidfire winks. Too many winks. Veering into sexual wink territory. Oh this will not end well. This will not end will. He will misread my winking and then what? Nothing good. But it stopped, thank God.

Then I spat out some crap about Trump and NATO, something that I'd heard someone at the studio say, something about the parameters of heroism and Milton What's-his-name.

Around us, the aroma of tree bark. Deciduous perfume. A piney landscape that rose out of mud. Forested swamp lined with rivers purging toward a fat, chubby delta. That was where freshwater meets the ocean. Or the other way around.

"Well anyway, here's your ticket, Mr. Ryan. You have a nice day." Then he, a real tough guy, smiled. That was pretty neat.

By habit, I was about to wink but stopped just in time.

Then, he paused, grabbed the ticket. Rip it, rip it, rip it. Be wild, my man. Rip. Rip.

But he just rewrote the station's telephone number, as if to say "Maybe things can change." Not justice. It could not change. Not for me, not in Louisiana. Not under God and all the angels that don't have a gender.

Plus, we all know I wasn't going to pay the ticket anyway. Better to just never return to Louisiana. Drive around it if need be. Fly over. And once the police car was out of view, I stomped on the gas pedal and we were lawless again. Like a comet, friend. A comet.

Welcome back to the election series. New installments are going to be Monday through Thursday leading up to the Iowa caucuses. Check out my Twitter. Email me at kryan@blazemedia.com

The loneliness epidemic: Are machines replacing human connection?

NurPhoto / Contributor | Getty Images

Seniors, children, and the isolated increasingly rely on machines for conversation, risking real relationships and the emotional depth that only humans provide.

Jill Smola is 75 years old. She’s a retiree from Orlando, Florida, and she spent her life caring for the elderly. She played games, assembled puzzles, and offered company to those who otherwise would have sat alone.

Now, she sits alone herself. Her husband has died. She has a lung condition. She can’t drive. She can’t leave her home. Weeks can pass without human interaction.

Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

But CBS News reports that she has a new companion. And she likes this companion more than her own daughter.

The companion? Artificial intelligence.

She spends five hours a day talking to her AI friend. They play games, do trivia, and just talk. She says she even prefers it to real people.

My first thought was simple: Stop this. We are losing our humanity.

But as I sat with the story, I realized something uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve already lost some of our humanity — not to AI, but to ourselves.

Outsourcing presence

How often do we know the right thing to do yet fail to act? We know we should visit the lonely. We know we should sit with someone in pain. We know what Jesus would do: Notice the forgotten, touch the untouchable, offer time and attention without outsourcing compassion.

Yet how often do we just … talk about it? On the radio, online, in lectures, in posts. We pontificate, and then we retreat.

I asked myself: What am I actually doing to close the distance between knowing and doing?

Human connection is messy. It’s inconvenient. It takes patience, humility, and endurance. AI doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t interrupt your day. It doesn’t ask anything of you. Real people do. Real people make us confront our pride, our discomfort, our loneliness.

We’ve built an economy of convenience. We can have groceries delivered, movies streamed, answers instantly. But friendships — real relationships — are slow, inefficient, unpredictable. They happen in the blank spaces of life that we’ve been trained to ignore.

And now we’re replacing that inefficiency with machines.

AI provides comfort without challenge. It eliminates the risk of real intimacy. It’s an elegant coping mechanism for loneliness, but a poor substitute for life. If we’re not careful, the lonely won’t just be alone — they’ll be alone with an anesthetic, a shadow that never asks for anything, never interrupts, never makes them grow.

Reclaiming our humanity

We need to reclaim our humanity. Presence matters. Not theory. Not outrage. Action.

It starts small. Pull up a chair for someone who eats alone. Call a neighbor you haven’t spoken to in months. Visit a nursing home once a month — then once a week. Ask their names, hear their stories. Teach your children how to be present, to sit with someone in grief, without rushing to fix it.

Turn phones off at dinner. Make Sunday afternoons human time. Listen. Ask questions. Don’t post about it afterward. Make the act itself sacred.

Humility is central. We prefer machines because we can control them. Real people are inconvenient. They interrupt our narratives. They demand patience, forgiveness, and endurance. They make us confront ourselves.

A friend will challenge your self-image. A chatbot won’t.

Our homes are quieter. Our streets are emptier. Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

Before we worry about how AI will reshape humanity, we must first practice humanity. It can start with 15 minutes a day of undivided attention, presence, and listening.

Change usually comes when pain finally wins. Let’s not wait for that. Let’s start now. Because real connection restores faster than any machine ever will.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Exposed: The radical Left's bloody rampage against America

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

For years, the media warned of right-wing terror. But the bullets, bombs, and body bags are piling up on the left — with support from Democrat leaders and voters.

For decades, the media and federal agencies have warned Americans that the greatest threat to our homeland is the political right — gun-owning veterans, conservative Christians, anyone who ever voted for President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden once declared that white supremacy is “the single most dangerous terrorist threat” in the nation.

Since Trump’s re-election, the rhetoric has only escalated. Outlets like the Washington Post and the Guardian warned that his second term would trigger a wave of far-right violence.

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing.

They were wrong.

The real domestic threat isn’t coming from MAGA grandmas or rifle-toting red-staters. It’s coming from the radical left — the anarchists, the Marxists, the pro-Palestinian militants, and the anti-American agitators who have declared war on law enforcement, elected officials, and civil society.

Willful blindness

On July 4, a group of black-clad terrorists ambushed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado, Texas. They hurled fireworks at the building, spray-painted graffiti, and then opened fire on responding law enforcement, shooting a local officer in the neck. Journalist Andy Ngo has linked the attackers to an Antifa cell in the Dallas area.

Authorities have so far charged 14 people in the plot and recovered AR-style rifles, body armor, Kevlar vests, helmets, tactical gloves, and radios. According to the Department of Justice, this was a “planned ambush with intent to kill.”

And it wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a growing pattern of continuous violent left-wing incidents since December last year.

Monthly attacks

Most notably, in December 2024, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan. Mangione reportedly left a manifesto raging against the American health care system and was glorified by some on social media as a kind of modern Robin Hood.

One Emerson College poll found that 41% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 said the murder was “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.”

The next month, a man carrying Molotov cocktails was arrested near the U.S. Capitol. He allegedly planned to assassinate Trump-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

In February, the “Tesla Takedown” attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships started picking up traction.

In March, a self-described “queer scientist” was arrested after allegedly firebombing the Republican Party headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Graffiti on the burned building read “ICE = KKK.”

In April, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-Pa.) official residence was firebombed on Passover night. The suspect allegedly set the governor’s mansion on fire because of what Shapiro, who is Jewish, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

In May, two young Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Witnesses said the shooter shouted “Free Palestine” as he was being arrested. The suspect told police he acted “for Gaza” and was reportedly linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

In June, an Egyptian national who had entered the U.S. illegally allegedly threw a firebomb at a peaceful pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado. Eight people were hospitalized, and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor later died from her injuries.

That same month, a pro-Palestinian rioter in New York was arrested for allegedly setting fire to 11 police vehicles. In Los Angeles, anti-ICE rioters smashed cars, set fires, and hurled rocks at law enforcement. House Democrats refused to condemn the violence.

Barbara Davidson / Contributor | Getty Images

In Portland, Oregon, rioters tried to burn down another ICE facility and assaulted police officers before being dispersed with tear gas. Graffiti left behind read: “Kill your masters.”

On July 7, a Michigan man opened fire on a Customs and Border Protection facility in McAllen, Texas, wounding two police officers and an agent. Border agents returned fire, killing the suspect.

Days later in California, ICE officers conducting a raid on an illegal cannabis farm in Ventura County were attacked by left-wing activists. One protester appeared to fire at federal agents.

This is not a series of isolated incidents. It’s a timeline of escalation. Political assassinations, firebombings, arson, ambushes — all carried out in the name of radical leftist ideology.

Democrats are radicalizing

This isn’t just the work of fringe agitators. It’s being enabled — and in many cases encouraged — by elected Democrats.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz routinely calls ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attempted to block an ICE operation in her city. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu compared ICE agents to a neo-Nazi group. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson referred to them as “secret police terrorizing our communities.”

Apparently, other Democratic lawmakers, according to Axios, are privately troubled by their own base. One unnamed House Democrat admitted that supporters were urging members to escalate further: “Some of them have suggested what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.” Others were demanding blood in the streets to get the media’s attention.

A study from Rutgers University and the National Contagion Research Institute found that 55% of Americans who identify as “left of center” believe that murdering Donald Trump would be at least “somewhat justified.”

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing. They don’t want the chaos to stop. They want to harness it, normalize it, and weaponize it.

The truth is, this isn’t just about ICE. It’s not even about Trump. It’s about whether a republic can survive when one major party decides that our institutions no longer apply.

Truth still matters. Law and order still matter. And if the left refuses to defend them, then we must be the ones who do.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

America's comeback: Trump is crushing crime in the Capitol

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

Trump’s DC crackdown is about more than controlling crime — it’s about restoring America’s strength and credibility on the world stage.

Donald Trump on Monday invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control and deploying the National Guard to restore law and order. This move is long overdue.

D.C.’s crime problem has been spiraling for years as local authorities and Democratic leadership have abandoned the nation’s capital to the consequences of their own failed policies. The city’s murder rate is about three times higher than that of Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than that of communist-led Havana, Cuba.

When DC is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak.

Theft, assaults, and carjackings have transformed many of its streets into war zones. D.C. saw a 32% increase in homicides from 2022 to 2023, marking the highest number in two decades and surpassing both New York and Los Angeles. Even if crime rates dropped to 2019 levels, that wouldn’t be good enough.

Local leaders have downplayed the crisis, manipulating crime stats to preserve their image. Felony assault, for example, is no longer considered a “violent crime” in their crime stats. Same with carjacking. But the reality on the streets is different. People in D.C. are living in constant fear.

Trump isn’t waiting for the crime rate to improve on its own. He’s taking action.

Broken windows theory in action

Trump’s takeover of D.C. puts the “broken windows theory” into action — the idea that ignoring minor crimes invites bigger ones. When authorities look the other way on turnstile-jumping or graffiti, they signal that lawbreaking carries no real consequence.

Rudy Giuliani used this approach in the 1990s to clean up New York, cracking down on small offenses before they escalated. Trump is doing the same in the capital, drawing a hard line and declaring enough is enough. Letting crime fester in Washington tells the world that the seat of American power tolerates lawlessness.

What Trump is doing for D.C. isn’t just about law enforcement — it’s about national identity. When D.C. is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak. The capital city represents the soul of the country. If we can’t even keep our own capital safe, how can we expect anyone to take us seriously?

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Reversing the decline

Anyone who has visited D.C. regularly over the past several years has witnessed its rapid decline. Homeless people bathe in the fountains outside Union Station. People are tripping out in Dupont Circle. The left’s negligence is a disgrace, enabling drug use and homelessness to explode on our capital’s streets while depriving these individuals of desperately needed care and help.

Restoring law and order to D.C. is not about politics or scoring points. It’s about doing what’s right for the people. It’s about protecting communities, taking the vulnerable off the streets, and sending the message to both law-abiding and law-breaking citizens alike that the rule of law matters.

D.C. should be a lesson to the rest of America. If we want to take our cities back, we need leadership willing to take bold action. Trump is showing how to do it.

Now, it’s time for other cities to step up and follow his lead. We can restore law and order. We can make our cities something to be proud of again.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

POLL: Can Trump make D.C. great again?

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

For years, Washington, D.C., has been a symbol of everything wrong with big government—riddled with crime, manipulated stats, and soft-on-crime policies that let gangs terrorize innocent citizens while the elite turn a blind eye. Now, President Trump is stepping up, deploying federal agents after a savage attack on a hero like Edward Coristine, vowing no more "Mr. Nice Guy" as he promises to jail criminals, clear out the homeless encampments, and restore order just like he sealed the border. This isn't just a crackdown; it's a reclamation of our capital from the chaos liberals have unleashed.

Glenn has already covered this on his radio show, exposing how legacy media and Democrats twist crime numbers. They claim that there was a 35% drop in crime while ignoring FBI data showing only a 10% decline, and murders are still sky-high compared to pre-pandemic days. Trump's policies draw parallels to the 1990s, when Congress took control and turned things around, proving that strong leadership can counteract progressive failures. With Democratic mayors crying "power grab" in failing cities like Chicago and Baltimore, it's clear: Trump's bold move is a lifeline for liberty, not a threat. Our capital should be a shining example of America, where leaders can work in peace and foreign representatives can see what this nation stands for without fearing for their lives.

Our nation's heart is at risk from the gaslighting establishment that benefits from disorder, absurdly framing Trump's actions as a "military takeover." Is this the leadership America needs, or will we let the swamp dictate the narrative?

Glenn wants to know what YOU think: Can we trust the media's spin? Should Trump expand this fight? Make your voice heard in the poll below:

Do you support President Trump's deployment of federal agents to crack down on D.C. crime?

Do you believe liberal media and Democrats are manipulating crime stats to undermine Trump's efforts?

Is Trump's plan to jail criminals and relocate the homeless a necessary step to restore order in our capital?

Do you see Democratic policies as the root cause of rising violence in cities like D.C., Chicago, and Baltimore?

Should Trump extend this federal intervention to other failing blue cities to protect American liberty?