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Glenn's Show Prep

Morning Brief 2022-06-06

June 06, 2022
Chris Brady

Bottom of Hour 2
GUEST: Sen. Rand Paul
TOPIC: To discuss his budget plan and his challenger whose recent ad featured the Democrat candidate wearing a noose.

Top of Hour 3
GUEST: Michael Shellenberger
TOPIC: To discuss his primary and hopeful challenge to Gov. Newsome in California.

News...

If Joe Biden Cared About Gun Laws, Hunter Biden Would Already Be In Jail
Before Biden goes on lecturing Americans about responsible gun ownership and threatening to regulate ownership out of existence, some self-reflection is warranted.

Democratic senator Chris Murphy says Second Amendment restrictions are off the table
Congress is talking about changing the nation’s gun laws but won’t touch the idea of banning “assault weapons.”

500 Percent Spike In Biden Administration Shutting Down Gun Retailers Over Typos
Firearm license revocations for retailers have increased greatly, and overzealous inspectors risk retailers’ cooperation with law enforcement.

Uvalde mother claims police threatened her if she did not stop telling her story
Angeli Gomez said she was threatened by an officer who warned she would be charged with "obstruction of justice" if she did not stop telling her story. The charge would have serious consequences because she was on probation.

In San Francisco, Democrats Are at War With Themselves Over Crime
Fueled by concerns about burglaries and hate crimes, San Francisco’s liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, faces a divisive recall in a famously progressive city.

Pennsylvanians Say State on Wrong Path, Many Consider Leaving: Poll
Across parties, the top category of concern voters picked was “Rising prices and inflation,” followed by “The economy and jobs,” and third, “Taxing and spending.” Very few participants picked COVID, education, or public safety as a top concern.

Major corporate donors silent on Black Lives Matter's alleged self-dealing
Major corporations that made a show out of cutting checks to the national Black Lives Matter group in the aftermath of George Floyd's police killing in May 2020 now have nothing to say about the charity's corruption.

Hawaii man refuses to surrender 'FCK BLM' vanity license plate
The license plate appears to have been spotted on a red Pontiac Trans Am. The driver also had a sign that read: "Trump 2024 Because F*** You."

Texas woman shoots suspected stalker who kicked in front door
The unidentified man was pronounced dead at the scene.

30 dead dogs, cats found in home of South Carolina animal rescue CEO
Investigators uncovered the revolting scene while performing a wellness check after a neighbor reported a “smell of death”

Original Gerber baby dies at 95
Gerber, which began using Ann Turner Cook's baby portrait as its logo since its trademark in 1931.

Politics...

McCormick Concedes To Oz In PA Senate Primary
Conceded on Friday after a statewide recount, vows to back Oz candidacy.

Biden’s Approval Craters On Key Issues, Potentially Dragging Down Dems In Midterms: Poll
ABC News and Ipsos found that Biden’s approval rating on the economic recovery sits at just 37%; on inflation, just 28%. What spells trouble is the fact that those issues are the top two concerns for voters in the November elections.

WaPo: Black voters’ support for Biden has cooled, poll finds
Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats and still back Biden more than other groups. But that support has fallen, and fewer say the election matters than in 2020.

GOP sharpens a new attack line: What Biden is doing to America is 'intentional'
From the border to inflated gas prices, Republicans now see a deliberate plan to alter the republic after months of suggesting Biden was clueless.

DeSantis tops Donald Trump in another straw poll
This weekend, the Western Conservative Summit 2024 straw poll in Colorado saw 71% approval for a DeSantis run, four points ahead of Trump.

Biden evacuated and military jets are scrambled after aircraft veered into airspace over Joe's beach house
Preliminary investigation revealed the small private plane entered the restricted airspace 'by mistake' and there was 'no threat to the President or his family,' a Secret Service spokesperson confirmed.

Three More Staffers Ditch Biden In One Week
One NBC report alleged that the West Wing is in for a significant shakeup over Biden’s stagnant and slumped polling numbers. More than a dozen top aides have left Harris’s office and more than 20 black staffers have left the White House since late 2021.

Young Democratic men think feminism has done more harm than good
The SPLC last week released a poll in which they asked men if they believe feminism has “done more harm than good.” Of younger Democratic men, 46% agreed, 41% disagreed and 13% stated they didn’t know.

J6 Show Trial Committee set to make its case public with prime-time hearings
The circus will start at 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 9.

GOP to go on the offensive, portray J6 Show Trial Committee probe as 'unconstitutional and illegitimate'
With little fanfare Republicans have gathered significant evidence about the Democrats' failure to preemptively protect the Capitol, turning down an offer for National Guard troops and failing to react to intelligence warnings.

TDS: Cheney claims Jan. 6 'attack' part of ‘extremely well-organized' conspiracy
“We are, in fact, in a situation where he continues to use even more extreme language, frankly, than the language that caused the attack,” she added.

DOJ Decides Not to Charge Former Trump Aides; J6 Show Trial Committee Outraged
"...we find the decision to reward Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for their continued attack on the rule of law puzzling,” Rep. Bennie Thompson and Rep. Liz Cheney said in a joint statement.

Economy...

This will end well: Congress pushes for a new national retirement plan
An estimated 57 million workers have no retirement plan offered through their job. Thankfully, the government has an answer and a legislative proposal is coming soon.

As food prices soar with no end in sight, Americans change habits
Report found that 46% of Americans are either dining out less or consciously spending less when dining out.

Average U.S. gas price surges to record $4.85 a gallon Sunday
As prices rise, consumer consumption is dropping at a rate of 3% to 5% the past seven weeks.

NY Times: Biden Has ‘Only Bad Options’ for Bringing Down Oil Prices
The president’s trip to Saudi Arabia is unlikely to reduce oil and gasoline prices, and it is not clear that anything else he might do would work, either.

Fed’s Mester says inflation hasn’t peaked and multiple half-point rate hikes are needed
Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said Friday that she doesn’t see enough evidence that inflation has peaked and is on board with supporting multiple interest rate increases.

A paradigm shift has begun in markets, says Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick
Global markets are at the beginning of a fundamental shift after a 15-year period defined by low-interest rates and cheap corporate debt.

Cardi B Wants To Know When ‘They’ Will Announce The Recession
“When y’all think they going to announce that we going into a recession?” she asked.

WAR News... 

Germany is on the brink of recession due to energy security, and other parts of Europe could be close behind
The EU's GDP could be slashed by 2.5% to 4.2% if energy imports from Russia were to be halted.

Russia Seeks Buyers for Stolen Ukraine Grain, U.S. Warns
American diplomats have alerted 14 countries, most in Africa, that Russian ships filled with stolen Ukrainian grain could be headed their way, posing a dilemma to countries facing dire food shortages.

Former NATO chief warns Black Sea will be next front in Ukraine war
“You’re going to see another … front open in this conflict, which is going to include escorting grain tankers in and out of Odessa,” former Admiral James Stavridis said in an interview.

Putin warns US against sending long-range rockets to Ukraine
Putin said Russia will retaliate by striking new targets

Japan's prime minister is expected to participate in an upcoming NATO summit
The Strait Times reported that Kishida’s move marks an “unusually aggressive stance for a Japanese leader.”

MONKEYVID-2219...

Special Olympics removes vaccine mandate after Florida threatens $27 million fine
A representative for DeSantis rejected the idea that the governor "threatened" the Special Olympics. "It’s not a matter of being 'threatened' with anything. Florida has laws, and nobody is above the law. Special Olympics International was in violation of Florida’s law banning vaccine passports..."

CDC director spoke with union leaders before tightening masking guidance
Rochelle Walensky, other CDC officials kept in close contact with teachers' unions throughout the coronavirus pandemic

Twitter in settlement talks with deplatformed journalist Alex Berenson to end COVID censorship suit
Parties agreed to a "modest extension of the discovery deadlines" to focus on resolving the dispute over former New York Times reporter's removal for COVID tweet now considered mainstream.

NY Times: CEO's think it's 2019
If some corporate leaders have their way, there will be a new test for workplace devotion — and anyone who opts for remote work gets a failing grade. But can CEOs really claw their way back to 2019?

DC confirms first case of Monkeypox
The CDC has now identified 24 monkeypox cases in the U.S.

Entertainment...

Maverick now Tom Cruise’s top-grossing film domestically
Maverick is expected to tally $85 million by the weekend’s end for a total of $290 million in domestic earnings — good enough for the smallest decline ever among movies that earned $100 million in their opening weekend.

Media...

Warnock using Herschel Walker podcast with Glenn Beck in attack ad
The clip comes from an August 2020 appearance Walker made on Beck's podcast.

Whoopi Goldberg: 'AR-15’s got to go' but you can keep your 'yee-haw guns'
"You can have your other yee-haw guns, whatever you want. The AR-15 is not a hunting gun. It is not a gun where you’re going to go out and shoot your dinner. This gun is meant to kill people. That’s what it’s for. And you can’t have it anymore.”

CNN Enters the Post-Jeff Zucker Era. Bye-Bye ‘Breaking News’ Banners.
Chris Licht, the new CNN chairman, is encouraging a more nuanced approach to coverage. Some at the network are skeptical.

WaPo Issues Corrections To Taylor Lorenz’s Article After Two Sources Accuse Her Of False Reporting
YouTubers alleged Taylor Lorenz never reached out to them for comment after her story said she did

Washington Post reporter blasts colleague for retweeting 'sexist' joke
Weigel retweeted a post by a Twitter user who joked: “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

Terrorism...

UN: Al-Qaeda Now Has ‘Safe Haven’ In Afghanistan Under Taliban
“Member State assessments thus far suggest that Al-Qaeda has a safe haven under the Taliban and increased freedom of action."

Terrorists Massacre 50+ Christians In ‘Vile And Satanic’ Attack On Nigerian Church
The terrorists rode up on motorcycles and began shooting those who showed up for mass at St Francis Catholic Church in the town of Owo. Guns are strictly regulated in Nigeria as citizens have “no legal right to gun ownership”

LGBTQIA2S+...

Videos from 'Drag the Kids to Pride' event in Texas show children handing money to drag queen dancers
A Texas gay bar hosted a "Drag the Kids to Pride" event where drag queen dancers provocatively gyrated in front of children as young as toddlers. Tensions flared when protesters demonstrated outside the venue hosting the drag queen show for children.

Five Tampa Rays players refuse to wear Gay Pride logo
The group of players opted to peel off the rainbow logo and wear the standard Rays hat for the team's 16th annual Pride Night celebration Saturday.

Education...

School Board closes Title IX investigation over wrong pronouns
The Kiel School District has closed its Title IX sexual harassment investigation into three eighth-grade students who allegedly used the wrong pronouns when addressing another student who uses they/them pronouns.

DeSantis Torches Biden For Holding School Lunches Hostage Over Gender Ideology In Schools
“Totally off his rocker to be doing that,” DeSantis continued. “We’re fighting on that, don’t worry."

Health...

A Cancer Trial’s Unexpected Result: Remission in Every Patient
It was a small trial, just 18 rectal cancer patients, every one of whom took the same drug. The cancer vanished in every single patient. “I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer,” Dr. Diaz said.

Doctors transplant 3D-printed ear made from human cells
Doctors have successfully transplanted a 3D-printed ear made from human cells onto the face of a 20-year-old woman who was born with a misshapen ear, a notable breakthrough in tissue engineering with the first-of-its-kind procedure.

Meet THE AMERICAN who invented the donut in 1847
96% of Americans say they enjoy donuts. But who are the 4%?

DailyMail Claim: Doughnuts are a British invention
The recipe for 'dow nuts' included sugar, eggs, nutmeg, butter and yeast, which are made into a dough which is rolled out and cut into 'nuts'. The nuts are then deep-fried in 'hogs-lard' before being covered in sugar and left by the fire to rise.

Technology...

"Lots of luck on his trip to the moon": Biden responds to Elon Musk's 'super bad feeling' about US economy
"...Intel is adding 20,000 new jobs for making computer chips," Biden said. "So, you know, lots of luck on his trip to the moon. I mean I don't know. I mean. Uh. You know."

Elon Musk asks questions about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, the media, and the DOJ
"Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?" Musk then joked, "Sometimes I think my list of enemies is too short, so …"

Elon Musk's feud with Bill Gates continues
Gates argued he had put more money toward climate change than Musk or anyone else, and shorting Tesla's stock didn't hurt Musk.

Artificial intelligence spotted inventing its own creepy language
DALLE-E2 is OpenAI‘s latest AI system – it can generate realistic or artistic images from user-entered text descriptions. But the system has one strange behavior – it’s writing its own language of random arrangements of letters, and researchers don’t know why.

2007: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, cu labores definitionem mel, ex nisl conclusionemque sed

2012: Ea sed ocurreret disputando, amet salutatus pri ex, dico facer nec ea. Ad nonumy insolens eos, sed cu facete ornatus urbanitas, ut euripidis dissentiunt eum.

2020: Nam diam saperet accumsan ea, id tacimates dignissim cum, id mea audiam ceteros.

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

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day EXPOSED: The Marxist roots you weren’t told about

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

ullstein bild Dtl. / Contributor | Getty Images

The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.