I was watching TV the other day and a political ad caught my eye. The ad was courtesy of New York’s Democratic governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-ny-gov-kathy-hochul-admin-gave-covid-test-contract-to-campaign-donors-company-at-double-the-price">Kathy Hochul</a>, slamming her Republican opponent, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/alleged-attacker-of-republican-congressman-released-from-custody">Lee Zeldin</a>, about his support for “extreme insurrectionists” on January 6 and other purported crimes.
So, the lines are being drawn and the strategies are solidifying. Fine. Politics are, after all, a contact sport.
The ad then goes on to say “&#8230; five law enforcement officers lost their lives.” 
As the famous quip goes, “How do you know when a politician is lying? When their lips are moving.”
The narrative about the death of these law enforcement officers is predicated on a flagrant lie, and the Democratic Party leaders know this. This is where a line must be drawn, in the interest of both accuracy and common decency.
Democrats have spent years labeling the police as an organization tantamount to the Knights of the White Camelia. They declare the police must be ‘defunded,’ and have actively supported mass riots that resulted in attacks on hundreds of police officers.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi also recalled four of the officers by name during her recent January 6 commemoration speech.
“Let us acknowledge today – as I conclude, I want to acknowledge our fallen heroes of that day, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, Metropolitan Officer Jeffrey Smith, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Billy Evans, of a later assault.”
What you just read from the sitting Democratic Speaker of the House is a series of outright, demonstrable lies. Yet, she went on record anyway. Why? Because she was confident that a pliant media would not call her out on it. And she believes that most Americans are too ignorant to know the facts. Unfortunately, she’s right on both counts.
So, how did these officers actually die?
Since I don’t know who the mysterious fifth hero is, let’s review the other four.
<a href="https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/medical-examiner-finds-uscp-officer-brian-sicknick-died-natural-causes">Brian Sicknick</a>, the officer most tied to the events of that day, died of a stroke — on January 7, 2021. The results of his autopsy — which were denied to the public for four months — were inconclusive, and they were unable to draw any connection between the events of January 6 and his death the next day. One does not go from being perfectly healthy to suffering a fatal stroke in the course of 24 hours. In my view, Sicknick was obviously already a dangerously ill man.
<a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-capitol-police-officer-howard-liebengood-death-20210110-ou4fzbyle5aoti3i5kj5qti2ha-story.html">Howard Liebengood</a> died of an apparent suicide — on January 10, 2021. To my knowledge, there is no known connection to his act of self-destruction (no statements or notes) that would tie his death to the events at the Capitol four days earlier. Anyone who has dealt with the suicide of a loved one (as I have) well knows, it is a far more complicated action than one brought about by a single one-off “trigger” event. It is a culmination of chronic emotional suffering, even mental illness. This man was a trained police officer, after all, not a bystander caught in the fray.
<a href="https://nypost.com/2022/03/09/dc-police-officer-jeffrey-smith-suicide-after-jan-6-riot-ruled-line-of-duty-death/">Jeffrey Smith</a> also died of suicide — on January 15, 2021. Now we are nine days and counting after the riot. Another tragedy whose ties to January 6 seems to begin and end with the fact that Smith was present for duty that day.
And most vile of all, is Pelosi’s mentioning of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/william-evans-death-us-capitol-police/2021/04/02/d5718bf0-93f7-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html">Billy Evans</a>. This brave man was murdered on April 2, 2021, three months after the January 6 riot, by a lone assailant who rammed him and two other cops with a car. Notice how the vulpine Pelosi slips in practically under her breath the  “…of a later assault” to cover her tracks. But the fact that she even mentions Evans in connection to January 6 at all starkly reveals how these unbelievably opportunistic and shamelessly mendacious party leaders really view that day.
All of these deaths are a great loss, especially for the loved ones these men left behind.
To be fair, one person did actually die by violence on January 6. Four-tour war veteran <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/officer-who-shot-ashli-babbitt-comes-forward-i-saved-countless-lives-followed-my-training">Ashli Babbitt</a> was shot dead at some distance by Capitol Hill cop, Lt. Michael Byrd, for the crime of attempting to climb through a broken window. Interestingly, Lt. Byrd received little attention.  
Pelosi and Hochul, whose party never once supported law enforcement throughout the months of far more destructive and deadly BLM riots from coast-to-coast, have used these terrible tragedies to promote a false narrative to help forward a political agenda. Their ultimate goal seems to be to stay in power, no matter the cost to truth, trust in our institutions, or national comity.
They continue to feign public outrage, though their behavior indicates they believe the events are a gift, overflowing with endless opportunities for political gain.
Ads like Hochul’s show the Democrats are willing to exploit the deaths of police officers who died for reasons other than a four-hour riot, without regard for the actual facts. 
In New York, even if the press acts as diligent and brave watchdogs rather than Democrat Party lapdogs, Hochul will likely win re-election. This is, after all, blue New York we’re talking about. “Facts are stubborn things,” said John Adams, a man whose bona fide integrity would be completely anathema to today&#8217;s Democratic leaders. 
But in the age of the unchallenged lie, the candle of facts doesn’t stand a chance of being seen when held up against the blinding sun of stubborn, even fetishized, ideological entrenchment.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Books-Brad-Schaeffer/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ABrad+Schaeffer">author of the best-selling novel</a> The Extraordinary, which deals with autism and PTSD and the critically acclaimed World War II novel, Of Another Time And Place.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Governor Hochul And Mayor Adams Deliver Remarks At NYS Financial Control Board Meeting

New York Gov. Hochul’s Ad Echoes DNC’s False Narrative About Capitol Police Officers

Capitol Police

January 6

Kathy Hochul

Nancy Pelosi

New York

Readers Pass

&#8220;[It was] a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, has been acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated.&#8221; – British army chaplain contemplating the British retreat from Afghanistan, 1843
Those same haunting words could very well have been written by a Russian tank commander as his column pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989. And, sadly, they could have been written by one of our own Marines in August of 2021, contemplating the unnecessary loss of 13 more comrades at the 59th minute of the 11th hour of our nation’s longest war.
As the old cliché goes, history may not always repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And if the fiasco of President Biden’s shameful Afghanistan withdrawal one year ago this week didn’t exactly resemble the experiences of Queen Victoria or Leonid Brezhnev, it certainly may have found a similarity with Gerald Ford watching helplessly as the last U.S. helicopter lifted off the rooftop of the Saigon embassy in 1975.
One must draw upon these  historical analogies when reflecting upon this nation’s humiliating final chapter to one of our most costly misadventures. The operation in Afghanistan squandered so many lives and so much capital with almost nothing to show for it in our nation’s history.
For decades to come, historians will conduct round table post-mortems on the ill-conceived Afghanistan operation. They will question what  our nation achieved in return for its estimated <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2021/08/18/cost-of-caring-for-iraq-afghanistan-vets-could-top-25-trillion-report/">$2.5 trillion investment</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-preparing-to-withdraw-thousands-of-troops-from-afghanistan-in-initial-deal-with-taliban/2019/08/01/01e97126-b3ac-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html">2,400 service personnel</a> killed, with many more wounded and incapacitated for the rest of their lives. Was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f">40,000 civilians</a> dead worth the cost of that brief taste of Western liberalism?
But, even if the U.S. operation in Afghanistan did have to end, must it have ended with such ignominy? How did what had been planned to be a phased, organized withdrawal turn into a stampede for exits of such haste and confusion that warehouses full of U.S. military hardware were <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-left-behind/index.html">left behind</a>? Our Afghan departure degenerated into an embarrassing scene of chaos at the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-u-s-suspends-flights-at-kabul-airport-after-afghans-swarm-runway-cling-to-departing-planes">Karzai International Airport</a>, complete with the shocking imagery of desperate civilians clinging to the sides of U.S. transport planes during take-off, only to fall to their deaths. Not to mention anywhere from <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/22/biden-admin-now-says-300-americans-remain-afghanis/">100 to more than 300</a> U.S. personnel and thousands of loyal Afghan civilians left behind to suffer cruel retribution at the hands of the victorious Taliban.
Another obvious question to ask is why were there so many imperiled U.S. civilian personnel and friendly Afghanis still in Kabul at all when the Taliban rolled in — many riding in fighting vehicles taxpayers paid for?
On April 14, 2021, President Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-blasted-by-terrorism-foreign-policy-experts-over-afghanistan-decision-such-an-avoidable-shame">announced</a> that the last U.S. troops were scheduled to be gone by September 11, 2021. This date was chosen solely for its symbolic — and political — significance rather than any military calculation. This allotted a mere 150 days to organize the withdrawal. So, as the date approached, in spite of the deteriorating situation, the White House stood fast to its timetable. And worse, a <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Risch%20Afghanistan%20Report%202022.pdf">report</a> from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations states: “…the [National Security Council] did not conduct its first senior meeting to discuss the withdrawal until August 14 at 3:30pm, just hours before Kabul fell, when evacuations became life or death for Americans, Afghans, and U.S. military personnel.”
The Biden team’s stubborn adherence to a schedule dictated by symbolism took no account of the change in circumstances on the ground — especially when they contradicted the assumptions under which said schedule was envisioned. What changed was the speed with which the Taliban took over the country on its relentless drive to Kabul.
According to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/15/biden-white-house-afghanistan-drawdown-505018">Brian Klaas</a>, a political analyst at University College London: “The White House was clearly blindsided and unprepared for the speed of Afghanistan’s collapse. Even Biden allies will not try to claim this as a job well done or say this is what they had planned. After all, nobody would have planned for a last-minute evacuation that was just thrown together out of necessity.”
In the case of Afghanistan, the administration underestimated the enemy’s strengths while overestimating its own. This error was compounded by the administration’s misguided confidence in the indigenous Afghan National Security Force. Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/">assured</a> the American people on July 8 that the U.S. and its partners in Afghanistan had &#8220;trained and equipped nearly 300,000 current serving members of the military&#8221; – a critical element to his justification for why the U.S. could withdraw.
Biden went further, predicting that, “the likelihood there&#8217;s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” Yet, despite billions in training and equipment over 20 years, this Afghan army — touted so confidently by a befuddled commander-in-chief — proved to be a mirage. Just 38 days later, the Taliban <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/taliban-takes-over-more-major-afghan-cities-controls-majority-of-nation-seizes-u-s-military-weapons">triumphantly entered</a> Kabul, having easily swept aside the Afghani defenders.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2738086/secretary-of-defense-austin-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-gen-mille/">admitted</a>: “I did not — nor did anyone else — see a collapse of an army that size.” But anyone with a history book could have certainly seen this, given the level of corruption in the Afghan army and political leadership — as well as the speed and ferocity with which Afghan guerillas have always moved against weakened opponents. Ask the spirits of Elphinstone’s slaughtered army of 1842. (Perhaps Gen. Milley should have been reading more Jules Stewart and George MacDonald Frasier and less Ibram X. Kendi.) 
What should have been a grim harbinger of where things were headed to the White House, State Department, and Pentagon that fateful summer of 2021 was the fact that, as we pulled troops out, the Taliban rapidly moved in, swallowing huge swaths of territory while occupying one provincial capital after another. At that point, the troop pull-out should have been halted, and perhaps U.S. deployment to Kabul Province even increased, albeit temporarily, so that order in and around the beleaguered capital could be maintained while evacuations continued.
Once it became clear the Taliban had every intention of racing to Kabul, our immediate policy should have shifted to a holding action in which at least our most valuable asset, Bagram Air Base, could be secured. Instead, it was decided to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/bagram-afghanistan-airfield-us-troops-f3614828364f567593251aaaa167e623">abandon</a> that most important outpost for the past 20 years  and instead use the Karzai International (a single runway civilian airport located in Kabul) for evacuations. As Gen. Milley <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2738086/secretary-of-defense-austin-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-gen-mille/">conceded</a>, due to insufficient troop strength, one had to go: “If we were to keep both Bagram and the embassy going, that would be a significant number of military forces that would have exceeded what we had or stayed the same or exceeded what we had. So we had to collapse one or the other, and a decision was made.”
But, if this is the case, then Gen. Milley et. al. chose poorly. “If you want to conduct an evacuation, you don’t do it from an airport that’s literally almost in the heart of the city,” <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/why-did-the-united-states-abandon-bagram-airfield/">said</a> Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “A military planner would know that as soon as things started going south in Kabul, and the Taliban was on the march, that [Karzai International Airport] would be flooded.” And once flooded, the opportunities for infiltration and terrorism were rife. And 13 distracted Marines, who were too busy acting as traffic cops, paid the ultimate price for this incompetence when a suicide bomber <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/13th-u-s-service-member-dies-in-afghanistan-now-deadliest-day-of-conflict-since-2011">inevitably struck</a>.
Not only did we hastily abandon Bagram Air Base, our most valuable military base in the region, to the Taliban, we left them a smorgasbord: $7 billion worth of military hardware, helicopters, fighting vehicles, night vision goggles, heavy and small arms, millions of rounds of ammo, as well as who knows what else. Your tax dollars at work.
One wonders why we did not issue warnings to the Taliban that clouds of A-10s and B-52s awaited them should they emerge outside the gates of Kabul before we decided it was time to go. (One cannot imagine the Trump administration not doing all it could to keep Bagram open and Kabul out of Taliban hands until an orderly exit, rather than chaotic mob scene, could be completed.) But, as with so much of this humiliation, these questions remain unanswered.
So where did the events in the “graveyard of empires” one year ago leave our nation’s standing in the world? In a word: weak. 
The events that unfolded in Afghanistan showed us that something is wrong in our military and the civilian leadership overseeing it — not with the caliber of our fighting men and women, or the quality and lethality of our hardware. Something is rotten at the top.
A political disease has seemed to have eaten away at the primary function of any armed forces: to efficiently apply deadly violence to protect and advance our national interests. Perhaps if the top brass cared more for the science of waging war and less for gender fluidity, or if they refocused on giving real support to the brave fighters in the field whose lives are in their hands rather than imposing <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/republican-introduces-bill-to-ban-critical-race-theory-from-being-taught-in-military-service-academies">woke textbooks</a> upon them, and perhaps if they had had the cajones to march into the Oval Office and say, “Mr. President, or whoever is running the circus, this plan is unrealistic,” things might have been different.
But this is the world the Biden White House made. Not in the plan to withdraw, which was long overdue, but rather in its botched execution.
U.S. allies and enemies watched and took notes — the former with foreboding and the latter with glee. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia Heino Klinck <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-faces-crisis-confidence-afghanistan">said</a> in August 2021: &#8220;The current chaos is being viewed and portrayed as a tragic mix of American incompetence, negligence and weakness and that certainly furthers Beijing&#8217;s narrative of U.S. decline.&#8221;
Klinck then added presciently: &#8220;And we see in the propaganda coming out of Beijing and coming out of Moscow, that our adversaries are gloating and conveying that America cannot be trusted. So, this has to worry our friends and partners, particularly in Taiwan as well as in the Ukraine.&#8221; Six months later, an emboldened Putin invaded Ukraine. And China’s rhetoric and military posturing, stemming from its seven-decade hunger to absorb Taiwan, has dramatically escalated.
Finally, where did  this leave Afghanistan itself? Perhaps Mark Steyn <a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2012/03/02/mark-steyn-americas-longest-war-will-leave-no-trace/">said</a> it best a decade ago: “Six weeks after the last NATO soldier leaves Afghanistan, it will be as if we were never there. …We came, we saw, we left no trace. America’s longest war will leave nothing behind.”
Not everyone is so blind to the lessons of history as those in and around the White House, whether they be the fathers of Liz Cheney or Hunter Biden. As with so many ill-conceived missions imposed upon our troops over the post-World War II years, our fighting men and women deserve a better legacy to account for the cost of their lives and limbs than what the Biden administration forced them and the nation to endure.
Something has to change before confidence in our military, and thus its capacity to still attract some of America’s finest to its hallowed ranks, is eroded beyond restoration. What happened in Afghanistan was a wake-up call. Whether we learn from it or not will matter for a resurgent U.S. military and foreign policy down the road. Or, as the Russians and British before us, future historians will merely shake their heads and marvel at the tragic stupidity of it all.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Brad-Schaeffer/146901071">author</a> of the World War II novel Of Another Time And Place as well as the best-selling novel dealing with PTSD and Autism The Extraordinary. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Readers Pass – Schaeffer – Anniversary Of Afghanistan Withdrawal16x9

One Year Later: Biden’s Botched Withdrawal From The ‘The Graveyard Of Empires’

Afghanistan

Biden Administration

Kabul

Marines

Mark Milley

In the 1987 film, “No Way Out,” the character Scott Pritchard, general counsel to the Secretary of Defense, is desperate to protect his boss &#8211; and his meal ticket &#8211; by covering up the secretary’s act of murdering his mistress. The film presents its audience with a tangled web of Washington intrigue, and even 35 years ago, it brought home the lengths to which small men with large ambitions, having burrowed within the termite mound of the deep state, will go to protect their own careers and the powers that come only to those in positions of unelected authority in a bloated federal bureaucracy. “You have no idea what men of power can do!,” shrieks Pritchard at one point in the film, as his desperation to preserve his threatened career reveals the depths of his megalomania.
On Monday, the American people were given an ominous demonstration of what men of power can, and indeed will, do to crush those who oppose them. Someone watching the unfolding events need not be a member of team MAGA to look upon the FBI raid of the duly-elected 45th former president of the United States’ Mar-a-Lago estate with the deepest of concerns. One cannot help but think that the very agencies set up to protect the citizens of this nation have become hopelessly politicized and are morphing into the enforcement arm of a borderline thugocracy that has taken over D.C. I can only imagine the horror with which the Founding Fathers would have looked upon such a brazen act of federal power projection. I think it might be along the lines of, “And we thought the Redcoats were bad? Will someone explain to me exactly what we had a revolution for again?”
Although the most rank and shameless partisans within the Democrat Party, along with their trained parrots in much of the media, have been dutifully mouthing the blast emailed talking point from the DNC headquarters that “no one is above the law” (more on that in a moment), many other Democrats are looking at this FBI action with the proper level of disquiet it deserves.
Of all people, former Democratic New York governor Andrew Cuomo, certainly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/oct/07/be-afraid-of-covid-new-york-governor-cuomo-blasts-trump-over-coronavirus-denial-video">no fan</a> of Trump to say the least, <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewcuomo/status/1556990308424028163">tweeted</a>: “[Department of Justice] must immediately explain the reason for its raid &amp; it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation &amp; legitimacy of January 6 investigations.” Even some in the media are showing themselves to be the proverbial broken clock that is still right twice a day.
When asked if the pretext for the FBI raid &#8211; to wit: a search for classified documents in Trump’s possession that should have been turned over to the National Archives &#8211; is enough to warrant such a SWAT tactic, CNN legal analyst <a href="https://flvoicenews.com/cnn-legal-analyst-even-if-trump-broke-the-law-fbi-raid-is-not-warranted/">Paul Callan responded</a>: “No, it’s not enough to warrant all this, and this is a daring and dangerous move by the Department of Justice, to serve a warrant on a former president and raid his personal residence.”
Daring, no. Dangerous, yes. There really seems to be, as of this writing (and yours truly waited a day or two to see what fruit fell from the shaken tree first), only two possible reasons for this unprecedented raid. Neither of which bring any comfort to lovers of civil liberties who believe in what seems to be a dying American Republic.
First is that this was really just “<a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/problem-trumps-response-fbi-raid-mar-lago-rcna42166">executing a search warrant</a>” (as one State lacky in the media tried to frame it) to retrieve the classified documents. If this is the case, then the obvious question hangs in the air like a foul vapor: why was there no similar FBI raid on the home of Hillary Clinton between 2014 and 2016? Unlike the president, who can declassify anything at will, the former Secretary of State was served with a subpoena related to her use of a private server in her Chappaqua home to conduct government business. In response, her staffers destroyed several cell phones with a hammer and bleach-bitted over 30,000 emails she claimed were merely of a personal, non-governmental nature. You try that after a federal subpoena and see how long before your door gets kicked in. “Well, we’d intended to delete them before the subpoena, so…” Good luck with that.
We might also ask: how is it that Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a sitting member of Congress, can allegedly sleep with a Chinese Communist Party agent and is not only allowed to remain free of investigation, but actually continues to sit on the &#8211; wait for it &#8211; House Intelligence Committee?
Then there are the former NSA and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-director-john-brennan-lied-senate">CIA directors</a> who demonstrably perjured themselves before Congress only to be rewarded with <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220411005146/en/John-O.-Brennan-former-Director-of-the-Central-Intelligence-Agency-joins-WestExec-Advisors">media consulting gigs</a>. Why does <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nancy-pelosis-husband-makes-huge-stock-move-ahead-of-key-vote-on-chip-subsidies">Paul Pelosi’s stock trading</a> not get the Martha Stewart treatment? Any bets on if his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/whats-going-on-with-the-dui-charges-against-nancy-pelosis-husband-paul-pelosi">DUI</a> vanishes without a trace, with no media curiosity as to why? And, of course, there is the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/collections/the-hunter-biden-files">Hunter and Joe Biden</a> multi-million dollar influence-peddling racket and the many brazen crimes Hunter videotaped himself committing.
It goes on and on, and nothing listed above is anything that hasn’t already been said a thousand times. Nevertheless, it bears repetition because as long as these questions remain, Americans’ trust in the government will continue to erode. And why shouldn’t it? It is as if these people somehow know that they are immune from any legal consequences for their actions &#8211; that the omnipotent State mechanism will move in to protect them. And it would seem that it has done just that.
This, then, presents us with a second possible, and more sinister, motivation for the raid: it was intended as a partisan projection of power and a message to anyone with Trump’s audacity to threaten the status quo. That same State apparatus that has been so absent in the face of blatant illegalities and improprieties committed by top Democrats has been ruthless in its pursuit of those on the other side of the aisle, as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/michael-flynns-family-files-75-million-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn">Michael Flynn</a> tragically learned the hard way.
Only someone steeped in naivete, or hyper-partisan denial, could believe that the raid on the Trumps’ home was not at its core a political action. Some 30 federal agents spent a full day on the Mar-a-Lago grounds going through every inch of the property. They even rifled through the former First Lady’s wardrobe closets while forcing Trump’s lawyers to stand out in the scorching Florida sun as the search went underway.
While the contents of the search warrant remain unknown, the pretext of finding archive documents was reportedly used to enter the house of the party in power’s most dangerous and outspoken opponent in order to find something, anything, damning enough to prevent his run for office against a failed president in 2024. And they may find something accusatory… as they would most likely find in any of our homes as well. Why? Because the legal statutes have become so gargantuan that, as civil liberties attorney <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1279295536&amp;sr=8-1">Harvey Silverglate has pointed out</a>, every day the average American commits three felonies without even realizing it. This presents a target-rich environment for a government machine looking to take down anyone standing in its way. As Stalin’s NKVD enforcer Lavrentiy Beria famously asserted: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
The shift towards authoritarianism over the past decade has been a trend we can no longer ignore. As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nearly-8-in-10-americans-believe-u-s-has-a-two-tiered-justice-system-survey">The Daily Wire reported</a>, according to a National Issues Survey of 1,000 people, nearly eight in ten Americans, 79.3%, responded that “[t]here are two tiers of justice in the American justice system: one set of laws for politicians and Washington D.C. insiders vs. one set of laws for everyday Americans.” If there is any silver lining to the FBI raid on the former president’s residence, it is that it has now laid bare for all to see the true corruption of the State. It is now known that there are no lengths to which those in power won&#8217;t go to in order to protect said power and punish any who threaten to upend their lucrative apple cart.
Throughout my adult life, I have been a Democrat, a Republican, and now a staunch Independent. I have voted across party lines in the past and have abstained from certain elections when I found both candidates unworthy of my vote. But I see now that there is no other way to vote than to remove this corrupted and power-mad group of grifters from office. I loathe hyperbole &#8211; we see it too often for too little &#8211; but I truly believe, barring shocking evidence against Trump to the contrary, that the FBI raid places us at a tipping point. The greatest myth of nations is permanence &#8211; that we are somehow immune from the evils that have brought down great empires of the past…tyranny, despotism, one-party rule, corruption at the highest levels, a selective application of the laws for political ends, moral decay, and a hubristic bureaucracy devoid of any accountability to the public. The framers of our Constitution understood the darkening of men’s hearts once they’ve tasted power. Thus did they realize their new nation’s system of government could only function with checks and balances to hold at bay the very people who would authorize a raid on a former president while their political allies go forth and multiply without fear of consequence.
Most importantly, they understood that having a codified Bill of Rights was not enough. After all, laws and rights are only as good as the willingness of those who wield power to enforce and protect them (the late great Justice Antonin Scalia reminded us that the USSR had a bill of rights too). Otherwise, as the framers said, they were a mere <a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/antoninscaliaamericanexceptionalism.htm">“parchment guarantee.”</a> Words on paper, nothing more. Something more is desperately needed in today’s legislative and executive branch. John Adams once observed that our Constitution was made only for a “moral and religious people.” He would be gravely disappointed, and frightened, at those who sit in the halls of power today. It is up to us to keep the faith this November, throw the corrupt officers overboard or in the brig, and bail out this sinking ship before it founders.
Brad Schaeffer is a trader, columnist, and author. He has <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Brad-Schaeffer/146901071">published two novels</a>: the World War II epic Of Another Time And Place and the best-selling The Extraordinary that tackles the difficult subjects of autism and PTSD. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

FBI Raid3_216x9

‘Laid Bare For All To See’: How The FBI Raid Exposes Deep State Corruption

Donald Trump

As anyone with a TV or newspaper well knows, the news media have relentlessly pounded us with coverage of the January 6 Congressional hearings. ABC Nightly News has at times devoted almost a third of their airtime to reportage from the Capitol, complete with Jon Karl shamelessly plugging his book while ostensibly pretending to be a man on the scene reporter (“As I write in my book, Betrayal…”). Every major TV network <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/they-prefer-their-sedition-made-fresh-on-site-critics-rage-over-fox-news-plan-to-air-january-6th-committee-on-fox-business">but Fox</a> carved out blocks of their prime-time space in an attempt to recapture the glory of the Watergate years. And, of course, the cable news networks are in a lather.
What happened on January 6 was indeed big news. It was very ugly. It was also a futile gesture. And it handed the Democrats &#8211; the very people many storming the Capitol believed to have illegitimately attained power through ballot box chicanery &#8211; talking points to carry them right through to the midterms. Anyone thinking rationally that day should have seen it. But, from Donald Trump on down, we see that rationality gave way to raw emotion and a frustration that stemmed from utter disbelief that over 81 million could cast their ballot for an uninspiring, corrupt septuagenarian, who is the consummate DC insider. Not to mention a candidate so obviously mentally enfeebled that he was relegated to meticulously choreographed Q&amp;A sessions <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/joe-biden-rumored-basement-strategy-really-is-his-actual-campaign-plan">from his basement</a> with journalists so overtly biased they may as well have been on the DNC payroll. And who knows, maybe they were?
And that last observation presents us with the bigger story of the riots. There are questions looming above the January 6 events that are more salient than the information being gathered in the hearings. They have to do with vital American institutions themselves. First and foremost, the press. No republic like ours can last without a diligent media questioning authority and keeping them at bay; human nature will always gravitate towards the accumulation of power if left unchecked. The Framers understood this. And yet the difference in coverage between the four-hour January 6 riots and those that occurred throughout the nation during the year preceding these events is telling, and disturbing for those who believe in the vital necessity of the Fourth Estate.
In 2020 <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/conservatives-point-out-that-princeton-study-on-protests-reveals-violence-was-found-at-hundreds-of-demonstrations">over 200 cities</a> were the scenes of riotous behavior, looting, vandalism and arson. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled">Over two dozen innocents</a> like <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2020/06/20/davenport-man-charged-murder-italia-marie-kelly/3231057001/">Italia Kelly</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jury-delivers-justice-for-david-dorn-beloved-ex-st-louis-cop-killed-by-2020-riot-thug">David Dorn</a> were murdered in cold blood. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-rioters-set-fire-at-st-louis-police-headquarters">Police headquarters</a> as well as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-far-left-black-lives-matter-storms-rochester-people-climb-on-homes-trash-businesses?al_applink_data=%7B%22target_url%22:%22https:%5C%2F%5C%2Fwww.dailywire.com%5C%2Fnews%5C%2Fbreaking-far-left-black-lives-matter-storms-rochester-people-climb-on-homes-trash-businesses?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=benshapiro%22,%22extras%22:%5B%5D,%22referer_app_link%22:%7B%22url%22:%22fb:%5C%2F%5C%2F%5C%2F%22,%22app_name%22:%22Facebook%22%7D%7D">businesses</a> were set ablaze. Some <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/police-chief-officers-injured-riots">1,000 police officers</a> were assaulted, and roughly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/riots-looting-that-followed-george-floyds-death-could-cost-2-billion-most-expensive-incident-in-insurance-history">$2 billion in property damage</a> occurred, mostly in minority neighborhoods.
And yet, the same media that seems so hellbent to crucify the man who took a selfie in Pelosi’s office performed rhetorical yoga that would make a swami wince when reporting the stories of the mass lawlessness across the country &#8211; some of it literally going on right behind the very reporters who with a straight face called them, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-cnn-claims-kenosha-protests-are-fiery-but-mostly-peaceful-as-city-burns-behind-reporter">this is my favorite from CNN</a>, “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.” Sure, and but for that unfortunate Booth-Lincoln incident, all-in-all the night out at Ford’s Theater was pretty fun.
Publications like the Washington Post went out of their way to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/">declare</a> that the protests were “overwhelmingly non-violent.” That <a href="https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/">only seven percent</a> of the estimated <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">15 to 26 million people</a> who hit the streets engaged in rank criminality. So that means only between a mere one and two million torched and ransacked their own cities?  Well, that’s a relief. Yet, were one to use these same soothing parameters as a measure of the “peacefulness” of the January 6 gathering, what percent of <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-classified-documents-reveal-number-january-6-protestors-1661296">the estimated 120,000</a> who marched in D.C. to protest what they believed to be a fraudulent election actually stormed the Capitol? As of this writing, <a href="https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1">884</a> have been arrested and charged. 
I’m no math wizard, but that means of the 120,000 in D.C. that day, it wasn’t seven percent who were lawless, but rather seven-tenths of one percent. Bump it up to an <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/numbers-jan-investigation-shaping-year/story?id=82057743">estimated 2,000</a> who actually stormed the Capitol itself. That’s one-and-a-half percent. Yet, the media was loath to call it an “overwhelmingly peaceful” protest. Why? Because this doesn’t suit the narrative the Democrats wish to impose upon the country through their reliable conduits in the newsroom.
Such obvious water-carrying for one party might be behind a new <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/394817/media-confidence-ratings-record-lows.aspx">Gallup poll</a> showing Americans’ trust in the news media is at an all-time low. Of self-identified Republicans, only five percent trust newspapers and eight percent trust TV news. This is to be somewhat expected as conservatives have for decades had to wade through the now flagrant but always present left-wing bias in the newsrooms. But more tellingly, of Democrats, only 35% trust newspapers and a mere 20% trust TV news. Even they get it.
This collapse in media trust, and the broader erosion of journalistic standards of objectivity and proper sourcing (see: <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/">Russia collusion hoax</a>) as relates to such an important foundation upon which any nation run by flawed human beings must rest, is being played out in the January 6 hearings. Americans wonder, why do these people care so much about what happened for four hours in one city in one day, wherein the only person to die was a four-tour veteran shot by a criminally trigger-happy Capitol Hill policeman (who was never prosecuted, of course) and so little about our nation’s cities in flames from coast-to-coast for eight months? Why did the media happily proffer the demonstrable lie, one which Pelosi still shamelessly touts, that <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1479193941161480197?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1479193941161480197%7Ctwgr%5E2e3c0c408286e792a76480c71869d0a2659fead9%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.westernjournal.com%2Fpelosi-tells-sick-jan-6-lie-completely-gets-away%2F">four officers died that day</a>? Why do they care so much about a man in a horn hat roaming the Capitol yet actively suppress a story of the president’s own son’s validated laptop implicating a then sitting vice president, and now titular president, in a lucrative <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-family-sought-to-make-money-by-giving-china-preferential-access-to-us-energy">influence peddling scheme</a> with our enemies? Why does the media do the bidding of the very State apparatus it is supposed to diligently police?
What we have seen in the January 6 process is more akin to a Stalinesque show trial. The Democrats are mining the hearings for political ore so as to distract Americans’ attention from the staggeringly disastrous Biden (or whomever is pulling his strings) presidency thus far. And if it serves to put those who would dare threaten their power on notice by making examples of imprisoning the likes of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/d-c-jury-convicts-former-trump-adviser-steve-bannon-on-two-counts-of-contempt-of-congress">Steve Bannon</a>—not my favorite guy, but clearly a pawn in a larger game—who dare challenge their authority and, the worst crime of all, supported Donald Trump, then all the better.
Meanwhile, a press that will devote precious air-time to cover the Bannon story shows no curiosity at all as to how we have a <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/lawmakers-resume-calls-for-james-clapper-perjury-charges">former NSA</a> and <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/did-john-brennan-perjure-himself-over-steele-dossier/">CIA director</a> who blatantly perjured themselves before Congress walking free without consequence. Indeed, as if to underscore the nation’s suspicion that the media is nothing more than an appendage of the State, they now serve as paid consultants with <a href="https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/james-clapper">CNN</a> and <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/john-brennan-cia-nbc-msnbc/2018/02/02/id/841162/">MSNBC</a> respectively. Nothing to see here. On the other hand, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/michael-flynns-family-files-75-million-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn">Michael Flynn</a>, a decent and honorable military man who chose the wrong president to serve, had his life ruined for far less.
As is the mantra of all tinhorn dictatorships that seems to guide the dangerously politicized Department of Justice these days: “For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law.” The same now could be said of the press. For their friends “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” and paid consultant gigs. For their enemies, a hyperbolic comparison to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and a gleefully covered perp walk.
Although an estimated <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jan-6-hearing-thursday-over-17-million-viewers/">17 million Americans</a> have watched the hearings, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/26/politics/cnn-poll-january-6-trump/index.html">most polls indicate</a> that, but for an erosion of support for Trump himself (which actually plays into GOP hands as they believe he is the only one who could lose to Biden in a free and fair election), the political needle hasn’t budged. The reason could be that many Americans now view the reporting of said hearings through the lens of the skeptic and the cynic. They know that, with a media that votes for and contributes to one party in vast numbers, they are as likely to be subject to that party’s propaganda as hard news. And it gets exhausting constantly trying to filter out the former to find the latter. So they have thrown up their hands and said, I’ll watch you and read you, but I won’t trust you.
Without trust, the press is impotent and doomed. Without the press, the Republic will continue to decay. Maybe, in a way, that is the most important message of January 6 being lost in all the noise of Liz Cheney’s self-serving moralizing and Adam Schiff’s serial mendacity. The riot wasn’t so much an attempt to overthrow the government, as it was a manifestation of the collective mistrust of our most vital institutions. A desperate cry out that something is rotten at the very core of this nation. And most disconcerting to anyone who cares about the future of the country, if history is any guide, such mass public mistrust can only be held at bay for so long.
If the news media really wanted to get to the heart of the January 6 story, this is what they would be investigating. But that would mean investigating themselves.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Brad-Schaeffer/146901071">best-selling author</a> of the World War II novel Of Another Time And Place as well as the best-selling novel dealing with PTSD and Autism The Extraordinary. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Schaeffer – The Most Important Story Of Jan 6 Hearings

The Most Important Story From The January 6 Hearings

ABC News

Fox News

January 6 Committee

&#8220;Human rights should be at the core of our engagement with the world — not the periphery. As president, Joe Biden will hold accountable Saudi Arabia, China, and every nation that violates the human rights of their citizens.&#8221; #DemDebate, <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1197354401754734593">11/20/2019</a>
President Biden made the trip to Saudi Arabia, the world’s <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/russian-supplies-to-global-energy-markets/oil-market-and-russian-supply-2">largest exporter</a> of crude oil, to discuss among other matters the continued high price of energy — which is a leading driver of the rampant <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inflation-soars-to-new-high-of-9-1">9.1% domestic inflation</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-worst-overall-cnn-analyst-says-biden-is-suffering-because-inflation-is-eating-his-presidency-alive">decimating</a> his approval ratings here in the U.S. as the midterms approach.
Joe Biden the president, who just returned from the Arabian desert, is a far cry from Joe Biden the candidate, who in November 2019 promised to treat the Saudi kingdom quite differently in response to the assassination of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-claims-he-confronted-saudi-crown-prince-over-murder-top-saudi-official-pushes-back">journalist Jamal Khashoggi</a> which was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/25/faq-jamal-khashoggi-intelligence-report/">presumably</a> on Riyadh’s orders. “I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them,” Biden <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/07/14/from-pariah-to-partner-the-healing-power-of-high-gasoline-prices/?sh=bc3c4385a764">said</a> in his debate with then-President Trump. “We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.”
Strong words. But back in 2019, the energy landscape was quite different. In December 2018, the U.S. had for the first time since the mid-1950s become a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/us-ends-reliance-foreign-oil-first-time-75-years-joseph-curl">net exporter</a> of energy. It was a position the country maintained throughout 2019 and 2020.
But today the situation has changed dramatically. Once again, the U.S. finds itself dependent on foreign imports to fill the supply gap between demand and domestic production. And, so, we now have what Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ex-saudi-spy-chief-offers-brutal-appraisal-of-biden-amid-trip-to-kingdom">described</a> as a “much diminished president” touching down in Jeddah hat-in-hand. 
One could not have imagined in January 2020 a U.S. president jetting off to the volatile and duplicitous Middle East to, in effect, beg for oil while the U.S. sits atop proven reserves of <a href="https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/">38.2 billion barrels</a> of crude oil and lease condensate. But the collapse in domestic crude during the disastrous and ineffective COVID lockdowns, as illustrated by the nearly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-rigs-baker-hughes/u-s-oil-gas-rig-count-falls-to-record-low-for-11th-week-baker-hughes-idUSKCN24I2EU">75% reduction</a> in U.S. rig counts, followed by the rapid rebound of economic activity, and thus soaring demand after the lockdowns were lifted, have left the U.S. in a precarious position. And now the president finds himself eating his condemnation of the Saudi royals while reversing several themes of his campaign, to wit: a drive for less fossil fuels in favor of green energy, and his push for holding nations accountable for human rights violations. Machiavelli is laughing.
To add insult to injury, despite Biden’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-biden-responds-to-russia-launching-invasion-into-ukraine">lofty rhetoric</a> that “the world will hold Russia accountable” for its invasion of Ukraine through sanctions, the reality has turned out to be quite different &#8211; and also predictable to anyone who understands the nature of the realpolitik by which much of the non-Western world operates. Maybe the U.S. and its EU allies have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-announces-ban-on-russian-oil-imports-in-bid-to-hold-putin-accountable">declined</a> to import Russian oil in a move to punish Moscow’s war-making on its neighbor, but other nations, most notably <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-may-oil-imports-russia-soar-55-record-surpass-saudi-supply-2022-06-20/">China</a>, <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/india-s-russian-oil-imports-jump-over-50-times-since-april-official-122062301046_1.html#:~:text=Indian%20refiners%20bought%20about%2025,throughout%202021%20and%20Q1%202022.">India</a>, and, wait for it, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-saudi-arabia-doubles-q2-russian-fuel-oil-imports-power-generation-2022-07-14/">Saudi Arabia</a> have not. Sanctions only work if the flow of material is cut off severely, or even completely. Otherwise they just present glittering opportunities to those who opt to not go along with the program.
As such, the Saudis have seized upon Russia’s desperation to sell its oil and distillates to anyone who will take it. It’s currently a buyer’s market for Russian energy. And, as with other non-aligned nations in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, the Saudis are gobbling up Putin’s fuel oil at steep discounts to power their own energy infrastructure. 
They have, in fact, <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/saudi-arabia-doubles-discounted-russian-fuel-oil-imports/">doubled</a> imports in the second quarter. This has freed the kingdom to sell its excess oil at a <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/saudi-arabia-raises-oil-prices-141821575.html">premium</a>. It is a classic, and to this energy trader enviable, arbitrage. In short, the Saudis are standing in between the Russians and the U.S./NATO as de facto intermediaries, buying low from Putin and off-loading it at a premium to his enemies. Feel foolish yet? These are your tax dollars at work.
What can Biden, who promised to marginalize the Saudis just two short years ago in one of his all-too-familiar episodes of either ill-conceived or mentally debilitated spasms of irresponsible public caprice, do about it? He may have but two options, as releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is of little long-term value.
One, he can beg OPEC to pump more fossil fuels, as he <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/02/opec-agrees-to-pump-more-oil-ahead-of-possible-biden-middle-east-trip-00036694">appears</a> to be doing. Two, he can step out of the way and allow for increased domestic production by returning the Bureau of Land Management’s available acreage, environmental standards, and fee structures to numbers that mirror those before the February 2022 “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/biden-administration-pausing-new-oil-and-gas-leases-amid-legal-battle-.html">pause</a>” on leasing of federal lands that was enjoined by a Louisiana court. As of now, drilling will be allowed on federal land again, but on <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-15/biden-shrinks-u-s-land-open-for-new-oil-and-gas-drilling">80% fewer acres</a> than before. And drillers will be saddled with higher environmental compliance hurdles, as well as a royalty that is <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/16/1093195479/biden-federal-oil-leases-royalties">6.25% north</a> of the pre-pause charge. 
By simply returning the lease structures to 2019 levels, the administration might incentivize increased drilling. But, of course, this would then be a slap in the face to the climate change lobby and activists who worked so hard to put him in office while imagining a carbon-free energy infrastructure — even as China, the <a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/interactive-chart-shows-changes-worlds-top-10-emitters">world’s largest</a> CO2 emitter by far, and India ramp up coal plant construction.
And yet, it might already be too late for the domestic carrot route as three factors will make it difficult for oil companies to increase production to pre-pandemic levels. First, rigs take a while to return to operations; second, the number of workers to operate them has been greatly reduced, especially since COVID; and third, investors, fearful of oil tumbling from these lofty prices, might discourage overproduction.
So, the president now has little choice but to go into the belly of the oil beast if he wants his party to have any chances of holding on to power by reducing energy costs before November. <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/07/15/press-gaggle-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-en-route-jeddah-saudi-arabia/">Said</a> national security advisor Jake Sullivan in Israel, the first leg of Biden’s Middle East sojourn, &#8220;We believe any further action taken to ensure that there is sufficient energy to protect the health of the global economy will be done in the context of OPEC+.” He added, “We are hopeful that we will see additional actions by OPEC+ in the coming weeks.&#8221;
But there is little incentive at the moment for OPEC+ (which includes Russia) to flood the market with cheap oil. Certainly the Saudis are very well-positioned to benefit from the status quo. And in the mind’s eye one can see Biden groveling before a grinning Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud with a shaky: “Sorry about that whole ‘pariah’ thing. No hard feelings? And we’re selling you weapons again, right? So are we cool? <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-laughs-when-asked-about-fist-bumping-mbs-dismisses-remarks-from-murdered-columnists-fiancee">Fist bump</a>?” 
Ironically, the sanctions that were supposed to prostrate Putin in submission have instead ended up forcing Biden, and thus the American taxpayer, on a bended knee before the altar of the Arab nation that is printing money thanks to a classic arbitrage the sanctions created. And given the weakness of the current administration, Riyadh has little reason to change either its moral ways or its energy output. Meanwhile the war in Ukraine rages on. It’s funny how the law of unintended consequences works. Although no one filling up their tank here is laughing.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and novelist. He is the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Brad-Schaeffer/146901071">best-selling author</a> of two novels, Of Another Time And Place and The Extraordinary.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Readers Pass – Schaeffer – Biden visits Saudi Arabia, Oil Hard Hat In Hand16x9

Saudis Maintain Upper Hand In Oil Markets As Biden Wraps Up Visit

Oil and Gas

OPEC

Saudi Arabia

As I sit here, studying my screen as it scrolls through the various commodities I either trade or simply follow out of professional curiosity, I find myself once again staring at a sea of green &#8211;  meaning the markets are positive for the day. Cash corn, for example, is trading at $7.97 per bushel. This is a run-up of 63% since January 2021. Cash wheat is trading $10.63 per bushel, up 73% since January 2021. Soybeans are up 43%. And so on. This is just in 18 months. The rise in commodities prices, especially food and energy, has been epic since their nadir during the Covid lockdowns went into full force around April 2020.
These flashing digits on my screen represent not just data points but very real and deep pain for hundreds of millions around the world. At least those without the wherewithal to leverage access to an important father to ink million-dollar “consulting” deals with Ukrainian oligarchs or Chinese despots, or the ability to enact market-moving laws while making personal insider stock trades so presciently timed they’d make Jesse Livermore salivate. Indeed, every uptick I see tells me someone on a fixed income or desperately trying to hang on to middle-class status, let alone half the world’s population <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/oct/13/half-world-wealth-in-hands-population-inequality-report#:~:text=About%203.4%20bn%20people%20%E2%80%93%20just,the%20%2410%2C000%2D%24100%2C000%20range">who earn less</a> than $10,000 per year, faces a crisis not seen since the advent of the postmodern age. And now we are starting to hear a frightening phrase bantered about not just in the media but also in the halls of power: food shortages.
In May, while speaking to the Treasury Select Committee, Bank of England Governor <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gEgr9bax3g">Andrew Bailey said</a>: “The [risk] I’m going to sound rather apocalyptic about, I guess, is food&#8230;It is not just a major worry for this country; it is a major worry for the developing world.”
Not to be outdone, before the baby formula shortage arose to drive home his point, President Biden <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwVbkT_B79M">warned</a> that “With regard to food shortage&#8230;it’s gonna be real.” Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Naturally, the Biden administration is doing its best to steer blame away from its reckless spendthrift fiscal policies — and the Fed monetary policy given the chairperson who failed to see inflation on the horizon is now Biden’s Treasury Secretary. Instead, the administration is pointing its finger at Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As with all deeply complex subjects of macroeconomic systems, there is some truth in this. <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/forty-percent-world-food-programs-wheat-supplies-come-ukraine">Some estimates</a> say Ukraine provides roughly 40% of the world’s wheat supply. And even more impactful, Russia and Ukraine combined produce roughly 50% of the <a href="https://www.tfi.org/content/statement-russia-ukraine-conflict">world’s fertilizer</a>. The problem is not so much reduced production, but rather the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2022/04/02/supply-chain-crisis-worsens-as-russias-war-against-ukraine-continues/?sh=1f0bc10c6e49">inability to move product</a> out of the warring nations and into the world markets. Such vulnerability has hit farmers hard, including those in the United States. Thus, they must pass on their rising costs to consumers. So even though the U.S. only imports 15% of its overall food supply from abroad, those providing the 85% domestically are being hammered with skyrocketing fertilizer costs that will punish Americans anyway.
Still, Russia’s invasion took place in February 2022. Inflation, which is often called the “hidden tax,” was on the rise throughout the global financial systems well before then — as anyone who has filled up their gas tank knows. Shipping, trucking, air cargo and railroads are also being impacted by higher fuel costs. And so we see the cost of transporting already-expensive farm products to market being passed on to shoppers on top of everything else. This could mean a one-two punch to the U.S. consumer of less food on the shelves, and a higher price for the goods that are available. As a result, we may very well see shortages of eggs, dairy, grains and meat. Such products make up the bulk of working-class Americans’ diets.
There are several arguments that could be made for who or what is to blame for the massive spike in inflation and the subsequent astronomical food costs. Covid lockdowns crimping supply chains. Massive government spending and “stimulus” diluting the value of the dollar, thus making everything cost more. Putin invading one of the most important food-producing regions on the planet. The Fed’s failure to see what even an Econ 101 student (or a caveman commodities trader with a state school education like your humble author) could see — that interest rates were too artificially low, and held there for too long. 
Back in 2020, economists at the UN World Food Programme <a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-chief-warns-hunger-pandemic-covid-19-spreads-statement-un-security-council">warned</a> that, due to disrupted supply chains as a result of Covid lockdowns and freezes on international trade, some 265 million faced imminent starvation. As Mr. Bailey intimated, it will only get worse as food shortages spread. The United States will most likely not see the abject starvation as seen in the world’s poorest quarters, given our inherent bounty and social safety networks. But the average American, with each paycheck worth less in buying power than the one before it, will be faced with tough choices in the future. Dinner will still be served, but it probably won’t be as plentiful, or healthy, as it used to be.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader and writer whose articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, and The Daily Wire.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Readers Pass – Schaeffer – Is The Impending Food Shortage Real_16x9

Amber Waves Of Pain: How Bad Is The Food Shortage Crisis Going To Get?

Food

Gas Prices

Inflation

I was walking down a street in New York City a while ago and saw a man at least twenty years younger than me wearing a prosthetic limb. He was, in fact, ambling along quite well and as such I was impressed with his clear ability to overcome a difficult situation I cannot even fathom.
He also wore a camouflaged fatigue cap and military tan t-shirt with the words “Operation Iraqi Freedom” emblazoned on the chest. And I thought to myself: here is a man who has given so much. Certainly as much as many a veteran of World War II had. Indeed a piece of himself, for a cause that had no victory. No surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. No ticker tape parade.
Just coming home having served his country (better than it served him) and having left a literal piece of himself in the sands of a distant land at the behest of his commander-in-chief. And who knows how many comrades he saw give the ultimate sacrifice during his tour of duty.
Sometimes I wonder: Should we, perhaps, consider retiring the moniker “Greatest Generation” as a descriptor of those—and only those—who fought Germany and Japan between 1941 and 1945? Is that really fair to all those buried in Arlington Cemetery who happened to have fought for this country since the Civil War? Were they not just as “great”? Cannot this wounded warrior lay claim to “greatness” as much as those who just happened to be born into a different time to fight a different enemy?
This is not a call to diminish the sacrifice of the men and women who fought in all of those terrible battles of World War II. As anyone who has read my articles over the years knows, I hold the men and women who fought against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in awe and with the sincerest gratitude.
But theirs is a small section of the story of the American fighting man and woman. To attach to them the superlative “greatest” is to in a way demean those who went before and after them. How are the men of the Union Army who again and again marched towards the impregnable rebel lines at Fredericksburg having just witnessed the rank before them scythed down like wheat, and yet they moved forward anyway, any less deserving of a seal of greatness as those who stormed Omaha Beach? 
How are the men of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, surrounded by Germans in sub-freezing weather, greater than the 1st Marines’ who pulled off a masterful “advance in the other direction” to the sea while surrounded and under constant attack by the Chinese in the sub-zero wastes of North Korea? Was a P-47 or Corsair pilot winging in at treetop level to strafe and bomb Nazi and Japanese positions any “greater” than the pilots of Huey helicopters flying their much more vulnerable ships into hostile Vietnam LZs to bring in supplies and evacuate wounded under intense enemy fire?
I think of today’s American fighting man and woman, and something occurs to me. First, ours is an all-volunteer service. Fully two-thirds of the “Greatest Generation” were draftees. And no group of young men and women who have ever volunteered for military service today have done so with eyes more wide open than this one.
What I mean is that in the 1940s there was no internet through which to see the shocking imagery of war at one’s fingertips. Nor were there graphic movies as “Saving Private Ryan” to show a prospective volunteer what war really looks like…blood, gore, agonizing and ghastly wounds, terror, men calling for their mothers with their dying breaths, brutality, and both chronic physical and mental exhaustion. Anyone wearing the uniform today does so despite all they have seen.
By contrast, the average World War II volunteer had almost no idea what he was getting himself into. Most had never seen any proper representation of war, save perhaps the old black-and-white Matthew Brady daguerreotypes of the grisly aftermath of Civil War battles like Antietam. War Department censors were diligently at work trying to hide the true cost of the war from the people back home, including those getting ready to join the fight. 
It was not until September, 1943, that Life magazine published the first explicit photo of American dead on the battlefield…three bodies lying on Buna Beach in New Guinea. But these photos, which showed no faces or blood, were mild compared to what was to come. 
The first true revelation of the horrors of a modern battlefield was not laid bare before the American people until March, 1944, a full 28 months into the war. This was the documentary “With The Marines At Tarawa”, which was released to public theaters after being approved by FDR himself. 
The film followed the 2nd Marines storming a tiny Central Pacific island the size of Central Park called Betio in the Tarawa Atoll. The cost was unbelievable. Over 1,000 dead and twice as many wounded in four days of intense, close-quarters combat which was diligently cataloged by Marine camera crews. For the first time, Americans were treated to the shocking images of bloated Marine corpses, faces blackened and swollen, bobbing grotesquely in the surf or sprawled out over barbed wire. All glory of wartime propaganda stripped away. 
For a populace so sheltered as was the USA in 1944, this was almost too much to bear. It should be noted that Marine recruitment plummeted after the airing of this footage! In other words, once they actually saw what it was they’d be signing up for, the bravura enthusiasm seemed to dim, even in this greatest generation. Human nature is what it is. And self-preservation was as much a part of their psyche as any others’.
So, who really is the “greatest generation”? I would argue the title belongs to any group of young men and women who bravely serve our country in its time of need, either in the thick of combat or dutifully walking the wall during times of restive peace, knowing they may be called upon at any moment to give their lives for their fellow Americans. 
Memorial Day is a holiday we set aside to remember all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who’ve given their lives across many generations so that our nation might live. I say let’s lose the superlative “greatest” as a descriptor of just one narrow band of so many who have answered the call over the years. 
Let us honor them all. And be thankful for their greatness.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, musician, columnist and author whose eclectic body of work has been featured in Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, National Review, The Federalist, Zerohedge and other publications. His best-selling novel “The Extraordinary”, and acclaimed World War II epic “Of Another Time And Place” can be found on Amazon and other popular outlets.

Readers Pass – Schaeffer – Our Generations Who Served Are _The Greatest Generation_16x9

Every Generation Who Volunteers To Serve Should Be Called ‘The Greatest Generation’

Air Force One

Military

U.S. Army

U.S. Navy

World War II

What late night comedian/talk-show host routinely brings in more total viewership than Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert? Who routinely attracts an average of over 2 million night after night, including the 25-54 demographic so highly coveted by advertisers? The answer is none other than Greg Gutfeld. Since the end of Letterman, Leno, Conan, and especially Carson, the late night setting has become far more political. Few have managed to navigate this arena so skillfully as Fox’s insightful class clown. 
Like many in his position, Gutfeld is a 20-year overnight success. Over the course of his career in media, he has worked as a writer and editor for various publications including Prevention, Men’s Health, and Maxim. He was also a contributor to the Huffington Post, where he became, according to his website bio, “legendary for his ‘inspired, lunatic, ridicule of his leftwing fellow Huffers’.” His targets included Deepak Chopra, Cenk Uygur and Ariana Huffington. 
It was his tongue-in-cheek ruminations on HuffPo that drew the attention of the Fox News Channel and earned him his first gig hosting his very late night panel talk show Red Eye. From 2007 to 2015 his growing flock of viewers (including yours truly when enduring bouts of insomnia) could tune in weeknights at 2am (later 3am) and 11pm on Saturdays to Gutfeld steering the conversation among an eclectic collection of comedians, media figures, pundits, and even a former CIA officer, while discussing the day’s events. During that time Gutfeld honed his craft and carved out a niche for himself as Fox’s comedic, yet sharply observant, personality.
In 2011, Gutfeld was an obvious choice to be a part of Fox’s new daytime panel show The Five, which gave him exposure to a broader group of viewers.
Having collected a loyal following of millions, Gutfeld was tapped as Fox’s perfect pointman for the competitive late night talk show space and to go head-to-head with its more established programs in the mainstream networks. Pulling double-duty once again, in 2015 he became host of The Greg Gutfeld Show which still airs at 11:00 pm. It took off and in 2018 Fox announced that The Greg Gutfeld Show had attracted over 2 million nightly viewers, effectively beating the mainstream networks in their own backyard.  
Gutfeld’s show overtook so many established figures with years of exposure and support from networks that for decades dominated the late night talk show airwaves. Perhaps the success lies in the fact that Gutfeld and his sponsoring network Fox, simply identified a hole in the marketplace and filled it. It is no coincidence that his show steadily gained popularity during the Trump years. Indeed, the timing of his show’s launch was perfect. 
 
Many of us fondly remember the days when talk show hosts such as Johnny Carson and his successor Jay Leno came into our living rooms every night with one goal in mind: to entertain as many people as possible through laughter. When politics did enter the fray, it was usually of the more elbow-to-the-ribs kind (think of Johnny Carson’s impersonation of Reagan, which was always light-hearted, where every sentence started off with: “Well…”). But with the ascendancy of Trump the late night comedy shows became attacks on the man that over 62 million voted for as President. Every night for years on end a viewer tuning into Colbert, Kimmel, and to a lesser extent Fallon, was subjected to non-stop Trump bashing. It was vicious, relentless, insulting, and worse, it most certainly was not funny; but funny was no longer a requisite for late night. 
Colbert and Kimmel saw their late night platform not as a stage from which to entertain, but rather a podium to blast out their far-left politics and Trump derangement, while cloaking themselves in what many saw as obnoxiously self-righteous sanctimony along the way. 
The alphabet networks had made a conscious decision to only go after the Trump-deranged, left-wing viewers, and thus had no problem insulting and alienating a huge swath of the population in order to grab and hold onto their narrow target audience. And as anyone who suffered through childishly acerbic monologues could attest, if you hated Donald Trump in particular, or the GOP in general, or even anyone who was slightly to the right of Che Guevara, you found all the reinforcing material you needed in the acid bath of antipathy that came spewing from your screen courtesy of hosts who we were told were supposed to be comics. And actually were at one time in their careers.
Greg Gutfeld and his brand of irreverent humor has provided a home for those who wish to tune in to late night TV to laugh again. And they want hosts who do not take themselves too seriously. To borrow a metaphor from Michael Lewis, Gutfeld’s offering was a firehose sprayed upon millions of thirsty urchins. Looking back on it, the need for this Yin to the alphabet networks’ yangs was so obvious that one would be surprised if Fox hadn’t made such a move. And who better than Greg Gutfeld — funny, flippant, both satirical and self-effacing — to be the right man for such an undertaking?
Like its rivals, The Greg Gutfeld Show is political in nature. And no doubt if you are pro-Trump you will feel at home there. But, unlike the others, it is also entertaining, and even, get this now, funny. Go figure, right? In a way, the show is even more entertaining because it makes no pretense at being pure comedy. Like Gutfeld himself, his show is a product of the right. A staunch libertarian, he goes after targets that are sacred political cows to other networks: chiefly Joe Biden, the Democrat Party, and the far-left.
By presenting a panel of pundits and personalities ala Red Eye off of whom he bounces ideas and jokes, one could argue that Gutfeld is not so much the right’s answer to Colbert et. al. but Bill Maher. However one wishes to categorize Greg Gutfeld’s unique late night offering, he has stepped in to pick the low-hanging fruit that the other networks, too blinded by ideology, either failed or refused to see. You cannot alienate so many in a market without someone else seeing the opportunity your disregard presents. And whether one loves or hates Fox, they have clearly done it again. Gutfeld is another arrow in the quiver of the conservative/libertarian response to the wokeness that Americans are tired of being forced to endure in that search for the elusive laugh or interesting conversation. In the process, one can truly say that there’s a new “King Of Late Night” on the throne. 
And as Gutfeld might observe in his aim to keep things light and irreverent while making a larger point, where better to do one’s most profound thinking and deepest ruminations than while sitting on the throne?
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, musician, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Brad-Schaeffer/e/B07MQJBJSD%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share">bestselling author</a>. His eclectic articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, Daily Wire, National Review, The Federalist, and others. 
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

gutfeld

Greg Gutfeld: The New Undisputed King Of Late Night

Entertainment

Greg Gutfeld

The United States has packed a lot of history into its relatively short existence. We have created so much history, in fact, that one could travel from shore to shore, and border to border, traversing the land visiting places that are all unique threads woven into the fabric of our national identity and never get to see them all.
For those historically-minded Americans who want to learn the story of us, here are some — but certainly not all — of the must-see places to visit in order to connect to our past to better understand our present.
1) Antietam National Battlefield
Nestled away in a beautiful pastoral, Western Maryland setting, this Civil War battlefield is the site of the bloodiest day in American history (23,000 casualties in 12 hours). Remarkably well preserved, the Antietam Battlefield features a visitor center, national cemetery and both professional and self-guided tours. As one of our nation’s most hallowed places, this hidden gem is a must for anyone wishing to be in true communion with the history of America’s most tragic war.
2) Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Home to the mother of all Civil War battlefields, Gettysburg offers something for the whole family. Whether taking a guided tour of the grounds, enjoying the many exhibits in the state-of-the-art visitor center, contemplating the cyclorama painting depicting the climax of the battle or perusing the many gift shops, the National Military Park will not disappoint. Finish your day settling in for dinner at one of the town’s excellent restaurants before retiring at one of the many local hotel options.
3) Independence Hall
An excellent focal point to any Philadelphia trip, this iconic meeting hall hosted two of the most consequential events in U.S. history: the debating, drafting and signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Stand where America’s founders — including Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison and Hamilton — created our nation and try not to be awed by the historical significance of this place.
4) National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
Located in Virginia 23 miles from the National Mall, this incredible museum contains the vast majority of the Smithsonian’s air and space collection. For military aviation enthusiasts, it is heaven. The enormous hangars offer everything from the earliest canvas and string biplanes, to some of the most iconic 20th-century warplanes — including the B-29 Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima — to the Space Shuttle Enterprise.
5) 9/11 Memorial and Museum
No visit to New York City should forgo a trip to lower Manhattan to experience the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero. The museum, located in the subterranean space in the bedrock of the former World Trade Center, exhibits over 60,000 artifacts. At ground level, surrounding the two remaining footprints of Towers 1 and 2, are the engraved names of nearly 3,000 innocent victims of the 1993 and 2001 attacks that changed the city and our country forever. 
6) Alcatraz 
Also known as “The Rock,” this forbidding island situated in San Francisco Bay was a federal penitentiary from 1934-1963. While in operation, it housed some of America’s most notorious criminals, from “Birdman” Robert Stroud to Al Capone. Today, it is open to the public as a museum. Visitors can take guided walking or audio tours through the prison to learn the history of this dark yet fascinating part of Americana.
7) Newport, Rhode Island 
This playground/summer retreat of the Gilded Age offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the idle 19th-century rich. Euphemistically called cottages, one gaudy uber-mansion after another lines the cliffs overlooking Narragansett Bay. Some of the more famous estates include The Breakers (Vanderbilt), Beechwood (Astor), Marble House (Vanderbilt), Chateau-Sur-Mer (Wetmore) and Rosecliff (Oelrichs) as well as Hammersmith Farm (Jackie Kennedy’s childhood home).
8) Annapolis, Maryland
Step back in time strolling the brick and cobbled streets of this historic state capital, which still retains a colonial feel by the water’s edge. Visit the oldest capitol building in the country, explore the U.S. Naval Academy or check out the statue of Alex Haley reading from his book “Roots” to three children on the spot where his African ancestor, Kunta Kinte, was herded off the ship and into tragic enslavement in the New World. 
9) Boston Freedom Trail
“Every step tells a story” is how the promotion goes. The two-and-a-half-mile walking tour features historic meeting houses, taverns, churches, parks, a cemetery, a ship and markers retelling the story of colonial Boston during those heady days of revolution. The trail also features specialized tours led by guides sporting costumes from the era, including knee breeches, tricorn hats, colonial dresses and bonnets. 
10) Yellowstone National Park: 
Established by the Grant administration in 1872, Yellowstone is the country’s first national park. Spanning over 2.2 million acres, it features some of the most pristine and beautiful wilderness in North America. Camp on the grounds or stay in comfort as there is plenty of quality lodging throughout the park. From its thermal vents and geological wonders to its hiking trails and wildlife, Yellowstone offers visitors an opportunity to connect back to the great unspoiled tracts of land that greeted settlers over 150 years ago.
11) West Point
Positioned strategically overlooking a sharp bend in the Hudson River, West Point started off as a Revolutionary War fortress. Today, it is the oldest continuously operated fort in the country. In 1802, it became home to the U.S. Military Academy. Some of America’s most celebrated soldiers — including Grant, Lee, MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower, to name a few — hailed from this hallowed school. Beyond touring the grounds, interacting with gray-clad cadets or attending a football game, the town offers plenty to do and places to eat and sleep. 
12) Baltimore Harborplace Ships
U.S. history comes alive in downtown Baltimore. After a visit to the city’s renowned aquarium, head over to the historic ships moored in the harbor: the sloop-of-war USS Constellation (1854) — the last all-sail warship commissioned by the U.S. Navy — the Treasury Class US Coast Guard Cutter 37 (1936), The Lightship LV116 Chesapeake (1930), and the Tench Class Submarine USS Torsk (1944), which saw action in the Pacific against Japan. Experience life on the high seas from the majestic age of sail to the claustrophobic existence aboard a World War II submarine.
13) Old Slave Mart Museum
Established in 1938, the Old Slave Mart Museum is the oldest museum of African-American history in Charleston, and the first on the history of slavery in the U.S. Housed in the only remaining structure of a once four-building slave market complex known as Ryan’s Mart, the museum invites visitors to learn the history of the slave trade in the New World via tours through the kitchen, infirmary, a four-story jail where captives were held prior to sale, and the large enclosed lot used as a slave pen. This excellent exhibit sheds important light on one of our nation’s darkest chapters.
14) Wrigley Field
This iconic 41,000-seat stadium is located in the heart of Chicago’s residential Wrigleyville and was first opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Federal League’s Chicago Whales. The league folded a year later and the field became the continuous home of the Cubs in 1916; it was renamed Wrigley Field in 1926 in honor of the Cubs’ owner and chewing gum magnet William Wrigley Jr. The oldest field in the National League and second oldest in Major League Baseball, “The Friendly Confines” is renowned for its ivy-covered brick outfield wall, red marquee over the entrance and hand-turned scoreboard. It was designated a National Landmark in 2020. 
15) Fenway Park
The oldest active ballpark in Major League Baseball, this legendary stadium located near Kenmore Square opened in 1912 and has been the home of the Red Sox ever since, as well as the Boston Braves until 1952. In its centennial year, Fenway was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Between its infamous 37-foot-high left-field wall — the “Green Monster” — and the 11 World Series that it’s hosted, Fenway Park has been labeled a shrine by baseball aficionados the world over. 
16) Tombstone, Arizona
Step back in time to the 1800s before the Wild West was tamed by walking down Allen Street, which maintains much of the historic character of the Old West. In the Tombstone Theater at the legendary O.K. Corral — the scene of the famous gunfight involving the Earps, Doc Holliday and the Clanton-McLaury gang — actors recreate the blood feud. The area also features some well-preserved landmarks, including the museum at Wyatt Earp’s home, Boot Hill cemetery and two supposedly haunted theaters. When hunger and thirst call, relax at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon. 
17) Arlington National Cemetery
Situated on the former estate of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Arlington, Virgina, this national military cemetery is the final resting place of approximately 400,000 U.S. veterans and their dependents. Every American should visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, complete with a moving changing-of-the-guard ceremony every hour (or half hour in colder months). Make sure to catch the Marine Corps Sunset Parade in the shadow of the Iwo Jima Memorial. The silent drill is especially impressive. 
18) The Grand Canyon
The majestic Grand Canyon should be on everyone’s bucket list, history buff or not. In addition to the breathtaking vistas that must be seen in person to be truly appreciated, there is history afoot in this natural wonder. The visitor center on the South Rim offers a 20-minute movie about the canyon, an impressive display of historic artifacts and guided tours. Learn about Pueblo Indian life at the nearby Tusayan Ruin and Museum, or get your science on at the Yavapai Geology Museum. 
19) Vicksburg, Mississippi
Settled in the early 1700s, this Mississippi town is one of the most historical spots in the nation. Known during the Civil War as the “Gibraltar of the South” for its position on commanding bluffs overlooking a hairpin bend in the Mississippi River (now diverted south), it was the scene of the famous battle and 47-day siege that changed the course of the war. There are excellent museums for everyone, from the Old Depot Museum — which tells the story of the siege in detail — to the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum. Tour Vicksburg National Military Park to learn about this pivotal battle, or enjoy walking the Vicksburg Heritage Walking Trails that pass 35 markers through the downtown and historic districts. Vicksburg also offers a casino and lively art scene. 
20) The Alamo
Travel to San Antonio in the heart of Texas and visit the scene of the most famous last stand in U.S. history. Although, at the time of the 13-day siege (1836), the mission was occupied and defended by mostly Texans seeking independence from Mexico. (Texas wouldn’t become a U.S. state until 1845.) The mission building, which began construction in 1744, features a one-hour guided tour. Visitors are also treated to hands-on demonstrations of what life was like in the 1830s. Additionally, there is an excellent museum of exhibits that tell the story of Travis, Bowie and Crockett’s fight to the death against the army of Santa Anna.  
21) The Betsy Ross House
Considered one possible birthplace of the American flag, this exhibit gives visitors a sense of what life was like for ordinary Americans — especially working women — in the 18th century through interactive, historical programming and reenactors. It’s an easy and fun addition to any Philadelphia trip.
22) The U.S. Capitol Building
Completed during the height of the Civil War, this recognizable structure in Washington, D.C., is the epicenter of the legislature, our most important branch of government. Take a guided tour through the Crypt, the Rotunda and National Statuary Hall and marvel at the stunning Greek-inspired architecture. 
23) Ellis Island
Located in New York Harbor, this iconic landmark served as the gateway to the U.S., and a new life, for more than 12 million immigrants from across the world. Today, over 100 million Americans can trace their roots back to this sublime place. Island visitors can trace their own heritage at the American Family Immigration History Center.
24) Graceland
This Memphis, Tennessee, estate is, of course, the home of Elvis Presley. Rock ’n’ roll music, which traces its roots back to African-American blues and gospel, is an integral part of the American cultural story — and no American did more to launch it into the mainstream than “The King.” Take an iPad tour of the property and get a behind-the-scenes look at Elvis’ home and gardens. While in Memphis, be sure to visit the legendary Sun Studio, which recorded other greats like B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.
25) Jamestown, Virginia
Travel back in time to 1607 and experience the first permanent English settlement in the New World. Along with the archeological site, there is a reconstruction of the Jamestown Settlement, recreations of ships of the early colonial era, a fort, and an Indian village where visitors can see how the Powhatan Tribe — whom the first settlers encountered after landing in this new, forbidding wilderness — lived their lives. 
26) Arizona Memorial
Pearl Harbor is the number one visitor destination in Hawaii. Take a boat from the visitor center to the moving wreck of the USS Arizona. Oil still leaks from the submerged battleship, sunk by the Japanese air attack on the morning of December 7, 1941. It is the resting place of 1,177 sailors considered buried at sea.
27) Yosemite National Park
Famed for its giant, ancient sequoia trees, Tunnel View, soaring Bridalveil Fall and El Capitan and Half Dome granite cliffs, this California park is one of the most beautiful places in North America. Yosemite village contains shops, lodging, restaurants, the Ansel Adams Gallery — featuring the famous photographer’s iconic black-and-white landscapes — and the Yosemite Museum.
28) The U.S. Supreme Court
Scene of some of the most important — both for better and worse — trials in our history, the Supreme Court building bears a dignified majesty unlike any other building in D.C. There is only a self-guided tour option, which explains exhibits about former justices and the building’s architecture. Courtroom sessions are open to the public.
29) Mystic Seaport Museum
Mystic, Connecticut, is a great midpoint stopover if you’re ever driving between New York City and Boston. The exceptional nautical museum offers a nice review of life at sea in the 19th century as the U.S. was becoming a burgeoning sea power. It features a captivating recreation of a New England seafaring village from that time period and a well-maintained fleet of old ships from a bygone age of sail. The Charles W. Morgan is a whaling ship right out of Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and represents the world’s oldest surviving trading vessel.
30) Kennedy Space Center
Florida has more to offer than beaches and Disney World. For any science or aviation buff, this Cape Canaveral destination must make the list. The Kennedy Space Center has been NASA’s primary launch center since 1968; you can still catch a launch to this day if you time your visit right. If you find yourself there on a non-launch day, don’t worry. There are many other fun attractions to check out, including the Apollo launch site from which the missions to the moon departed.   
31) The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park
Located in Atlanta, Georgia, this park features several buildings documenting the work and life of Dr. King as well as a visitor center with exhibits on the Civil Rights Movement. A visitor will learn about MLK’s childhood home and the church in which he was baptized. The center also features exhibits dedicated to Dr. King’s wife, Coretta, and Mahatma Gandhi.
32) Hoover Dam
Completed in 1935, this iconic dam located 30 miles east of Las Vegas was (and still is) an incredible feat of engineering. It shielded the surrounding farmlands from frequent flooding by the Colorado River, but at a cost of some 96 fatalities during its construction. Visitors can marvel at its sheer scale while discovering the part it played in the growth of Sin City. 
33) Mount Rushmore 
In Keystone, South Dakota, the 60-foot-tall faces of four American presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln) gaze out from the Black Hills granite. Almost 3 million visitors come to see the sculptural feat every year. 
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Patriotic

33 Patriotic Sites To Make Your Kids Fall In Love With America

History

Patriotism

Washington D.C., June, 1972: Five men are caught breaking into the Democrat National Committee headquarters while attempting to remove planted listening devices. Although at the time this was a minor story of a simple breaking and entering, two diligent reporters from the Washington Post — Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein — believed there was more to the story and continued to dig until they found evidence leading all the way back to the Nixon White House. And indeed, to the President himself.
But when the reporters attempted to run the story, the Republican-run DC establishment along with 90% of mainstream media outlets engaged in a concerted effort to suppress the story. They tried to remove all copies of the Washington Post from newsstands, storefronts, vending machines, and even forcibly prevented paperboys from making their morning deliveries. They went so far as blocking the Washington Post from the White House until Ben Bradley and his team agreed to remove any mention of Watergate from its pages.
Meanwhile, every major TV network and every other major newspaper circled their wagons around President Nixon and with one voice declared that the break-in story was merely a “conspiracy theory.&#8221; And to top it off, 50 former intelligence apparatus operatives, including former heads of the CIA and NSA, publicly declared the Watergate reporting to have “all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation” designed to make Nixon look bad before the 1972 election.  
Sounds crazy, right? It is, especially in a country where the founders codified a free press in our bill of rights. Thankfully, this scenario could never happen in today’s world, though. Or could it?
Chillingly, it already has. All one need do is replace the word “Watergate” with “laptop,” “Nixon” with “Biden,” “1972” with “2020,” and reverse the party affiliations of the powers-that-be. All you need to do is replace the Washington Post with the New York Post and you have what happened just one month before the last national election.
In many ways, the Hunter Biden laptop story is far more scandalous and dangerous than Watergate. During the Watergate scandal, it was said that “the coverup is worse than the crime.” But in the case of the Hunter Biden scandal, it very well could be that the crime is just as bad as the coverup. Here we have the ne’er-do-well son of a sitting Vice President with ambitions aimed at the Oval Office, doing business with China – a country that openly labels us among their greatest enemies. And what is the business? Is it software, manufacturing, or property development? No, it is blatant, naked influence peddling.
And speaking of naked, said son is addicted to crack cocaine. He is staying in the enemy’s capital, in hotel rooms that are surely surveilled. The Chinese Communist Party’s intel knows of his addiction, of course, and they also know what a recovering crack addict in my own family once told me: “When you are on a binge you will say or do anything for your next bump.” That alone is an obvious national security concern. But also, Joe Biden is not only a politician but by all accounts a devoted father to a troubled son. Who knows to what lengths he will go in order to protect his son from embarrassment or worse? It’s a question worth asking. 
To make matters worse, this scandal is not just about the son and his shameless influence peddling that yielded millions in ill-gotten Chinese (and Ukrainian) cash. The emails in question show that ten percent of those profits were kicked up to “the big guy.” Now, I wonder who that could be? Who is the Pauli Cicero to Hunter’s Henry Hill? Anyone care to take a guess? Is that “BG” the man sitting in the Oval Office who is also making policy decisions about our relationships and responses to the country that is far more a threat to the long-term interests of the USA than Russia? If so, one must wonder just how compromised are the highest levels of Federal power.
Like Watergate, there are several scandals within the scandal here. The obvious scandal is that the former VP’s, now the President’s, son has used his father’s name to wring millions from the coffers of an enemy state. And Xi Jinping’s people are too shrewd to part with millions of dollars without some expectations of a return on their investment, yet to be fully uncovered. But then we have a sitting Vice President who is now in the Oval Office most likely reaping kick-backs from his son’s nefarious dealings. And then, to me, the most frightening scandal of all is that the National Media/Big Tech/Bureaucratic State technocracy is lining up to suppress the story. Not only are they going so far as to censor the nation’s oldest newspapers , but they’re even reaching down to our personal devices to squash any mention of the story, just one month before an election that all interests involved in the suppression very much wanted to go Biden’s way.
My concerns are those of an American classic liberal, not a blind partisan. If the name “Biden” was replaced with “Trump,”  and the year was 2016 rather than 2020, my outrage and fears would be the exact same. But one doubts the legacy media now belatedly chasing a story that has become too widespread for them to hide any longer can say the same. 
The great misapprehension of many in this country is that, somehow, a different political system can craft a different human nature. No, human nature never changes. And political systems like ours — in which powers are balanced, ambitions checked by oversight, and a free and diligent press acts as an independent Fourth Estate — are constructed to rein in human nature. As such, when the levees holding back those who seek unchecked power break, when the watchdogs become the lapdogs of the State, then the country is in existential danger of becoming that which we once despised. Perhaps we are finally at an awakening. Only time will tell if we are too late. 
Either way, for once Carl Bernstein’s overused hyperbolic go-to line is actually true this time: “This is worse than Watergate.&#8221;
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Watergate

For Once, Something Really Is “Worse Than Watergate”   

Hunter Biden

Media Bias

We are living in the most extraordinary and dangerous of times, while trying to navigate through waters we have yet to begin charting with any accuracy or confidence. The entire story of the human race can be divided into two periods, a true before and after, and that dividing line can be precisely delineated down to the second: <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945">16 July, 1945, 5:29:45 am</a>. That was the moment the first controlled nuclear detonation took place in the New Mexico desert, culminating years of work and the two billion dollars that went into the Manhattan Project. When the atomic bomb lit up the pre-dawn sky, in a flash “brighter than a thousand suns,” a new age of commoditized mass destruction, indeed extinction-level power, had dawned, and the world has never been the same. 
Physicist Kenneth Bainbridge immediately grasped the significance of the sinister raw power they’d just set loose into an unsuspecting world, declaring, “Now we are all sons-of-bitches.”
We live far enough along the human timeline to look back and clearly see the demarcation points of history, and we have enough of the story, both of the before and the after, to make intelligent assessments of the far-reaching impacts of those seminal events – whether it be the birth of a prophet, a great discovery, a natural disaster, or the final resolution of a war. However, we are barely on the other side of the divide of the dawn of the Nuclear Age…the greatest moral challenge humankind has ever had to confront. What do I mean by this? I am not convinced that humanity has developed the moral grounding to be the wise stewards of such an awesome power. There are currently over 13,000 nuclear warheads dotting the planet, and I am disconcerted by the notion that no weapons system has ever been developed that was left unused.  
The great promise governing these weapons of mass destruction is that MAD (mutually assured destruction) will keep any conflicts hemmed in and local, for the risks of nuclear war in which both parties are annihilated is seen by all sides as unacceptable. As such, since 1950, the United States and its primary adversarial nuclear powers – China and Russia – have engaged in limited proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and other flashpoints. However, during that short window of the global after, we have seen the Damoclean sword of nuclear holocaust come dangerously close to dropping on more than a few occasions, October 1962 being the most well-documented.  
I reflect on this because what we are seeing in Ukraine is a true test of the post-Nuclear Age. For the first time since 1945, we find ourselves facing the prospect of a first-rate nuclear power engaging in outright warfare against a non-nuclear opponent…but one that has the sympathies and tacit support of the nuclear-armed West. There is, however, a terrible downside to MAD. While it has arguably kept a fragile Pax Nuclear in the world, preventing us from reliving the horrors of the Somme or Stalingrad, it has also hemmed us in regard to our real options, should we be confronted by a nuclear state gone rogue. Today, we face just such a scenario in the form of an unapologetic despot, whose goals are conquest and re-establishment of what he sees as a great empire of the Tsars and Soviets. 
Put simply, Putin has made the calculation that he could attack Ukraine without fear of an armed alliance directly challenging his armed forces. He need not fear the kind of Allied military intervention that stopped Hitler from realizing his megalomaniacal ambitions. Consider this thought experiment: would Great Britain and France still have declared outright war on Germany in 1939, when the Wehrmacht entered Poland, had we been in a nuclear age with Nazi Germany armed to the teeth with such weapons? What could the West have really done? Would Churchill have even risked vaporizing his beloved British Isles just to protect far away Poland, in what was in essence a border war between ancient enemies in a region that has never known peace or stability since the fall of Rome? What could the Allies have done? I can’t game that out. MAD works, really works, only when each side fears the others’ responses to the point where they act responsibly. This military strategy requires leaders to behave in rational ways, but what if someone with 4,000 nuclear weapons at their disposal calls MAD’s bluff?  
We are seeing just such a scenario as the vexing limitations of MAD unfold before us. A calculating man like Putin surely knows that, in a war against NATO, his 40-mile convoy of trucks heading for staging areas around Kyiv would not have lasted a day under the guns of marauding US A-10s with clouds of superlative F-22s flying top cover. Such a response, however, could very well lead to World War III, and that would be an existential threat to our species. For this reason, NATO, in all its superior military might, is impotent, for it cannot even enforce a no-fly-zone – despite Zelensky’s pleadings. 
 Putin certainly underestimated the ferocity of Ukrainian resistance – reminiscent of the Greeks’ spirited defense of their nation against Mussolini’s legions in 1940. As such, Putin’s timetable for subduing his neighbor has been upended. He likely did not expect the unity of response and punitive actions taken against Russia by the world at large. Still, he has correctly taken the measure of a Nuclear Age still in its infancy by gambling the West, for all its economic sanctions and peripheral attacks on his nation’s business infrastructure will not directly intervene with boots on the ground or fighters in the sky. A perverse application of MAD is in play. Therefore, despite much of the world’s justified outrage, we can only do so much as we watch Ukraine be overrun.  
Since 2008, Putin has made three encroachments against his neighbors: in Georgia, the Crimea, and now Ukraine proper. Three times he has been allowed to proceed. The West had no choice. If history has taught us one thing, it is that once wars start, no one can really tell in which direction events beyond our control will move the world. Just a century ago, it took barely two years for Europe to lurch from a single gunshot in Sarajevo to the agony of Verdun. Few in power in 1914 saw it coming.  
The question is: if Putin does get away with this, if his nuclear umbrella does protect him from direct Western response, what next? The Baltic states, too, were part of the USSR, and there is no doubt that he has his eye on them. However, unlike Ukraine, they are a part of NATO, whose core mission statement is “an attack on one is an attack on all.” Let us hope Putin doesn’t push his luck. It will be harder for the West to allow such an incursion the next time around, and NATO membership will be meaningless. 
As we navigate our way through this terrible minefield of the Ukraine invasion, we must, as always, make calculations based on what Churchill called the diabolical mathematics of war. Do we risk incinerating billions and ending all that we have built as a species since time immemorial – our progress in science, the arts, history, culture, indeed all we are – to protect one nation in a border war, however just the cause or tragic the imagery? I do not envy anyone in power having to run the numbers and make just such a calculation. 
This is the world of the “after” in which we live. Let us hope Putin is an anomaly, rather than a harbinger of things to come. Though, one need only to glance at Taiwan to see that this new age of MAD turned on its head may have only just begun, courtesy of the self-described “sons-of-bitches” in a remote desert 77 years ago…a mere blip in the historical timeline. Let us hope humanity is in the beginning of a second lasting age, rather than our collective denouement. Only time will tell. Those who are reflexively calling for a hawkish response may want to take a step back and consider the reflections of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant and mercurial leader of the atomic bomb’s development. While watching the great man-made fireball curling over 30,000 feet into the air, he recalled the ominous words of the Bhagavad Gita running through his head: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

When MAD And Megalomania Intersect In The Nuclear Age

Putin

Russia

While Washington shifts its attention to other matters, the Israelis continue to cast a wary eye towards Iran. This October in D.C., Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullha bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Afterward, Lapid repeated earlier warnings that “Iran is becoming a nuclear threshold country.” The Biden administration seems to be belatedly coming to realize that Iran has no interest in returning to Vienna to discuss curbing its nuclear ambitions—ambitions that, despite the common narrative, were helped along, not impeded, by the naïve 2015 accord. This was the deal that served up pallets of cash to the theocratic state in return for vague assurances of compliance. (Donald Trump pulled us out of this unilateral agreement in 2018).
What is there to say about Iran? Well, there are two very good standards by which to measure a government: what it says, and what it does. When it comes to Tehran, the Obama administration opted to ignore these two criteria. Trump’s diplomats understood the Mullahs better. And now the Biden people are waking up to a stark reality. US Special Envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, candidly admitted recently: “We have to prepare for a world…where Iran doesn’t have constraints on its nuclear program and we have to consider options for dealing with that, even as we hope that we can get back to the deal.” He must know that no one will deal with this president without demanding huge concessions in their favor. One must wonder, however, if Biden may become so desperate for a foreign policy “win” that he will acquiesce. In the meantime, it is wait and see what Iran has up its nuclear sleeve.
Israel, a nation surrounded by enemies hell-bent on its annihilation, cannot afford to be so glib. They, too, apply the litmus test of words and actions to Tehran…and it is chilling what they find.
First, what do Iran’s leaders, past and present, have to say? It seems to not matter to the West that when he was the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted the “elimination” of the Jewish State. Nor do many care to remember that when he was president up until August 2021, Hassan Rouhani referred to Israel as the “festering Zionist tumor.” (Interestingly, Rouhani was often touted by the media to be a “centrist” and “reformer.”)  And what of current Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi. As far as this gem goes, Ram Ben-Barak, a former Mossad deputy chief, tweeted: “Raisi’s election as Iran’s next president is conclusive evidence of [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei’s decision to radicalize Iran’s conduct on foreign, nuclear, and terrorist policies.” Khamenei himself has happily proposed that Israel will not exist in a quarter-century. And yet another of their so-called “moderates”, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, has declared Israel a “fake temporary state” and “a foreign object in the body of a nation and it will be wiped off the map.”
Yes, but how do you really feel?
Perhaps such overtly bellicose clarion calls for Israel’s demolition are just red-meat posturing for their more radicalized citizens. So let us ask instead what does Tehran do? They are the leading sponsor of terrorism in the Levant. Iran continues to support Hamas in Gaza by providing the missiles that routinely rain down upon Israeli civilians. They are a funding agent of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They are the regional destabilizer funneling arms and other materiel to our enemies in Iraq for 20 years, as well as the more militant rebels in Syria. They even have worked with the Taliban in Afghanistan in the past, although that relationship is tenuous.
This is the enemy with whom the Obama administration in one of its many unconstitutional side-steps, made a one-sided deal that prima facie defied common sense…much to Israel’s horror.
During the Cold War, the logic behind the uneasy peace with the U.S.S.R. was that while thousands of nuclear-tipped warheads sat at the ready on either side of the Iron Curtain, the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) kept both sides rational and at bay. Bit what if MAD seems like a great idea to a certain group of apocalyptic jihadists eager to sell their lives (or in the Mullahs’ case the lives of others) to do Allah’s work? What do you do if you are Israel confronted with the very real notion of a nuclear-armed regime that denies the previous Holocaust ever happened while calling for the next one?
The carrot of appeasement has not worked with Iran. And after Afghanistan, few enemies fear the U.S. stick. So perhaps then the best option for the Biden administration is to send Tehran a message by reaffirming in no uncertain terms U.S. support for Israel. Otherwise, with only the feckless Biden to fall back on as its “ally”, the IAF may have to re-enact its 1981 airstrike on Iraq’s Orsirak nuclear reactor. And who knows what genie that might let out of the bottle. Back then Ronald Reagan was president to keep the retaliatory inclinations of a generally anti-Israeli world, including his own cabinet, at bay, even as the U.S. joined in the ceremonial U.N. condemnation of their action. Those days are long gone.
Like all nations, Israel certainly has behaved over the years in a manner to warrant scorn. Still, there is an old but true expression: “If the Arabs laid down their arms there’d be no more war; if the Israelis laid down their arms there’d be no more Israel.”
The Iranian leaders, of course, are not Arabs, but they are fundamentalist Shi’ites who see the eradication of Israel as not just a legitimate foreign policy goal, but a noble, even holy, cause. Certainly, if their words and actions are to be believed.
In 2020 the American people voted out the most Israel-friendly administration in my lifetime.  This president, or whoever is pulling his strings, is no friend of the Jewish state. The Iranians know this.  And until it changes, they will continue to be emboldened. Why shouldn’t they after watching the catastrophe in Afghanistan unfold within months of the new U.S. president’s administration? No doubt the Israelis are praying for a GOP takeover of the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. And they understand the chief lesson of the Holocaust and will conduct their affairs accordingly: when people say they want to annihilate you, believe them. Because they mean it.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader and author. His latest novel, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Extraordinary/Brad-Schaeffer/9781642939422">The Extraordinary</a>, tells the story of a family dealing with a Marine veteran&#8217;s PTSD as told through the words of his autistic teenaged son. 
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Joe Biden, Israel, And The Iranian Mullahs

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