It was a long time coming.
On Thursday, it was announced that a grand jury had <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/morning-brief-comey-charged-ice-shooter-investigated-californias-crime-wave-intensifies?author=Morning+Wire&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=12&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Morning+Brief%3A+Comey+Charged%2C+ICE+Shooter+Investigated+%26+California%E2%80%99s+Crime+Wave+Intensifies">indicted</a> a longtime target of President Trump&#8217;s, former FBI director James Comey.
James Comey has been on President Trump&#8217;s so-called target list for a very long time, going all the way back to when President Trump fired him during his first term. He fired him because James Comey almost certainly bootstrapped into the press the so-called Steele dossier. He promoted the Trump/Russia collusion hoax. He was deeply involved in every aspect of that — up to and including the use of the Steele dossier — in documents that were presented directly to President Trump, which was then used as an excuse by the media to push the Steele dossier, a compendium of lies about President Trump, into public view.
There have been open questions about whether James Comey, over the intervening years in which he testified repeatedly in front of Congress, among others, had actually committed perjury.
It is a very, very, very short indictment, a page and a half maximum. It accuses Comey by stating he “did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the Government of the United States, by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, James B. Comey Jr., had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning” President Trump.
The indictment continues, “That statement was false, because, as James B. Comey Jr. then and there knew, he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning” Trump.
The allegation is that there was a person lower down at the FBI who leaked to the press details involving the investigation into President Trump, and it is suggested that the person was authorized by Comey illegally to do that, and Comey subsequently lied about it. Or, if he had the authority to authorize the leak, he lied about it.
That lie is count one, which is the perjury charge. Count two is obstruction of a congressional proceeding, saying then on that same date, based on that same testimony, Comey did “corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct, and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which an investigation was being had before the Senate Judiciary Committee by making false and misleading statements before that committee.”
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2287-breaking-former-fbi-director-james-comey-indicted-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
That is the entirety of the indictment. It is very specific. It is presumably about one or two lines in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The reason it&#8217;s being brought so quickly is because there&#8217;s a five-year statute of limitations on perjury charges. Comey’s testimony was September 30, 2020. It is now September 26, 2025, so we are about to expire on that statute of limitations.
It appears from much of the public information that this isn&#8217;t a particularly well-predicated indictment, and the indictment itself is quite weak and that it&#8217;s unlikely to survive in court.
Many of the things mentioned for the possibility of indictment of Comey are immoral and display ethics much worse than this.
But that&#8217;s not what he&#8217;s being indicted for.
At the end of the day, the indictment that&#8217;s left is pretty simple. Comey either lied about leaking to The New York Times in a tantrum because he was getting fired or he didn&#8217;t.
James Comey has decided to do what no one should ever do when hit with an indictment, which is to go directly on camera and talk. First rule of lawyering: Tell your client to shut the hell up.
But Comey <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/25/defiant-comey-video-defense-donald-trump-00581806">publicly stated</a>: 
<blockquote>My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn&#8217;t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees. And you shouldn&#8217;t either. Somebody that I love dearly, recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant. And she&#8217;s right. But I&#8217;m not afraid. And I hope you&#8217;re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I&#8217;m innocent. So let&#8217;s have a trial. And keep the faith.</blockquote>
He is simply the worst. Such a self-aggrandizing ridiculous figure.
This person had brought our country to the brink — in terms of the Justice Department, the FBI — for basically a decade, and it turns out he was one of the most ridiculous figures in the history of American public service. Truly a ridiculous figure, not only blowing the Hillary Clinton investigation, but blowing the Donald Trump investigation, manipulating the release, effectively, of the Steele dossier, and then using his perch as the guy who got fired by Donald Trump in order to launch salvos at Donald Trump over and over and over again, while walking through the forest and taking selfies of himself, or walking on the beach and taking pictures of shells on the beach, saying, “86 Donald Trump.”
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So don&#8217;t mistake my questions about the indictment, that I somehow believe that James Comey is deserving of tremendous sympathy. I do not think that James Comey is worthy of tremendous sympathy. He was an awful director of the FBI, a joke of a public figure, and his “I&#8217;m standing up to authority. I am the hero standing in the breach” posturing is silly.
He&#8217;s just a silly, silly person. That doesn&#8217;t speak to whether the criminal indictment that is being brought here is weak or strong.
We&#8217;ll see what the underlying evidence looks like on the face of it.
But as far as personal sympathy for James Comey?
The guy is a schmuck.

James Comey Promotes His New Book FDR Drive At Barnes And Nobles In New York

The Comey Indictment

Ben Shapiro

James Comey

Opinion

President Trump

Russia Collusion Hoax

Steele Dossier

U.S. Senate

President Trump became the first American president to be hosted at a second state visit to Great Britain this week. The President was greeted with a parade of British soldiers wearing dress red uniforms and marching in perfect unison while ragtag American soldiers popped up from behind rocks and trees and shot at them until they surrendered.
Trump and his wife Melania were given a lavish state dinner at Windsor Castle. Trump told the other guests that he was astounded by the beauty of the castle, and said it was absolutely amazing what you could do with Legos.
The dinner was attended by many British dignitaries including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who gave a brief toast in which he pledged to continue lowering the British voting age until the electorate was ignorant enough to keep the Labour party in power. 
Also at the Dinner was Education Minister Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa, the founder of the Fatwa Pre-School for the Grooming of Naughty but Strangely Alluring Little White Girls. The Education Minister presented Trump with a ceremonial scimitar which, luckily, just missed when the president turned his head at the last minute to point at a chart showing just how many Islamists he plans to deport after meeting Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa.
The dinner was also attended by the mayors of several major British cities, including Mayor Fatwa Mohammed Mohammed Fatwa, the mayor of Birming-al-hambra, and, of course, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa followed by several more Fatwas and Mohammeds.
The dinner began with a grace said by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was then arrested for praying within 300 miles of an abortion clinic. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, called the arrest absurd, saying Britain was a Christian nation, after which she was arrested for violating the blasphemy laws. Keir Starmer explained that the U.K. absolutely has free speech but only as long as you talk silently to yourself and are not within 750 miles of an abortion clinic, where such talk could be mistaken for praying to the God of love and life, which would be offensive to the nation’s terrorists. Fortunately Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa did not hear Kemi Badenoch’s offensive remark because he was busy on the phone, arranging the sale of some of his pre-school students.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974739 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-1024x171.webp" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
King Charles III then gave a speech, in which he spoke warmly of the special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., saying that the two nations shared many values, although he couldn’t name them for fear of being arrested. President Trump then rose and also gave a speech, saying that Great Britain was one of his favorite places in the middle east, even though he’d gotten a much nicer present from Qatar, who gave him a jet, while the British only gave him some cheap oil painting of Winston Churchill, which was then confiscated for spreading imperialist ideas that were offensive to the Muslims who were conquering the country.
The affair ended with Princess Kate and Melania Trump trying to decide who was more glamorous with an arm wrestling match. Princess Kate managed to pin the First Lady, but Melania responded by taking off that gigantic circular hat she wears and spinning it at Kate as if it were Oddjob’s derby in &#8220;Goldfinger.&#8221; Fortunately for relations between the two nations, Kate managed to duck, and the hat sailed past her and beheaded Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa, who congratulated the First Lady on mastering the essentials of sharia law.
After the dinner, Trump accompanied Prime Minister Starmer on a tour of factories and businesses that Labour has destroyed by their socialist policies. Trump said he was delighted to make the state visit, but said next time he had to come to one of these crap-hole countries, he hoped it would be someplace like Haiti, so at least he could get some sun.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is now available for Pre-Order. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

UK Hosts President Trump And First Lady Melania Trump For State Visit – Day Two

Trump Visits Great Britain, His Favorite Place In The Middle East

Andrew Klavan

England

Great Britain

Humor

King Charles III

Satire

President Trump Meets Polish President Nawrocki At White House

Democrats Panic As Trump Kills Narco Terrorists And Stops Violent Crime

Donald Trump

Tren De Aragua

Venezuela

White House

While the vast majority of Americans who dwell outside the ivory tower may roll their eyes at the crazed, fanatical politics that have festered at many college campuses across the country, this extremism hits much closer to home for level-headed college students and faculty. Recently, the Trump Administration has been using its control over federal education grants to push back against campus radicalism at some of America’s most elite universities.
Yet still untouched is the massive power that the Obama and Biden Administrations granted to campus union bosses who are frequently at the center of the most extreme and sometimes even violent so-called “activism” taking place at universities. It is time that Trump appointees go to work to fix it.
You see, currently, union bosses on dozens of campuses across the country are exercising government-granted powers that require unwilling graduate students to associate with (and often subsidize) campus unions. College administrators are also forced to “negotiate” with these union officials over campus policies, including discipline for violent campus agitators.
Those unfamiliar with labor law might wonder how union officials obtained such clout on college campuses in the first place – aren’t graduate students students, and not workers on a production line?
It all traces back to controversial rulings by the Obama and Biden National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which handed union bosses the power to obtain monopoly “representation” power over graduate and doctoral students. In states that lack Right to Work protections, that power includes forcing students to pay union dues.
This means union bosses can upend graduate students’ academic careers if they refuse to fund a group whose ideology they find abhorrent, which threatens both academic freedom and religious freedom on campus.
<div id="attachment_967075" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-967075" class="size-large wp-image-967075" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-1762566453-864x576.jpg" alt="ITHACA, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 3: People walk through the Cornell University campus on November 3, 2023 in Ithaca, New York. The university canceled classes after one of its students is accused of making violent antisemitic threats. (Photo by Matt Burkhartt/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-1762566453-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-1762566453-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-1762566453-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-1762566453.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Matt Burkhartt/Getty Images</div>
Take the case of David Rubinstein, a Ph.D. student in history at Cornell University whose research concerns the postwar Jewish diaspora in Europe. David, who is Jewish, wants as little as possible to do with the Cornell Graduate Student Union (CGSU-UE, an affiliate of the United Electrical union), knowing union officials’ virulent opposition to Israel and affinity for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
But when David exercised his right under federal law and demanded an accommodation to union dues payment based on his religious beliefs, union officials refused. They harassed Rubinstein and other religious objectors with unnecessary and illegal “questionnaires” that demanded they divulge particulars about their religious practice, their faith organizations, and faith leaders. As a result, with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, David is pursuing a federal civil rights case challenging CGSU-UE’s illegal tactics.
Numerous graduate students at other campuses have similarly needed to take legal action just to get campus union bosses to respect their legal rights. Yet graduate students shouldn’t need to jump through union-created hoops and tangle with union lawyers just to pursue a graduate degree in the first place.
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Fortunately, a more comprehensive solution is on the horizon. Russell Burgett, another Ph.D. student from Cornell, recently launched a groundbreaking NLRB case to strike at the heart of union bosses’ monopoly bargaining powers on campuses. A victory for him would free any dissenting graduate student – whether their opposition is political, religious, financial, or otherwise – from having their academic fates dictated by union apparatchiks.
His Foundation-backed case argues that Obama and Biden NLRB appointees were wrong to “reinterpret” federal law to allow union officials to collectivize graduate students. Nothing in the statute’s plain text suggests that students, whose primary reason for being on campus is to pursue a degree, should be included in the National Labor Relations Act’s definition of “employees.”
If he wins, militant campus union bosses would be stripped of their government-granted powers that let them dragoon unwilling students into their ranks, while also freeing administrators of their current obligation to “negotiate” with union boss radicals over the conditions of all graduate students.
President Trump is currently staffing up his NLRB. He should ensure his appointees get to work quickly on ending the monopoly “representation” and forced-dues powers that previous administrations improperly handed to campus extremists.
* * *
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Cornell University, College Town, Ithaca, NY, stone entrance sign with red Geraniums

For Grad Students, Labor Day Needs To Be Liberation Day From Radical Campus Union Bosses

American Universities

Anti-Semitism

Boycott Divest Sanction

Labor Unions

Leftists

Obama Administration

Unions

Monopolies have been rigging the system for decades. They cozy up to Washington, throw cash around, hire armies of lobbyists, and manipulate rules so that everyday Americans always lose.
Thankfully, President Trump isn’t playing by their rules. He’s standing up for Main Street, not corporate boardrooms.
We first saw this with Big Tech. Mark Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/technology/mark-zuckerberg-trump-meta-antitrust.html">thought</a> he could cut a favorable deal to get Facebook off the hook, possibly even counting on Trump to back him. Instead, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/facebook-privacy-practices-focus-8-billion-trial-targeting-zuckerberg-2025-07-16/">allowed</a> the case to go to trial, and Zuckerberg found himself sweating it out on the witness stand. 
Google attempted a similar stunt, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/21/google-argues-doj-breakup-could-hurt-us-economy-in-battle-with-china.html">claiming</a> national security would be at risk if it faced a breakup. Trump’s DOJ wasn’t buying it. 
 
“You know what is dangerous?” Antitrust chief Gail Slater <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/30/business/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-testifies-extraordinary-doj-remedies-would-cause-many-unintended-consequences/">asked</a> outside the courthouse. “The threat Google presents to our freedom of speech, to our freedom of thought, to free American digital markets.” That case has now <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2025/08/20/google-will-soon-learn-its-fate-as-judge-prepares-to-reveal-antitrust-remedies/">reached</a> the remedies stage, and for the first time since AT&amp;T in the 1980s, we could see a Big Tech monopoly actually broken apart. That’s how monopolies should be treated.
Now Ticketmaster is running the same playbook. 
Controlling <a href="https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/did-ticketmasters-market-dominance-fuel-the-chaos-for-swifties">80% of the market</a>, the ticket marketplace is infamous for outrageous fees and predatory practices, such as charging junk fees and allowing scalping bots to buy up most of its inventory, leaving regular fans at the mercy of price gougers. Yet now the monopoly wants Trump to think it’s the solution, not the problem. 
Ticketmaster’s owner, Live Nation, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5311464-ric-grenell-live-nation-board-trump-doj-ticketmaster-antitrust/">added</a> a MAGA-friendly face to its board and is now floating “reform” ideas, like capping resale prices. Such caps would <a href="https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2025/07/09/live-nation-asks-the-trump-administration-to-cap-ticket-resale-prices-which-would-conveniently-put-their-competition-out-of-business/">bankrupt</a> almost all of Ticketmaster’s rivals, leaving the company even more dominant while pretending to “fix” the market.
It’s a double scam: they make the mess, then turn around and sell the “solution” as regulation.
It’s like an arsonist showing up with a bucket of water after lighting the fire.
Fortunately, the Trump administration is not paying any attention to Ticketmaster’s desperate attempt to protect itself from the White House’s wrath. It is already <a href="https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2025/03/14/329490.htm">continuing</a> the antitrust suit against Ticketmaster, and a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-will-end-price-gouging-by-middlemen-in-the-entertainment-industry/">ticketing reform plan</a> set to drop in September could put the company’s “business as usual” to an end.
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Big Tech and Ticketmaster aren’t alone.
In June, the Trump administration hit Mexican bank CIBanco with the <a href="https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2025/07/fincen-new-authority-targeting-mexico-based-financial-institutions-cartel/">toughest sanctions possible</a>, accusing it of aiding the fentanyl trade. A few weeks later, CIBanco — never before a client of Washington lobbyists — <a href="https://lda.senate.gov/filings/public/filing/ab337cdd-495b-4498-a1f9-4f3b0ec83631/print/">hired</a> the MAGA-connected Rubin, Turnbull &amp; Associates. The sanctions haven’t moved, and Trump has stood firm.
Amazon has also tried its usual political maneuvering on the president. When Trump won the White House, executives <a href="https://lda.senate.gov/filings/public/filing/b22dc7d6-7900-40e4-9f3f-985bbbb32579/print/">hired</a> Brian Ballard — Trump’s former lawyer and Florida finance director — to lobby on Amazon’s behalf. They even contributed <a href="https://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/286/201704180300150286/201704180300150286.pdf">over $50,000</a> to the president’s inauguration. Did it work? No. Trump didn’t blink, and Amazon lost its effort to dodge federal antitrust charges.
Hardworking Americans are tired of being taken advantage of. Insider games, where a board seat or a lobbyist equals immunity, have gone on for too long. Trump sees it, and he’s the one president actually saying “No” loud enough for all of us to hear.
Trump is different from most politicians. He doesn’t feel he owes these corporations anything, and he isn’t inclined to give them a free pass. His administration is pushing back against any monopoly that harms consumers or breaks the law.
The bottom line? Corporate America needs to clean up its act or face the consequences. Because the Trump administration isn’t standing up for special interests, it’s standing up for everyday Americans like you and me.
* * *
Haley Kennington (@LadyKennington) is an investigative journalist and conservative commentator. She served as the Research Director &amp; Story Editor for The Daily Wire’s “2020:The Plot Against the President” and the Research/Archive Editor for “What Is a Woman?“
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

In Trump’s White House, It’s Main Street Over Monopolies

Big Pharma

Big Tech

Corporations

Washington D.C.

This week, President Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115092130707196133">sent a letter</a> to Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022, informing her of her immediate removal from her position of service, citing allegations of mortgage fraud.
In a time when buying a home is out of reach for millions of Americans, in part due to the high interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, it is obvious that someone who allegedly committed mortgage fraud by claiming two different homes as their main residence to get better loan terms would be unfit to serve. While the President provided documentation alleging fraud, time will tell whether Ms. Cook indeed committed fraud. Innocent until proven guilty.
Aside from this point, however, there is a much larger problem at play.
The Constitution is clear: All members of the Executive Branch report to the President of the United States. This is a basic chain-of-command that is not difficult to understand.
Yet time and time again, we see political appointees cling for dear life to their appointed, and temporary, positions of service, exhibiting unmatched levels of arrogance and entitlement.
Take Lisa Cook, for example.
A decorated former professor of economics who has conducted plenty of research and advised the Obama administration, her resume passes muster. Still, are there not thousands of other economic experts who might serve the American people in this position?
Not according to Ms. Cook, who remains defiant.
“I will not resign,” she <a href="https://x.com/bencasselman/status/1960175891658498543">pouted</a> through her attorney like a petulant child, adding that the President of the United States has no authority to fire her.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Just received this statement from Lisa Cook, via her attorney: 
&#8220;President Trump purported to fire me &#8216;for cause&#8217; when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have… <a href="https://t.co/57C6p0cwMI">https://t.co/57C6p0cwMI</a>
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) <a href="https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1960175891658498543?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @bencasselman/X
Of course, that is not true.
As every middle school civics student knows, and as President Trump spelled out quite clearly in his letter, his authority comes from Article II of the Constitution of the United States: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
Lawyers are scrambling in Washington and across the nation to come up with legal arguments for both sides. But it doesn’t take a Juris Doctorate, just a basic reading comprehension level, to understand that the President oversees the Executive Branch. Ultimately, all members of the Executive Branch report to him.
If that were not the case, then who is in charge? 
Who has the authority to appoint and fire within the Executive? Lisa Cook?
Let’s take it a step further to examine the practicality of the matter: Why on earth would Ms. Cook wish to continue her service when her boss, the President, has fired her? She is no longer wanted in the Trump administration. This was not a lifetime appointment. She was always going to have to return back to the real world and her real job.
Cue the arrogance to center stage.
Ms. Cook apparently believes she alone is capable of serving as on the Board of Governors at the Fed, and that her politically-appointed position holds more power in it than the President of the United States holds via Article II of the Constitution.
She will use the mainstream media and the fury of liberal Democrats who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome (looking at you, Gavin Newsom) for as many news cycles as she can to stir up trouble and get her 15 minutes of fame.
Meantime, those Americans trying to afford a home will just have to wait.
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Lisa Cook is not the first, nor will she be the last, to throw a temper tantrum when asked to leave. She is just one of thousands of bureaucrats in Washington who mistakenly believe they are independent from and just as important as the sitting President of the United States.
Woe to anyone, including the president, who challenges that notion!
But perhaps the American people can use this moment to see just how difficult it is for the president to exert his authority over the very government he has been elected to lead. Millions of Americans voted for President Donald Trump. Nobody voted for Lisa Cook.
They voted for his vision, his leadership, and his discretion. They voted for his judgment. Politically-appointed bureaucrats may not like it, but that is how democracy works.
Time to pack your things, Ms. Cook.
* * *
Carly Bird is a Republican strategist and founder and president of Bird’s Eye Consulting. She previously served as the national spokeswoman for Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

President Trump Meets With His Cabinet At The White House

Yes, The President Can Fire Politically-Appointed Bureaucrats

Federal Government

Federal Reserve

President Trump suggested via executive order that burning the American flag could be punishable by law.
This is good.
But some people are critical of it because they are misreading the executive order.
What President Trump said publicly was a very simplified version of what the executive order actually stated. He said, “If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. No early exits, no nothing. You get one year in jail. If you burn a flag, what it does is incite to riot. &#8230; You burn a flag, you get one year in jail, you don&#8217;t get ten years. You don&#8217;t get one month, you get one year in jail. And it goes on your record, and you will see flag-burning stopping immediately.&#8221;
People are saying that Trump’s order criminalizes all forms of flag burning. That is not true. The president does not have the authority via executive order to make anything criminal. You can&#8217;t make things criminal via executive order at the federal level. That requires a congressional act. The president can&#8217;t deem an act illegal and then it magically becomes so. He can enforce the current law by directing his DOJ to prosecute certain crimes that are already on the books.
So what exactly did the president sign? The executive order doesn’t say if you burn an American flag in a protest that you&#8217;re going to go to jail, because that would violate Texas v. Johnson.
What it does say is that if you do something that is likely to incite imminent lawless action that is not protected by the First Amendment — if I tell you, “Let&#8217;s go attack that courthouse” — you can be prosecuted.
Why? Because the action is likely to incite imminent lawless action.
Thus, this order doesn&#8217;t do what some critics think it does. It does not say that if you burn a flag under any circumstances, you are going to jail.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2267-trump-protects-the-american-flag-plus-we-break-a-major-story?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Two things can be true at the same time. First: According to the Supreme Court, the Constitution of the United States protects flag-burning as a form of expression, so long as it doesn&#8217;t violate other issues such as incitement to violence. Second: The Supreme Court decision in Texas v. Johnson is wrong and a bad decision. That 5-4 decision, which is held in high esteem by libertarians and members of the Left, violated centuries of American precedent. The First Amendment was not designed to protect flag-burning.
So why is the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. Johnson wrong?
By 1932, every single state in America had a flag desecration statute. Even though, according to the Supreme Court, the flag was a federal symbol, states could still criminalize desecration of the American flag. Typically, this was designed not only to prevent marking, mutilating, trampling, defacing, defiling, or defying the flag; in many states, it was meant to ban the use of the American flag in advertisements — a ban that has been jettisoned over the course of time.
In 1943’s West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnett, the Supreme Court started to assert that people could not be compelled to salute the flag because refusing to do so was freedom of speech.
You could say that was a fairly decent argument. Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote, “If there&#8217;s any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
That&#8217;s an arguable opinion. I think saying that you should like the country and like the flag is not a horrible prerequisite to being an American citizen. But you can see the counterargument, which is that freedom of speech exists at the federal level, not at the state level. The First Amendment to the Constitution applies to Congress, and Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. That does not apply to the states. In the early days of our Republic, states routinely made laws abridging freedom of speech.
But then we saw attempts by the Supreme Court to carve back much of the law surrounding the flag. In 1968, Congress passed a federal flag desecration law, which was meant to mirror many of the state laws. The federal law made it illegal to knowingly cast contempt upon any flag of the United States by publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning, or trampling upon it.
Then there were a bunch of Supreme Court cases under the very liberal Warren Court that carved a lot of that back the other way, including in 1969 saying that you could curse the flag, in 1974 saying that you could sew the flag to your pants, or you could sit on it in a way to shame it.
That culminated in the Texas v. Johnson decision, which was written by Justice William Brennan, which found that flag burning was symbolic speech and that the Texas statute was content-based. Justice Scalia, the deciding vote in that case, said, “If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy, bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.”
But as Justice William Rehnquist wrote in dissent, “In holding this Texas statute unconstitutional, the court ignores Justice Holmes&#8217;s familiar aphorism that a page of history is worth a volume of logic. For more than 200 years, the American flag has occupied a unique position as the symbol of our nation; the uniqueness that justifies a governmental prohibition against flag burning in the way respondent Johnson did here.”
He pointed out that every single state except for Alaska and Wyoming had statutes at the time prohibiting the burning of the flag. He added that the “American flag, throughout more than 200 years of our history, has come to be the visible symbol embodying our nation. It does not represent the views of any particular political party. It does not represent any particular political philosophy. The flag is not simply another idea or point of view, competing for recognition in the marketplace of ideas. I cannot agree that the First Amendment invalidates the act of Congress, and the laws in 48 of the 50 states which make criminal the public burning of the flag. The government may conscript men into the armed forces where they must fight and perhaps die for the flag but the government may not prohibit the public burning of the banner under which they fight?”
Rehnquist was right about that.
On the merits, President Trump is not wrong. Flag burning is bad. And the executive order does not prohibit flag burning per se, as Trump has no power to do that.
Another reason the order is good is that it is smart politics. You’re now going to see a bunch of lefties going out in the streets burning the American flag, which is precisely what Trump is tempting them to do. He’s baiting them.
President Trump is saying, “You believe that America is all about burning the American flag? That American citizenship is about &#8216;Dissent is patriotic?'&#8221;
Americans don’t like burning the American flag.
The American flag is special. I&#8217;ve backed a constitutional amendment that would criminalize flag burning for my entire political career. That’s because, as our institutions fall apart, we have less and less fealty to anything in common.
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Fealty to the American flag remains, along with fealty to the Constitution of the United States, the basis for being a good American.
You should love the American flag. It&#8217;s the flag of your country. You should love the Constitution of the United States, the organizing founding document of our country.
If you are going to form an Americanism around ideas, loyalty, and love for the country, the American flag is a very good place to start.

President Trump Signs Executive Orders In The Oval Office Of The White House

Trump Protects The American Flag

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Washington, D.C. isn’t just any city, it’s our nation’s capital — where Americans go to conduct the business of our nation and to celebrate our history. More than that, it’s a place many call home.
Unfortunately, thanks to the work of local elected officials and their radical progressive <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/25/7-changes-congress-should-make-before-restoring-d-c-s-bloated-billion-dollars-in-funding/">policies</a>, the District of Columbia is now incredibly unsafe.
A quick <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcS3wkDf4MU">listen</a> to reporters in the White House Press Briefing Room reacting to President Trump’s D.C. crime crackdown shows just how bad things have gotten. Many have personally been victimized in D.C., or at least have friends or family members who have.
And it’s no wonder. For years, local D.C. Council members have proudly proclaimed their plans to <a href="https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/the-dc-city-council-failed-criminal-justice-reform-congress-must-fix-it">decriminalize</a> entire swaths of problematic conduct and to only allow relatively lenient sentences even for those convicted of very violent crimes.
On top of that, council members have touted their plans to <a href="https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/dcs-radical-criminal-code-reform-would-make-city-even-less-safe">defund</a> the Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC) and to impose onerous restrictions on officers while performing their duties.
The result? MPDC is facing a historic staffing crisis, with some saying it will take a decade or more for the force to recover and be fully staffed.
But, fortunately, President Trump and his administration have stepped in to take action to protect our nation’s capital — something the Framers of our Constitution always <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4034744">intended</a>. Federal officials have the final say — and responsibility — for what happens in Washington, D.C.
As provided by the <a href="https://dccouncil.gov/dc-home-rule/">Home Rule Act</a>, the president has directly taken control of the local police force. He has deployed D.C.’s national guard to help patrol and make up for the police department’s manpower shortage, and he has surged federal law enforcement resources — FBI, DEA, ATF, etc. — to help patrol too.
The initial results have been staggering. D.C.’s police union <a href="https://x.com/DCPoliceUnion/status/1957435067258577173">highlighted</a> that in the first seven days of Trump’s law enforcement surge, carjackings dropped 83% compared to the same period a week earlier. Robberies dropped by 46%. Car thefts dropped by 21%. And violent crime overall dropped by 22%.
Even more shocking and welcome news is that for the first time in a long time, the District went an entire week <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/david-marcus-dc-just-had-murder-free-week-yes-dems-trump-did">without a murder</a> committed within its borders. That’s even more impressive considering that murder rates tend to spike during the hot and humid summer months.
While President Trump has <a href="https://www.fox5dc.com/news/trump-patrol-dc-military-law-enforcement-thursday-night-officials-say">joined</a> law enforcement to see firsthand what they experience while patrolling the streets and Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other senior administration officials <a href="https://www.fox5dc.com/news/vp-vance-visits-national-guard-union-station-amid-dc-protests">visit and listen</a> to deployed national guard troops around the capital, some local officials seek to frustrate these effective crime fighting tactics.
For example, D.C.’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued the president, claiming that the Home Rule Act — and the Constitution — don’t really mean what they say.
Schwalb <a href="https://x.com/DCAttorneyGen/status/1956339474633253098">claims</a> that the President can’t really control D.C.’s local police and that any actions must run through local officials — who generally oppose his efforts. There’s no discretion there for the mayor or the D.C. AG to second guess the president. It would be an odd situation for an inferior official to tell the president how to discharge his duties. And yet, that’s exactly what local D.C. officials are trying to do.
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But more to the point, it’s unfortunate that local D.C. officials and others on the Left are denying that there’s even a crime crisis in D.C. After all, denying a problem exists doesn’t make it go away.
Thankfully, President Trump and his administration are taking long-overdue and much-needed actions to transform our nation’s capital from a cautionary tale of the harmful results of progressive policies to a shining example of America’s greatness.
* * *
Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

President Trump Visits Law Enforcement And National Guard During D.C. Crime Crackdown

A Week Without Murder: Trump’s Crackdown Restores Safety To Washington, D.C.

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Since 2015, President Trump has obviously become very popular because of his stance on illegal immigration.
He said what most people aren&#8217;t willing to say: Illegal immigrants should go home. They don&#8217;t have a place in the country.
And the Left went nuts.
They are still going nuts over the fact that the president of the United States has single-handedly shut the southern border, and this means that apparently he&#8217;s bad and racist and all the rest.
But most Americans don&#8217;t believe that about Trump. Most Americans look at illegal immigrant crime and say President Trump is right.
The latest case in point: According to the Department of Homeland Security, California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom and his continued support for sanctuary policies are to blame for an illegal immigrant trucker who was given a driver&#8217;s license in California, then charged with killing three Americans in Florida when making an illegal U-turn.
Harjinder Singh entered the U.S. illegally in 2018 and then the state of California decided to give him a driver&#8217;s license. He was driving a semi in St. Lucie County, Florida, and he made an illegal U-turn that left three Americans dead.
Newsom was held responsible for Singh getting a driver’s license. He immediately responded that it was the fault of the Trump administration.
The issue is that he only had a commercial driver&#8217;s license despite being an illegal alien, thanks to a law passed in 2013 and then expanded by Gavin Newsom in 2022.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin <a href="https://x.com/TriciaOhio/status/1957503043710181746">wrote</a>, “Harjinder Singh is in the United States illegally, and his work authorization was rejected under the Trump administration on September 14, 2020. It was later approved under the Biden administration, June 9th, 2021. The state of California issues commercial driver&#8217;s licenses. There is no national commercial driver&#8217;s license.&#8221;
It turns out that the illegal immigrant trucker allegedly responsible for all of this failed an English language proficiency test and also failed to accurately identify highway traffic signs, according to the Department of Transportation.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy <a href="https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/trumps-transportation-secretary-announces-investigation-deadly-florida-truck-crash">said</a>, “If states had followed the rules, his driver would never have been behind the wheel and three precious lives would still be with us. This crash was a preventable tragedy, directly caused by reckless decisions and compounded by despicable failures. Non-enforcement and radical immigration policies have turned the trucking industry into a lawless frontier, resulting in unqualified foreign drivers improperly acquiring licenses to operate 40-ton vehicles.”
Authoritative estimates have placed California&#8217;s undocumented immigrant population in the range of 2 million. As far as driver&#8217;s licenses, California has, since 2015, allowed illegal immigrants to obtain driver&#8217;s licenses. By 2023, the California Department of Motor Vehicles had issued nearly 1.2 million original <a href="https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/assembly-bill-ab-60-driver-licenses/">AB 60</a> driver&#8217;s licenses to undocumented immigrants.
That&#8217;s crazy. So 1.2 million illegal immigrants are roaming around the United States with California driver&#8217;s licenses.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2263-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
But this is part and parcel of a broader Democratic policy that suggests that somehow illegal immigration is a positive good for the United States, and you are inhumane or bad if you say that immigrants should not be in the United States.
In essence, this comes down to a question that&#8217;s increasingly being asked online: What ought an American to be? What is an American?
If you go all the way back to the American founding, the definition of an American was to be a natural-born citizen of the United States. There were real holes in the citizenship definition because it didn&#8217;t include, for example, black slaves in the South.
But the basic predicate for citizenship was that you were assimilating to the dominant culture of the United States, an Anglo-American culture, and you abided by the applicable law in your state, and you were not a drain on the people around you.
The history of the United States was successive waves of immigrants who were then assimilated into the dominant majority culture. Those successive waves of immigrants could be welcomed because there was no facilitation of inability to speak English. There was no facilitation of inability or unwillingness to assimilate to the dominant adherence to law.
My great-great grandparents came to the United States in the early 20th century. They spoke Yiddish, but they and their families immediately stopped speaking Yiddish as fast as possible so that they could actually immerse themselves in the American culture. That was true for the Irish, it was true for the Germans, it was true for the Italians, and it was true for many Hispanics.
And then something changed. And what changed was a gigantic welfare system, accompanied by a view of multiculturalism that suggested that not only ought you bring your home foods and some of your home traditions, but that your culture need not in any way mesh or assimilate with dominant traditions of law or believing in things like free speech or private property, or the constitutional government of the United States. The United States was to be the repository of any people who wished to come here, even if those people were just coming here to take advantage of the system itself.
That meant lower rates of assimilation. It also meant that people came here who didn&#8217;t speak English, couldn&#8217;t read road signs, were immediately entered into the stream of commerce, and then sometimes did things like commit crimes.
But if you say no to this, you are the problem.
What you actually want is people coming to the United States and becoming part of the American experiment by accepting the American experiment, by learning the language and becoming part of the culture, by believing in the creed of the Declaration of Independence.
But if you say those things, then many members of the Left will say, that&#8217;s wrong, that&#8217;s bad, that&#8217;s racist, because what you actually need are segmented populations that don&#8217;t actually believe in the American experiment. They don&#8217;t just bring their food and their customs; they also reject the dominant customs and heritage and law and legal framework of the United States.
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That’s led to identity politics on the Left and to a concomitant rise of a new identity politics on the Right, which says, “If we are going to do various ethnic cliques in a ‘multicultural country,’ then what we really ought to do is have a white ethnic clique as a form of identity politics.”
None of this is good.
Until we get back to accepting legal immigrants but demanding that they know our laws, accept our laws and live by them, know our Declaration of Independence and Constitution and live by them, we are headed for the cliff.

California Gov. Newsom Discusses Texas’ Redistricting Plan

Newsom’s Open Borders Vs. Trump’s Immigration Sanity

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Students across the country are getting ready to head back to school, and this year they’ll have the chance to take on a different kind of assignment: the first-ever Presidential AI Challenge. An outgrowth of an executive order signed by President Trump in April, the Challenge aims to inspire students, educators and community leaders to work together to ensure the next generation is ready to take on the unprecedented technological change we can expect in the near future. This goes beyond politics, and asks students to find ways to use artificial intelligence to respond to challenges in students’ local communities.
This initiative has arrived not a moment too soon. New developments in AI are announced almost daily – some promising, some disconcerting. The headlines show us every day that this world-changing technology will need governance and guardrails left firmly in qualified human hands. The Trump White House understands this, and is right to engage America’s youth. Who better to challenge our thinking on emerging tech than those who will be impacted the most?
If educators prioritize safe and ethical engagement with AI in the classroom, this could be one of the most consequential school years in decades. Generation Z is coming close to the end of their school years. Generation Alpha, in school behind them, may well be renamed by history as “Generation AI,” because they will be the first to come of age in a world with all the power of artificial intelligence at their fingertips. The sooner they start working through what that means, the better.
Different schools and communities will inspire students to meet the Presidential AI Challenge in different ways, but there are a few consistent elements that educators, community leaders, and the tech community should strive to instill in American youth so that they learn to engage with AI in responsible, ethical ways.
The first is to reconceptualize the idea of digital citizenship. It’s not just about being nice on social media anymore (although that remains important). But we must make sure students understand that AI is a tool to be used responsibly, and that being a good citizen extends to online communities. Understanding ethical standards is key, as is the constant reminder that technology should serve humanity, and not the other way around. As powerful as the technology will be, the students using it will have to remember that their human mind is still in charge.
If the human minds are to remain in charge, we will need to sharpen critical thinking skills at all educational levels. Switzerland and Sweden, for instance, have integrated these skills into all levels of their curriculum – even into continuing education in their workforce. Critical thinking will be the bedrock of ethical AI use. By fostering skills to question, analyze, and evaluate AI outputs, we empower learners to challenge assumptions and create AI systems that foster trust and respect. The use of AI as a crutch – like writing your term papers for you – is the exact opposite of this. It’s more than just lazy – it sets us back on doing the important work to keep this technology in check.
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To stop AI from replacing critical thinking, we should train students to use AI as a tool for exploration and curiosity: start with an idea in your own brain, then explore further with AI-generated insight that you never fully trust and always verify. Once outputs are created, there must always be a &#8220;human in the loop&#8221; by design, evaluating AI outputs and coming up with an original solution based on human judgment. Students can study, design, and ensure solutions reflect steps that allow humans to interject moral reasoning and human creativity.
The next generation will need to understand more than just how to interact with a chatbot in a safe, ethical, and helpful way. AI’s ripple effects will go beyond our screens, as the need for more physical data centers to power AI innovation increases. We must set an example by wrestling with policy questions, like energy access issues, in an empathetic, human-centered way. We don’t want power grids diverting power to data centers while hospitals can’t keep their machines on. AI must be used to uplift communities, as outlined in the Presidential AI Challenge.
We are poised to mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in a world abounding with technology that our founders could only dream of. But the same values that inspired them, a “decent respect” for freedom, human dignity, and individual rights, should guide us as we explore this uncharted technological territory. The upcoming school year, educators and students alike have a fascinating opportunity to engage with this technology in ways that align with our values.
* * *
Theresa Payton is the founder and CEO of Fortalice Solutions. She served as the White House Chief Information Officer under President George W. Bush, and co-founded the Major-Payton School of Business at Immaculata University.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

School boy in a computer lab.

AI Heads Back To School: Students Face A Challenge That Will Shape The Future

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As the media and Democrats fulminate over President Trump&#8217;s supposed capitulation to Vladimir Putin, precisely the opposite seems to be happening.
But leave it to the media and the Left to deliberately misinterpret what is going on.
On Monday, President Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/with-historic-zelensky-visit-donald-trump-moves-the-world-one-step-closer-to-peace?author=Mary+Margaret+Olohan&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=14&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=With+Historic+Zelensky+Visit%2C+Donald+Trump+Moves+The+World+One+Step+Closer+To+Peace">met with</a> Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, along with a bunch of European leaders.
Everything seems to be moving toward Ukrainian territorial concessions in return for serious security guarantees for Ukraine.
Those guarantees would presumably be some form of European trigger force in Ukraine that would implicate a mutual defense pact. It wouldn&#8217;t exactly be NATO, but it would be NATO-lite. The problem is that to be a credible deterrent, you need tens of thousands of troops.
The second possibility is a trip-wire force that would trigger the possibility of the mutual defense coming into effect if Russia were to walk across the border.
A third possibility would be a kind of observer force, perhaps a few hundred troops or so, to report on incoming military action, which could be accomplished with satellites and ground cameras.
Of course, all of this flies in the face of the fact that Russia wants to leave Ukraine utterly defenseless and prostrate before them.
But here’s the thing: The fact that President Trump is willing to hold Russia&#8217;s feet to the fire by even talking about these kinds of significant security guarantees is a major move from the president, and pretending that it&#8217;s a pro-Russia move is silly. If there were a significant security guarantee, a sort of NATO-lite and Article Five-lite approach to Ukraine in exchange for territorial concessions in Donbas, that would be a masterstroke from the president of the United States, because otherwise this war just keeps going.
All of Trump’s forward movement on this issue is to the great consternation of both the media and the Democrats, who claim that Donald Trump was a Putin catspaw. They thought that Trump was going to welcome Zelensky to the White House yesterday by berating him and telling him he needed to basically surrender in the war: No security guarantees, no economic health, no nothing.
None of that happened. In fact, it was pretty warm. You could see Trump and Zelensky getting along. This was not an antagonistic meeting.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2262-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
One of the things that Zelensky also said is that as part of any of the security guarantees put forward by Europe and the United States, Ukraine would buy $90 billion in American weapons via Europe. The rest of the NATO nations and the United States military would benefit from it. The defense industries in the United States would end up benefiting from that. He expressed gratitude to both President Trump as well as the EU leaders for their hard work on the possibility of a peace deal.
There are still a lot of steps to go. We still have to see whether Vladimir Putin actually is interested in ending the war in any serious way.
As I’ve said before, a good thing about President Trump is that he&#8217;s heterodox in his views, which means he does very creative things. But if things don&#8217;t happen, he will respond. He&#8217;s responsive. He doesn&#8217;t just stick with an idea, no matter what.
The idea that endless diplomacy is something that President Trump is going to pursue here is not true. If Russia does not come to the table, if he feels that Putin is jacking him around again, he&#8217;ll walk away. He is not going to be bullied by Vladimir Putin here.
Trump remains optimistic, saying that he thinks that Putin wants to make a deal.
For the media and the Left to pretend that somehow Trump is doing Putin&#8217;s work here is to ignore everything that&#8217;s actually going on in favor of a pre-established narrative.
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Even Michael McFaul, who was President Obama&#8217;s Russian ambassador, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5459351-mcfaul-praises-trump-peace-efforts/">admitted</a> that Trump is actually doing a pretty good job here. “I think this was a very positive meeting,” he said. “And whoever had the idea to bring all these European leaders together, in addition to President Zelensky, that was a brilliant, brilliant idea. And having it come so quickly after Alaska was also very important because now they&#8217;ve changed the talking points here. Just in this meeting alone, they&#8217;ve walked back some of the positions that the president was echoing, when he met with President Putin. So this is very positive progress.”
If you&#8217;re honest —even if you&#8217;re a Democrat — you should be acknowledging that President Trump not only is not doing anything wrong here, he&#8217;s actually moving the ball forward.
To pretend that this was somehow a gigantic Trump capitulation to Putin is to ignore the actual reality of the situation, and it demonstrates the wild disconnect between reality and what Democrats think of President Trump.
But then, Democrats and reality are like oil and water.

TOPSHOT-US-UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT-DIPLOMACY

Could Trump’s Masterstroke End The Russia-Ukraine War?

Could Trump's Masterstroke End The Russia-Ukraine War?

Europe

Legacy Media

NATO

Russia

Ukraine-Russia War

Vladimir Putin

Volodymyr Zelensky

President Trump has two goals. One goal is to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump said this over and over during the campaign. He said, “If I&#8217;d been president, it never would have started. … I want to stop the death. There&#8217;s too much carnage. “
It’s a simple truth. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed on both sides. The number of total dead and wounded is probably over one million at this point, depending on the estimates that you are using. There has been a vast flight of people from places like Ukraine. Seven million people from Ukraine left the country during the ongoing conflict, which has been going on for three years.
But President Trump also has another goal, a larger geopolitical and geostrategic goal here, and that may be to do a sort of reverse Henry Kissinger.
In a famous incident, Henry Kissinger went to China to normalize relations with the U.S. when he served under Richard Nixon. It was an attempt to split the USSR from China in the early 1970s.
It is quite possible that this is something that President Trump would like to do here: Stop allowing Russia to be predominantly used as a Chinese gas station. If we are orienting ourselves toward boxing in China, then a Russian-Chinese close alliance is a bad thing.
The idea could be to reach an end of the war, create a warm relationship with Vladimir Putin, and create a quasi-detente with the Russians in an attempt to pry them out of the waiting arms of the Chinese.
Is that something that&#8217;s going to happen? Not likely. The Chinese and the Russians share many interests. The Russians have a long-standing agenda.
And this gets to what Vladimir Putin wants.
What Vladimir Putin wants is not only territorial expansion in Ukraine. What he wants is the capacity to turn the rest of Eastern Europe, as well as Western Europe, into an anti-Atlantic preserve. What Putin would like is for Europe to become a Russian sphere of influence, because the goal of the Russians is not to be a sort of strategic player in the world. They want Russia to be an actual, honest-to-God, quasi-empire.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2261-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=1&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
They would like for the Russian capacity to influence events to spread far beyond its borders. They see themselves as preservers of a deeper Russian ideology that should be spread.
Thus, the war could be the first step toward something like that. Gain a little bit more territory in Ukraine, stall for time, wait for the next president of the United States, and then go after the rest of Ukraine, or put additional pressure on Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, try to formally actually break NATO, try to get all of these countries —because they&#8217;re afraid of the West abandoning them — to start treating Russia in friendlier fashion.
Something like that has been happening in Taiwan, where every few years they have a presidential election, and then they decide whether to pursue a closer policy with China, a friendlier policy with China in an attempt to prevent a Chinese invasion, or whether to stand tall and independent of China.
Vladimir Putin&#8217;s goal here does not align with the goals of the president of the United States. When it comes to China, if Putin has to choose between siding with China against the United States and siding with the United States against China, the answer is probably the former rather than the latter.
And then there&#8217;s the interests of Vladimir Zelensky and the rest of Ukraine. They want to be an independent state. They do not want to be under the Russian thumb. They&#8217;re not interested in becoming Belarus. They&#8217;re not interested in becoming a Russian proxy state. They don&#8217;t want to be Georgia.
They want their independence.
Meanwhile, the Europeans want to have a warmer economic relationship with Russia. They had that before Vladimir Putin&#8217;s repeated invasions of Ukraine.
But they would also very much like for Vladimir Putin&#8217;s influence to stop at the borders of NATO.
Those are the various interests at play here, and it&#8217;s very hard to see a deal that gets made here that enshrines all of those interests and ensures all of these different interests.
This is a very, very sticky situation, and the thing that makes it most sticky is that the history of Russia in conflict is this: Mass casualties do not matter to the Russian regime.
The rest of the West sees mass casualties as a terrible thing. Russia does not. The more Russians who died during World War II, the more Russians can claim Russian heroism.
Vladimir Putin&#8217;s losses in Ukraine — which he thought he was going to win easily — have not diminished his standing in Russian circles.
How does all of this end? There are a couple of scenarios posited by The Wall Street Journal in a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/how-will-the-war-in-ukraine-end-two-scenarios-2bcc0d99?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAgxsUv7fSfcNxX0S-r1dO8mTJs-IYDSK6mjtpNdSLHTTb-jHIj-SJRqZwoBfE4%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68a37030&amp;gaa_sig=dSZh-rHKSheqYDiYEd_dTJ1ihnv4w61g0lZcxHW8Oe6_mmapRSi7iegB9YbQ0pYI78J96YZypMywe8EtvU_3lw%3D%3D">piece</a> by Marcus Walker.
One is “partition with protection.” He writes: “Ukraine’s leadership has quietly come to accept that it doesn’t have the military strength to get its borders back in full. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated his willingness to negotiate about territory in video calls with President Trump and European leaders—after a cease-fire that freezes the current front line.”
So the goal there would be to stop the forward momentum that Russia is attempting to pursue while the talks continue.
“Kyiv and European countries say they would never give legal recognition to Russia’s gains, a step that would turn international law into an incentive for further conquest instead of a taboo against it. But they are signaling they would live with the reality of de facto Russian control,” he continues.
What would that look like? It’s unclear. It wouldn&#8217;t be a formal recognition of annexation.
“The best-case scenario for Kyiv and its European backers is probably to limit Russia to what its forces already occupy, equivalent to about one-fifth of Ukraine’s land. The Kremlin continues to insist that Ukraine retreat from areas that it claims as Russian but doesn’t control — notably the Ukrainian-held part of the Donetsk region, where Ukraine holds a chain of fortified cities that Russia so far has been unable to conquer,” he writes.
Remember, any sort of territorial acquiescence by the Ukrainians will have to go through a referendum in Ukraine. There&#8217;s a constitutional provision in Ukraine that requires that the people vote if they&#8217;re going to give up land to the Russians.
“But the biggest question is what happens to the other 80% of Ukraine,” Walker asks. “Kyiv and its European allies want to protect the future security and sovereignty of the remaining rump with a combination of strong Ukrainian military defenses and Western security assistance. A so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ led by the U.K. and France wants to deploy some of its own troops to Ukraine as a further deterrent against a future Russian attack.”
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It&#8217;s similar to the way the United States has a trigger force in South Korea to prevent North Korean aggression.
That is possibility number one: Get very, very strong security guarantees. Ukraine makes some sort of territorial concessions. And this conflict comes to a sort of ceasefire, an end point without a full-scale peace agreement. That is the most hopeful possibility.
Then there&#8217;s possibility number two. Walker calls it “Partition with subordination,” writing:
<blockquote>Russia’s demands since its 2022 invasion have included shrinking the size of Ukraine’s armed forces, limiting its weaponry and its supplies of Western armaments, and changing its political regime—including its constitution, its leadership, and its policies on language, history and national identity. The greatest danger for Ukraine isn’t just losing its east and south. It is that what remains wouldn’t be able to resist a third Russian invasion, following those of 2014 and 2022. </blockquote>
You can&#8217;t imagine a situation in which Ukraine accepts that outcome, not after the second invasion of Ukraine in a decade. There&#8217;s no way they&#8217;re going to accept full-scale subordination. They&#8217;re going to say, “We might as well fight this thing out and slug it out on the front lines, if the idea is that we&#8217;re supposed to diminish our military in some serious way.”
So possibility number one looks like the best solution.
Which means Trump will do everything he can to achieve it.

U.S. President Trump And Russian President Putin Meet On War In Ukraine At U.S. Air Base In Alaska

The Trump/Putin Faceoff

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