Every American remembers where he was on September 11, 2001.
It was the same for my generation on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Dark days such as these may not cause the dark history that follows them, but it’s difficult not to feel they mark the place in time where a certain shadow fell.
JFK’s murder marked the end of that period of patriotism, confidence, and unity brought about by the Allied victory in World War II. The Islamist destruction of the World Trade Center marked the end of the “Holiday from History” that followed the West’s victory in the Cold War.
Many of today’s young people feel beset and battered by such catastrophic days. Endless wars in the Middle East. The 2008 financial crisis. The COVID lockdowns. Race riots. Inflation. The madness of woke — or the rise of conservative populism, or both, depending on your point of view.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/andrew-klavan-show-ep-1295"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-974735 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now.jpg" alt="" width="1800" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1536x256.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px" /></a>
But, of course, my generation also saw such things. The Cuban missile crisis. The 60s riots. Assassination after assassination. The stagflation of the Jimmy Carter economy, and the gas shortage. Speaking personally, I lived in the crime-ridden New York City of the 70s and 80s, when smoking was bad for your health because you were likely to get shot going to the store for a pack of cigarettes.
Yet I also saw that things could turn around. I saw Ronald Reagan restore the economy and help engineer the end of the Soviet Union. I saw Rudy Giuliani transform a cesspool of a city into the greatest, safest metropolis on Earth, thus leading the way to an era of lower crime across the nation. These men were reviled every day by the powers-that-be and the news media. Yet on they went, and did what they did and accomplished what they accomplished. As we recently saw in the Lindsay Clancy trial, it really is true: One man with courage makes a majority.
Still, there is no doubt we are living in an age of uncertainty. As the Baby Boom generation passes into the greater life and its long-dominant vision begins to fade, destructive radicals are vying to fill the gap. The collapse of a non-credible news media followed by the rise of a non-credible social media has caused an information crisis — a long Good Friday in which it seems the truth is forever being crucified. We know from history that such uncertainties often resolve themselves through war. It doesn’t take a catastrophist to trace a potential path from the present moment to some worldwide conflagration.
All this, I think, should be taken seriously, but calmly, too, in a spirit of hope.
It has always fascinated me — and puzzled me somewhat — that hope is considered one of the three primary Christian virtues. Faith, hope, and agape love — that spirit of benign, non-judgmental goodwill sometimes called charity. I feel I understand two of these virtues. Faith is “the evidence of things unseen.” It gives us assurance that we can know and live in some human version of God’s truth. Agape love is the spiritual practice that helps us develop the third eye with which we see that truth, even amid the harsh practicalities of life.
But what about hope? I suppose this could mean the sort of generalized hope that “all things work together for good to them that love God,” the hope that suffering and death lead to eternal life and so on. But this always sounds to me better than it actually is. I know a lot of people who believe in that kind of hope, and yet they live as pessimists, morosely and sometimes angrily counting every setback as a sign of the incipient End of Days.
I myself am frequently derided for what some deem my blindly optimistic attitude. But I think they mistake me. I see the possibility of disaster just as clearly as they do. It’s the certainty of disaster that is rarely apparent to me. I am a tragedian by nature. I take a dim view of humanity. I know that every mortal enterprise will ultimately end in failure and death. I simply don’t believe that it will necessarily end today — &#8220;Sufficient unto this day is the evil thereof.&#8221;
This sort of hope is the hope of doctors and soldiers. Of Gandalf’s consolation: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” This is the sort of hope that knows that in the certain march toward death, today is a day of life and there are works to do and tears to shed and loves to love. This, I think, is the hope described by the poet Emily Dickinson when she <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>
Hope is the thing with feathers &#8211; 
That perches in the soul &#8211; 
And sings the tune without the words &#8211; 
And never stops &#8211; at all &#8230;
</blockquote>
“The tune without the words,” means, as I read it, not with grim reason ceaselessly charting out the possible paths to destruction, but with a general attitude of joy in living. Whatever the outcome, after all, this is the day that the Lord has made. We should rejoice in it and be glad.
When The Daily Wire began, it was Ben Shapiro and I recording podcasts in the pool house in Jeremy Boreing’s backyard. The first day, I was so jet-lagged from a trip to England that I forgot to put my shoes on and arrived wearing bedroom slippers. I stumbled through a short opening podcast that ended with that Bible quote: &#8220;This is the day that the Lord has made.&#8221; It was like nothing else I’d ever done. So when I was finished, I asked Jeremy how it went. He said, “Great, but you say ‘uh’ too much.” I said, “Well, what can I do about that?” He said, “You can not say it.”
I was startled to discover that this was true. It was a small piece of wisdom, but it grew greater over time. Because I also soon discovered you could treat fear and depression and despair in much the same way. Without denial, without repression, without dishonesty, you could simply not do them and let the thing with feathers sing.
“A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.” So says Aragorn in the movie version of “The Lord of the Rings.” And he adds: “This day we fight.”
So yes, the crises facing the West this day are real, and so are the possibilities that they will lead to disaster. But every day is the Lord’s day, and we are only responsible for the days He has given us.
So this day, we rejoice — each one of us — and we fight.
Because one man with courage makes a majority.

Giuliani 9/11

Defiant Hope Conquers Despair In An Age Of Uncertainty

faith

opinion

ronald reagan

rudy giuliani

september 11 attacks

the daily wire

Among the DC and Marvel movies that have hogged much of the attention in theaters this year, “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hollywood-made-another-modern-woman-hero-heres-how-it-went">Supergirl</a>” and “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-spider-man-is-succeeding-where-so-many-superhero-movies-failed">Spider-Man</a>” among them, my favorite superhero movie has flown under the radar. Filmmaker Michael Russell Gunn’s “The Brink of War” contains no galactic skirmishes or city-leveling explosions. Instead, it takes us back to 1986, when the global nuclear stockpile had reached its Cold War peak, and reminds us how the fortitude and resolve of President Ronald Reagan helped bring one of history’s most oppressive empires closer to collapse.
Jeff Daniels portrays Reagan, capturing much of the Gipper’s mannerisms and genial, folksy candor, though I still preferred Dennis Quaid’s more physically intuitive performance in the 2024 biopic (or “origin story,” in superhero parlance) “Reagan.” The film opens with Reagan arriving in Iceland for the famed Reykjavík Summit with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (Jared Harris), where the two intend to negotiate arms control. Reagan himself is reluctant to call it a summit. “Summits have gotten us nowhere,” he says. “Let’s just call it a meeting.”
The stakes hardly need embellishment. By 1986, the world contained nearly 70,000 nuclear warheads, overwhelmingly American and Soviet, with both superpowers restrained by the ghastly game theory of mutually assured destruction. Neither leader, socialist or otherwise, had any desire to preside over the annihilation of his country.
Most of “The Brink of War” unfolds inside Hofdi House, the actual site of the negotiations, where Gunn was even able to film using the chairs in which Reagan and Gorbachev sat. The claustrophobic setting suits a movie in which civilization’s fate turns on two men refusing to budge across a small table.
Harris, complete with Gorbachev’s signature forehead birthmark, wisely stops short of attempting a full Russian accent — one dialect American actors almost never get right — instead folding Slavic affectations and rolled Rs into his English. “Are we not mutually assured partners in destruction?” Gorbachev asks. “Should we not be mutually assured partners in reduction?”
Yet Reagan’s concern extends beyond quibbling over how many warheads should remain stationed across Europe. Gunn treats the summit as a collision between two political systems. Referencing the Second World War, Reagan tells his colleagues that “any system, no matter communist or fascist, that denies people their God-given free will is a threat to all nations.”
“The Brink of War” succeeds as a political thriller because it takes that moral distinction seriously.
Gunn also finds simple visual ways to enliven what is essentially two hours of men negotiating. Reagan and Gorbachev, seated across from one another, are at points framed inside isolated black spaces that create a visual wall between them. Elsewhere, the film cuts to the aides, intelligence officers, journalists, and spouses orbiting the negotiations.
Raisa Gorbacheva (Branka Katić), dressed head-to-toe in sumptuous sable furs, bristles when a New York Times reporter addresses her as the Soviet first lady. “In the Soviet Union, we are all truly equal,” she replies.
Such jabs at communism are abundant. When a Soviet official asks Secretary of State George Shultz (J.K. Simmons) why Americans call the president’s emergency satchel a “nuclear football,” suggesting such euphemisms signal weakness, Shultz shoots back: “Yes, gulag sounds so much nicer than inhumane Siberian torture prison.”
The screenplay occasionally feels inspired by contemporary politics. One Soviet dismisses Thomas Jefferson as a “slaveholder” and “conveniently capitalist,” while Gorbachev calls Jesus “the first socialist,” sounding more like Columbia freshmen than Cold War-era Kremlin hardliners. Still, it produces an amusing question. How can affluent Western college students fantasize about an economic system whose leader, in the film, admits that the Soviet Union cannot even manufacture milking machines and functioning tractors to feed its people?
Watching Reagan refuse to abandon the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile-defense program nicknamed “Star Wars,” also made me pine for some of his uncompromising spirit in America’s dealings with Iran. One struggles to imagine Reagan tweeting that “A CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT,” only to announce shortly afterward that military action has been postponed for two weeks.
Reagan and Gorbachev ultimately leave Reykjavík without what negotiators call a zone of possible agreement, or ZOPA, largely because Gorbachev insists that Strategic Defense Initiative research be confined to the laboratory. Yet Reykjavík was hardly a failure. The negotiations helped clear the path toward the 1987 INF Treaty and proved that sweeping arms reductions were possible.
That is also where “The Brink of War” finds its point. Reagan understood that negotiation did not require moral equivalence and that peace was worth pursuing without pretending the systems on either side of the table were interchangeable. Driven by strong performances from Daniels and Harris, the film may lack the CGI thrills of this year’s superhero blockbusters, but it portrays a hero who actually had a hand in saving the world from nuclear annihilation and communism.
***
Harry Khachatrian (<a href="https://x.com/harry1t6">@Harry1T6</a>) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at <a href="https://www.betweenbottles.com/">BetweenBottles.com</a>.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

R_03561

‘The Brink Of War’ Finds A Superhero In Ronald Reagan

arts

film review

mikhail gorbachev

reykjavik summit

the brink of war

John Hinckley Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, is offering new insight into the factors that drove him to carry out the attack, pointing to his own estrangement from his family.
In an interview with filmmaker and producer Mark Joseph obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire, Hinckley once again said the 1976 Martin Scorsese film &#8220;Taxi Driver&#8221; had a profound influence on him as he spiraled into the delusions that ultimately led him to shoot Reagan. “&#8217;Taxi Driver&#8217; influenced me very much,” Hinckley said when asked how responsible he believed the movie was for his actions. “I wouldn’t use the term ‘hold them responsible,’ but yeah, &#8216;Taxi Driver&#8217; influenced me greatly.”
But he also said his isolation from his family was a contributing factor, and offered a word of caution to young people struggling with loneliness.
“Do not get estranged from your family,” Hinckley said. “Keep the family ties, because that’s what happened to me: I got estranged from my family, and that led to isolation and depression and delusions.”
“So do everything you can to keep your family ties,” he continued. “And, you know, if you have some faith, try to have a faith in God. With me, that’s what saw me through.” The comments come as Hinckley has received renewed attention following his first major interviews in decades. In another <a href="https://ew.com/john-hinckley-jr-shares-a-message-for-jodie-foster-in-rare-interview-12053383">portion of the interview</a>, he discussed his obsession with Jodie Foster and said he once believed the actress would ultimately join him after the assassination attempt.
The attack wounded Reagan, White House Press Secretary James Brady, Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy. Reagan survived after suffering a punctured lung and internal bleeding. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 and spent more than three decades in psychiatric care before being released from court supervision in 2022.
Joseph produced the 2024 film “Reagan,” starring Dennis Quaid as the 40th president. A director&#8217;s cut of the film is scheduled to return to theaters in September as part of the nation&#8217;s 250th anniversary celebrations.

BC-HINCKLEY-FOSTER:NY-20260812

EXCLUSIVE: Ronald Reagan Shooter Speaks To ‘Reagan’ Producer Ahead Of Director’s Cut Release

john hinckley jr

reagan assassination attempt

reagan film

taxi driver

Leave it to New York rookie socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani to lecture Americans on hardship while taking aim at one of the most popular and economically successful presidents in history.
During a press conference on Monday, Mamdani mockingly referenced former President Ronald Reagan’s iconic 1986 quip: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
Mamdani, thinking himself a master of rhetoric, countered: “I think nine more terrifying words are actually ‘I worked all day and can’t feed my family.’”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
MAMDANI: “Ronald Reagan…famously said ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are I’m from the government and I’m here to help’…I DISAGREE.” <a href="https://t.co/cAXqjRz9iI">pic.twitter.com/cAXqjRz9iI</a>
&mdash; Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/2056392177652023429?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
It’s a cute line, but it’s completely untethered from historical reality. Mamdani is attacking a man whose conservative policies actually rescued the American worker, all while Mamdani practices a brand of fiscal theft today that guarantees future generations will pay the price tomorrow.
Let’s look at the facts. When Reagan took office in 1981, the American economy was being suffocated by Carter-era &#8220;stagflation&#8221; — a toxic mix of double-digit inflation and high unemployment. Reagan didn&#8217;t use big-government handouts; he crushed inflation from 13.5% down to 4.1%. He slashed the astronomical 21.5% prime interest rate in half, sparked a 92-month peacetime economic expansion, and oversaw the creation of over 16 million new jobs.
Reagan’s supply-side miracle didn&#8217;t just help the wealthy; it lifted everyone. Real median family income rose by 12.6%, and poverty rates plummeted. Minority communities thrived, with black unemployment at a near all-time low and black-owned businesses expanding by nearly 38%.
Reagan knew that the American taxpayer didn&#8217;t exist to fund bureaucratic overreach. As he noted in his 1980 GOP acceptance speech, any program representing a &#8220;theft from their pocketbooks&#8221; had to go.
Contrast that economic boom with Mamdani’s <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/mamdani-closes-12-billion-new-york-city-budget-gap">current high-wire balancing act</a> in New York City. Mamdani recently took a rooftop victory lap, boasting that he magically closed a $12 billion budget deficit without resorting to &#8220;austerity.&#8221; But a look under the hood reveals that Mamdani’s &#8220;solution&#8221; is just a massive shell game of short-term gimmicks and fiscal procrastination.
To patch the hole for fiscal year 2027, Mamdani relies on roughly $2.8 billion in one-time measures. He is implementing a punitive &#8220;pied-à-terre&#8221; tax and clawing back unincorporated business tax credits that hit self-employed New Yorkers making as little as $142,000 — giving productive citizens an explicit incentive to flee the city. Worse yet, he is extending the amortization period for unfunded pension liabilities, pushing hundreds of millions in city obligations well into the 2030s.
By kicking the pension can down the road and relying on temporary state aid infusions from Albany, Mamdani isn&#8217;t saving New York; he’s merely loading up a fiscal time bomb. Fiscal experts note that these gimmicks leave the city dangerously exposed to massive multi-billion-dollar deficits in the years ahead — topping out at an estimated $9.8 billion by 2030.
Mamdani wants to pretend he’s the champion of the working class. In reality, Reagan&#8217;s free-market policies allowed families to feed themselves through dignity and work. Mamdani’s progressive playbook simply steals financial stability from the future to fund big-government hubris today.

MixCollage-18-May-2026-01-22-PM-8378

Mamdani Tries Dunking On Reagan, Ends Up Soaking Wet

new york city

zohran mamdani

As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave an update for his city-owned grocery stores, he surprised the crowd by quoting former President Ronald Reagan.
“Standing here this morning, I cannot help but think of the words of our fortieth president, Ronald Reagan. He famously said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are &#8216;I&#8217;m from the government and I’m here to help.'&#8221;
The socialist mayor said it’s a “good quote,” but added that he disagrees with the message. 
“I think nine more terrifying words are actually, &#8216;I worked all day and can’t feed my family,&#8217;” he countered. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
MAMDANI: “Ronald Reagan…famously said ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are I’m from the government and I’m here to help’…I DISAGREE.” 
<a href="https://t.co/cAXqjRz9iI">pic.twitter.com/cAXqjRz9iI</a>
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/2056392177652023429?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Unlike Reagan, who pushed for a limited government, Mamdani said his new city-owned grocery stores would act as proof of concept for expanded government. 
“We are going to use the power of government to lower prices to make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table,” he said. “When government understands its purpose as serving the very working people that it has left behind time and again, it can make a difference in the most pressing struggles facing our city today. It’s not just that government can help, it’s that the government must help, and our government will help.”
On Monday, Mamdani shared that the first city-owned grocery store is set to open in the Bronx in 2027 at the site of the Spofford Juvenile Detention Facility. He secured $70 million in funding to not only remodel the detention center into a grocery store but to also build four more grocery stores. 
Mamdani previously announced that one of the stores would be placed where his favorite mayor opened a store 90 years earlier, the La Marqueta in East Harlem. The second store is expected to open in 2029. 
Mamdani praised NYC Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who created a &#8220;municipal market” that consolidated independent vendors into a permanent place to sell their goods. The market functioned like a public farmers market rather than a city-owned and stocked supermarket. La Marqueta ultimately saw rapid decline in the 1970s as New York City teetered toward bankruptcy and crime skyrocketed. 
While two of the five properties have been selected, Mamdani has put out a casting call for the others. Through an application on the city’s website, property owners can submit their storefronts to be selected to house a public grocery store. It is not clear whether the city would then purchase the property from the landlord or become a tenant. 
Once the space is acquired, however, the city will select a third-party operator to run the grocery store, which the Mamdani administration claims has “no plans to turn a profit.” Those who want to run the store will go through a “future request for proposals (RFP) process.&#8221; The documents do not disclose who is eligible to apply or how much operational control the city will retain. 
While the city has not fully detailed how it will implement the program, officials have already outlined what they expect the results to be. 
“In these stores, prices will be cheaper. Workers will be paid fairly and treated with dignity. Going to the grocery store will no longer cause that same anxiety for so many New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.
After Mamdani won the 2025 mayoral election, The Daily Wire asked a bodega owner about his thoughts on the new grocery stores. The bodega owner questioned the fairness of the city government forcing him to compete against a grocery store not obligated to pay rent or property taxes. 
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TOPSHOT-US-MAMDANI-FISCAL-BUDGET

Zohran Mamdani Quotes Ronald Reagan As He Rolls Out Socialist Campaign Promise

<div>
In a bold move to defend the nation’s heritage from &#8220;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/columbus-day-2025/">left-wing arsonists</a>,&#8221; President Donald Trump is planning to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/04/trump-christopher-columbus-white-house/">install a statue</a> of Christopher Columbus on the White House grounds. The decision marks a major victory for the preservation of American history and a direct rebuke of the radical activists who spent years trying to erase the 15th-century explorer from the public square.
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<div>
The statue, set to be placed on the south side of the White House grounds, is a reconstruction of a monument originally unveiled by President Ronald Reagan in Baltimore. In 2020, during the height of the George Floyd riots, a mob toppled the original sculpture and dumped it into Baltimore&#8217;s Inner Harbor.
</div>
<div>
While Democratic leaders like former Chicago Mayor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-have-the-biggest-d-in-chicago-chicago-mayor-lightfoot-accused-of-raging-against-officials-who-wanted-to-display-columbus-statue-report">Lori Lightfoot</a> and former <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/clip-of-kamala-bashing-columbus-day-resurfaces-trump-camp-promises-to-protect-this-holiday">Vice President Kamala Harris</a> have spent years disparaging the explorer — with Harris once labeling his voyage a &#8220;shameful past&#8221; and a &#8220;wave of devastation&#8221; — the Trump administration is making it clear that the era of apologizing for Western civilization is over.
</div>
<div>
“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” spokesman Davis Ingle said. “And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump.”
</div>
<div>
The restoration was made possible by a group of Italian-American businessmen and local sculptors who recovered the broken pieces from the harbor. Bill Martin, who helped lead the recovery effort, noted that the statue represents the &#8220;American spirit of daring and defiance.&#8221; For the Italian-American community, the return of Columbus to a place of honor is a significant cultural win.
</div>
<div>
The president has long positioned himself as a bulwark against the &#8220;corrosive ideology&#8221; of the Left. Last October, Trump signed a proclamation recognizing Columbus as &#8220;the original American hero&#8221; and a &#8220;giant of Western civilization,&#8221; vowing to protect Columbus Day from those who wish to replace the holiday with &#8220;Indigenous Peoples&#8217; Day.&#8221;
</div>
<div>
This move is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to &#8220;make the White House great again,&#8221; which has included remodeling internal fixtures and reinstating historical monuments previously targeted by vandals. With 83% of Americans favoring common-sense measures like voter ID and a clear majority supporting the preservation of national monuments, President Trump is betting that honoring America&#8217;s founders and explorers will resonate with voters tired of the Left&#8217;s &#8220;merciless campaign&#8221; to slander the nation’s heritage.
</div>

Baltimore Cityscapes And City Views

Trump Brings Columbus Back To White House In Blow Against History Erasers

Trump Defies Woke Erasure, Set To Install Toppled Columbus Statue On White House Grounds

christopher columbus

donald trump

Executive

General

politics

Wednesday marked 40 years since the in-flight explosion of NASA&#8217;s Space Shuttle Challenger — just 73 seconds after lift-off — and then-President Ronald Reagan&#8217;s address to a nation in shock.
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission/sts-51l/">STS-51-L</a>, according to NASA, was the 25th mission of the NASA Space Shuttle program. Children in classrooms across the nation gathered around televisions to watch the shuttle that would carry the first teacher, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, to space. But just over one minute after the launch, it became clear that something had gone terribly wrong.
WATCH:
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An investigation following the disaster determined that an o-ring in the right solid rocket booster had failed, likely in part due to the extreme cold weather in Cape Canaveral at the time.
<h4>The Crew</h4>
<ul>
<li>Spacecraft commander Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, a veteran Air Force test pilot who&#8217;d logged thousands of flight hours and flown in combat in Vietnam, joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1978. He piloted STS-41C, the fifth orbital flight of the Challenger spacecraft, after a successful launch in April of 1984.</li>
<li>Mission pilot Michael J. Smith was an instructor at the Navy’s Advanced Jet Training Command before flying A-6 &#8220;Intruders&#8221; from the deck of the USS Kitty Hawk in Southeast Asia. He was selected for NASA in 1980, and the 1986 mission was to be his first.</li>
<li>Judith A. Resnik, mission specialist, was the second American woman ever to orbit the earth aboard the maiden flight of Discovery, STS-41D, in the fall of 1984.</li>
<li>Ronald McNair, mission specialist, was selected by NASA in 1978 — and became the second black American in space when he flew in the Challenger Shuttle mission STS-41B in February of 1984.</li>
<li>Ellison S. Onizuka, mission specialist, served in the Air Force prior to being selected for NASA in 1978. He also served as a mission specialist on STS-51C in January of 1985, on the Discovery orbiter.</li>
<li>Gregory B. Jarvis, a payload specialist with Hughes Aircraft Corp.’s Space and Communications Group, competed with 600 others in his company for a spot on the shuttle.</li>
<li>Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher, also competed against 11,000 applicants for a spot on the Challenger crew. After being fascinated as a child by the Apollo moon landing, she wrote on her application, &#8220;I watched the Space Age being born and I would like to participate.&#8221;</li>
</ul>
That evening, President Reagan addressed the nation, announcing at the beginning of his remarks that he&#8217;d originally planned to deliver a very different speech.
&#8220;Ladies and gentlemen, I&#8217;d planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss,&#8221; he said.
He went on to speak of the dedication and bravery of all who worked in NASA&#8217;s space program, telling the families of those who&#8217;d tragically lost their lives that their loved ones had been true pioneers and true patriots.
WATCH:
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&#8220;To the children who&#8217;d watched the disaster unfold on live television,&#8221; he added, &#8220;I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It&#8217;s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It&#8217;s all part of taking a chance and expanding man&#8217;s horizons. The future doesn&#8217;t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we&#8217;ll continue to follow them.&#8221;
&#8220;There&#8217;s a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard a ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and an historian later said, &#8216;He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it,'&#8221; Reagan added. &#8220;Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake&#8217;s, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and &#8216;slipped the surly bonds of earth&#8217; to &#8216;touch the face of God.'&#8221;

On January 28, 1986, space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after its take-off from Kennedy Space Center in Cap Canaveral, Florida, On the picture, Challenger’s crew.

40 Years Ago: Ronald Reagan Addresses The Nation After Challenger Disaster

Aerospace

nasa

Michael Reagan, the adopted son of the late President Ronald Reagan, died on Sunday. The conservative commentator, radio host, and author was 80 years old.
The family released a public statement on Tuesday:
<blockquote>It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Michael Edward Reagan. Michael was and will always remain a beloved husband, father, and grandpa. Michael was called home to be with the Lord on Sunday, January 4th, surrounded by his entire family in Los Angeles, California. Our hearts are deeply broken as we grieve the loss of a man who meant so much to all who knew and loved him.
We appreciate your prayers and ask that you would respect our family&#8217;s privacy during this difficult time.
Colleen Reagan, Cameron Reagan, and Ashley Reagan Dunster</blockquote>
Former Governor and President of Young America&#8217;s Foundation Scott Walker (R-WI) issued a lengthy statement on Reagan&#8217;s passing as well.
&#8220;Michael Reagan was such a wonderful inspiration to so many of us. That was particularly true of the students who heard him at Young America’s Foundation’s programs at the Reagan Ranch,&#8221; he said. &#8220;He did so much more than share stories about his father. He challenged the next generation to share the values he stood for throughout his public life. He called on them to be happy warriors in the battle to uphold the founding principles of our republic.&#8221;
&#8220;Years ago, I first got to know Michael Reagan by listening to his radio show while driving to and from the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. I enjoyed his insights on the news of the day,&#8221; Walker continued. &#8220;Years later, I got to know him personally after becoming president of Young America’s Foundation. He was a fixture at our student programs in California. Michael and his family frequently returned to Rancho del Cielo for public and private events.&#8221;
Walker went on to note just how much Reagan had meant to YAF and how willing he had been to participate in programs that mentored students in conservative values.
&#8220;Michael and I last spoke on December 22, 2025. He told me about his health issues and shared that he was optimistic about a follow-up visit with his medical team soon after the start of the year,&#8221; Walker said. &#8220;Unfortunately for all of us, the Good Lord decided to call him home sooner. That said, he and I also discussed his faith and devotion to Jesus. That should give us all comfort during this difficult time as he is with the Lord.&#8221;
Dozens of others — some who remembered his books or broadcasts, and some who were students who&#8217;d attended events he&#8217;d been a part of — poured out their tributes to Reagan on X.
&#8220;Crushed to hear the news of Michael Reagan’s passing. What a life he led and always with a huge smile. RIP to one of the best,&#8221; Katie Pavlich said.
&#8220;Very sad to learn of @ReaganWorld’s passing. I met him when I was a @yaf student activist many moons ago. I’m forever grateful to Mr. Reagan’s dad, President Ronald Reagan, for allowing my parents, Soviet escapees, to settle in America,&#8221; Gabriella Hoffman added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Very sad to learn of <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganWorld?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ReaganWorld</a>’s passing. I met him when I was a <a href="https://twitter.com/yaf?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@yaf</a> student activist many moons ago.
I’m forever grateful to Mr. Reagan’s dad, President Ronald Reagan, for allowing my parents, Soviet escapees, to settle in America.
RIP, sir. 💔 <a href="https://t.co/bDkPKPW9Xp">pic.twitter.com/bDkPKPW9Xp</a>
— Gabriella Hoffman (@Gabby_Hoffman) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gabby_Hoffman/status/2008656461384347981?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
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John McCain Joins Sharron Angle At Get Out The Vote Rally In Las Vegas

Michael Reagan, Adopted Son Of President Ronald Reagan, Dead At 80

Something crucial happened with President Trump’s actions in Venezuela.
President Trump substantively killed the Iraq syndrome.
The Iraq syndrome arose in Americans&#8217; minds concerning our role in the world after the failure of the Iraq War and the subsequent occupation.
You have to go back in history to understand this. In the aftermath of the disastrous Vietnam War, America&#8217;s foreign policy establishment fell into disarray. According to a lot of experts, the Vietnam War hadn&#8217;t been lost because of a combination of terrible war strategy and domestic discontent, they argued. Instead, the new conventional wisdom said the Vietnam War never should have been fought in the first place. Not only that, but America had to fundamentally rethink its role in the world.
The new conventional wisdom suggested that the United States should stop engaging in aggressive foreign policy in its own interests. Instead, the United States ought to pursue a more dovish or isolationist foreign policy in order to avoid quagmires. This conventional wisdom came to be known as Vietnam syndrome.
Undergirding the Vietnam syndrome was a thinly veiled anti-Americanism; the belief that America was not good, but a malign force on planet Earth. Former Princeton professor Richard Falk said at the time, “I love the Vietnam syndrome because it was the proper redemptive path for American foreign policy to take after the Vietnam defeat.”
In other words, America was guilty, as we learned in Vietnam, and now we ought to withdraw from the world and acknowledge our guilt.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2340-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&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>
But the Vietnam syndrome in the real world came with serious costs. The world without a strong America is a far worse world. An America dedicated to self-castration on the international stage ushered in the Cambodian genocide, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, among other foreign policy tragedies.
By the mid-80s, Ronald Reagan had decided that it was time for America to move beyond the Vietnam syndrome. In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened to depose a Marxist government in Grenada, a successful intervention that cost few American lives and restored that small island nation to freedom. And just a few months later, Reagan&#8217;s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, spelled out six standards to be met prior to a military intervention.
1) A vital interest had to be at stake. 
2) The United States had to be prepared for outright victory. 
3) America needed to have clear political and military goals. 
4) America had to be willing to adjust its strategy continuously. 
5) Public support had to be maintained. 
6) All other options had to be exhausted. 
The Reagan administration and the subsequent George H. W. Bush administration ended the Vietnam syndrome with the Weinberger Doctrine in 1989.
The United States intervened in Panama to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega, restoring democracy to that nation. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush initiated Operation Desert Storm to eject Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. That intervention was specifically designed to fulfill Caspar Weinberger’s criteria.
And so the Vietnam syndrome was basically dead.
Then came the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan, which revived it.
Both wars began with specific missions. The Afghanistan War was designed to depose the Taliban regime and prevent the installation of another regime friendly to al-Qaeda. The Iraq War was designed to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Both of those objectives were achieved in the early going, but then the aftermath in both countries turned into an exercise in large-scale nation building, a project that lasted years and cost over $1 trillion and the blood and lives of thousands of American troops.
Ever since, critics of American foreign policy have basically revived the Vietnam syndrome in the form of an “Iraq syndrome,” the idea that every single conflict in which the United States is involved must or will become Iraq — not, contra the usual definition, a justified skepticism of intelligence findings, or fear of nation building — but a full-scale restoration of the Vietnam syndrome: Every single foreign policy intervention is supposed to become Iraq or Afghanistan.
You hear this repeated ad nauseam from the horseshoe Left and the horseshoe Right.
Unsurprisingly, just as with the Vietnam syndrome, the Iraq syndrome ushered in a period of American retreat and international chaos, predominantly led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Withdrawal from Iraq led to the rise of ISIS under Barack Obama, Iranian proxies around the region grew, and that eventually resulted in the cataclysm of October 7, 2023.
Joe Biden&#8217;s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and prompted, at least in part, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. China looked at the United States and the world and decided that it was going to spread its tentacles throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
But now, on the tail end of Joe Biden&#8217;s catastrophic foreign policy presidency, an Iraq syndrome presidency, just as Ronald Reagan once did, President Trump has now put the Iraq syndrome to bed.
Trump has done so with what could be called the “Trump Doctrine.” That&#8217;s a term that I defined back in November 2024 with the following criteria: First, America&#8217;s interests are paramount, and they include a lot of things, from freedom of the seas to the strength of American allies in contentious regions, to U.S. oil interests. Second, America&#8217;s interests must be carefully calibrated to our investment in them. Big interest means big investment, small interest, smaller investment. Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America&#8217;s interests are on the table, from diplomacy to military interventionism. And fourth, all of this should be made very public all the time. The threat should be on the table. The threat of the gun should always be on the table.
President Trump has done this. I said this was his doctrine in November 2024. In the last year, he has done it twice. First, he did so with the June 22, 2025, B-2 strikes on Iran&#8217;s nuclear reactor at Fordow, reestablishing America&#8217;s deterrence power in the Middle East, reshaping the geopolitics of the region in dramatic fashion.
Despite all of the caterwauling from his supposed allies declaring that World War III would break out because they had been captured by Iraq syndrome, President Trump moved ahead. President Trump has done the same with the ouster of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
In pursuing these actions, Trump has reestablished American deterrence globally. He&#8217;s made clear America&#8217;s enemies are on notice — FAFO — and he&#8217;s demonstrating that such action doesn&#8217;t need to lead to a quagmire or to a full-scale, nation-building exercise draining America&#8217;s attention and resources.
The Iraq syndrome should be dead. If it is, it died at the hands of President Trump.
America is indeed once again feared on the global stage, which is an incredible accomplishment given where we were just one year ago.
This is what many of us voted for.
At least those of us who actually would like to make America great again in the world.

President Trump Returns To The  White House After Spending Holidays In Florida

Masterstroke: Trump’s Venezuela Coup Ends The Iraq Syndrome 

Ben Shapiro

foreign policy

George H.W. Bush

Nicolas Maduro

South America

venezuela

Vietnam

The White House unveiled new plaques beneath the portraits of American presidents on its Presidential Walk of Fame on Wednesday, with some of the plaques including President Donald Trump&#8217;s jabs at former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
The Presidential Walk of Fame, which is located along the outside wall of West Wing, includes biographies for every U.S. president. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump, &#8220;as a student of history,&#8221; wrote some of the descriptions himself, which is evident, as much of the sentence structure and grammar is reflective of the president&#8217;s unique style usually seen in his social media posts.
Instead of a photo of Biden for the former president&#8217;s portrait, the White House displays an image of an autopen. The text beneath the image reads, &#8220;Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction. His policies caused the highest Inflation ever recorded, leading the U.S. Dollar to lose more than 20% of its value in 4 years. His Green New Scam surrendered American Energy Dominance and, by abolishing the Southern Border, Biden let 21 million people from all over the World pour into the United States, including from prisons, jails, mental institutions, and insane asylums. His Afghanistan Disaster was among the most humiliating events in American History, and resulted in the murder of 13 brave American Servicemembers, with many others gravely wounded. Seeing Biden’s devastating weakness, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Hamas terrorists launched the heinous October 7th attack on Israel.&#8221;
“Nicknamed both ‘Sleepy’ and ‘Crooked,’ Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left handlers,&#8221; the biography continues. &#8220;They and their allies in the Fake News Media attempted to cover up his severe mental decline, and his unprecedented use of the Autopen. Following his humiliating debate loss to President Trump in the big June 2024 debate, he was forced to withdraw from his campaign for re-election in disgrace. Biden weaponized Law Enforcement against his political opponent, while also prosecuting many other innocent people. He left office issuing blanket pardons to Radical Democrat criminals and thugs, as well as members of the Biden Crime Family — But despite it all, President Trump would get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA!”
The plaques for President Obama refer to him as &#8220;one of the most divisive political figures in American history&#8221; and blast his handling of foreign policy and Obamacare.
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Obama&#8217;s plaques reads, “Barack Hussein Obama was the first Black President, a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History. As President, he passed the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act, resulting in his party losing control of both Houses of Congress, and the Election of the largest House Republican majority since 1946. He presided over a stagnant Economy, approved the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, and signed the one-sided Paris Climate Accords, both of which were later terminated by President Donald J. Trump.”
“Under Obama, the ISIS Caliphate spread across the Middle East, Libya collapsed into chaos, and Russia invaded and took Crimea, in Ukraine. He crippled small businesses with crushing regulation and environmental red tape, devastated American coal miners, and weaponized the IRS and Federal bureaucracies against his political opponents. Obama also spied on the 2016 Presidential Campaign of Donald J. Trump and presided over the creation of the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, the worst political scandal in American History. His handpicked successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would then lose the Presidency to Donald J. Trump.”
Trump&#8217;s plaque for President George W. Bush was far more friendly, but it still took a shot at Bush over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
&#8220;The son of former President George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush was the Governor of Texas when he won the hotly contested 2000 Election for President. His Administration was largely defined by the events of September 11, 2001 — The destruction of the World Trade Center, after which he led the war on terror. President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, but started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened. He also enacted Tax Cuts, expanded Medicare, signed the No Child Left Behind education bill, and launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Shortly before the end of his Administration, a Global Financial Crisis and major Recession took place.”
For President Bill Clinton, Trump&#8217;s plaque highlights the economic boom in the 1990s, but it also mentions the &#8220;scandals that plagued his presidency.&#8221; The end of Clinton&#8217;s biography states, &#8220;In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!&#8221;
President Ronald Reagan&#8217;s plaque reads, &#8220;Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, and transformed American politics and the Conservative Movement. Before entering the White House, Reagan was a Hollywood actor, President of the Screen Actors Guild, Governor of California and, for decades, a leading voice in American Conservatism. As President, he enacted Tax Cuts, presided over a thriving Economy, and rebuilt the American Military. He survived being shot by an assassin, and confronted the Soviet Union with striking moral clarity, labeling it an &#8216;evil empire,&#8217; and putting unprecedented pressure on the Communist menace. Known as &#8216;The Great Communicator,&#8217; he was re-elected in a landslide in 1984, and left office with high approval, having restored National Confidence, Spirit, and Will. He was a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before President Trump’s Historic run for the White House. Likewise, President Trump was a fan of his!&#8221;
Of course, the most admiring biography was for Trump, with the president&#8217;s plaques reading, &#8220;On January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump became the first President in 132 years to be sworn into office for a second non-consecutive term, following his Historic Victory in an Electoral College landslide, 312 to 226. Overcoming unprecedented Weaponization of Law Enforcement against him, as well as two assassination attempts, he won all battleground States by millions of votes, was the first Republican in decades to win the Popular Vote, BIG, and won 86% of Counties in America, 2,700 to 525. All 50 States shifted toward the Republican Party for the first time ever. At his Inauguration, President Trump announced the beginning of the &#8216;Golden Age of America,&#8217; and he delivered, ending eight wars in his first eight months, securing the Border, deporting gang members and migrant criminals, making our Cities safe, helping our Farmers, defeating Inflation, reducing Energy costs, and drawing Trillions of Dollars of new Investment, a RECORD, into the United States.&#8221;
&#8220;President Trump signed the Largest Tax Cuts in American History, the Largest Spending Cuts in American History, and implemented the Largest Ever Regulation Cuts,&#8221; a second plaque adds. &#8220;He obliterated Iran&#8217;s nuclear enrichment capacity with Operation Midnight Hammer, convinced NATO Countries to agree to increase contributions from 2% to 5% of GDP, reformed the Global Trading System, and made America Rich with Historic Tariffs, removed Critical Race Theory and transgender insanity from public schools, and banned men from women&#8217;s sports. He began the construction of the Golden Dome missile defense shield, renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and has built, right here at the White House, the magnificent Trump Presidential Ballroom after a 225 year wait—but THE BEST IS YET TO COME!&#8221;

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

Trump Adds Descriptions For Every President On Presidential Walk Of Fame. You Need To Read Them.

barack obama

bill clinton

joe biden

white house

President Donald Trump ended “all trade negotiations” with Canada on Thursday after Ontario’s government recently launched a $75 million anti-tariff ad campaign targeting Americans and featuring former President Ronald Reagan.
The ad campaign aired in the United States during a playoff baseball game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners. Game 1 of the World Series takes place Friday night, featuring the Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
It is set to air on major networks across the United States and was developed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his provincial administration. Trump responded to the campaign by accusing Canada of trying to interfere with American politics and abruptly ending trade talks. 
“The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The ad was for $75,000,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts. TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A. Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”
Trump’s post followed a statement from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute saying that it was pursuing potential legal options over Ontario’s use of the audio. 
“The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address, and the Government of Ontario did not seek or receive permission to use and edit the remarks,” the foundation said. “We encourage you to watch President Reagan’s unedited video on our YouTube channel.” 
The audio used for the ad came from an April 25, 1987, radio address Reagan gave on free and fair trade. The foundation posted a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t5QK03KXPc&amp;t=181s">link</a> to the full speech on its YouTube channel. Ford’s <a href="https://x.com/fordnation/status/1978779503213052337">ad</a> pulls audio from the speech. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched.
Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.
Watch our new ad. <a href="https://t.co/SgIVC1cqMJ">pic.twitter.com/SgIVC1cqMJ</a>
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) <a href="https://twitter.com/fordnation/status/1978779503213052337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;When someone says let&#8217;s impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they&#8217;re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs,&#8221; Reagan said in the ad. “High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens. Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.”
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A Ford spokesman <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-trade-negotiations-tariffs-ontario-ad-9.6951469" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> the audio was pulled from the public domain.  
&#8220;Reagan knew and spoke directly to Americans that tariffs hurt the U.S. economy, workers and families. He was a strong supporter of free and fair trade between Canada and America,&#8221; the spokesman said. 
The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Trump’s tariffs on November 5. Trump on Friday again praised his tariffs, saying that they were making the country prosperous. 
“THE UNITED STATES IS WEALTHY, POWERFUL, AND NATIONALLY SECURE AGAIN, ALL BECAUSE OF TARIFFS! THE MOST IMPORTANT CASE EVER IS IN THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT,” he wrote on Truth Social.
On Friday, Ford said Ontario would pause its ad campaign effective Monday &#8220;so that trade talks can resume.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;ve directed my team to keep putting our message in front of Americans over the weekend so that we can air our commercial during the first two World Series games,&#8221; he said.

Trump Pulls Plug On Canada Trade Talks Over ‘Fake’ Ad Featuring Ronald Reagan

canada

economy

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The following excerpt is taken from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495">The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer</a>,” by Daniel J. Flynn, (Encounter Books, August 19, 2025)
* * *
&#8220;For the ﬁrst time in the past few months I find myself viscerally as well as intellectually deeply concerned about the immediate future of the country,” Frank Meyer wrote in March 1968 to co-founder of National Review Willi Schlamm in Europe. “Between Vietnam, this summer’s projected insurrectionary riots, and the real threat to twenty years of economic stability that the monetary situation poses, almost anything could happen.”
Everything did.
Lyndon Johnson soon announced his decision to neither seek nor accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Days later, a career criminal on the run after escaping prison murdered Martin Luther King Jr. The tragedy, and the initial elusiveness of the murderer, fueled riots that killed dozens in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and points beyond. Uprisings that spring plagued campuses. Columbia, where student activists occupied university buildings and held administrators hostage, served as the focal point. In June, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant incensed over U.S. aid to Israel, murdered Robert Kennedy. All the while the Vietnam War reached peak violence; more than three hundred American men died in combat each week.
The chaos jarred Meyer. Even prior to Kennedy’s murder, the National Review columnist had described the times as the most fateful for Americans since Fort Sumter. The upheaval, he reasoned, emanated not from deprivation but abundance. This did not lead to a more contented society. Riots, campus takeovers, civil disobedience, crime, and other actions often vaguely or specifically linked to political demands counterintuitively followed. The more authorities rewarded disobedience, disorder, and disregard for law, the more disobedience, disorder, and disregard for law proliferated. The damage from nihilism and a West alienated from itself, he concluded, bore this bitter fruit of attempted civilizational suicide.
His articles adopted an ominous tone. More shocking to readers, his order-liberty emphasis flipped. He still articulated libertarian positions in opposing the draft and in shunning calls for gun control in the wake of the assassinations (“An unarmed citizenry is potentially the victim, ﬁrst of anarchy, then of tyranny and totalitarianism”). The holstered ﬁrearm spotted under his jacket at a Philadelphia Society meeting in Chicago, where American Communists knew him best, indicated he practiced what he preached. The times dictated a condemnation of freedom’s unsavory cousin chaos. In March, Richard Nixon identiﬁed order as the priority. Meyer followed that summer by telling readers that “order is the ﬁrst condition of civilizational existence, the only foundation of freedom and well-being for anyone and everyone.”
<div id="attachment_961609" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-961609" class="size-large wp-image-961609" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Encounter Books" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-16-Aug-2025-04-20-PM-7447-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Encounter Books</div>
His son John’s attendance at Columbia amid the takeover and riots laying waste to his hometown of Newark the previous summer personalized the events. So did his own history. He had once stood on the other side of the barricades. If he regarded many antiwar protestors as effectively aiding the Vietcong, then he surely recalled his own role in the 1930s peace movement that had softened Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. Meyer the Communist had shouted down speakers, disrupted meetings, and scoffed at campus authorities the way Mark Rudd now did. He saw others reliving his life and wanted to stop them from inflicting the damage that he had once caused.
“The issue facing the United States this summer is the survival of a free society,” he told readers. “No society can exist in a state of endemic disorder. Specifically, a representative republic cannot function if its magistrates and its representative assemblies are subject to blackmail by mob violence.” From Death Valley Days came a sheriff to make things right.
Meyer saw in Ronald Reagan the ﬁgure to lead Americans out of the smoke, grime, and darkness of 1968 to a place more resemblant of America. Some regarded this as a pipe dream; others as unwise.
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HUGH KENNER wrote William F. Buckley, Jr., a private letter critical of his “Ronald Reagan: A Relaxing View,” an unusually long cover article. Kenner explained of his letter to Guy Davenport, “It is to their honor that they want it revised for print. Imagine, per contra, The Nation running a pro-Reagan piece.” Not everyone welcomed Buckley’s tolerance. And, because
of that, Kenner’s view of the magazine changed. “Communication from WFB just re[a]d from Switzerland says that my Nervous View of Ronald Reagan has been held over till April (!) at Frank Meyer’s (!!) intervention, in the interests of fairness, Frank having held that Reagan (!!!) should be given a chance to reply,” Kenner wrote Davenport. “If Reagan does not, the accompanying rebuttal will be by Frank (!!!!).”
Behind the scenes, a January editorial meeting resulted in the board’s endorsement of Meyer’s personally rebutting the anti-Reagan piece. In February, Bill Rusher supplied the Master — the sobriquet he had long ago given to Meyer — with a dossier. Jeffrey Hart later received the task of writing the Meyer-engineered counterpoint to an article preoccupied with Reagan’s treatment of the universities. This substitution, given that it negated one English professor’s charge of anti-intellectualism with another’s rebuttal, struck as a master stroke to anyone paying attention but too cute by half to anyone really paying attention.
When “A Nervous View of Ronald Reagan” ran in May as an “Open Question,” Kenner, though a major asset as a literary critic, appeared outside of his element. Unlike Davenport, who had threatened to resign in 1965 after being assigned to cover a Philadelphia Society meeting, Kenner did subscribe to the general tenets that animated National Review. Nevertheless, the University of California–Santa Barbara professor came off as a parochial cosmopolitan in portraying California’s governor as a philistine for supporting the ﬁring of the university system’s president, Clark Kerr, and for his periodic clashes with academia, which to many conservatives increasingly resembled a left-wing training ground. The philistinism, to them, occurred among the people perverting intellectual pursuits toward the service of narrow, ideological ends.
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Hart, on leave from both Dartmouth and National Review to write speeches for Reagan, authored the “Open Question” that appeared immediately after Kenner’s. He juxtaposed Reagan’s widely shared critique of the campuses with Kenner’s use of “zamindary,” a ten-cent word even by National Review standards. He wondered why Kenner must psychoanalyze his subjects as though the mind holds the answer for all questions. For Kenner this undoubtedly avouched philistinism’s further inroads on the intellectual right; for many readers, it likely contrasted California’s man of the people with yet another of its professors above all in an ivory tower. The byline did not fully obscure who lurked behind every word. As a bewildered Davenport had explained to Kenner, “Frank thinks that Reagan ought to be president of the USA.”
Kenner lost sleep. He went from gaining respect for the magazine to losing it. Buckley, though playing a passive role, allowed this to happen. He acted as godfather to Kenner’s daughter, paid for another daughter’s freshman year at college, and served as best man at the widowed Kenner’s second wedding. The active involvement of his other friend of more than a decade, the editor of his book reviews, sharpened the sting. So did yet another colleague’s mockery of him in print as an egghead. “I can sympathize with you,” Davenport wrote, “knowing how I would feel to be hee-hawed at by a cold bastard like Hart who can scarcely hide the fact that he has been called in to wipe a well-aimed egg off a politician, and to denounce the opposition with cultivated yelps and whimpers.” Meyer lost his section’s most accomplished literary critic.
He pleaded with Davenport to beg his friend back. The last issue in May listed Kenner as an associate. Any trace of him had disappeared from the masthead by June.
Meyer succeeded in shielding his favored candidate but at terrible cost. The tear revealed the frayed fabric holding together the two elements — the cynosure for conservatives and a citadel for reﬁned literary appraisal — that made National Review great. Meyer could play conservative pope. He could serve as keeper of culture. Could he play both? The question did not always yield an answer in the affirmative.
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THE SAME WEEK that National Review offset Kenner’s criticism with Hart’s rebuttal, The New Republic published Meyer’s “Why I Am for Reagan,” one in a series from supporters of the various presidential contenders. The magazine commissioned Meyer to write the piece for obvious reasons. His campaign for Reagan began the moment the campaign for Goldwater ended.
In December 1964, Meyer spotlighted Reagan as the Republican future. The veteran actor had delivered a compelling infomercial for Goldwater that aired a week before the election. He did not merely replace Goldwater’s scowl with a smile. He eviscerated Great Society liberalism with humor, anecdotes, and folksy logic. Reagan connected. One could almost see the studio audience, and Frank Meyer listening in his living room, wondering, “Why can’t I vote for this man?” People who knew him as a star nevertheless experienced a revelation that night that they had watched, well, a star.
Reagan parlayed that speech into a run for governor in the state that suddenly boasted the most people. He vanquished Nixon’s vanquisher. Weeks before Reagan assumed office, Meyer touted him as the next president. As with Goldwater, the enthusiasm masked a <a href="https://youtu.be/WBMWd49rtu8?feature=shared&amp;t=187">Johnny Bravo</a> quality. Ronald Reagan nevertheless ﬁt the suit better.
Reagan met the requirements of “a candidate who can stir conservative enthusiasm and behind whom a campaign for delegates to the Republican National Convention of 1968 can be launched,” “Principles and Heresies” maintained in 1966. “By the principled positions he has taken, and by his proven ability as a campaigner, demonstrated both in 1964 and this year in California, Ronald Reagan, should he prove the governor he promises to be, qualiﬁes for this role.”
Rusher shared Meyer’s enthusiasms. Buckley touted Reagan, too. Again, James Burnham opposed.
“I insist that Reagan is a serious candidate,” Meyer responded to Burnham’s insistence to the contrary. “Furthermore, if it were journalistically advisable to support a single candidate, it would unquestionably be our duty to make Reagan our choice with Nixon as our second choice.”
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This excerpt from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Conservatism-Unlikely/dp/1641774495">The Man Who Invented Conservatism</a>,” by Daniel J. Flynn is published by permission of Encounter Books.
Daniel J. Flynn is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has authored seven books, including “Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America;” “A Conservative History of the American Left;” and “Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco.”
The views expressed in this excerpt are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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