Laura Ingraham says the American people are done with war. They won&#8217;t fight; won&#8217;t fund it; won&#8217;t support it, and that this new isolationism is going to win.
It might win. But that kind of thinking is dramatically wrong. It&#8217;s the kind of wrong that destroys countries and that could destroy America.
I understand why people feel the way they do. Gas prices are high. Families are stretched thin. Folks are looking at the grocery bill and their rent and thinking, “Why on earth are we spending blood and treasure halfway around the world and not even getting to the endpoint?”
But this is why it&#8217;s imperative that America wins and wins quickly.
There are three options. Number one: We win. We do what we have to do in order to achieve our goals. Number two: We fight antiseptically, and the war goes on pretty much forever. Number three: We go full isolationist and pacifist and then continue to fight forever wars forever, because that&#8217;s what will happen.
The choice is right there in front of us, which means there&#8217;s really only one choice: Victory.
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Ingraham wrote on X, “The American people are done with war. They will not support war. They will not voluntarily pay for war. They will not make sacrifices to support war. They will not encourage their kids and grandkids to fight in wars. They won&#8217;t vote for politicians who promise war, and they will punish politicians who get them into war. It&#8217;s not Trump who&#8217;s making America more isolationist. It&#8217;s the American people. And they are going to win this fight.”
If that is how the American people are now operating, it&#8217;s a foolish and dangerous sentiment. The idea that we&#8217;ll never fund; we&#8217;ll never fight; we&#8217;ll never allow anyone to declare war; we&#8217;ll never get into a war? You may as well say that you will never allow the sun to rise, because the reality is that the world will come to you.
Let’s look into the sentiment that&#8217;s feeding this foolish point of view.
The American people are looking at the situation in the Middle East, and they don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going on. It is confusing because it’s not clear whether the Strait of Hormuz is open.
President Trump said, “If you combine us and Venezuela, we have about 62% of the world&#8217;s oil market. So we don&#8217;t need Straits, we don&#8217;t need anything, we don&#8217;t need the Hormuz Strait. But we do it because we have to do it because we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
With the president saying that we shouldn&#8217;t care about the Strait, Americans are saying, “So why should we care about what we are doing there? Just hit the nuclear facilities and go home.”
It&#8217;s all discombobulated; it doesn&#8217;t feel like it moves us toward victory.
And then things get more complicated.
In reality, Iran is in very serious trouble. Iran&#8217;s economy is flat on its back. There are rifts inside the Iranian governing structure. Iran has no capacity to ship its oil out. They have no capacity to shoot down things that are flying over their country. That’s why they&#8217;ve been activating their friends, the Houthis.
I understand why people are confused and upset. It feels like things are stalemated, and even that they&#8217;re getting broader and more difficult.
Why? Because what the American people want is victory. There&#8217;s this bizarre notion in foreign policy that the American people are deeply worried about the immediate cost of war to the enemy, that the American people can&#8217;t handle the ugliness of war for even a day, and that every conflict has to be totally antiseptic.
I&#8217;m not even talking about the American willingness to undergo casualties. No one in America wants American casualties. It&#8217;s a tragedy and a horror. We do understand that war does come along with casualties, and we are willing to undergo those casualties in pursuit of an end and a victory for America.
But as far as the idea that America can&#8217;t hit Kharg Island because the Iranian people would then be deprived of oil resources, the American people are not particularly concerned about that. We are far more concerned with why we&#8217;re there and not winning.
You have to balance these options. We would like to be antiseptic and to win. But victory wins over antiseptic every time. If antiseptic wins over victory, then you will get neither victory nor antiseptic.
That is how this works. In reality, always and forever, there are only three real possibilities, and those possibilities stack up to only one choice. The first possibility is you go fast and you go hard and we win. That means we bomb their nuclear facilities into dust. We bomb Kharg Island, we bomb South Pars. We put the regime on its last legs. We destroy their fields and their capacity for a final result. We force open the Strait.
The president wanted to do this, remember? He tried to do this for one day with Project Freedom in the Strait. It was one day. One day. And then the Saudis said no.
We have to tell them to shove it; we&#8217;re going to do it anyway. Allies like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia should help us militarily. They should provide us with soldiers for use on the north shore of Hormuz and on Qeshm Island and Kharg Island. It may be uglier, and it may be costlier, but it&#8217;s faster, and we win.
War is bad. It is hell. It is awful. It always has been, and it always will be. War is the infliction of pain on the enemy to the point where they no longer want to undergo that pain while you are able to withstand pain. That&#8217;s what war is. It is a test of willpower and a test of pain tolerance.
But war is also and forever a necessary tool in the American arsenal. It always has been. It always will be. So you ought to win, and you have to win as fast as possible.
As Marco Rubio said at an Asian summit in Manila: 
<blockquote>I saw Araghchi, the [Iranian] foreign minister, the other day say something about their policy is &#8220;an eye for an eye.&#8221; The president’s policy is &#8220;a head for an eye.&#8221; I mean, honestly, that’s what it’s gonna be. They will pay a very heavy price for the things they’re doing. They’re already paying a very heavy price. You guys don’t know it because you don’t cover it; you’re not in Iran; you’re not in the street; they don’t have a free media. But they’re going to continue to pay a very heavy price; their industrial base has been decimated; their defense industrial base has been decimated. They’re losing launchers; they’re losing radars every single night.</blockquote>
This is correct. It&#8217;s not an eye for an eye. It&#8217;s a head for an eye.
That&#8217;s option one: Actual victory.
Option two: Go antiseptic. This is the strategy of gradual escalation. We tried it in Vietnam. We have to be as clean as possible; it’s the strategy of an eye for an eye or tit for tat, or you hit a ship, and we hit a bridge.
But here’s the thing about the Iranians: they are perfectly willing to put out their own eye if it means you lose an eye.
An Iranian analyst close to the Iranian regime threatened, “It&#8217;s time to evacuate Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and probably Oman.”  Trump is saying “an eye for an eye,” and the Iranians are saying “an eye for everything.”
Why is Iran doing that? Iran doesn&#8217;t have the military capacity to do all of that. We do. Why is he making that threat? Because he knows that threat works. It turns out that antiseptic and proportional in the statistical sense is very, very bad and foolish foreign policy. What you&#8217;re relegated to if you end up with this sort of tit-for-tat strategy is hoping they eventually collapse from within.
I never thought the administration would end up with this option, because historically, President Trump didn’t like this. He didn&#8217;t like forever wars; he liked the big spectacular strike that was over quickly, like the attack on Venezuela’s Maduro, or “Let&#8217;s kill Qasem Soleimani and then he&#8217;s dead,” or “Let&#8217;s hit the nuclear facilities in Iran, and then let&#8217;s leave,” as he did with Operation Midnight Hammer.
It seems that the president originally wanted to go very hard, but he was talked out of it by Turkey and Saudi Arabia and some of his own advisers, and then he got stuck in this tit-for-tat, gradual escalation, gradual de-escalation routine. And now we&#8217;re stuck here.
The quickest path to a forever war is to eschew using overwhelming force.
Option three: Give up on war. Give up on military optionality. Give up global power, recede within your own borders.
Isolationist pacifism has been tried before. It is legitimately one of the great failures in all of world history.
After World War I, when the Allies had imposed a peace on Germany, the Allies then refused to actually hold Germany to that peace. You can make the case that the Treaty of Versailles was too strenuous in its desire for reparations from the Germans; there’s a solid historical case for that.
But — there is no question that if France had stood up to Germany, if the Brits had stood up to Germany, if America had stood up to Germany in the interwar period, World War II would never have happened. Instead, Great Britain, France, and the United States all attempted to pursue a pacifist and isolationist strategy, and this led to the worst and most costly war in all of human history.
You don&#8217;t have to speculate that this is what they were trying to do. They openly said they were trying to do this. In 1928, the United States Secretary of State and the French foreign minister designed the so-called Kellogg-Briand pact. It outlawed war as an instrument of policy. The signatories to that agreement that outlawed war were the U.S., France, the U.K., along with Germany, Italy, and Japan.
You may notice that it didn&#8217;t work out well.
This is the theme of Churchill&#8217;s &#8220;The Gathering Storm,&#8221; the first volume of his World War II history. In 1933, students at Oxford University famously voted in favor of the so-called “King and Country” resolution. That resolution said that the students would “under no circumstances fight for king and country.”
That sounds exactly like what Laura Ingraham is saying.
Over the course of the 1930s, the United States slashed our military to the bone. By the time World War II broke out, the United States had the 19th largest military on planet Earth. We were stacked behind Portugal.
One of the reasons that World War II took so long and killed so many people is that once the United States got involved after December 7, 1941, it took us fully three years to rearm and then four years to win. If we had had that weaponry at the ready, would Pearl Harbor ever have happened?
Isolationism plus pacifism is a deadly combination because it turns out the world is a deadly place. Our enemies are not going to subscribe to those notions.
There&#8217;s also this very ahistorical notion that American foreign policy was once truly isolationist and pacifist. That’s nonsense. If you look at the history of America&#8217;s wars, America has been involved in conflicts all over the globe almost since its founding. We were fighting wars with the Barbary pirates under Thomas Jefferson.
Our national interests have always extended beyond pure physical threat. I know that some people think, “Unless we get physically hit, we cannot get involved in conflict.”
That is stupid. We have interests that require us to defend them. And sometimes — with luck as rarely as possible — that requires military force.
But to pretend otherwise is to be stupid.
The idea that America is supposed to lose or surrender to a third-rate regime that is shooting drones at ships opens the door to actual, significantly larger threats. Money will pour into Iran from China and Russia. They&#8217;ll rearm stronger than they ever were. China and Russia themselves will flex their muscle if you choose this path.
Americans are not pacifists. We&#8217;re not isolationists. We don&#8217;t like to lose. We like to win.
So let’s go do it.

blind spot

America’s Biggest Blind Spot Is About To Be Tested

Ben Shapiro

forever war

Iran war

Isolationists

Laura Ingraham

Marco Rubio

Opinion

President Trump

Saudi Arabia

Strait of Hormuz

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

WWII

President Donald Trump made it crystal clear to Saudi Arabia on Thursday: if the kingdom wants a blockbuster <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-set-to-strike-major-nuclear-agreement-with-middle-east-power">U.S. civilian nuclear package</a>, it has to put its signature on the historic Abraham Accords.
Trump’s ultimatum came after a groundbreaking 30-year Section 123 Agreement signed between U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. The deal lays out a blueprint for American energy giants, such as Westinghouse, to go to the Middle East and export reactors, high-tech engineering, and scientific expertise to help Riyadh move away from oil so it can power its AI data center explosion.
“The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote on <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116969149016233329">Truth Social</a>.
Under the proposal, Washington and Riyadh would launch a two-year joint study evaluating a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia. American corporate giants would keep standard U.S. proprietary technology under direct American control, rather than handing over control to the Saudi government.
Security will be tight. Instead of relying solely on standard IAEA snap inspections, the deal sets up a bilateral safeguard system, putting American inspection teams side-by-side with international monitors.
For the White House, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Proponents argue that if the United States doesn&#8217;t step up to build Saudi Arabia’s nuclear backbone, Beijing or Moscow will. The deal promises to dump billions into the U.S. economy and create thousands of blue-collar energy jobs at home.
The historic Abraham Accords originally flipped the script on Middle East diplomacy during Trump’s first term. His administration brokered game-changing normalization deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. The accords triggered a multi-billion-dollar boom in trade, defense sharing, and direct flights across the region.
If Trump can connect Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords, it would be a massive win.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-set-to-strike-major-nuclear-agreement-with-middle-east-power">Related: Trump Set To Strike Major Nuclear Agreement With Middle East Power</a>

President Trump Meets With The Crown Prince And Prime Minister Of Saudi Arabia At The White House

Trump Gives Saudi Arabia Ultimatum Before He Signs Major Nuclear Deal

Abraham Accords

Donald Trump

Middle East

Nuclear

Reuters reported Wednesday that U.S. intelligence analysts are looking into whether Russia helped Iran strike CIA facilities in the Gulf by providing targeting intelligence or advanced drone technology.
The report, which cited four people familiar with the matter, said analysts have not reached definitive conclusions. But the precision of the strikes and Russia&#8217;s longstanding military support for Iran are among the factors under review. 
The investigation into Moscow&#8217;s possible role in the attacks on CIA sites has not previously been reported.
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-strikes-cia-facilities-prompt-questions-about-possible-russian-role-2026-07-22/?utm_source=braze&amp;utm_medium=notifications&amp;utm_campaign=2025_engagement">Reuters</a> has previously reported that Russia provided Iran with targeting assistance and other military support for attacks on U.S. interests in the Gulf. 
At least two CIA facilities were hit in March, including the CIA station housed inside the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and another facility in eastern Iraq. Some sources said additional sites were also hit but did not provide further details. 
One internal memo from a Western intelligence agency, according to a regional official familiar with it, concluded that Russia likely played a role in targeting regional CIA facilities.
Two Western officials in the Gulf briefed on intelligence reports said analysts believe the Saudi attack involved two Russian-enhanced versions of Iran&#8217;s Shahed drones. According to those officials, the first drone breached a vulnerable section of the embassy&#8217;s exterior, allowing the second to fly through the opening before detonating. No deaths or injuries were reported.
While Russia has long supported Iran militarily, helping Tehran target sensitive CIA facilities would mark a significant escalation in Moscow&#8217;s efforts to disrupt U.S. operations amid the ongoing Iran war.
Concerns about Russian assistance intensified after recent strikes on a U.S. military base in Jordan, where Iranian ballistic missiles hit army barracks and killed two soldiers.
Russia has helped Iran improve the range and accuracy of its Shahed drones by supplying the Kometa-M satellite navigation system, which is more resistant to jamming than Iran&#8217;s domestic version. The Wall Street Journal first <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-secretly-sharing-location-of-u-s-targets-with-iran-u-s-officials-say-127d4f1a">reported</a> this assistance in March; the Kremlin called the report &#8220;<a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-03-18/kremlin-says-wsj-report-on-russia-sharing-drone-technology-with-iran-is-fake-news">fake news</a>.&#8221;
U.S. analysts have examined whether Iran relied on Russian targeting intelligence during the embassy attack. Some officials noted that few nations besides Russia would have both the capability and interest in providing such sensitive information against the U.S.
Still, some sources cautioned that Iran might have been targeting the broader U.S. Embassy and struck the CIA station by chance.
Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA station chief and undercover operations officer, said Russian assistance in targeting CIA facilities would be consistent with Moscow&#8217;s strategic partnership with Iran. 
&#8220;They share an interest in trying to reduce or eliminate U.S. influence altogether in their self-designated spheres of influence,&#8221; he said.
The White House referred questions to the CIA, which declined comment. Iran&#8217;s mission to the United Nations, Russia&#8217;s Defense Ministry, and the Saudi government did not respond to Reuters&#8217; requests for comment.
CIA facilities overseas typically include stations in embassies, along with offices, safe houses, logistics hubs, and sites for surveillance or other operations. Their locations remain closely guarded.
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Mideast Iraq

U.S. Investigates Russia’s Possible Role In CIA Attacks

Drones

Embassy

Iran

Reuters

Russia

United States

On Tuesday, President Trump announced that America has achieved a form of regime change in Iran. 
To a certain extent, that is correct. President Trump has already announced that the war has effectively been won. From an American perspective, he&#8217;s right; the war has been won —on the military level. Iran has done minimal damage by any sort of standard to American forces and interests.
Meanwhile, Iran itself has been pummeled to dust. The ballistic missile program has basically been destroyed. Their nuclear facilities have been pounded again. Their drone program has been blown up. The only thing Iran can do at this point is harass people.
They can harass their neighbors with occasional missile and drone strikes. They can disrupt some shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
We&#8217;re not done yet, as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has made clear, saying:
<blockquote>And that&#8217;s why we see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs. You have a choice. As we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the president talked about, about your future, the president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees. Our job is to ensure that. 
And so we&#8217;re keeping our hand on that throttle as long as it&#8217;s hard as is necessary to ensure the interests of the United States of America are achieved on that battlefield. This is not Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not a president who&#8217;s interested in vague end states. He&#8217;s been very clear with us about what we need to accomplish, creating the conditions for them never to have a nuclear capability. And that&#8217;s exactly what we&#8217;re doing in historic fashion.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2395-sub?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" 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>
What would victory look like for the United States? There are two types of victory here: political victory and actual victory.
We may already have an actual victory. Let&#8217;s say that Iran ends up falling in the next couple of years; that victory will belong to President Trump, because we will have weakened all of the foundations upon which the Iranian regime stands, in the same way that the fall of the Soviet Union belonged to President Reagan.
It won&#8217;t be a political victory because you need an exclamation point for a political victory, some way to say we didn&#8217;t just win; Iran also lost.
Where is Iran right now? Did they totally lose? On the one hand, we can make the argument that simply to survive would be the regime winning, that survival amounts to not losing. 
 
Israel and America&#8217;s other regional allies would have to continue to exercise overwatch of the regime to ensure they don&#8217;t renew their missile, drone, and nuclear programs.
But we do have to ask: Is not losing really a victory for Iran? It might be for the moment, but not for long, because Iran would remain isolated, throttled, and devoid of basic resources. Remember, before this war, there were already millions of people in the streets protesting the regime; the rial was running at 0.00001 to a dollar, and they had so little water that they were moving millions of people out of Tehran. They were actually evacuating their own capital.
Can this regime continue to limp along on that basis for many more years?
The question becomes whether or not President Trump can force the Iranians into a deal that achieves political victory, a good end state that he can go home and brag about. Despite members of the media and Democratic politicians saying they don&#8217;t actually believe that President Trump has been talking to Iran, it has now been confirmed that there are negotiations between the two countries indirectly.
What kind of concessions are they actually making? The devil remains in the details. President Trump said yesterday that Iran has agreed we will never have a nuclear weapon. But if they had to retain a nuclear program that could easily be turned toward weapons development, that&#8217;s not good enough. Will they retain enriched uranium? We&#8217;ll have to find out. President Trump has made clear that, in his view, they must never have a nuclear weapon.
President Trump has apparently released a list of demands: All existing nuclear capabilities will be dismantled — which I assume means all of their nuclear plans — a commitment that Iran will never strive to obtain nuclear weapons, which would have to be enforceable; no material will ever be enriched on Iranian soil; all enriched material would be handed it over to the IAEA in a short-term timetable to be defined between the parties; Natanz and Fordo would be decommissioned and also destroyed. The IAEA would have full access to all information within Iran&#8217;s borders. Iran would completely abandon its terror proxy network. Iran would stop financing and arming proxies in the region. The Strait of Hormuz would remain open, would be a free maritime zone; no one would block it.
As for the missile program, according to the talking points put out by the administration, there would be a decision at a later period, but they would have to limit the quantity and the range, and future use of missiles would have to be for self-defense purposes only.
In return for all of that, theoretically, Iran would have sanctions lifted and receive assistance in developing a civilian nuclear program in Bushehr. Basically, we would build them low-level nuclear programs for energy, and the threat of snapback sanctions would be removed.
I have a question: Does it sound like Iran is ready to do any of that? I have some very, very serious doubts.
At the same time, President Trump does not want to leave the rest of the region subject to the whims of the mullahs. President Trump&#8217;s strongest support for continued action, at this point, is coming from the Saudis, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/us/politics/saudi-prince-iran-trump.html">The New York Times</a>:
<blockquote>In recent days, Mr. Trump has given more serious consideration to a military operation to seize Kharg Island, the hub of Iran&#8217;s oil infrastructure. Such an operation with airborne armed forces or an amphibious assault by Marines would be immensely dangerous. But Prince Mohammed has advocated ground operations in his conversations with Mr. Trump, according to people briefed by American officials.</blockquote>
I actually agree with Mohammed bin Salman&#8217;s assessment here. If America were to grab control of Kharg Island, the actual capacity of Iran to survive — even midterm — drops dramatically.
What comes next? The answer, as it has always been, is in the hands of the Iranian government. Remember, Iran could have, at any time for 50 years, reintegrated into the world economy by ending its global ambitions, its support for terrorism, and its nuclear program. They have not done that.
Maybe they&#8217;re willing to moderate now. I doubt it, but there are still plenty of levers left for the United States to pull. President Trump has already shown a high willingness to do just that.
The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-us-israel-news-updates-2026?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqfGcgDfKBEWhIxvwC5oIzLdgAB61kcrWruScWSEPgDmDl58AWAUM0ls&amp;gaa_sig=ussC2AZQMvBhhzrltb90YvkjDqf3AIQnMr5GiMux8VVsd05MyjHAdj-cQm7pMbigC61x2AT6u1daMqiTYdUcww%3D%3D&amp;gaa_ts=69c42828&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com">reported</a> yesterday:
<blockquote>The Pentagon is planning to deploy about 3000 soldiers from the Army&#8217;s elite 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East to support operations against Iran, according to two U.S. officials, with a written order expected in the coming hours. Officials cautioned that a decision for boots on the ground in Iran has not been made, but deploying the 82nd opens the door to President Trump for several strategic options.</blockquote>
Special operations, limited in duration; this is not the kind of “quagmire boots on the ground” stuff people were talking about. We&#8217;re not talking about 100,000 troops occupying Iran indefinitely. At most, we are talking about a ground operation to take away territory used to target the Strait of Hormuz, to take away the island.
That&#8217;s probably what we are talking about here.

US-POLITICS-SECURITY-TRUMP-MULLIN

What Does Victory Over Iran Look Like?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Pete Hegseth

Trump Administration

CNN&#8217;s Kaitlan Collins may often find herself at odds with President Donald Trump, but during a recent interview, she conceded that it was White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt who stepped in to defend her rights as a journalist.
Collins explained the situation to &#8220;Absolutely Not&#8221; podcast host Heather McMahan, which unfolded when Collins traveled with the president to Saudi Arabia. She explained that the Saudi Royal Guard attempted to bar her from attending an event with Trump, and Leavitt lobbied for her to be allowed in the room.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Says Karoline Leavitt Defended Her Free Press Rights
“The Saudi Royal Guard freaked out because I dared to ask a question … and said, you can&#8217;t come into the next event … Karoline, to her credit said, no Kaitlan&#8217;s coming in with the rest of the U.S.… <a href="https://t.co/uhB9al4GVX">pic.twitter.com/uhB9al4GVX</a>
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2021943212605165863?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 12, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;When we were in Saudi Arabia, we were on a foreign trip with the president, and [Trump] came in with all the other leaders, including the Saudi Crown Prince,&#8221; Collins said, setting the scene for McMahan. &#8220;They famously do not like the media there, to put it lightly.&#8221;
&#8220;[I] shouted a question to President Trump, who had seen me when the U.S. press came in,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;He didn&#8217;t answer, which is, I mean, that&#8217;s how it works: you shout questions, they either answer or they don&#8217;t, it&#8217;s their prerogative. And then the world leaders left the room.&#8221;
That, Collins said, was when things started to get sticky for her. The Saudi Royal Guard, unaccustomed to reporters being allowed to shout questions at their leaders, attempted to bar her from entering the room ahead of the next event.
&#8220;The Saudi Royal Guard kind of freaked out because I dared to ask a question, and they&#8217;re not used to that there because they don&#8217;t have a free press,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;And so they came up, and they said, &#8216;Okay, well, you can&#8217;t come into the next event,&#8217; which was like two minutes later.&#8221;
Collins said she attempted to explain &#8220;that&#8217;s not how this works,&#8221; but gained little ground with the Royal Guard.
&#8220;I could see them whispering and pointing about me,&#8221; she added. &#8220;Some of the younger White House press weren&#8217;t really sure what to do, and they went to Karoline. And, to her credit, she said, &#8216;No, Kaitlan&#8217;s coming in with the rest of the U.S. press&#8217; &#8230; which I do think is important, in that moment.&#8221;
Collins noted that similar incidents had happened on foreign trips before, such as when President Trump visited the DMZ and met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

President Trump And French President Macron Hold News Conference

Trump Foe Kaitlan Collins Recalls Time Karoline Leavitt Defended Her From Saudis

Regular CNN Trump Foil Admits Karoline Leavitt Defended Her Rights As Journalist

Freedom of the Press

Kaitlan Collins

Karoline Leavitt

Media

Politics

The first time I met Cory Pesaturo, he had just hijacked the stage at a wedding in Boston with an accordion strapped to his chest. Little did I know he would do the impossible: make me a fan of the accordion.
Cory is — and I’m not exaggerating — the world’s best accordion player. He’s won the accordion World Championship three times. He holds the Guinness World Record for playing the accordion for the longest continuous time. He brings his accordion with him <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DPY132wkTkt/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">everywhere</a>, and can play just about anything, including the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CknQsS8uqcW/?hl=en&amp;img_index=4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accordion tracks</a> in the feature film “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”
Most recently, he took his talents to Saudi Arabia, which is now <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-officially-designates-saudi-arabia-a-major-ally-of-united-states?author=Tim+Pearce&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Officially+Designates+Saudi+Arabia+A+%E2%80%98Major%E2%80%99+Ally+Of+United+States" target="_blank" rel="noopener">officially</a> a “major ally” of the United States. The Saudi Arabia he presents is much different from the Saudi Arabia most Americans probably imagine. — Brent Scher
***
Earlier this month, I arrived in Saudi Arabia for my second visit to a country which has always seemed like a forbidden land to the West. I’d been invited again as a guest star to play accordion in the “Riyadh Season” concert series — this time with Egypt’s biggest singing sensation, Angham.
What struck me, on both trips, was how aggressively the Saudis are betting on capitalism.
Everywhere you go, the top Western brands are visible: Dunkin’ Donuts, Texas Roadhouse, Bath &amp; Body Works, Chuck E. Cheese, and yes, Randy’s Donuts, with the giant donut on the roof are there for you in Riyadh. There is even a Disney castle and theme park.
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On every corner there seem to be concerts, tourist attractions, and massive development projects. The music you hear playing through the speakers of high-end locations? Jazz, Lady Gaga, or Burt Bacharach. The style of filming for major concerts?  Straight out of CBS’s Grammys playbook.
Could a country truly hate America if this is what I was seeing?
When I first traveled to Saudi Arabia two years ago, I didn’t even tell my father. You can’t lie to an Italian mother, of course, but my father? If he had known I was flying to a country he associated with the worst terror attack in American history, he would have tied me to my bed. Many of my friends felt the same, judging by their reactions when I returned: “Saudi Arabia? Are you insane? Are you trying to get arrested or killed?”
But over the past decade, the Kingdom, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has charted a different course. One built on peace, prosperity, and a surprisingly familiar engine: Western-style capitalism.
It is true that in Saudi Arabia, you have no real rights against the state — no First Amendment protections, no guarantee of a fair trial, a mandatory dress code, and laws that make smoking pot or ordering a margarita about as plausible as Cardi B performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto on the accordion — a stunt I once pulled to win a national title.
Yet, regardless of this different universe of ideas from the United States, I wasn’t afraid.
The free market being unleashed in Saudi Arabia, even if still in a more state-run manner, is the greatest modern example of how a country thought to be an untrustworthy foe can turn into an important ally.
What struck me most, though, was that while I was in Saudi Arabia, a Muslim socialist won the mayor’s seat in the financial capital of the world, New York City. Three different Saudis during the trip (including a Syrian security worker at the venue who had fled Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s regime) asked me some version of the same question: “What on earth are you Americans doing electing Mamdani? He’s crazy.” This, again, from inside the very center of Islam. And even they aren’t at all sold on the politics that Zohran Mamdani represents.
My insight is anecdotal, but the friendships I’ve formed in Saudi Arabia reveal a people not so different from my own friends back home. They want peace. They want prosperity. They want their families to be happy. They want to travel. They want to have fun.
I asked them everything — about Israel, Islamic extremism, terrorism, drinking, drugs, dating, hating their boss, weekend plans, and which video games keep them up until 4:00 a.m.
Watching a group of young men in Riyadh blast pop music at 1:30 a.m. as they inched through a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through, talking about girls and killing time, looked the same as you’d see in America. Different faiths, different cultures, same very human scene.
A handful of companies profit from global conflict. But 99.9% of businesses in a free-market economy — from Nike and Coca-Cola to Apple and Tesla — depend on global stability and rising disposable income. Peace is profitable.
In just a decade, Saudi Arabia has gone from a place many Americans fear to visit to a place I can’t recommend enough to go see. If that’s the result of “greedy capitalism,” then count me in.
Cory Pesaturo is a three-time World Champion accordionist and Guinness World Record holder who has performed on six continents and at the White House four times. In addition to giving five TEDx Talks, he is also active in the motorsports world, bringing his signature blend of innovation and artistry to audiences around the globe.
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The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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President Trump Makes First Middle East Trip Of His Second Term

Is Saudi Arabian Capitalism Bringing Peace To The Middle East?

Capitalism

Islam

Israel

The legacy media went nuts on Tuesday because the President of the United States hosted the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), at the White House. 
They went nuts because back in 2018, there was a Washington Post journalist (we say journalist, but he really was more of an op-ed writer) named Jamal Khashoggi, who was linked to the Muslim-Brotherhood. Khashoggi was murdered in grisly fashion, apparently at the Saudi consulate in Turkey, according to intelligence estimates, on the orders of Mohammed bin Salman. 
The Biden administration decided to make this incident front and center in their campaign against Saudi Arabia in an attempt to create distance with the Saudi government in order to make overtures to the Iranian government. The Saudis and the Iranians are enemies, of course, because the Iranians wish to destroy the Saudis; that&#8217;s been true for a very long time. 
No one is making the case that Khashoggi should have been murdered by the Saudis. It also happens to be the case that the United States has relations with a wide variety of despotic regimes around the globe. Some are better for the American people. Some are worse for the American people. That&#8217;s just the way global politics works. 
The vast majority of places on planet Earth are not nice places, and terrible things happen there, and their leaders do terrible things. That is reality.
In fact, the realpolitik of the situation forced Joe Biden to go on bended knee to the Saudis to try and lower oil prices before the midterm elections in 2022. He started his administration by yelling at the Saudis about Jamal Khashoggi, and ended by bending the knee to the Saudis. 
The legacy media, however, have now decided to put tremendous focus on the Khashoggi murder. For some reason, they seem to have no such objections to Qatari ties to Hamas, or Qatari ties to Iran, which is responsible for the death and wounding of hundreds of Americans during the Iraq War. They seem to have no such complaints whenever President Erdogan visits from Turkey. Erdogan has participated in an extraordinary variety of human rights abuses.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2321-radical-islam-s-front-group-exposed-by-texas?elementPosition=6&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" 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 when MBS shows up, then it&#8217;s time to ask him endlessly about Jamal Khashoggi.  
He can answer those questions. That&#8217;s his problem. But I will note the outsized interest in Jamal Khashoggi — as opposed to all the other various human rights violations that are happening around the region — has more to do with the legacy media’s geopolitics.  
They don&#8217;t like Saudi Arabia because they believe that there ought to be some sort of Obama-esque “balance of power” benefiting the Turks and Iran at the expense of the Saudis and the Israelis, presumably. 
That&#8217;s why they focus on Jamal Khashoggi. But if you look at the history of Jamal Khashoggi, the attempt to paint him as some sort of liberal reformer should be counterposed by being accurate about who Jamal Khashoggi was. 
As The Jerusalem Post <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-819834">reported</a> on Khashoggi in a 2024 article: 
<blockquote>In the months leading up to his death, he was in the process of launching an organization later known as DAWN – Democracy for the Arab World Now, working in close collaboration with Palestinian-American Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and currently a board member of DAWN.
CAIR is a powerful U.S. Muslim advocacy group long known for its sympathies – and the denial of them – for Global Muslim Brotherhood (GMB) organizations in the West and in Muslim countries, including murky links to terrorists and terror funding that garnered public attention during the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trials and the conviction of CAIR affiliate Ghassan Elashi.</blockquote>
CAIR is deeply associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. They have close personal ties in the form of some of their leadership with people who are associated with Hamas. 
Khashoggi had a lot of those connections. You can say two things at once: He should not have been murdered, and he was not a liberal reformer in the Arab world. 
The media decided that they were going to ask the president about Mohammed bin Salman, and the proper answer from the president probably could have been something like, “The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was a tragic problem; also, we are in the business of geopolitics and pursuing America&#8217;s interests.” 
“He&#8217;s done a phenomenal job,” Trump stated. “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you&#8217;re talking about, whether you like him or didn&#8217;t like him. Things happen, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don&#8217;t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
I think that was a more aggressive response than was warranted, because it is true that the Saudi royal government has engaged in some pretty extraordinary brutality.
But what Trump was saying — that MBS is a transformative leader in the region and that the United States needs to work with the people who are there, that we don&#8217;t get to choose the leadership class in all of these countries — is accurate.
The media attention with regard to all of this is quite purposeful. I do not think that it is a coincidence that they are virtue-signaling about Jamal Khashoggi rather than dealing with the reality of actual geopolitics.
* * *
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Saudi Prince To Meet With Trump In US After Weeks Of Tense Talks

Selective Outrage: Why Jamal Khashoggi Matters To The Media

Selective Outrage: Why Khāshoggi Matters To The Media

Jamal Khashoggi

The Trump administration is designating Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally, strengthening economic and military ties between Washington and Riyadh, the president announced on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump announced the designation while Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited the White House this week. Salman’s visit was received with many of the trappings of a state visit, though the event lacked the official status as Salman’s father is the actual head of the Saudi state.
“We&#8217;re taking our military cooperation to even greater heights by formally designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally, which is something that is very important to them,” <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1990948885271842899">said</a> Trump, before adding that Washington and Riyadh will enter into “a historic strategic defense agreement, which we just signed a little while ago.”
The announcement comes a day after the president said that he intends to allow Saudi Arabia to purchase F-35 stealth fighter planes from the United States.
“I am planning on doing that,” the president said. “They want to buy them. They’ve been a great ally.”
Salman offered promises to Trump, as well. Earlier on Tuesday, the crown prince said that Saudi Arabia <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1990838255311356094">intends</a> to increase its pledge to invest in the United States from $600 billion to “almost $1 trillion.” The investment would be nearly equal to the entirety of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11/18/world/trump-saudi-crown-prince-visit/trump-saudi-crown-prince?smid=url-share">The New York Times</a>.
Trump has moved to strengthen ties between Washington and Riyadh after the Biden administration’s effort to distance itself from the Saudis over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and other controversies. The Trump administration has prioritized the relationship with Riyadh, seeking its cooperation on issues such as gas <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gas-prices-plummet-after-trump-rebuilds-ties-with-saudis-biden-snubbed">production</a> and the Abraham Accords.
The Saudis have signaled interest in joining the landmark foreign policy achievement of Trump’s tenure in office, the Abraham Accords, and normalizing relations with Israel. Riyadh has made it firmly understood, though, that it cannot normalize relations with Jerusalem until a pathway to a two-state solution with the Palestinian people is secure.
Saudi Arabia was one of a coalition of Arab states that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/arab-states-line-up-behind-trumps-middle-east-peace-plan">backed</a> the Trump-brokered peace and ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire agreement, if it holds, provides a pathway to end the war in Gaza and sets goals and parameters for a Palestinian state to eventually be built. Some experts have expressed concern over Washington’s growing ties with Riyadh, especially over the Trump administration’s decision to share highly-prized military assets such as the F-35 with the Saudis. Saudi Arabia has a defense agreement with China, and some experts have said that the Saudi government may share the technology with Beijing, according to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/17/trump-f-35-saudi-arabia-00654771">Politico</a>.

Mohammed bin Salman, Donald Trump

Trump Officially Designates Saudi Arabia A ‘Major’ Ally Of United States

Global Politics

World

Gas prices have finally fallen into territory drivers have long hoped for but rarely seen in recent years. The national average <a href="https://www.gilmermirror.com/2025/10/20/texas-weekly-gas-price-update-192/?">now sits</a> at $2.98 per gallon, down 4.1 cents in a week and about 15 cents lower than a year ago. Just last month, prices were nearly 20 cents higher, and many Americans had resigned themselves to paying “$3 or more forever” under the current economic status quo.
One major factor? The global oil picture has shifted: crude recently hit <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-drops-investors-weigh-supply-surplus-outlook-us-china-trade-tensions-2025-10-15/#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20Oct%2015%20(Reuters,settle%20at%20%2461.91%20a%20barrel.">five‑month lows</a>, excess supply is forcing price discipline, and that means relief for American motorists. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, <a href="https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/national-average-falls-below-3-refinery-outage-in-midwest-may-hike-regional-gas-prices">stated</a> that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) &#8220;deserves much of the credit for this trend, having steadily raised oil production for much of 2025.&#8221;
But the “why” behind the supply‑side motion connects directly to how the United States engages major producers—especially OPEC members like Saudi Arabia. President Donald Trump’s dealings with the Saudis have re‑energized the U.S.–Saudi partnership. In May 2025, his administration <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-historic-600-billion-investment-commitment-in-saudi-arabia/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">announced</a> a Saudi investment commitment of $600 billion in U.S. industry, energy, infrastructure, and tech. On the energy front, Saudi’s national oil champion, Saudi Aramco, <a href="https://www.investing.com/news/commodities-news/saudi-aramco-signs-deals-worth-up-to-90-billion-with-us-companies-4045710?utm_source=chatgpt.com">announced</a> preliminary U.S. corporate ties worth up to $90 billion on the back of Trump’s Gulf tour. That kind of alignment means Saudis have skin in U.S. production and supply reliability, which gives the U.S. far more leverage in global markets and less reliance on adversarial supply shocks.
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Contrast that with former President Joe Biden’s rhetoric.
“President Biden said he would make the kingdom of Saudi Arabia a pariah state. That was an enormous mistake,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pompeo-biden-calling-saudi-arabia-pariah-state-enormous-mistake">said</a> in July 2022. “But let&#8217;s look at the facts. They are an important security partner for the United States. There&#8217;s only one country in that whole region that wants to threaten the United States of America and Israel and wipe us from the face of the earth. That&#8217;s the leadership in Iran and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia&#8217;s been an important partner in helping protect us from that threat.”
In early April 2023, Saudi Arabia, whose relationship with the United States had taken a nosedive during Biden’s tenure, announced it would lead the members of OPEC, including Russia, to cut more than one million barrels of output a day starting next month, which could cause higher U.S. inflation.
And Biden was reticent about raiding the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to keep customers happy. In March 2022, Biden announced that he would release 1 million barrels a day to cut the cost American consumers were paying for gas. That was the biggest withdrawal in the reserve’s 46-year-history.
Trump’s Saudi pivot has helped pay off for Americans at the pump.

Gas Prices Dip Lower Ahead Of July 4th Holiday Weekend

Gas Prices Plummet After Trump Rebuilds Ties With Saudis Biden Snubbed

Gas Prices

Joe Biden

Oil and Gas

OPEC

Comedian Dave Chappelle is getting ripped for telling an audience in Saudi Arabia, where mocking the royal family, Islam, or the government can land you in prison, “It’s easier to talk here than in America.”
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled,” Chappelle, a practicing Muslim,  <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/world/middleeast/saudi-comedy-festival-riyadh-free-speech.html">declared</a> at the Riyadh Comedy Festival before a crowd of 6,000 people. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m gonna find out.”
Chappelle has been viciously critical of Israel, <a href="applewebdata://A52DFCE2-01FF-40DE-85E7-E5F7A517E32C/v">saying</a> in May 2024 in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, “If you are in America, the best thing you can do is to make American Jews feel safe, feel loved and supported so they can know they don’t have to support a country that is committing genocide just to feel safe.” He continued his anti-Israel rhetoric in Riyadh, saying he feared returning to America, because, “They’re going to do something to me so that I can’t say what I want to say,” then adding he would alert his fans by using a code phrase: “It’s got to be something I would never say in practice, so if I actually say it, you’ll know never to listen to anything else I say after that. Here’s the phrase: I stand with Israel.”
Critics didn’t hold back. Author Dumisani Washington slammed Chappelle for his apparent hypocrisy: “A Black, multimillionaire comedian goes to Saudi Arabia, where there are African slaves, and complains about his lack of civil rights in America. Only a Westerner could be so privileged yet so deluded.”
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
So, Dave Chappelle, a Black, multimillionaire comedian goes to Saudi Arabia where there are African slaves and complains about his lack of civil rights (freedom of speech) in America. 
Only a Westerner could be so privileged yet so deluded to think that an Islamic regime is…
&mdash; Dumisani Washington (@DumisaniTemsgen) <a href="https://twitter.com/DumisaniTemsgen/status/1974629061059019116?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 5, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Comedian Tim Young was equally scathing: “If Chappelle believes there’s freer speech in Saudi Arabia than in the U.S., he should do an entire set mocking Muhammad there and see how it goes.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
If Dave Chappelle believes there’s freer speech in Saudi Arabia than the US… 
he should do an entire set mocking Muhammad there and see how it goes.
&mdash; Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) <a href="https://twitter.com/TimRunsHisMouth/status/1974668040265470305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 5, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Others, like commentator Jesús Enrique Rosas, pointed to the life-or-death stakes of dissent in the Kingdom: “Does Chappelle know you can get literally EXECUTED in Saudi Arabia for saying the ‘wrong things’? That oil money must have been SWEET.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Does Chapelle know you can get literally EXECUTED in Saudi Arabia for saying the &#39;wrong things&#39;?
That oil money must have been SWEET 🤌 <a href="https://t.co/nrb9NduFsr">https://t.co/nrb9NduFsr</a>
&mdash; Jesús Enrique Rosas &#8211; The Body Language Guy (@Knesix) <a href="https://twitter.com/Knesix/status/1974579681207959676?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2025</a></blockquote>
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And conservative journalist Carmine Sabia nailed the heart of the matter: “I find it interesting that Chappelle, who was paid a fortune to perform in Saudi Arabia… would say there is more free speech there than in the U.S. — a nation that actually gave him a list of things he was not allowed to joke about.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I find it interesting that Dave Chappelle, who was paid a fortune to perform in Saudi Arabia, and good for him, would say that there is more free speech there than in the United States.
A nation that actually gave him a list of things he was not allowed to make quips about. <a href="https://t.co/rZT5pd096V">pic.twitter.com/rZT5pd096V</a>
&mdash; Carmine Sabia (@CarmineSabia) <a href="https://twitter.com/CarmineSabia/status/1974833298078667155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 5, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Even Bill Maher, not exactly a bastion of right-wing thinking, ridiculed Chappelle on HBO’s “Real Time,” saying,
“It’s not true. Do your hunk on Muhammad, Dave.”
This isn’t Chappelle “punching up.” This is Chappelle indulging in moral relativism at its worst — throwing stones at a country that made him rich, while cozying up to a regime that jails dissidents and executes critics.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dave-chappelle-attacks-israel-during-performance-in-middle-east?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Dave Chappelle Attacks Israel During Performance In Middle East</a>

Canelo v Crawford

‘That Oil Money Must Have Been Sweet’: Chappelle Under Fire For Anti-US Remarks Made In Saudi Arabia

Anti-American

Celebrities

Dave Chappelle

Free Speech

For years, we&#8217;ve been hearing about the power and magic of comedians who are not just telling jokes, they are speaking “truth to power.” They&#8217;re going for the &#8220;clapter,&#8221; meaning not just laughs, but approval and agreement from the audience on social and political issues. 
We’ve been told comedians are the only ones willing to say what no one else will say. They&#8217;re the ones who are breaking open the Overton Window, who are really saying the unsayable. And traditionally, comedians have done just that. Traditionally, comedians violate taboos because when you violate a taboo, it&#8217;s either inherently funny and transgressive. Even if it’s not funny, it might shatter or shock your sensibilities.
And the natural reaction when someone does something transgressive is to laugh. Comedians have always had this sort of role in society, and sometimes that role can be properly directed because the things they&#8217;re attacking are worthwhile to criticize or make fun of. But sometimes the transgressivism of these comedians is really just about the clicks and money. It&#8217;s about faux transgressivism because when it comes down to it, they are perfectly willing to take money from some of the world&#8217;s most repressive human beings and then crap on America in the process.
So Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Andrew Schulz, and a bunch of other top-shelf American comedians went over to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Now that sounds like an Orwellian contradiction in terms. The Riyadh Comedy Festival sounds sort of like the North Korean Dance Festival.
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It&#8217;s ridiculous what the Saudi monarchy is attempting to do right now. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is attempting to create tourist traps in Saudi Arabia because, effectively, the country has no economic resources other than oil. Oil remains the massive driver of its economy. Salman is trying to diversify. He&#8217;s trying to get into tech. He&#8217;s trying to get into travel and tourism, all of which is fine and dandy.
But let&#8217;s be very clear. Saudi Arabia is an unbelievably repressive country. It remains an unbelievably repressive country today, except for certain touristy areas that are being opened to Westerners so they can come and spend their money. So now a bunch of comedians are apparently so brave when there are no consequences to their bravery, when the only consequences they face are money and applause.
They’re not so brave when they go over to Saudi Arabia and abide by every single rule set by the Saudi government for millions of dollars. 
So Dave Chappelle, a faux brave person, goes to Saudi Arabia and says, “Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, you&#8217;ll get canceled. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s true, but I&#8217;m going to find out.”
Wow. Look at the bravery of that man. He&#8217;s going over to Saudi Arabia to rip on Charlie Kirk and make jokes about him. Just look at that bravery. Perfectly happy to take the money from the repressive Islamic dictatorship and rip on Charlie Kirk in the process.
What a brave man. What a truly brave man. 
According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/world/middleeast/saudi-comedy-festival-riyadh-free-speech.html">The New York Times</a>:
<blockquote>[Chappelle] was performing in Riyadh at the same time as a divisive free speech debate was roiling the United States. … Mr. Chappelle has talked frequently about being canceled after an uproar caused by his jokes mocking trans people. But in Riyadh, he also took aim at the recent suspension of Mr. Kimmel.
Like other comedians at the event who said they felt muzzled by American political correctness, Mr. Chappelle reveled in making uncouth jokes in Saudi Arabia. Yet he overlooked an eight-year crackdown that has led to many of the country’s writers, businesspeople, activists, clerics and social media influencers being arrested.</blockquote>
So he goes to Saudi Arabia, of all places, to rip on the United States because Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from the air for five minutes.
That’s where he&#8217;s putting his ire. What a brave person. 
And speaking of brave people, Bill Burr is out there saying, “Free Luigi! Kill the rich!” The same very wealthy Bill Burr, who believes that the systems of the United States are deeply corrupt, so corrupt that he is a man speaking “truth to power” when he appears on every late-night television show to the hoots and hollers of a bunch of morons in Manhattan, and flies to Riyadh to pick up a giant check.
Burr talked about how he found out that Saudi Arabia is made up of people just like us because, you know, there&#8217;s a Starbucks over there.
Great job, Bill. You really are a warrior for truth. What a brave man. Truly an incredible person.
Here’s what he said after the festival:
<blockquote>And like my whole idea of Saudi Arabia is what I&#8217;ve seen, like on the news. I think I&#8217;m going to land, you know, and everybody&#8217;s going to be screaming, “Death to America!” And they&#8217;re gonna have like, machetes and want to, like, chop my head off.
Right? Because this is what I&#8217;ve been fed about that part of the world. Right. When they first went to set it up over there, the rules on what they had above what you could say and what you couldn&#8217;t say in Saudi Arabia, the people running the festivals were like, &#8220;All right. Well, man, that&#8217;s game, set, match. If this is like all you can talk about, and you want some good comedians, like this isn&#8217;t going to work.&#8221;
And then, to their credit, they said, “All right, what do we got to do?” And they just negotiated it all the way down to like, “You can talk about anything, you know, other than a couple things,” which was basically, you know … religion, don&#8217;t make fun of the royals. And other than that … everything was like open. The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people who were doing the festival were thrilled. And, yeah, it was just this great, positive thing.</blockquote>
Wow. So much bravery.

Dave Chappelle Theatre Dedication Ceremony

Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle Kiss Ass In Saudi Arabia

Bill Burr

The New York Times

One of the primary reasons my campaign for Congress was successful was that I embraced President Trump’s Peace through Strength agenda and promised to hold Iran’s terror proxy, the Houthis, accountable. I meant it; it was not a throwaway line. It is a moral and strategic imperative, which is why one of my first legislative acts was <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1250">introducing H.R. 1250</a>. This bill requires the designation of Ansarallah, the Houthi movement, as a foreign terrorist organization and mandates sanctions on its leaders and affiliates.
The Houthis are not some faraway nuisance. Their campaign of terror, their alliance with Iran, and their direct threat to global shipping and stability make them a clear and present danger. To hesitate would only embolden them.
During my deployment to Saudi Arabia as a U.S. Army Reserve Intelligence Officer, I had a front-row seat to the Houthi threat. Under constant risk of Houthi strikes in Saudi Arabia, I worked to develop measures to prevent insider threats like the Pensacola base shooting.
Let me be clear: the Houthis are not a political faction looking for a seat at the table. They are violent extremists who seized territory in Yemen, trapping millions in misery. They threaten Red Sea shipping lanes, target civilian infrastructure, and fire rockets across borders into sovereign nations, and they operate with Iran’s full financial and military backing.
The Houthis are one part of a wider Iranian proxy network. These groups menace regional rivals and target Americans. Iran-backed militias killed three U.S. Army reservists in Jordan earlier this year. They struck at America’s energy interests in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, including HKN, a company tied to the family of Ross Perot.
The Houthis, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi militias are all part of the same web of terror. Ignoring one is ignoring all. President Trump gets that, and that’s why he was able to free Princeton student Elizabeth Tsurkov, whose siblings I hosted in my office, from Iraqi Hezbollah captivity last month – after two years of Biden-Harris inaction.
Within a month of taking office, Biden-Harris revoked President Trump’s terror designation of the Houthis and badgered our Saudi and Emirati allies to cease fighting the terrorists. By 2024, Biden, Harris, or the Autopen had buyer’s remorse and moved to partially redesignate the group.
That is why decisively codifying President Trump’s redesignation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization matters. It is not symbolic. It gives us sharper tools: sanctions, financial restrictions, visa bans, and the ability to choke off their networks. H.R. 1250 requires the President to act within 30 days and also forces determinations on senior figures, including Abdul Malik al-Houthi and Abdullah Yahya al-Hakim. Targeting leadership matters. Cutting money matters. Disrupting weapons pipelines matters.
<div id="attachment_979475" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-979475" class="size-large wp-image-979475" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2228070084-864x576.jpg" alt="Huthi supporters and university students shout anti-Israeli slogans, calling for an end to the war in Gaza, during a demonstration in Sanaa on August 6, 2025. (Photo by Mohammed HUWAIS / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2228070084-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2228070084-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2228070084-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2228070084.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images</div>
Some might ask, why act now? Why make this an early priority? Every moment of hesitation allows the Houthis to consolidate power, disrupt trade, and strike at allies. More than 90% of container shipping through the Suez Canal <a href="https://apnews.com/article/red-sea-yemen-houthis-attack-ships-f67d941c260528ac40315ecab4c34ca3">was halted by the Houthis</a>, which accounts for approximately 40% of the world’s container shipping and a route for over one billion barrels of oil per day. 
This disruption is a key driver of global inflation, cutting the buying power of American families.
Sanctions are one part of a larger strategy to end Yemen’s war. We must also work to block weapons flows from Iran, keep humanitarian channels open, and tighten oversight in Congress to make sure enforcement does not drift or get watered down.
Critics will say this risks escalation and hinders peace talks. However, pressure is not the enemy of peace; weakness is. That’s why the Houthis felt so emboldened, and why they were the only group to relentlessly attack Israel — regardless of Hezbollah’s and Iran’s pauses. Labeling the Houthis as terrorists does not declare war. It puts the law on our side. Negotiations only work when leverage is real. The Houthis will never come to the table if they believe America lacks resolve.
Failing to respond only invites more attacks.
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Just this week, the Houthis declared that they will start to target additional U.S. oil firms, such as Chevron and ExxonMobil. This is unacceptable, and it’s time for my colleagues in Congress to act.
Holding the Houthis accountable was one of my first promises, and H.R. 1250 is how that promise begins to take shape. Passing this legislation sends a message: the United States will not cede the Red Sea, will not normalize terrorism, and will not stand by while Iran’s proxies destabilize the region.
The Houthis think they can outlast our resolve. They are wrong. America has faced down far greater threats with determination and clarity. We will do so again. By standing firm, by acting decisively, and by keeping our word, we can ensure that no terrorist movement, whether in Yemen, Iraq, or anywhere else, believes it can threaten American lives and hinder prosperity without consequence.
* * *
Congressman Abe J. Hamadeh represents Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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