Believe it or not, we are now a decade removed from the summer of 2016.
If you’re a liberal, you’re probably used to thinking back to these halcyon days, when everyone was talking about Pokémon Go and a Hillary Clinton victory was in the bag. If you’re reading this site, you’ve probably moved on — and rightly so.
But anniversaries warrant nostalgia, this one in particular. Because even if you cheered Donald Trump’s victory, you can’t deny that the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign was wild.
It’s okay if you forgot — a lot has happened since. So here, in no particular order, are the seven craziest moments from the 2016 presidential campaign.
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<h3>“What Is Aleppo?”</h3>
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson never really had a chance at the White House. But there was a brief moment where many fooled themselves into believing Americans might elect the good-natured Libertarian Party nominee.
That changed in the early hours of September 8, 2016, when “Morning Joe” panelist Mike Barnicle <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/gary-johnson-aleppo-227873" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked Johnson</a> what he would do about Aleppo, the destroyed Syrian city that became an epicenter of the migration crisis during that country&#8217;s civil war in the 2010s.
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“And what is Aleppo?” a visibly perplexed Johnson asked.
“You’re kidding,” the equally shocked MSNBC host replied.
Upon being told what Aleppo was, Johnson confidently offered his solution — work with Russia to sort things out. It really was a different time.
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<h3>The Libertarian Debate</h3>
Speaking of libertarians, they really had a moment in 2016. They had a number of debates, including two at their nominating convention. There, things got … interesting.
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The question from the audience: should you need a license to drive a car? The response from the candidates: absolutely deranged.
“Hell no!” shouts one. “What’s next, requiring a license to make toast in your own damn toaster?!” roared another, in the midst of what appears to be some kind of rheumatic fit.
Only Johnson had the gall to defend drivers’ licenses, a sin for which he was roundly booed by the presumably unwashed crowd.
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<h3>Carly Fiorina Singing</h3>
Ted Cruz, in a last-ditch effort to save his campaign, announced to the world that, if elected, he would tap former HP executive and Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina as his running mate.
It was a real Hail Mary, likely doomed to fail. But what little chance the gambit had of succeeding died moments after it was announced, murdered by Fiorina’s decision to sing at the rally.
I’m not kidding when I say I remember exactly where I was when I saw this clip for the first time, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it for a decade. I still don’t know what to make of it, or how to describe it. Please, just watch the clip. Join me.
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<h3>Jeb Bush’s $75 Guacamole Bowl</h3>
There are three defining moments of Jeb Bush’s campaign: the Jeb! signs, the original Trump nickname (“low energy Jeb”) and the infamous clip of Bush asking a crowd to “please clap,” an unanswered plea that seemed to confirm Trump’s read on the former Florida governor.
Bush almost certainly wasn’t thrilled about these moments at the time, but he may be grateful that they overshadowed another swing and miss. I’m talking about the Guaca Bowl-E.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1145385" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.51.07-PM-991x576.png" alt="" width="991" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.51.07-PM-991x576.png 991w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.51.07-PM-300x174.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.51.07-PM-768x446.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.51.07-PM.png 1514w" sizes=" (max-width: 991px) 100vw, 991px" /></div>
For $75, Jebutantes could purchase an unmarked stone guacamole bowl from the campaign website. That’s right — unmarked. Just a bowl.
“Jeb and Columba love whipping up guacamole on Sunday Funday,” read the description on the campaign website. “Now, you can get in on the action with this “Guaca Bowle.” Jeb’s secret guacamole recipe not included … yet.”
Please clap.
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<h3>Jim Webb Killed A Guy</h3>
Remember Jim Webb? It’s okay, me neither. He was Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan and Senator from Virginia before Tim Kaine. He was also, if you can believe it, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016.
It’s a shame no one remembers his campaign, because it was honestly kind of based. He criticized Obamacare. He said “all lives matter.” And, during one of the Democratic primary debates, he casually mentioned that he killed a guy in &#8216;Nam.
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At the end of the debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked the candidates which enemies they were the most proud of making. Hillary gave an early version of her later “basket of deplorables” comment, which didn’t get much traction at the time — likely because, I cannot stress enough, Jim Webb talked about killing a guy.
“I would have to say the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me but he’s not around right now to talk to,” said Webb.
If you want to know more about the incident, you can <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/jim-webb-fiction-119116/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">read the short story</a> Webb published on it in Politico. I wish I was kidding.
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<h3>Martin O’Malley’s Campaign Announcement</h3>
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Oh my God, he plays the guitar?! Can’t believe he didn’t get the nomination.
There’s really nothing else to say about Martin O’Malley, who dropped out after getting less than one percent of votes at the Iowa Caucus and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/social-security-head-drank-with-union-members-before-giving-them-telework-through-2029?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Social+Security+Head+Drank+With+Union+Members+Before+Giving+Them+Telework+Through+2029" target="_blank" rel="noopener">went on to do corruption</a> as head of the Social Security Administration under Joe Biden. He was like watered-down Howard Dean? His two biggest endorsements in 2016 were Eric Swalwell and the Dropkick Murphys? Who cares.
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<h3>The Last Funny Political SNL Sketch</h3>
Let me be clear: I’m not saying this sketch is unbiased, or that it’s laugh-out-loud funny all the time. But watch this and tell me it’s not funnier than any political sketch Saturday Night Live has put out since.
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It’s embarrassing for them, really, because it shows that they can make fun of their chosen candidate when they’re certain they’re going to win. Alec Baldwin’s first appearance as Trump is exaggerated, of course, but pretty funny — not moralizing, still fresh, and the bit about kissing Sean Hannity is great.
But more importantly, they make fun of Hillary! They make fun of her for being unlikable, phony, and power hungry. They make fun of her arrogance and overly-rehearsed debate performance and awkward attempts to be relatable. It’s insane that just a month after this aired, Kate McKinnon sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in the show’s least funny cold open ever. It’s all been downhill from there.
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<h3>BONUS: Normie Trump</h3>
<a href="https://mashable.com/article/donald-trump-slicked-back-hairstyle" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1145389" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.53.28-PM-1022x576.png" alt="" width="1022" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.53.28-PM-1022x576.png 1022w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.53.28-PM-300x169.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.53.28-PM-768x433.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.53.28-PM-1536x865.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-28-at-12.53.28-PM.png 1860w" sizes=" (max-width: 1022px) 100vw, 1022px" /></a>
To be fair, this was in 2019. But it’s so crazy it feels like it should have been from 2016.

Final Presidential Debate Between Hillary Clinton And Donald Trump Held In Las Vegas

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2016

2016 Election

Donald Trump

Gary Johnson

Hillary Clinton

Libertarian Party

Martin O'Malley

Ted Cruz

A bipartisan Senate bill aimed at keeping Chinese-made vehicles and automotive technology off American roads moved one step closer to becoming law on Wednesday after clearing the Senate Commerce Committee with unanimous support.
The Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, sponsored by Sens. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), would prohibit the import, sale, and operation of vehicles manufactured by China and other designated foreign adversaries while also banning Chinese-developed connected vehicle technology, including software and data systems, from American roads.
Supporters argue the bill is necessary not only to protect the American auto industry from heavily subsidized Chinese competition, but also to address national security concerns posed by increasingly software-driven vehicles capable of collecting vast amounts of data on their owners.
&#8220;Chinese cars are surveillance packages on wheels, with the ability to collect on American citizens and transmit that data back to Beijing,&#8221; Slotkin <a href="https://www.slotkin.senate.gov/2026/07/22/slotkin-moreno-bill-to-protect-national-economic-security-from-chinese-vehicles-advances-unanimously/">said</a> after the bill advanced. &#8220;The Chinese Communist Party&#8217;s playbook of heavily subsidizing their product and underselling the competition puts Michigan&#8217;s auto industry and millions of American workers at risk.&#8221;
Moreno <a href="https://www.moreno.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/moreno-bill-cracking-down-on-chinese-vehicles-passes-out-of-committee-unanimously/">echoed</a> those concerns, arguing that Beijing&#8217;s ambitions extend beyond simply competing in the global auto market. &#8220;China&#8217;s auto industry was not built to compete, it was built to destroy American manufacturing, gut the middle class, and undermine our national security,&#8221; Moreno said. &#8220;For decades, D.C. globalists propped up Chinese businesses — now it&#8217;s time for Congress to stop this cancer before it spreads through the American auto market.&#8221;
The legislation would significantly expand upon regulations adopted during the Biden administration that effectively blocked Chinese automakers from entering the U.S. passenger vehicle market. Rather than focusing solely on connected vehicle technology, the bill broadly prohibits Chinese-manufactured vehicles and connected components throughout the production, importation, and sales process.
Moreno has argued that modern automobiles function as &#8220;roving electronic devices&#8221; capable of collecting sensitive location, infrastructure, and behavioral data while also allowing remote access to critical vehicle functions such as steering, braking, and acceleration. The bill also seeks to protect domestic manufacturers from what lawmakers describe as China&#8217;s strategy of flooding global markets with heavily subsidized vehicles sold below market prices.
The measure received backing from major American automakers, labor unions, steel manufacturers, and industry groups. General Motors praised the legislation for protecting American manufacturing while maintaining that U.S. automakers &#8220;can compete with anyone in the world when we are given a level playing field.&#8221;
Ford likewise commended the bipartisan effort &#8220;to protect the U.S. industrial base,&#8221; while Stellantis said the legislation addresses &#8220;important issues related to connected vehicle security and fair competition.&#8221;
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain also endorsed the proposal, arguing that rebuilding American manufacturing requires preventing further offshoring of the domestic auto industry. &#8220;Our national and economic security relies on a strong U.S. auto industry,&#8221; Fain said. &#8220;We can&#8217;t keep selling out the U.S. working class to transnational corporations that have no respect for labor rights.&#8221;
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents major automakers, warned that Chinese manufacturers are already flooding overseas markets with low-cost vehicles and said the legislation sends &#8220;a clear message&#8221; that the United States will not allow the same strategy to undermine the domestic market.
The bill was not without debate during Wednesday&#8217;s committee markup. Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) expressed concerns over a provision barring automakers with more than 15% Chinese ownership from selling vehicles in the United States, warning the language could inadvertently affect companies such as Mercedes-Benz, which has substantial Chinese investment despite maintaining significant American manufacturing operations.
Moreno responded that the ownership provisions would not take effect until 2030 and include a waiver process to address companies caught by the threshold. He emphasized that lawmakers had no intention of preventing Mercedes-Benz from selling vehicles in the United States.
An amendment to soften the ownership requirements was ultimately withdrawn, while another amendment that would have narrowed the bill&#8217;s definition of connected vehicle hardware failed on a bipartisan vote.
The legislation now awaits consideration by the full Senate.

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Auto Companies

Auto workers

Bernie Moreno

bipartisanship

Cars

China

Congress

Democratic Party

Economy

Elissa Slotkin

Politics

Republican Party

Senate

United States

Joking with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump was asked whether Cruz belonged on the Supreme Court.
Trump stated, “In fact, somebody said, ‘Would you ever appoint him to the United States Supreme Court, because he’s a brilliant lawyer, Ted?’ I said, “Well, he’s the only one I can think of that&#8217;s gonna get 100 votes. All Republicans will vote for him. All Democrats will vote for him, because they want to get him the hell out of the Senate!’ If I was having a hard time with getting the votes I would appoint Ted Cruz, I’d get 100%. Guaranteed.”
The truth is no laughing matter.
Although Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito are rock-ribbed originalists and staunchly conservative, Thomas turned 78 in June, and Alito is 76. If Trump wants to preserve the Court&#8217;s conservative stamp, he may need to find replacements for one or both before leaving office. With the GOP holding only 53 Senate seats, the majority could easily evaporate.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Donald Trump: If I appointed Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court, he&#39;d get 100 votes.
&quot;He&#39;s the ONLY ONE I can think of that&#39;s gonna get 100 votes.&quot;
&quot;ALL Republicans will vote for him. ALL Democrats will vote for him, because they want to get him the hell out of the Senate!&quot; <a href="https://t.co/Y8hvrzp3LS">pic.twitter.com/Y8hvrzp3LS</a>
&mdash; Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://x.com/townhallcom/status/2074128308816490598?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Cruz, the first Hispanic senator from Texas, graduated from Princeton University before earning his Juris Doctor from Harvard. After serving as a policy advisor in the George W. Bush administration, he was appointed by then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott as the state’s solicitor general, a role he held until 2008. Cruz worked in private practice until winning his Senate seat in 2012, then winning reelection in 2018 and 2024.
During his tenure as Solicitor General, Cruz successfully defended the Ten Commandments placed on the Texas State Capitol grounds and successfully defended Texas against reopening the cases of 51 Mexican nationals who were convicted of murder in the United States.
In September 2020, after President Trump named him to a group of potential Supreme Court nominees, Cruz was <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/14/ted-cruz-supreme-court/">asked</a> by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, “Do you want the job?”
“I don’t,” Cruz replied. “It is deeply honoring, it’s humbling to be included in the list … but it’s not the desire of my heart. I want to be in the political fight.”
In 2016, he also <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/13/cruz-not-interested-us-supreme-court/">dismissed the idea</a>, saying, “That is not a desire of my heart. I am committed to the fight of ensuring we have strong principled constitutionalists on the court, but I believe that I can do a great more good fighting across the political spectrum.”

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Executive

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

When we talk about the Founding Fathers, we’re usually just talking about the Big Five: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.
Of course, these men deserve our veneration. But Jefferson, Madison, and Washington are synonymous with the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and presidency, respectively. Adams and Hamilton both have award-winning Broadway musicals and popular 20th century biographies that keep them top of mind.
But what of the other Founders, the men who thought, fought, and wrote this country into existence? In honor of America’s 250th birthday, The Daily Wire asked lawmakers, writers, and historians to draft a new Founding Father starting lineup. The only rule: they couldn’t choose one of the Big Five. Here are their picks.
<h3>Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives</h3>
Frederick Muhlenberg was elected to serve as the very first Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives by the First Congress in 1789, and was the first signer of the Bill of Rights. An ordained Lutheran minister, Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, and former 3rd Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he was well prepared to accept the great privilege and challenge of leading and establishing a brand new institution.
Shepherding our great deliberative body through its formative days was no small task and required tremendous vision, skill, and patience. Muhlenberg was up to the task, and effectively crafted the rules, procedures, and protocols of Congress while actively serving in it. Because he and his colleagues had to travel treacherous or nonexistent roads on horseback, he was forced to delay the first meeting of Congress by a month until a quorum was reached. In August 1789, he cast the deciding vote for the location of the nation&#8217;s new capital.
While the speakership has changed considerably since Muhlenberg wielded the gavel, his efforts to construct a Congress capable of governing itself, debating openly, and exercising a check on the other branches of government were essential. As we celebrate America’s 250th, we do well to remember the wisdom and invaluable contributions of our founders and the unsung heroes who set our nation on its course to become the greatest in history.
<h3>Ben Shapiro, editor emeritus, The Daily Wire</h3>
Robert Morris was the greatest entrepreneur of the Founding generation. He bet his entire fortune — the largest in the country — on the riskiest startup the world has ever seen: the United States of America itself. Morris lived out the saying “freedom isn’t free”: you can proclaim your self-evident truths, but if you can’t pay your army, the British win.
Morris had every reason in the world to sit the Revolution out, hedge his bets, and stay rich. Instead, he became one of only two men to sign the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Morris risked it all because he understood the American experiment was worth more than his own fortune, or even his own life. That’s not a businessman’s calculation. That’s closer to love than anything else.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-mini-doc-robert-morris?utm_campaign=founding&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=iterable&amp;utm_content=email_blast_creative00098_na">WATCH: BEN SHAPIRO ON ROBERT MORRIS</a></h4>
<h3>Dr. Ben Carson, president, American Cornerstone Institute</h3>
George Mason doesn’t come off the bench; he’s a starter. Mason’s thinking about liberty and the best way to structure government had an outsized impact on the Founding. To take just one example, the Virginia Declaration of Rights might be the most important but least appreciated document from the time. Too few Americans have even heard of that document. If you have never read it, take a minute and do it now; you’ll see that it was basically the first draft of both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. True, Mason did not support the Constitution, but his objections to the Constitution — based on concern about too powerful a federal government — seem prescient given how much power Washington has aggregated for itself. George Mason isn’t the B-team; he should be talked about in the same breath as the other giants of the Founding.
<h3>Dr. Larry P. Arnn, president, Hillsdale College</h3>
You could no more put together an alternative starting five for the American Founding than you could for the 1991 championship Chicago Bulls. But if asked what secondary founders deserve attention, Benjamin Rush and Robert Morris come to mind. Rush, a Philadelphia physician, was a leading opponent of slavery and a great advocate of education in addition to being an ardent revolutionary. Morris, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant, took on the impossible job of Superintendent of Finance during the Revolution and played a critical role in getting arms to American troops in the field. But these men themselves recognized the superiority of those on the starting team. Rush said of Washington, “There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.” Morris, when asked by Washington to serve as the country’s first treasury secretary, declined and recommended Hamilton.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/could-donald-trump-finally-dismantle-the-deep-state-ronald-pestritto-thinks-so">READ MORE: HILLSDALE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS HOW DONALD TRUMP COULD KILL THE DEEP STATE</a></h4>
<h3>Daniel McCarthy, distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the Heritage Foundation</h3>
No one can replace the greatest of our Founding Fathers, but if we lost all record of them tomorrow, we might try to approximate the effect of their ideas and sensibilities in combination by looking to James Otis and Samuel Adams in place of Jefferson; Robert Morris, who was Washington’s first choice for Treasury secretary, in place of Hamilton; Roger Sherman, a wise constitutionalist, in Madison’s or John Adams’s stead; and James Wilson instead of Benjamin Franklin to supply some Pennsylvania principle. No one can compare to Washington, but John Marshall might occupy the place of a great Virginian profoundly committed to the Union. These less appreciated figures would give us a strong sense of our founding, though they would also remind us of what we were missing without the most renowned names available.
<h3>Richard Brookhiser, author, The Hero Returns: Lafayette and the Legacy of Revolution</h3>
For all the brilliance of the founders, not many of them understood economics. Tench Coxe, a Philadelphia merchant, did. He assembled facts and figures for Alexander Hamilton&#8217;s “Report on Manufactures,” and might have filled his shoes had Hamilton not existed. He later became a supporter of Thomas Jefferson, so he was also adroit politically. Nathanael Greene was also widely acknowledged for his military brilliance, losing every battle he fought against Cornwallis in the Carolinas yet driving him to Virginia and ultimate defeat at Yorktown. Georgia awarded Greene a plantation for his services, where he died of heat stroke after the war. Had he lived he might have made an excellent Secretary of War.
<h3>Troy Senik, author, A Man Of Iron: The Turbulent Life And Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland</h3>
Because he didn&#8217;t sign the Declaration of Independence, John Dickinson is always portrayed as a coward, the jittery man blind to the glory of the moment. The irony is that he walked into the Second Continental Congress arguably the most prominent advocate for colonial rights in America.
Dickinson did not oppose independence. He opposed declaring it before the preconditions for sustaining it were in place. No foreign alliance had been secured. The Articles of Confederation were nowhere near complete. The military situation was uncertain at best. His argument was methodical, not ideological: do these things first, then declare.
What happened next proved him right about virtually everything save the final outcome. The country barely survived the early days of the war, and only through a sequence of events so improbable that it would have been folly to plan for them. Had things gone south, Dickinson would have been remembered as Cassandra. Instead, he became a footnote in a story he helped write.
John Dickinson knew he was destroying his reputation by resisting the rush to declare independence. But he did so anyway because he believed the country&#8217;s long-term survival mattered more than the passions of the moment. It&#8217;s a sober patriotism to ask the questions nobody wants to hear rather than to give the hosannahs that everyone expects. Dickinson asked those questions, was overruled, and was later proven right. What had he done in the interim? Put on a uniform and fought for the cause anyway.
We could use more cowards like that.
<h3>Brian Anderson, editor-in-chief, City Journal</h3>
That’s easy: If Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Hamilton were unavailable, my first draft pick would be James Wilson. One of the Constitution’s principal architects but now less well-known than the Big Five, Wilson argued that America’s liberties rest on more than individual rights; they also grow out of a moral order discoverable through reason and grounded in natural law.
Big themes: Rights and duties are inseparable, liberty means self-government rather than license, and political authority flows directly from the people because all persons are naturally equal before that higher law. Wilson offers a distinctly American synthesis of natural rights, civic responsibility, and constitutional self-government that in my view deserves renewed attention.
<h3>Ryan Williams, president, the Claremont Institute</h3>
John Quincy Adams was only 11 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed, but he would go on to a long career as senator, Secretary of State, Minister to Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia, and finally, president. After Washington’s peerless inaugural example, JQA remains, to this day, the greatest foreign policy strategist and diplomat of American history. For a continued restoration of a truly America First foreign policy, all roads lead through JQA.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-editor-of-the-most-popular-edition-of-the-federalist-thinks-its-more-important-than-ever">READ MORE: THE CLAREMONT INSTITUTE&#8217;S CHARLES KESLER ON WHY THE FEDERALIST PAPERS MATTER</a></h4>
<h3>Daniel Gullotta, assistant professor at the Ohio State University’s Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society</h3>
While I&#8217;m sad most people don&#8217;t know who Gouverneur Morris is, it&#8217;s a lot of fun telling people who he was. Just mentioning he had a peg leg usually gets people&#8217;s attention. But his role in the Constitution, crafting the opening &#8220;We the People,&#8221; is something people should know just as commonly as they know Jefferson was the drafter of the Declaration. He was also arguably the most anti-slavery Founding Father (just read some of his speeches during the compromise debates). He also refused to leave France during the Reign of Terror while serving as our minister, despite the danger. Then there&#8217;s the crazy way he died, trying to clear a urinary blockage with a piece of whalebone from his wife&#8217;s corset. I know everyone says this person or that person needs a movie or miniseries, but come on, there&#8217;s just no part of his life that isn&#8217;t compelling.
<h3>Mark Helprin, author, “Elegy In Blue”</h3>
We&#8217;re sorely in need of Benjamin Franklin, maybe a few dozen of him, to correct the abysmal ignorance and inexperience of today&#8217;s &#8220;Yutes,&#8221; who know virtually nothing and yet are powered by the energy of the young and destined to run the zoo. And it is a zoo. Franklin made use of his long experience and inherent brilliance to take under his wing Adams, Jefferson, and a lot of others, guiding them with practical and long-lasting results. Maybe I say this about the younger generations because I&#8217;m in my 80th year and am falling prey to chasing them off the lawn. But, really, they can hardly speak English, the girls&#8217; speech sounds like frying eggs, and they know so little that they buzz around communism and fascism like moths around a flame. You know what happens with moths and flames.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/he-turned-the-royals-into-a-joke-his-take-on-america-is-anything-but?trueLinkId=75JIYEMEAhD1KHqlEouqVfPC%2Fc5LDaS1niXzcEeobct2bv%2FJcUHC%2BLs8PvnWg1HDBGj%2FUEf2tfG%2B%2BQqbHoPtag%3D%3D&amp;trueLinkTs=1782577908&amp;trueLinkExpiry=43200">READ MORE: A CONVERSATION WITH MARK HELPRIN, AMERICA&#8217;S GREATEST LIVING WRITER.</a></h4>
<h3>Brenda Hafera, Assistant Director and Research Fellow, B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies</h3>
Mercy Otis Warren was an exceptional woman who contributed to the founding of an exceptional nation. A staunch republican, she depicted the happenings in her native Boston through plays and poems intended to drum up support for the patriot cause. The list of her correspondence was a &#8220;Who&#8217;s Who&#8221; of the Founding generation, including John and Abigail Adams, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, enabling her to write the only Anti-Federalist account of the War of Independence. That opus, along with her thoughtful and uncompromising defense of the importance of morals and manners, justly earned her the designation, &#8220;The Conscience of the American Revolution.&#8221;
<h3>Anastasia Boden, Director of Constitutional Scholarship at Pacific Legal Foundation and the host of the In Dissent podcast</h3>
James Wilson has largely been forgotten. He deserves better. Wilson&#8217;s argument that the people, not the government, are sovereign justified not only rejecting Parliament&#8217;s taxes but breaking with Britain altogether. A Scottish immigrant steeped in the Scottish Enlightenment, Wilson helped popularize the radical idea that the people — not kings or Parliament — are the ultimate source of political authority and are fully capable of governing themselves. Wilson also played a leading role in shaping <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-can-sue-the-government-right/id1896779544?i=1000772988868">Article II of the Constitution</a>, strengthening the presidency with the counterintuitive goal of protecting liberty. In an era of debates over democracy, federal power, and constitutional government, few Founders have more to teach us.
<h3>James Patterson, author, “Why Postliberalism Failed”</h3>
The Founders we admire today were stark personalities and prolific writers, men who overshadowed impressive figures we tend to forget. One is John Witherspoon, the only member of clergy to sign the Declaration of Independence and teacher to James Madison, who gave both a religious and intellectual heft to the Revolutionary cause. As a Catholic, I have to recommend Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, a major financier of the Revolution, and a fierce advocate for republican politics and religious liberty. And then there’s Roger Sherman, who was something of an unsung workhorse from the start of the Revolution through the early Republic years. He opposed slavery, and he was the chief author of the Connecticut Compromise that gave us the bicameral Congress we have today.

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Stadiums filled to capacity with fans in Collegetown, U.S.A. A marching band with full brass in sync with impeccable, crisp, choreographed movements. A cheer squad of young women wearing bright uniforms and brighter smiles — the Saturday ritual that is college football has taken a turn from the homespun, wholesome, right-of-passage, wistful alum, stuff of Americana to a multi-million dollar enterprise complete with eye-popping dollar bids over television rights, legal battles over players’ compensation, and the darker side of gambling. And that’s just football. College sports in the 21st century have evolved into a chaotic mess. But one senator is hoping to make sense of it all through a bipartisan bill. Will it be the last best hope of reviving the charm and spirit of college sports, or are we at the end of an unraveling American legacy? The Daily Wire sits down with Senator Ted Cruz to briefly talk about Iran, followed by an in-depth conversation to see if he can mark one in the W column and save college sports.
***
Ben Domenech: I want to get your initial thoughts on the MOU, this deal, and what you think about it in terms of pros and cons, risk and reward.
Ted Cruz: To the best of my knowledge, the administration has not yet briefed Congress on what this deal entails. I understand that the administration is doing background calls with reporters with the briefer, whom they identify as a &#8220;senior administration official.&#8221; And I&#8217;m told that the official read the MOU verbatim to the reporter. So I assume that is the text, but no one has confirmed it to me.
BD: Assuming that it is essentially the framework that has been publicly discussed and that has been going back and forth, do you think that it&#8217;s a satisfactory end to achieve the goals that this administration set initially?
TC: I am hoping there are more deep details and better details than what has been released so far. What has been released so far suggests that, unfortunately, the president is getting very poor advice when it comes to this deal. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea. Under the terms of what&#8217;s been released, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion will flow to the Ayatollah immediately before they make even a single nuclear concession. I think that&#8217;s ill-advised. That money, if it goes to the Ayatollah, will go to fund terrorists trying to kill Americans and weapons that will be used to try to kill Americans.
It also appears to formalize a permanent role for the Islamic regime controlling the Strait of Hormuz. It is difficult to see what possible benefit to America could come from that.
BD: When it comes to control of the Strait, the idea that they&#8217;re going to wait 60 days and then start charging tolls or fees — however you want to describe it — for going through, it shocks me that that&#8217;s something that is acceptable to this administration.
TC: I do not believe the Ayatollah should be able to charge one penny for the free navigation of the seas. It has also been discussed that the financial reward could be $300 billion to the Ayatollah. If that is true, that would be three times more than the money Joe Biden and Kamala Harris funneled to the Ayatollah. It is a virtual certainty that if $300 billion went to the Ayatollah, that money would be used to murder Americans.
I&#8217;ll also say the idea that we should want a Marshall Plan for Iran to come in and rebuild Iran like the United States did for Europe after World War II makes no sense whatsoever.
President Trump was exactly right to initiate military action against Iran because, for 47 years, the regime has been waging war against America, has been the world&#8217;s leading funder of terrorism, and has been murdering Americans for 47 years. Nearly 1,000 Americans have been murdered by the Ayatollah and the Mullahs. That is why the president acted as a strong commander in chief to take out their military capacity, and it is not remotely in America&#8217;s interest for us to pay to rebuild that capacity that we just took out.
BD: Let&#8217;s talk about sports. Only a slightly less fractious moment for sports in America, thanks to the college system and the changes that have happened in recent years. And you have a bipartisan bill to save college sports, with proponents and opponents who cut across political lines in interesting ways. What made you feel like you needed to weigh in on this topic and have a federal solution on these matters?
TC: College sports is an incredible institution. At a time when Americans are divided on so many issues, sports is one of the few things that brings us together — students and alumni and fans and communities. Sharing your hometown team. It is uniquely American. No other nation has anything remotely comparable to what we have in college sports in the United States. College sports has also been an avenue for millions of young men and women to go to college and to get an education. Right now, there are more than 500,000 collegiate athletes competing across the country. Many of those are from low-income environments, where they would have few, if any, other viable paths to a college education.
And yet college sports is in crisis right now. Every week, we see another program being canceled, women&#8217;s sports being canceled, track and field being canceled, Olympic sports being canceled, and non-revenue sports being canceled. The transfer portal is chaotic, with student-athletes transferring two, three, four, or five times, which is not good for them. It&#8217;s not good for the college. It&#8217;s not good for the fans. It&#8217;s not good for the sport. And for a student who transfers two, three, or four times, the odds are vanishingly small that the student will get anything resembling a college education. If you&#8217;re moving from school to school to school, the academic environment is one where students are being robbed of the opportunity to get a meaningful college education. You have college sports being governed by endless lawsuits and injunctions. Eligibility standards are all but nonexistent because of the chaos. And you asked why Congress needs to get involved?
Well, that chaos was caused by the application of laws Congress passed, which means only Congress can change those laws. Only Congress can fix this problem. College sports, universities, and conferences have come to Congress, begging it to act. I&#8217;ve spent three years working on this problem, trying to bring Republicans and Democrats together. This is obviously a deeply divided time with real partisan differences on virtually everything, and miraculously, we were able to forge a bipartisan compromise to save college sports. And I&#8217;ve worked hand in hand with [Sen.] Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who is the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. I&#8217;m the chairman, obviously. The two of us together have spent hundreds of hours negotiating this bill and reaching common ground. This bill is the only viable path for a bill that can actually pass the Senate and be signed into law. My hope is that we will get a big bipartisan vote behind the bill.
BD: From your perspective, what are the three biggest problems? You mentioned the transfer portal, kids moving around, not getting an education. What are the three biggest problems that your bill is attempting to solve?
TC: There are a number of different pieces in this bill that are really important. Number one is the transfer reform — it guarantees every student-athlete one free transfer, and after that, you can have a second transfer only in narrow, specified circumstances: if your coach leaves, your program is discontinued, or you&#8217;re the victim of sexual assault or sexual harassment. If you transfer a second time for any other reason, then that athlete has to redshirt a year. That provision alone will do a lot to fix the chaos because it ensures that athletes will not constantly enter the transfer portal and simply be acting as free agents, but rather will be student-athletes.
Much of my focus was not about the superstars — the Michael Jordans of the world — they&#8217;re going to do fine. They&#8217;re going to make millions of dollars. They&#8217;re going to be on the cover of Wheaties boxes. They&#8217;re going to do great. My focus is very much on the 99% of student-athletes who will never play in the NBA. They&#8217;re never going to play in the NFL. But sports provide them a pathway to get a college degree. It also teaches them life skills — hard work and grit and discipline and teamwork and sportsmanship — all of which set them up for success in the future. So bringing some sanity to the transfer portal is an important element of this bill.
Another important element of this bill is providing clear eligibility rules. Every athlete is entitled to five years of eligibility, a hard age cap of 24, so that you don&#8217;t have what we have right now, which is 27- and 28-year-olds competing against 17-year-olds. That&#8217;s not fair. And what it&#8217;s doing is crowding out high school graduates from the scholarship slots they used to get to go to school.
The bill also makes clear that professional athletes can&#8217;t compete in college sports. If you choose to be a professional athlete, you&#8217;re no longer eligible to be a student-athlete in college. Both of those provisions are very important. The bill addresses the problem from two directions: cost and revenue. On the cost front, the bill provides the authority to enforce the House settlement and slow the constant cost spiral. Right now, virtually every athletic program in the country is losing millions of dollars; many are losing tens of millions. And if Congress doesn&#8217;t act, we&#8217;re on a path that, within five years, there will be 30 to 50 schools playing competitive college football. They&#8217;ll essentially be a mini-NFL, and the rest of the athletic programs will collapse. They will not be able to keep up with the arms race, and when they cancel football, football is what pays for every other sport, so the remainder of their sports will go away as well. That would be a disastrous outcome. That would be bad for student athletes, bad for colleges, bad for academic programs, and bad for fans.
This bill, on the cost side, provides the authority to enforce revenue-sharing limits to keep costs manageable. And then on the revenue side, we provide the legal authority for colleges to join together and negotiate their media rights collectively as pooled media rights. That is designed to substantially increase the revenue that they extract for college sports. Right now, college football has roughly twice as many eyeballs. Roughly twice as many people watch college football as watch the NBA, and yet the NBA&#8217;s media deals are worth billions more than college football’s.
That&#8217;s because right now every conference negotiates separately, and they&#8217;re fractured. By allowing the schools to negotiate jointly, I believe this will substantially grow the available revenue pie, and that revenue is what will enable these programs to survive and thrive. It&#8217;s also what enables us to keep and protect women&#8217;s sports, Olympic sports, and all of the remaining sports that are not college football. And I underscore that media pooling is purely voluntary. The bill does not force them to do that, but it creates an avenue they can pursue if they determine it is in their interest to do so.
BD: How important is transparency in the NIL [Name, Image, and Likeness] world?
TC: I think it&#8217;s very important. The bill has provisions that require reporting of NIL deals and protect the rights of student-athletes to be compensated. The old system, where student-athletes could not be compensated, was unfair.
You had college sports producing millions of dollars of revenue, and everyone got a piece of the pie except for the athletes, and that was not a fair system. As a conservative, I believe you ought to be entitled to earn the fruits of your labor. And so this bill explicitly protects the right of athletes, number one, to participate in genuine NIL contracts. If a quarterback can sell millions of tennis shoes, then that quarterback ought to be able to reap millions of dollars as a result. Now, those NIL deals have to be genuine NIL deals for a valid business purpose. This also protects athletes’ right to share in the school&#8217;s revenue. Both of those are protected, but what it prohibits is phony NIL — essentially a booster with a bag of cash in a back alley simply paying an athlete to be at the school, and that kind of abuse, unfortunately, has been rampant.
By requiring reporting of the NIL deal, the bill is designed to ensure transparency. The bill also puts important restrictions on agents. One problem we&#8217;re seeing across the country is unscrupulous agents taking advantage of often 17- or 18-year-old kids who are not financially sophisticated, extracting huge fees and exploiting these young athletes. And so this bill creates an agent registry, and it caps agent fees at 5%, which is consistent with where they are in the NFL or the NBA, and it provides important protections for student athletes.
BD: Looking at the Brendan Sorsby situation, which obviously applies particularly to those who have issues with gambling, there are different polls that suggest that, given its ubiquity, it&#8217;s going to be a bigger problem going forward with athletes participating. What&#8217;s the solution to avoid this from being resolved just by local judges? There has to be a way to adjudicate this and feel like it has fairness and also understands these situations in ways that don&#8217;t feel like there&#8217;s something corrupt going on.
TC: The Sorsby judicial decision was indefensible, and it is a perfect illustration of why this bill is necessary and of the chaos that currently exists in college sports. I&#8217;m very glad, by the way, that Texas Tech made the right decision to no longer continue down that path, but if the Protect College Sports Act had already been signed into law, you would never have had the judicial decision in Sorsby because this bill makes explicit that eligibility rules can be fully enforced and that gambling is explicitly a basis for denying eligibility. Gambling will only grow as a problem. Gambling goes right to the heart of sports integrity across the board, so this bill provides the authority to enforce those eligibility rules and prevent another situation like what happened with Sorsby.
BD: How optimistic are you that you&#8217;ll be able to get it done?
TC: I’m quite optimistic. Right now, the bill has two Democrat sponsors and two Republican sponsors. So [Sen.] Maria Cantwell and I, but then also [Sens.] Chris Coons (D-DE) and Eric Schmitt (R-MO). On the Democrat side, both Cantwell and Koons are senior Democrats. They have a lot of respect in their conference. My hope is that the markup will produce a meaningful bipartisan vote. I don&#8217;t know if it will, but I hope that it will. We&#8217;re having very productive conversations with members of the Commerce Committee, both Republicans and Democrats, and trying to find consensus and common ground.
We&#8217;ve seen overwhelming support for this bill. Twenty-two conferences have come out and endorsed the bill. It&#8217;s been endorsed by the NFL, the NFL Players Association, and the NBA Players Association. It&#8217;s been endorsed by Coach Nick Saban and upwards of 50 college coaches across the country. Coach John Calipari has been vocal in supporting it. It has been endorsed by Notre Dame&#8217;s athletic director, who testified at the hearing. The breadth of support is significant. There have been a handful of critics, and I would say any critic bears the burden of pointing to the alternative, and I don&#8217;t believe there is a viable alternative. Some have pointed to the SCORE Act in the House. I like a lot of provisions of the SCORE Act. The House has worked hard on the SCORE Act, but Senate Democrats strongly oppose it.
In order to pass into law, we&#8217;ve got to get at least 60 votes, and the SCORE Act would get zero Democrats in the Senate. What made this difficult was negotiating a compromise that could actually pass the Senate. My objective is not just to eke by with barely 60 votes. My hope is to get substantially more than 60 votes — a big bipartisan vote — and to do that, we had to compromise. I made compromises that I don&#8217;t like. I think Senator Cantwell made compromises that she doesn&#8217;t like. And we tried to reach a middle ground designed to solve the problem, and I think this is the only path that can result in legislation that is actually signed into law and able to solve the problem.
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I spoke to Texas Senator Ted Cruz today for this Saturday’s Daily Wire Weekend Punch interview, but he provided his immediate reaction to the widely publicized release of the memorandum of understanding with Iran. Here were his thoughts:
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Ted Cruz: To the best of my knowledge, the administration has not yet briefed Congress on what this deal entails. I understand that the administration is doing background calls with reporters, with the briefer whom they identify as a quote, senior administration official. And I&#8217;m told that the official ran the MOU verbatim to the reporters. So I assume that is the text, but no one has confirmed it to me.
Ben Domenech: Assuming that it is essentially the framework that has been publicly discussed and that has been going back and forth, do you think it&#8217;s a satisfactory end to achieve the goals that this administration set out to initially?
TC: I am hoping there are more deep details and better details than what has been released. What has been released so far suggests that, unfortunately, the president is getting, I think, very poor advice when it comes to this deal. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea. Under the terms of what&#8217;s been released, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion will flow to the Ayatollah immediately before they make even a single nuclear concession.
I think that&#8217;s ill-advised. That money, if it goes to the Ayatollah, will go to fund terrorists trying to kill Americans and weapons that will be used to try to kill Americans. And it also appears to formalize a permanent role for the Islamic regime controlling the Strait of Hormuz. It is difficult to see what possible benefit to America could come from that.
BD: When it comes to control of the Strait of Hormuz, the idea that they&#8217;re just going to wait 60 days and then start charging tolls or fees, however you want to describe it, for going through, it shocks me that this is something acceptable to this administration.
TC: I do not believe the Ayatollah should be able to charge one penny for the free navigation of the seas.
It has also been discussed that the financial reward could be $300 billion to the Ayatollah. If that is true, that would be three times more than the money Joe Biden and Kamala Harris funneled to the Ayatollah. It is a virtual certainty that if $300 billion went to the Ayatollah, that money would be used to murder Americans.
I&#8217;ll also say the idea that we should want a Marshall Plan for Iran to come in and rebuild Iran like the United States did for Europe after World War II makes no sense whatsoever.
President Trump was exactly right to initiate military action against Iran because for 47 years the regime has been waging war against America, has been the world&#8217;s leading funder of terrorism, and has been murdering Americans for 47 years. Nearly one thousand Americans have been murdered by the Ayatollah and the mullahs. That is why the president acted as a strong commander-in-chief to take out their military capacity. It is not remotely in America&#8217;s interest for us to pay to rebuild that capacity that we just took out.

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The internet and streaming platforms haven’t just left a mark on Hollywood-style entertainment; the sports industry has felt the waves: a rushing tide that swept up cable behemoths like ESPN and publications like Sports Illustrated — even newspapers such as The Washington Post no longer carry separate sports sections. In just a few years, the industry that cultivated and created stars turned to the internet to recruit them. This is one of many changes to an ecosystem that dominates an increasing share of Americans’ time and attention each year, judging by NFL viewership numbers alone. Gambling, fantasy leagues, college transfer portals, and media startups have contributed to an evolution in sports and are the topics of discussion for DW’s Weekend Punch interview with Outkick founder, Fox News contributor, and Tennessee die-hard fan Clay Travis.
***
Ben Domenech: Obviously, you have just achieved something pretty significant when it comes to the world of sports media with OutKick. You were one of the OG people to recognize the space that existed that wasn&#8217;t being filled. How do you think about that sports media landscape now, and what do you think is different when you started OutKick?
Clay Travis: Good question. When we started OutKick, there was much more of a written marketplace for original content. If you remember back in those days, you might go to Deadspin, you might go to Grantland, or Kissing Suzy Kolber. It was the heyday of interesting written content that was being produced on a regular basis. That doesn&#8217;t really exist now.
The blogosphere was still a thing. Video hadn&#8217;t completely taken over, and everybody didn&#8217;t have one-minute social media clips that they were being inundated with on TikTok, Instagram, or even Twitter, where the virality has all gone video. I still think much of the news cycle was dictated by what people wrote rather than what people said. That&#8217;s the biggest thing I see as different in the marketplace right now compared to when we started.
BD: When you see the landscape now, what are you surprised by in terms of either the success or the failure of the worldwide leader to adapt to the changing cultural moment and priorities of fans?
CT: It used to be the case that ESPN made stars. And I actually think ESPN is now reflective of the larger marketplace. Other than maybe Fox News and maybe Netflix, I&#8217;m not sure anyone makes stars anymore, other than the internet and maybe YouTube, but you don&#8217;t have big media companies that deputize you and say, &#8220;You are now a star.&#8221;
One of my favorite stories back in the day was right before the show “Friends” made its debut. The entire cast went out together in Las Vegas, and one of the show&#8217;s creators was there with them and said, &#8220;This will be the last time that you guys can go out to dinner for the rest of your lives.&#8221; And you are going to be on after “Seinfeld,” you&#8217;re going on NBC, it’s a sitcom that everyone is going to see, and you are going to go from normal people to luminescent stars overnight.
That kind of world doesn&#8217;t exist. You can see it in the rise of Pat McAfee, where ESPN had to go hire people who were already famous. You can see it in the success that the Barstool guys have had. I still think of myself as a guy who came out of the internet, and you have to compete against everybody when you come out of the internet. You don&#8217;t get deputized, and someone doesn&#8217;t say, &#8220;Oh, this guy&#8217;s going to matter because we&#8217;re putting him on a show and there are very limited numbers of shows.&#8221; In fact, it&#8217;s kind of a fun question. Who is the last person in sports media to become famous from television? It used to be that you would find a Stephen A. Smith or a Michael Wilbon or a Tony Kornheiser columnist —  people who had had an opportunity to write, did radio, and then you put them on television.
That pathway doesn&#8217;t seem to exist for ESPN other than maybe, again, Fox News and Netflix.
BD: We&#8217;ve just seen the takeover of Hollywood and the box office by two creators in the horror space who came out of YouTube. Do you think at some point there will be a similar crossover effect from these YouTube personalities to a greater degree than it&#8217;s already happened, or are they their own animals and will stay within that lane just because of the nature of what they do?
CT: I think if you can make money, Hollywood and every other media company is going to find ways to make money more than they otherwise would. For example, I’m utterly fascinated that Star Wars, which has been popular since 1977, was dominated by two YouTube guys, even though Star Wars obviously had a 50-year head start on them in terms of recognizing the marketplace. And so I think what it represents is every generation wants to find its new people, and I think YouTube is more experimental, and when you&#8217;re more experimental, you can find out what works quicker than a lot of big companies can. If they&#8217;re totally wrong, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars. If a YouTuber is totally wrong, they might lose a few hundred thousand dollars. And so the scale of success is massive for them, but the risk that&#8217;s put on the table is tiny, and most big companies have the reverse.
BD: Let’s talk about those big companies. They&#8217;ve made huge bets on sports rights across the board, rights that are continually getting more expensive. Those costs are being passed on to consumers. You testified about this on Capitol Hill. What is the actual solution that doesn&#8217;t require some kind of breakup or major disruption that would be difficult for the marketplace to handle? Or is that something that&#8217;s going to have to happen if we&#8217;re ever going to get back to a point where people can afford to watch as many games as they want?
CT: What surprised me is the degree to which Republicans and Democrats across the political spectrum were furious with what NFL games cost now. The NFL is very popular and powerful, but there definitely seems to be the sense that fans are being gouged and that anger over affordability and access is also declining. I think this is a bad combination for the NFL.
It&#8217;s funny, I have said for some time — and I think it&#8217;s probably going to end up being the reality of where we end up — that somebody&#8217;s going to try to put together a bundle of streaming services, which just recreates what we had when we had the bundle of cable channels, and it was a great deal. Everybody with one remote control could sit and watch every game. You could jump from one to another. I have argued for a long time that fans really didn&#8217;t understand how good we had it back then. If you compare the fan experience watching games to 2012, for instance, back when we started OutKick, I think it was way better.
It was way easier to find your favorite teams. It was way more affordable. The analogy I used in my testimony earlier this week on Capitol Hill was this: I&#8217;m sure you remember the first flat-screen television that you bought, which was crazy expensive. It had HD. It revolutionized the sports viewing experience. I was at Costco the other day. You can buy a massive flat-screen television for $700. So we have higher-quality television at a much more affordable price. Meanwhile, you&#8217;re paying way, way more for the sporting rights, and you&#8217;re getting much less. And again, that&#8217;s a bad combination.
BD: In terms of the decision that the NFL has made to go in all these different directions, particularly to require setting up their own coverage, their own teams, and their own announcers. And then of course, you add the overseas product and their hopes for extending the game around the world, which is getting bigger and bigger. Do you think that they&#8217;re risking diluting a product, or is the NFL just so big that they can do whatever the hell they want?
CT: They do risk diluting a product in some sense. In September, I&#8217;m very excited. I&#8217;ve got Thursday football, Friday football, Saturday football, Sunday football, and Monday football. And then after a few weeks, I&#8217;m thinking, &#8220;Man, I don&#8217;t really care that much about Monday Night Football.&#8221;
It used to be that when you just had Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, Monday Night Football was really a big deal. Now it&#8217;s not to that same extent. That&#8217;s a challenge for the NFL going forward in maximizing revenue without oversaturating the marketplace.
BD: The NFL has decided to embrace gambling — I&#8217;ve heard the first radio ads for betting on prediction markets this week, and they&#8217;re essentially described that way, which surprised me a little bit. Do you think there&#8217;s any risk of going too far in that direction of making the game seem more disposable because fans are less devoted to their teams in a way that echoes what happened to the NBA? Or where people just don&#8217;t care about their teams anymore — they just care about stars?
CT: It’s what the fantasy football world has created. For instance, my kids want to watch every game, and they have an incentive to do so. I do think the game itself can be threatened when you&#8217;re allowing prop bets to become too much of a storyline because players certainly can be corrupted, as we&#8217;ve seen, and the overall game itself can risk being bogged down by not whether someone performs at the absolute highest level or even whether a team wins, but whether someone scores a touchdown or makes a reception. And I do think the gamification of the game itself does lead to monetization, but I think you have to remain aware that the game is still the primary story, not how individual players perform.
BD: Senator Ted Cruz has a bipartisan bill that is advancing, which is pretty rare for him. On the question of reform for college sports, they describe it as saving college sports. It does many different things that have generated controversy, not necessarily among the people who you would think would be politically on one side or the other. What is your particular take, and do you think that this would be a step forward or would create so much complexity that it would be very difficult for the different schools, the different institutions, and teams to adapt?
CT: The number one thing they have to have is an antitrust exemption. You can just look at what happened with Brendan Sorsby versus Texas Tech. You can&#8217;t have individual federal district court judges making default policy rules for different teams in Texas compared to Florida, California, or Michigan. Everybody has to play by a uniform rule. Right now, every time you try to put a uniform rule in place, a player who is disadvantaged by that rule sues.
It used to be that college athletes like Maurice Clarett sued to get to the NFL faster. Now guys sue to be able to stay in college longer. The second-highest paid basketball league in the world, after the NBA, is college basketball. So all the best European players actually want to play college basketball. Illinois effectively had an Eastern European All-Star squad and nearly won the national championship with it. So you do have to figure out basic rules. How many years can somebody play? How many years can they transfer and give an organization or entity the ability to put those rules in place?
What Ted Cruz presents with the SCORE Act — figuring out how to get something that can pass both the House and the Senate that just has a very basic framework to allow rules to be put in place — is going to be necessary. The absence of any rules themselves at some point is leading to such a chaotic situation that college sports are on a sort of runaway train.
Do you remember “The Polar Express”? There’s a scene in that movie where the train track runs out, and the train hits the ice and starts to spin in every different direction, and you&#8217;re like, &#8220;What in the world&#8217;s going to happen here?&#8221; I think we&#8217;ve reached the point where the train track has run out, and we&#8217;ve got a train on ice, and we really don&#8217;t have any idea how to control it or where it&#8217;s headed.
BD: When it comes to your recommendations for our European friends who are navigating the country right now during the World Cup, what&#8217;s something that those folks who are trying to go viral haven&#8217;t checked out yet?
CT: That they saw Buc-ee’s is pretty crazy. Somebody tweeted that Lionel Messi played in College Station before the University of Georgia did. I&#8217;m sure you saw that they brought out the War Eagle at Auburn for the Iceland versus Argentina game, if I remember correctly. It’s wild. I think the sheer immensity of America, when it comes to places, just walking into a Publix and looking at how many different types of peanut butter we have. I just think that the European mind doesn&#8217;t comprehend how much incredible excess we have. There&#8217;s that great stat where the British were actually told how poor they were compared to the poorest American states, and they just really had no understanding or comprehension of that.
BD: What’s the most underrated storyline in sports media today?
CT: The degree to which there aren&#8217;t very many successful sports media companies, period. right? There was a time when ESPN employed a lot of people who worked on ESPN.com. Hunter S. Thompson used to write at ESPN.com. — Bill Simmons. I started talking with you about the lack of writers. It used to be that writers drove content conversation and discussion in a significant way. There&#8217;s almost no one writing interesting opinion pieces now, and I think sports media suffers as a result.
BD: Should we feel happy for Timothée Chalamet, or has he led a life that is so charmed that we are allowed to hate him for being so happy?
CT: It reminds me of how today’s young Boston sports fans have won so many championships, creating an embarrassment of riches, which is such a dichotomy between everyone else. If you grew up from 1950 to 2000, Boston won almost nothing. If you were born after 1990 or 2000, all you&#8217;ve seen is Boston win. The guy&#8217;s got everything going for him and doesn&#8217;t seem to be wearing too many stresses on his shoulders.

Punch — Clay Travis-horizontal

Sports Media Used To Make Stars — Now It Doesn’t Know How

Barstool Sports

Clay Travis

ESPN

Fantasy Sports

Outkick

Sports

Sports gambling

Weekend Punch

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz bluntly laid out the case for President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, describing the regime as the leading global state sponsor of terrorism.
Appearing on Fox News, Cruz laid out a staggering indictment of Tehran’s financial reach, noting that for 47 years, the radical Islamist leadership has been the &#8220;number one state funder of terrorism worldwide.&#8221;
Cruz praised what he called the military’s &#8220;clear-eyed&#8221; strategy, saying the strikes targeted Iranian missile capacities and anti-aircraft defenses. He characterized President Trump’s decision to authorize the strikes — including the elimination of top military leadership — as the &#8220;most consequential&#8221; of his presidency because, in Cruz&#8217;s view, Tehran &#8220;posed a significant danger to the United States.&#8221;
He noted that prior to the intervention, the Iranian regime was churning out 100 missiles a month and maintaining a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenTedCruz</a>: &quot;The reason <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> made the decision to go in and take out the Ayatollah, take out the military leadership&#8230; is because they posed a significant danger to the United States.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/GP45feoMoM">pic.twitter.com/GP45feoMoM</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2028474984356528365?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Cruz argued that Tehran&#8217;s influence stretches across nearly every major flashpoint in the region, pointing to longstanding U.S. assessments of Iranian funding for proxy groups:
<ul>
<li data-path-to-node="7,0,0">Hamas: <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/ba/ba10/20231025/116509/hhrg-118-ba10-wstate-noronhag-20231025.pdf">Receives</a> an estimated 90% to 93% of its military budget from Tehran. Reports indicate this surged to $350 million annually by early 2026.</li>
<li data-path-to-node="7,1,0">Hezbollah: Iran funnels <a href="https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Iran_Financial_Practices_Transcript.pdf">between</a> $700 million and $800 million a year to the Lebanese group.</li>
<li data-path-to-node="7,2,0">The Houthis: Annual aid is <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/houthis-iran#:~:text=Calculating%20the%20exact%20monetary%20value,%24300%20million%2C%20according%20to%20Juneau.">estimated</a> at up to $300 million, providing the &#8220;bang-for-buck&#8221; investment that fuels Yemen’s instability.</li>
</ul>
Cruz noted that the Iranian regime bears responsibility for the deaths of nearly 1,000 Americans, referencing U.S. military casualties linked to Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
He also asserted that, before last year&#8217;s U.S. strike, Iran operated &#8220;a major underground nuclear weapons facility,&#8221; which he said Trump took out.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Watch how Hezbollah raises huge funds of civilian money to pay for its weapons, infrastructure, and terrorists.
Our strikes today targeted the heart of this network, so that it can no longer fund terror. <a href="https://t.co/2IZGtU86fW">pic.twitter.com/2IZGtU86fW</a>
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) <a href="https://twitter.com/IDF/status/2028539988162289973?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
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While the IRGC’s official budget is estimated at roughly <a href="https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2018/01/10/iran-spends-16-billion-annually-to-support-terrorists-and-rogue-regimes/">$8.2 billion,</a> experts say it likely controls billions more through illicit enterprises and &#8220;off-the-books&#8221; oil sales.
This massive expenditure comes at a time when the Iranian economy — one-fiftieth the size of the U.S. economy — is cratering under inflation and unemployment.
As the United States maintains its posture of &#8220;robust military deterrence,&#8221; Cruz argued the goal remains simple: forcing the regime to choose between domestic stability and its global terror franchise.

GOP Border Presser

Cruz Slams Radical Islamist Iranian Regime As World’s Top Terror Funder

Iran

President Donald Trump said Senator Ted Cruz could be Supreme Court nominee in the near future, praising the Texas Republican during a speech in Corpus Christi on Friday evening.
Trump, who was once a fierce critic of Cruz, called the senator &#8220;an amazing guy&#8221; who is &#8220;so good and so talented.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking about putting him in the Supreme Court,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;I&#8217;m thinking because it&#8217;s very hard, getting these nominations through is tough.&#8221;
The president added that Cruz would receive &#8220;100%&#8221; of the Democratic and Republican vote, arguing that Cruz&#8217;s foes would &#8220;want to get him out of [the Senate]. He is such a pain in the ass.&#8221;
Trump also floated the idea of a Cruz Supreme Court appointment during a speech last month, calling the senator a &#8220;brilliant legal mind.&#8221; Cruz, however, shot the proposal down in January.
&#8220;My answer&#8217;s not just no, it&#8217;s hell no,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.fox26houston.com/news/supreme-court-texas-ted-cruz-donald-trump">said</a>. &#8220;It is interesting in the first Trump term, the president talked to me about all three Supreme Court vacancies, and we had very serious conversations and I told him no all three times.&#8221;
Cruz added that he wants to be &#8220;right in the middle&#8221; of political battles, something the Republican said a &#8220;principled federal judge&#8221; would stay out of.
After completing law school, Cruz clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the Supreme Court from 1996 to 1997. Trump first discussed the idea of nominating Cruz to the Supreme Court with the senator privately after the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, according to Cruz.
&#8220;I wrestled with it because I knew Justice Scalia and revered him,&#8221; Cruz added. &#8220;And to have the opportunity to succeed him, I mean, talk about taking your breath away.&#8221;
While none of the Supreme Court justices have announced plans to retire anytime soon, there has been talk of either Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas, the two oldest and most conservative justices, retiring within the next couple of years to give Trump a chance to replace either of them with another conservative. Thomas is 77-years-old and Alito is 75.
Alito is set to release a book in early October, which has sparked rumors that the conservative justice could be hanging up his robe before the beginning of the Supreme Court&#8217;s next term, which also begins in October. Alito has served on the court for 20 years, while Thomas is the longest-tenured justice, nearing his 35th year on the high court.
When asked about Thomas or Alito potentially retiring in the near future, Trump <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/09/donald-trump-full-interview-transcript-00681693?nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&amp;nname=playbook&amp;nrid=fe8db97b-d67e-4e92-8f3a-1577ce038e35">told</a> POLITICO in December that he wants both of them to stay on the court.
&#8220;Both of those men are fantastic,&#8221; he said.
After Republicans successfully prevented former President Barack Obama from tapping Merrick Garland as Scalia&#8217;s replacement — thanks to the efforts of then-Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch in 2017. Trump went on to nominate two more justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, during his first term. Conservatives now have a 6-3 majority, but Trump has recently been frustrated with conservative justices, including Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Trump Signs Order Seeking To Limit State-Level AI Regulation

Trump Floats Idea For His Next Supreme Court Appointment As Rumors Swirl About Possible Retirements

Clarence Thomas

Samuel Alito

Texas Senator Ted Cruz dismantled California’s leftist Governor Gavin Newsom in a blistering history lesson after Newsom attempted to frame the presence of federalized National Guard troops in his state as some unprecedented act of tyranny.
Newsom — apparently recalling President Trump invoking 10 U.S.C. § 12406 in June 2025 to federalize approximately 4,000 members of the California National Guard over  Newsom&#8217;s explicit objections — desperately attempted to stir up a narrative of &#8220;secret police&#8221; and &#8220;masked men,&#8221; comparing the federal response to Nazi Germany. “I want to remember all those images of masked men, the secret police, something familiar in Germany,” Newsom bloviated.
“Those first images came out of my state. The second-largest city in the United States of America. We saw 4,000 National Guard federalized. First time. We&#8217;ve never seen anything like this. And 700 active duty Marines sent — not overseas, but to the second largest city in the United States of America. Militarizing the streets of my city.  Masked men. Masked men showing up. Unaccountable.”
The problem for Newsom? History actually happened.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmhKfG5jBnA">Responding</a> on his &#8220;Verdict&#8221; podcast, Senator Ted Cruz scorched Newsom’s grasp of the American timeline. “Just like AOC and Whitmer, Newsom is apparently thoroughly historically illiterate,” Cruz stated. “He said we’ve never seen National Guards federalized in the states. I guess his history book does not discuss the civil rights movement; he’s never heard of a president named Dwight D. Eisenhower; he’s never heard of sending the National Guard into Southern states. When Democrats, who refused to desegregate schools, resisted, Eisenhower sent the National Guard in. The pattern is the same; in this instance, you have Democrats who are saying, ‘We refuse to comply with federal immigration law.’ Then you had, in the 50s and 60s, you had Democrats saying, ‘We refuse to comply with civil rights law.’ In both instances, it is lawless Democrats attacking law enforcement. Gavin Newsom is proudly following the tradition of Bull Connor, another Democrat politician.”
When Cruz took to X to reiterate that Newsom is “historically illiterate,” the California Governor — rather than defending his grasp of history — opted for the politics of grievance. Newsom, who has been open about his lifelong struggle with dyslexia, attempted to cast Cruz’s critique as a personal attack on his learning disability. “Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him,” Newsom whimpered.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him. <a href="https://t.co/XC75ybiGKd">https://t.co/XC75ybiGKd</a>
&mdash; Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) <a href="https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/2023502733513552233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Cruz was having none of it. Firing back on X, the Texas Senator clarified for the Governor that &#8220;historically illiterate&#8221; refers to a lack of knowledge, not a lack of phonics. “I didn’t say you couldn’t read, you 🤡,” Cruz retorted.
He then dropped the hammer with specific receipts: Executive Order 10730. Cruz detailed how Eisenhower used the 101st Airborne Division to break the blockade imposed by Democratic Governor Orval Faubus, allowing the Little Rock Nine to enter Central High School.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I didn’t say you couldn’t read, you 🤡
I said you were “historically illiterate”…
….because you apparently have no idea that Eisenhower federalized the national guard to stop Dem governors from defying federal law.
Specifically, on September 23, 1957, President Eisenhower… <a href="https://t.co/63z3botBKs">https://t.co/63z3botBKs</a>
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/2023603867254997407?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Newsom’s schooling appears to have elided the chapters on how his own party has spent decades standing on the wrong side of federal law and basic historical fact.

MixCollage-17-Feb-2026-10-46-AM-4471

‘Historically Illiterate’: Cruz Scorches Newsom After CA Governor Compares Federal Troops To Nazis

HISTORICAL AMNESIA: Cruz Scorches Newsom After CA Governor Compares Federal Troops To Nazi Germany

California

Gavin Newsom

National Guard

President Donald Trump took action on Thursday to limit state-level regulations on artificial intelligence (AI) and create a new national framework, saying that the United States was in a race with China to develop the best technology. 
Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to challenge “onerous and excessive” AI regulations issued by states. The order also directed his administration to begin developing a national framework for AI. 
“One of the things it has is you have to have a central source of approval. When they need approval of things, you have to come to one source; they can&#8217;t go to California, New York, and various other places,” Trump said as he signed the executive order. 
“To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation. But excessive State regulation thwarts this imperative,&#8221; the executive order said. &#8220;State-by-State regulation by definition creates a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that makes compliance more challenging, particularly for start-ups.&#8221;
The order added that the Trump administration was concerned about states’ embedding ideological bias into their models and unconstitutionally regulating interstate commerce. 
“My Administration must act with the Congress to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard — not 50 discordant State ones. The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order,” the order added. &#8220;That framework should also ensure that children are protected, censorship is prevented, copyrights are respected, and communities are safeguarded.&#8221;
The order establishes an AI litigation task force to challenge state laws deemed overly burdensome, directs Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to evaluate all state AI laws, and proposes restrictions on federal funding if states enact certain policies. 
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More than 1,000 bills have been introduced in state legislatures addressing AI, which the Trump administration said could disrupt the race with China for technological development.  
The signing of the executive order was attended by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, AI and crypto czar David Sacks, and Lutnick. Sacks noted that the Trump administration would not push back against states that have passed laws protecting child safety. 
Trump signed an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-signs-order-launching-manhattan-project-for-artificial-intelligence">executive order</a> last month creating a “national effort” to integrate AI into research and accelerate innovation and scientific discovery. The initiative, known as the &#8220;Genesis Mission,&#8221; focuses on developing an AI model to accelerate scientific discovery.

Trump Pushes Back On ‘Excessive’ AI Regulations, Blocks State Overreach

Artificial Intelligence

Executive Orders

Technology

When Nicki Minaj stepped up to the podium at the United Nations on November 18th, wearing a somber black suit instead of her usual bubblegum pink, one of the world’s most influential rap artists became one of the most unexpected voices to join the fight against Christian persecution in Nigeria.
“In Nigeria, hundreds of communities live in fear simply because of how they worship,” she said. “Protecting Christians is not about taking sides, and it is not about dividing people. It is about uniting humanity.”
Her appearance was arranged by United Nations Ambassador Michael Waltz, who has spent the past several months pushing world leaders to acknowledge the religious genocide in Africa’s most populous and economically successful nation. “We are witnessing atrocities,” Waltz declared earlier in the session. “One bullet at a time, one torched Bible at a time.”
The unlikely partnership between the superstar and former counterterrorism officer came at a moment when the mass Christian killings in Nigeria have triggered the most direct American criticism of Nigeria’s government in decades. President Donald Trump recently reinstated Nigeria’s designation as a “Country of Particular Concern,&#8221; a formal label that opens the door to sanctions, aid restrictions, and military pressure.
A Crisis Long in the Making
Violence in Nigeria’s central and northern regions is not new, and the perpetrators come from a variety of Muslim groups, from Fulani herder militias in the Middle Belt to Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province jihadis in the North. Leery of seeming critical of Islam, legacy media outlets have for years regurgitated the narrative of the Nigerian government, shying away from characterizing the attacks as religious persecution. Instead, they’ve cited secondary causes — land disputes, ethnic tensions, weather-related displacement — that sometimes overlap with religious motives.
But in several recent congressional hearings, press briefings, and policy papers, consistent evidence has emerged that Christian communities, particularly in rural regions, are being disproportionately targeted specifically because they are Christians. The numbers vary, depending on the source, but even the most conservative estimates are grim. Advocacy organizations report 7,000 Christians killed and 7,900 abducted this year alone, with more than 19,000 churches destroyed. In a <a href="https://rileymoore.house.gov/media/press-releases/congressman-moore-introduces-resolution-condemning-persecution-christians" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resolution</a> condemning the religious violence, Texas Congressman Riley Moore noted that as many as 100,000 Christians have been killed since 2009.
Humanitarian groups like Open Doors stress that more Christians are killed every year in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined, making it the most dangerous nation on earth for Christ followers. Yet under the Obama and Biden administrations, the federal government refused to classify the violence as persecution, with Biden reversing the first Trump administration’s designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern.”
Texas Senator Ted Cruz has spent years trying to convince his fellow lawmakers to adopt a clearer, more confrontational response to the Nigerian government’s ongoing refusal to address the violence. He told The Daily Wire the Nigerian government has not simply turned a blind eye to the situation but in some cases are complicit in the persecution and murder of Christians.
Cruz’s advocacy has helped initiate a wave of renewed interest in the crisis that was further amplified once Minaj and Ambassador Waltz moved the conversation to the global stage.
Cruz recounted that when Senate Republicans were invited to breakfast at the White House shortly before the Country of Particular Concern designation was reinstated, he pulled the president aside and personally thanked him.
“This unlocks targeted sanctions,” he explained. “It unlocks the ability to use deep economic leverage. It allows the administration to say enough is enough.” He added that Nigeria has 12 states enforcing Sharia-based laws and maintains a federal blasphemy statute. According to Cruz, these legal structures “are used to persecute Christians” and create an environment where extremist groups can operate with impunity.
The senator takes particular issue with outlets like the Associated Press reporting that the data does not support a Christian genocide.
“I think you could actually teach [the AP report] in a journalism class as an example of pure political hackery and dishonest reporting,” he said. Cruz believes the media reluctance stems from a worldview that downplays religious persecution when the victims are Christian. He compared it to coverage of the war in Gaza, alleging that some outlets report atrocities selectively depending on who commits them.
To bolster the strength of the Country of Particular Concern designation, Cruz has introduced the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2747" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025</a>, which will place targeted sanctions on Nigerian officials who enforce Sharia law and facilitate violence against Christians and other minority groups.
The View from the Ground
In Abuja, officials maintain that the crisis cannot be reduced to persecution and accuse some in Washington of using Nigeria as a “political football.” Government spokesmen insist the country’s constitution forbids religious discrimination and that Muslim communities also sometimes suffer violence at the hands of more extreme Muslims. These are the claims regularly echoed by major American media.
But those on the ground in Nigeria say that while it’s true other Muslims are sometimes targeted for not being “Muslim enough,” there’s no question that Christians are disproportionately targeted.
Judd Saul, founder of Equipping the Persecuted, ministers on the ground in Nigeria, and he told The Daily Wire that the Nigerian government regularly fails to act to protect Christians, even with ample forewarning. Yet outlets like the AP and Reuters are content to echo their talking points.
“The mainstream media never shows up. They just take the government’s word for it, and every time Christians are killed, it’s always ‘unknown gunmen.’ But we know who’s doing it,” Saul said. He added that legacy reporters need to visit Nigeria to see the situation on the ground for themselves. “They need to see the dead bodies, hug the wounded, hug the survivors, be there feeding them when they&#8217;re starving, like I have,” he added.
Other Americans ministering in Nigeria echo Saul&#8217;s sentiment.
“Let&#8217;s not forget, [Nigerian] Christians are second class citizens,” Pastor Brad Brandon, who leads a Christian relief organization Across Nigeria, told The Daily Wire. “Oftentimes, they have trouble even buying food at the market or getting medical care or education for their children simply because they&#8217;re Christians.” He further pointed out that of the 3.5 million people in Nigeria’s displaced persons camps, eighty percent are Christians who are there because their homes and their villages have been destroyed by Muslim attackers.
“When somebody denies that this is a genocide or Christians are being targeted, like the AP has done, if it wasn&#8217;t so serious and horrific, it would be laughable,” Brandon said, citing the Yelwata massacre where 250 Christians were slaughtered in a single night. &#8220;Entire villages were razed, houses burned, women and children shot as they fled the flames,&#8221; he said. Brandon himself witnessed the violence close up in 2021 when a Nigerian colleague was hacked to death in his bed by extremists after they torched his church and home during a ministry tour. &#8220;We&#8217;ve lost friends, scouts, partners. We’re constantly in and out of massacre sites,&#8221; Brandon added.
It’s a reality that has led some Nigerian pastors to carry weapons during worship services, prepared to protect their flocks physically if need be.
A Growing Movement
As recognition of the crisis in Nigeria has grown, American churches have begun organizing prayer vigils, fundraising campaigns, and policy petitions. Ambassador Waltz is preparing for closed-door consultations with his UN counterparts in hopes of securing a multilateral fact-finding mission. Lawmakers in the United Kingdom have called for a parliamentary inquiry into Nigeria’s security situation, while several members of the European Parliament have urged the European Union to reassess its aid strategy.
Yet for survivors and displaced families in Nigeria, the long-awaited international response can feel distant and lack urgency. Viral videos circulating online show Nigerian pastors standing in mass graves pleading for help, describing ruined congregations and inaccessible hospitals. One recent clip showed a rural priest surrounded by makeshift wooden crosses, mourning dozens of victims buried less than a day earlier.
Whether Minaj’s intervention will translate into sustainable policy outcomes remains unclear. Celebrity involvement has, historically, produced mixed results for international crises. But for now, what she has undeniably done is thrust Nigeria’s crisis into headlines it had rarely reached. Her UN appearance led to days of debate across cable news and radio programs. Editorial boards that had not covered Nigeria’s rural violence in months published opinion pieces after her social media posts praising President Trump for his action. Lawmakers previously unfamiliar with the issue requested briefings.
As Waltz put it afterward, “Sometimes the world pays attention only when someone unexpected steps forward.”
In the wake of the UN event, the Trump administration is reportedly considering targeted sanctions on specific Nigerian officials accused of failing to prevent extremist violence. The State Department is preparing a report on blasphemy laws and religious-freedom restrictions in Nigeria’s northern states. Ambassador Waltz has indicated that he hopes to formalize new security conditions for future arms sales.
Nigeria, facing diplomatic and economic pressure, is weighing how to respond. Officials have hinted that they will accept additional counterterrorism support but will resist any effort to frame the conflict primarily as religious.
Meanwhile, advocates like Saul say the crisis cannot wait for geopolitical negotiations. He argues that international pressure must intensify immediately, before more villages are burned and more families displaced.
International Stakes and China’s Influence
One complicating factor, though, is China’s expanding presence on the African continent. China is Nigeria’s largest bilateral lender and a key investor in infrastructure, energy, and mining, and it benefits from the status quo. Cruz believes that economic relationship gives the United States further geopolitical incentive to put pressure on Nigerian officials to stop the violence.
“Communist China is the single largest geopolitical threat facing the United States for the next hundred years,” Cruz said. “Their objective is unequivocal. They&#8217;re not shy about it. It is global domination. It is economic domination. It is military domination. And Africa is one of the major battlegrounds where China is trying to exert its influence.”
According to Cruz, China benefits from a weakened or destabilized Nigeria because radical Islamist factions tend to resent Western influence more than Chinese investment.
“Chinese communists are perfectly fine with persecuting Christians,” he said. “The Chinese communist government persecutes Christians in China. They also recognize that the more influence radical Islamists have in Nigeria, the less likely Nigeria is to align with America because radical Islam hates America. And so, from China&#8217;s perspective, if they want Nigeria to side with the communists, one of the ways of doing so is trying to strengthen the forces that hate Americans, that hate Christians, that hate the West. And sadly, that&#8217;s exactly what China is doing.”
For Cruz, Waltz, and scores of humanitarian workers, the moment to stake a clear position on Nigerian persecution feels long overdue. And for the families living through nightly attacks, fleeing burned homes, or burying loved ones in village clearings, it is simply another chapter in a long struggle for survival — one they hope the world, finally, has begun to see.

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