Jerome R. Corsi's Blog, page 26
August 31, 2025
‘It’s their lifeblood’: Network anchor apoplectic over Trump comments on Russiagate
(Official White House photo by Daniel Torok)MSNBC host Eugene Daniels expressed outrage on Sunday after President Donald Trump’s Daily Caller interview, in which he said that it “would not bother” him to see former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan arrested live on television.
Trump told Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese on Friday that he believed his administration’s investigation into Russiagate should result in arrests. Daniels argued on “The Weekend” that Trump’s comment fell into a pattern of his “authoritarian ambitions.”
WATCH:
“That attitude — punishing perceived enemies while rewarding devotees — is exactly what we’re seeing across the federal government,” Daniels said. “At the Centers for Disease Control, Trump has already installed a new hand-picked loyalist, a business investor with no medical training, to replace a career scientist to run your nation’s top public health agency.”
“Then there’s the Federal Reserve, where emergency hearings are underway right now after Trump’s attempt to oust Fed Board Governor Lisa Cook over alleged mortgage fraud, even though she has not been charged with any crime,” he continued. “But the aim is clear: get her out so he can put in a loyalist.”
Cook allegedly declared multiple properties as her primary residence within weeks of each other.
“And that’s become Trump’s playbook across the government, forcing out officials at the CIA, the Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics — institutions where nonpartisanship is essential to what they do,” Daniels added. “It’s their lifeblood.”
“Trump is also ramping up his war on blue cities, manufacturing crisis after crisis as a means to seize more power,” he said. “In addition to National Guard deployments, Trump is threatening new immigration crackdowns in Boston and Chicago, using agents from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol — agencies whose budget Trump tripled this year.”
The president announced on Aug. 11 that his administration was declaring a “public safety emergency,” deploying the National Guard and federally taking over the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).
Democratic Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said during a Wednesday press conference that she was grateful for “the surge of officers” during Trump’s crime crackdown.
“We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city … for carjackings, the difference between this period, this 20-day period of this federal surge, and last year represents a 87% reduction in carjackings in Washington, D.C.,” Bowser said.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard published documents in July which she said showed “overwhelming evidence” that former President Barack Obama and his national security team “manufactured and politicized intelligence” after Trump’s 2016 victory. She also referred the case to the Department of Justice.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
‘Conscious, alert’: Rudy Giuliani severely injured in ‘high speed’ car crash
Rudy Giuliani speaks at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020Former New York City Mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is hospitalized with severe injuries after being struck by a car at high speed in New Hampshire on Saturday night.
Michael Ragusa, head of Giuliani’s security, disclosed some details on X, indicating: “On the evening of August 30, 2025, in New Hampshire, Mayor Giuliani was involved in a motor vehicle accident.
“Prior to the incident, he was flagged down by a woman who was the victim of a domestic violence incident. Mayor Giuliani immediately rendered assistance and contacted 911. He remained on scene until responding officers arrived to ensure her safety.”
@RudyGiuliani was in a car accident in NH on Aug 30 after assisting a domestic violence victim. He sustained injuries but is in good spirits and recovering tremendously. Thank you for the prayers & support. official statement below. pic.twitter.com/ohYJCcXpjR
— Michael Ragusa (@themikeragu) August 31, 2025
“Following this, while traveling on the highway, Mayor Giuliani’s vehicle was struck from behind at high speed. He was transported to a nearby trauma center, where he was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg.”
Ragusa stressed: “This was not a targeted attack. We ask everyone to respect Mayor Giuliani’s privacy and recovery, and refrain from spreading unfounded conspiracy theories.”
He noted Giuliani had been traveling in a rental car.
One commenter asked specifically: “Was it the alleged perpetrator of domestic violence who struck his car, or was it random / unrelated?”
“Random and unrelated,” Ragusa replied.
Another wondered: “Where was his security?”
Ragusa answered: “You can’t control reckless drivers hitting you from behind my brother.”
He is in “good spirits and recovering tremendously,” Ragusa told Fox News Digital.
“He’ll be released in a few days and he’s doing great. Conscious, alert, strong. He’ll be back to business as usual this week,” he added.
Gen. Mike Flynn, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump during his first term, said: “Prayers coming your way Mayor!!! Thank God you’re alright and thank you for always being there to help others in need. That’s why you’ll always be ‘America’s Mayor.'”
Follow Joe on X @JoeKovacsNews
‘You just created live, fake news’: Sebastian Gorka demolishes network anchor who used deceptive data to downplay deadly attacks on Christians by transgenders
CNN’s Brianna Keilar and Sebastian Gorka, White House senior director for CounterterrorismA top White House official went to war with CNN on Sunday as a network anchor used deceptive data to downplay deadly attacks against Christians by transgenders.
Sebastian Gorka, the White House senior director for Counterterrorism, appeared on “State of the Union” with guest host Brianna Keilar, as the pair discussed Wednesday’s mass-casualty shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis that killed two children and wounded 17 others.
The perpetrator, Robert Westman, a transgender who had changed his name to Robin Westman, killed himself at the conclusion of the horror.
Keilar asked Gorka: “When you are looking at the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center looking 172 mass attacks in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020. 96% of the attackers were non-trans men.
“So I know you’re focusing on the shooter being trans, uh, the shooter was trans, and that is certainly of note. But are you missing the bigger picture here when you zero in on that instead of more broadly these school shooters as an epidemic and you perhaps miss through line that connects them all?”
Gorka responded: “Well, no, because your facts obfuscate two things: You are using data based on the predominant gun violence, which is gang-on-gang violence with zero ideological content.
“If you remove all of that, the gang violence on the streets of Chicago, L.A., Detroit, then you come down to a much smaller dataset. So, it’s like those who say ‘gun violence in America causes so many deaths’ and then fail to note the majority of the stats they are using refer to also suicides by gun, which, of course, is not what we are talking about here today.
“So let’s concentrate on mass shootings at schools, especially Christian or Catholic schools, then the data set is wholly different. So, don’t conflate different datasets just to make a political point.
“There was an ideological content to this attack. that’s what terrorism is. It’s not because somebody didn’t get the drug deal they wanted. It is an ideological message, whether it was anti-Israel as in this case, whether it targeted President Trump in its rhetoric as we saw on one of the magazines written by the perpetrator on that YouTube video, or whether was saw the fact that it was anti-Christian and targeting children! That has nothing to do with gang violence. Let’s not mix the two things up.”
Everybody stop what you’re doing and watch this.
A CNN host tried to downplay the surge in Christian attacks and pushed false data on transgender shootings, but Sebastian Gorka called her out and shut her down.
“Forgive me if I don’t go with CNN stats. Okay?”
An absolute… pic.twitter.com/PHiRqGSxWk
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 31, 2025
Keilar, in an attempt to “narrow it down,” told Gorka, “By CNN’s count, when you look at 32 school shootings since 2020 in which you have four or more people who have been killed … only three of 32 of those shootings were committed by transgender shooters.”
Gorka blasted back: “Forgive me if I don’t go with CNN stats. OK? CNN has proven itself to be wholly inaccurate in all kinds of things for the last 10 years, uh, perpetrators of the Russia Russia hoax and that we didn’t have an open border. So please forgive me if I don’t take your stats for granted.”
“It’s simple math,” stressed Keilar.
“No it’s not. It’s distortions,” Gorka said. “You are distorting the facts. Let me be clear. In just a couple of years, we have seen SEVEN mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who were confused in their gender, SEVEN in just the last couple of years. That is inordinately high. … I’m gonna stick with the facts and not CNN’s pseudo-facts.”
Keilar then said: “You think transgender people are the problem here. So what specifically do you think should be done?”
“When did I say that?” Gorka replied. “You just created live, fake news. You just did it right in front of the small viewership you have.”
Regarding how such tragedies could be prevented in the future, Gorka explained: “What we should do is we should look at the early warning signals. We should be providing off ramps. We should providing mental health options for these individuals.”
“I find it hard to believe that an individual goes from getting his mother to sign a change of name certificate, age 17, and then just a handful of years later is mowing down innocent children in a church pew during a Catholic Mass, and nobody realized there was a problem. That’s what we have to address to save the next children from the next atrocity.”
WATCH: Senior WH Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka calls out the trans violence epidemic and how to combat it:
“What we should do is we should look at the early warning signals. We should be providing off ramps. We should providing mental health options for these… pic.twitter.com/4irJtjvP6X
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 31, 2025
“It’s not about the sexual proclivities of the individual. It’s the fact that nobody seems to notice a very disturbing pattern towards violence. You don’t end up you don’t wake up one morning saying I’m going to do a video on YouTube threatening to kill the president, targeting Jews, targeting children.”
“That doesn’t happen overnight. Somebody saw that degradation. Somebody saw those mental issues and said nothing. That’s what we have to prevent. The early warning signals must be addressed if children’s lives are to be saved.”
Follow Joe on X @JoeKovacsNews
/*! This file is auto-generated */!function(d,l){"use strict";l.querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&"undefined"!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.secret||t.message||t.value)&&!/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/.test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),o=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),c=new RegExp("^https?:$","i"),i=0;i<o.length;i++)o[i].style.display="none";for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.removeAttribute("style"),"height"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.height=r):"link"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute("src")),n=new URL(t.value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.top.location.href=t.value))}},d.addEventListener("message",d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll("iframe.wp-embedded-content"),r=0;r<s.length;r++)(t=(e=s[r]).getAttribute("data-secret"))||(t=Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.src+="#?secret="+t,e.setAttribute("data-secret",t)),e.contentWindow.postMessage({message:"ready",secret:t},"*")},!1)))}(window,document);
‘I am not right’: Catholic school shooter identified as anti-Trump transgender
/*! This file is auto-generated */!function(d,l){"use strict";l.querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&"undefined"!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.secret||t.message||t.value)&&!/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/.test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),o=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),c=new RegExp("^https?:$","i"),i=0;i<o.length;i++)o[i].style.display="none";for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.removeAttribute("style"),"height"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.height=r):"link"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute("src")),n=new URL(t.value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.top.location.href=t.value))}},d.addEventListener("message",d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll("iframe.wp-embedded-content"),r=0;r<s.length;r++)(t=(e=s[r]).getAttribute("data-secret"))||(t=Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.src+="#?secret="+t,e.setAttribute("data-secret",t)),e.contentWindow.postMessage({message:"ready",secret:t},"*")},!1)))}(window,document);
‘Let’s not pussyfoot around’: Watch Jeanine Pirro explode over murderers walking free in D.C.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro unloaded on Sunday, blasting the city’s spiraling crime crisis and warning that violent killers are being left on the streets without consequences.
President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C. on Aug. 11, and the White House told the Daily Caller the crackdown has already led to more than 1,000 arrests, including a Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang member. In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Pirro noted that the nation’s capital has become one of the most violent cities in the world, plagued by shootings, stabbings and brutal assaults while police fail to secure convictions.
“President Trump has literally changed the safety landscape in Washington, D.C. And I often wonder in answer to your question whether, you know, who is the person who says, you know, crime is low enough for us to handle,” Pirro told host Shannon Bream. “Who decides what is acceptable? If we go from intolerable to unacceptable, does that mean we should pat ourselves on the back and say, let’s just leave town? No, that’s not what President Trump is about here.”
Pirro pointed out that in just the last 20 months, 45 black teenagers were gunned down in D.C.
WATCH:
“Washington was one of the most violent cities, not just in the United States, but in the world. So let’s not pussyfoot around this whole thing. We’ve got individuals who are being shot, stabbed, beaten and brutalized and arrests are not being made,” Pirro added. “In the last year and eight months, 45 black teenagers, minority teenagers, have been shot and killed with firearms. You know what the clearance rate is, Shannon? The clearance rate, meaning how many cases have been solved, is 29%.”
Pirro blasted claims that crime has tapered off in the city as flatly false.
“That means that 70% of the murderers of African American teens, all of them killed with guns, are still out on the street with their guns continuing to do what they do. And so for all those people who said, ‘Oh, crime is down, isn’t this great?’ That’s nonsense. What we need is to recognize that the first order of government is a protection of its people,” Pirro explained.
“And President Trump is willing to make sure that D.C. has the resources, that D.C. has the determination and all of us, both in the United States attorney’s office, are doing the best we can to put together the most solid cases. And so far, we’ve had 1,528 arrests, one hundred and 156 taken off the street, which means they can’t be used to shoot and kill other people,” the U.S. attorney added.
A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll revealed that 54% support Trump’s decision to declare a public safety emergency in Washington and call in the National Guard. Data from the D.C. Police Union revealed sharp declines during the first two weeks of the operation, with robberies falling 42% and carjackings dropping 85%.
The capital’s violent crime problem has dominated headlines in 2025 after the murder of 21-year-old intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym and the savage assault on government staffer Edward Coristine — known online as “Big Balls” — as he tried to intervene in a carjacking.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
How doctors want to die
Lt. Cmdr. Marissa Mayor, a general surgeon with Fleet Surgical Team 7, observes her patient prior to conducting a surgical walkthrough during a mass casualty drill to assess skills and coordination between integrated units aboard the amphibious assault ship USS America in the Philippine Sea, June 18, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Karis Mattingly)Much of the general public doesn’t experience death very often. Many doctors, on the other hand, do. Researchers with the End-of-life Care Research Group in Belgium wondered how this intimate knowledge shaped physicians’ wishes for their own inevitable ends, and how their desires differ with those of non-physicians.
The researchers interviewed 45 doctors – fifteen each from Italy, Belgium, and the United States. The interviewees included general practitioners, palliative care physicians, and other medical specialists with a high likelihood of seeing patients near death.
“Physicians often cited the elements of a good death as being at home or in hospice, anticipating death, loved ones nearby, enough time for goodbyes, not suffering, pain and symptoms controlled, spiritual and practical affairs in order, a clear mind, and autonomy and dignity preserved,” the authors reported in the journal Palliative Care and Social Practice.
Many physicians were also aware that their own preferences could change closer to the end, having witnessed their own patients’ plans fluctuate at death’s door.
“So many patients I’ve run into change their mind,” a palliative care physician from Wisconsin told the researchers. “Over time you can get acclimated to new baselines you never thought that you could.”
As one would expect, doctors’ clinical experience heavily factored into their wishes for how they’d like to die, but even more impactful were the deaths of loved ones. A family member’s experience resonated much more than a patient’s.
Doctors’ views on dying were also sharply affected by witnessing undesirable deaths. Seeing patients with uncontrolled symptoms or severe pain, being on a ventilator long term, receiving futile treatments, being alone, being dependent on others for care, and being confused or cognitively impaired stuck in physicians’ psyches.
Perhaps this was why most physicians expressed the desire to avoid life-prolonging measures such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, artificial nutrition and hydration, and mechanical ventilation. Prior studies suggest that this is a key differentiator between doctors and members of the general public. Personally aware of the burdens of life-sustaining treatments, physicians are more likely to forgo them. Near the end, they tend to opt for quality of life over longevity at any cost.
Source: Mroz S, Daenen F, Dierickx S, et al. What do physicians want at the end? An international qualitative study on physicians’ personal end-of-life preferences and what influences them. Palliative Care and Social Practice. 2025;19. doi:10.1177/26323524251351349
This article was originally published by RealClearScience and made available via RealClearWire.Lawyer overbills tax-funded legal program for 33 hours worked in JUST ONE DAY!
Topline: An attorney in Syracuse, New York, gave up her law license on July 22 after she admitted to overbilling a taxpayer-funded legal program by $160,000, according to Syracuse.com. She is not expected to face criminal charges.
Key facts: The Onondaga County Bar Association Assigned Counsel Program is one of many across the country that uses public funds to provide lawyers for defendants who can’t afford an attorney.
The county district attorney’s office found that Marsha Hunt, 63, billed the program for more than 12 hours worked in one day several times starting in 2022. Five times, she claimed to have worked an entire 24 hours in one day, including an impossible 33 hours on Nov. 29, 2022. When confronted by the district attorney, Hunt reportedly said that she “works a lot,” Syracuse.com reported.
The county’s online payment system is supposed to block lawyers from billing more than 12 hours per day, but there was a glitch that went unnoticed for 12 to 18 months. It was finally fixed in August 2023.
In a court affidavit reviewed by Syracuse.com, Hunt admitted to falsifying records to hide her misconduct and presenting them to judges who unknowingly signed off on the improper payments.
The district attorney’s office is not pressing criminal charges. DA William Fitzpatrick told Syracuse.com the overbilling could have been a result of “bad bookkeeping” and not necessarily intentional fraud.
Instead, Fitzpatrick gave up her law license and $250,000 she was owed from the program. The district attorney’s office said Hunt legitimately earned about two-thirds of the $250,000, but the rest is believed to be from overbilling.
Hunt had already been investigated and censured by the district attorney’s office in 2023 after she found login credentials to the online payment system in a judge’s chambers and used them to edit a clerk’s timecard.
Background: Hunt found a way to scam taxpayer funds from her community, but attorneys can take home huge payments from assigned counsel programs even when playing by the rules.
Lawyers in New York can earn $158 per hour by representing indigent defendants, which has allowed some attorneys to take home over $400,000 per year from taxpayers. The highest state-level rate in the country is Maryland’s $164 per hour, though the Maryland Public Defender previously told OpenTheBooks their budget does not allow for payments that high.
Federal defenders working on capital cases can earn up to $220 per hour.
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com .
Summary: A 33-hour workday may be impossible, but sadly there is nothing unusual about yet another scheme to siphon money from a taxpayer-funded program.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.Locals on the hook for taxes left unpaid by business
Topline: Residents of Lanesborough, Mass., will likely be on the hook for over $1 million of their local shopping mall’s unpaid taxes. Local officials are suing the mall owners, but their own attorney told them during an Aug. 11 board meeting to “treat [the money] as though you might not get it,” according to iBerkshires.
Key facts: The Baker Hill Road District, an independent authority that manages the Routes 7-8 Connector road in Lanesborough, sued mall owners JMJ Holdings for $545,000 of unpaid taxes in December 2024. The road district plans to file another $500,000 lawsuit for unpaid taxes from 2025.
The New York Times reports that the Berkshire Mall once drew huge crowds and was Lanesborough’s single largest taxpayer. At its peak in 2007, the mall made $2.3 million for the town, which helped fund the police department, schools and road maintenance.
Today, the mall is mostly shut down. The roof needs $5 million in repairs, and one of the main doors is destroyed after someone reportedly tried to drive their car through it, according to The Times. The water and electricity have been shut off and break-ins are frequent.
The mall was worth $60.5 million in 2008, but it sold to JMJ Holdings in 2023 for just $100 because the firm agreed to take on the mall’s $4 million mortgage. The firm plans to turn the property into a senior living facility.
Joseph Jones, a manager at JMJ Holdings, told The Times that the mall’s $1.2 million tax bill is far too high given the mall’s low value. He claims the bill is scaring off potential investors in the housing complex.
Lanesborough officials argued that getting rid of the road district and the tax revenue it collects from the mall and other properties would raise taxes for the rest of the town. Police Chief Robert J. Derksen told The Times the road district provides a third of his budget, and without it “taxpayers are going to have to make up the difference.”
Last year the five highest-paid public employees in Lanesborough were police officers, though only two of them made over $100,000, according to OpenTheBooks’ database. Derksen made $97,649.
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com .
Summary: Customers are supposed to be the ones looking for bargains from their shopping mall, not the other way around.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.Anti-Trump geopolitics from a Naval War College professor
President Donald Trump holds a press conference with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on Friday, June 27, 2025. (Official White House photo by Molly Riley)At first glance, a recent essay on the Foreign Affairs website by Sarah C.M. Paine, emeritus professor of history and grand strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, appears to be a classical geopolitical analysis that frames current great power competition through a maritime vs. continental prism: Mahan vs. Mackinder, if you will. But a close reading of Paine’s essay reveals its true purpose: to use the respectable aura of geopolitics to criticize the Trump administration’s America First approach to national security.
Professor Paine, you see, believes that Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. And the Trump-led Republican Party, she believes, “threatens us all.” Her anti-Trump mindset leads her to make some revealing statements in an interview she gave in January 2024, such as if Trump was in office in 2022, “there would be no Ukraine today, Russian armies would be on Poland’s borders, and the West would be in a much weaker position to defend itself.” Perhaps professor Paine forgot that Russia only recently seized Ukrainian territory during the Obama and Biden presidencies, and that it is Trump who is attempting to end a war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. Dr. Paine, however, wants the war to go on to weaken Russia and Putin’s regime.
In that January 2024 interview, Dr. Paine identified the election of Trump, not foreign adversaries, as the “immediate security threat for the United States” because in her view “Trump will fast-track [an] authoritarian dystopia.” She suggested that the Trump-led Republican Party “has run its course.” The American electorate thought otherwise.
It is ideology, not geopolitics, that informs Dr. Paine’s analysis. She has argued that Russia’s leaders “aim to recreate the Soviet empire and cannot coexist with democracy.” She has also invoked her own version of the discredited domino theory, claiming “If Ukraine falls, Moldova, the Baltic States will be next and then comes Poland.” “For Russia,” Paine says, “Ukraine is simply a menu item—the appetizer before getting on with the meal.” In her Foreign Affairs essay, professor Paine even suggests that France may be on the Kremlin’s menu. She transforms maritime vs. continental geopolitics into democracy vs. autocracy ideology.
Paine apparently believes that dictatorships and democracies cannot coexist, even though they have done so throughout most of America’s history. She applauds NATO’s enlargement and complains that anyone who believes that it helped provoke Russia’s aggression is simply falling for the Kremlin’s disinformation. Presumably, Dr. Paine believes that she knows more about what makes Russia tick than, say, George Kennan, Richard Pipes, Jack Matlock, Jr, William Burns, Marshal Shulman, Paul Nitze, Edward Luttwak, and the many others who tried to warn America’s leaders that NATO enlargement would produce Russian aggression. Her goal in the Ukraine war, she makes clear, is to bring about regime change in Russia.
In her January 2024 interview, Dr. Paine urged Americans not to re-elect or donate to Trump. Her “solution” to the border crisis was to encourage investment in Central America. Americans, she said, should stop “obsessing” over “limiting bathroom access, personal pronoun use, rare cases of transgender amateur sports participation, and intervening in other people’s health care.” For Dr. Paine, those issues are unimportant compared to Ukraine’s survival. “If Ukraine loses,” she says, “the international order will crumble.” Indeed, judging by the January 2024 interview and her Foreign Affairs essay, she appears to worship at the altar of the “rules-based international order.”
The so-called rules-based international order is nothing more than a semantic disguise for the promotion of global governance. Which is why Dr. Paine and so many of our foreign policy establishment hate America First. Paine gives this away in her essay, comparing Trump’s approach to the world to Napoleon’s: imposing trade barriers, rupturing alliances, picking fights with neighbors, etc. Yet, Trump, unlike Napoleon, has focused on ending wars not starting them.
The rules-based international order so cherished by Dr. Paine has always been a myth—a myth promoted by those who view themselves more as citizens of the world than citizens of their own countries. This myth has enabled, for example, our European allies to get away with having the United States shoulder most of the burden of providing for their ultimate security, while they spend lavishly on domestic social programs to gain favor with their citizens. This myth has made the United States act as the world’s policeman, intervening in conflicts that often have nothing to do with concrete American interests. This myth has led many of our leaders to make “human rights” and democracy promotion integral elements of American foreign policy.
In the end, even overlooking Dr. Paine’s Trump Derangement Syndrome, it is hard to take seriously a professor of grand strategy that writes about America’s “friends” and the importance of “moral capital” in global politics. It was the great Prussian/German statesman Otto von Bismarck who said that an ideal foreign policy is “freedom from prejudice, the independence of our decisions from impressions of dislike or affection for foreign states and their governments.” It was Britain’s Lord Palmerston who said that his country had “no eternal allies” and “no perpetual enemies,” only “interests [that] are eternal and perpetual.” And it was America’s own George Washington who said that “nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded” from our country’s external relations. I think that President Trump would agree.
Francis P. Sempa is an attorney and the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century and America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.Restructuring the U.S. military for a multi-front war
Navy Lt. Tom Sandford signals the launch of an F/A-18E Super Hornet on the flight deck of the USS Gerald R. Ford during a scheduled deployment in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations, Aug. 15, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Mariano Lopez)Over the course of our nation’s relatively brief history, Americans have risen to the occasion to defeat our enemies and protect our freedoms. Whether it was those brave souls parachuting into Normandy on D-Day or those in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, American sacrifice serves as a powerful example of what can be accomplished when we dedicate the best of ourselves to the greatest good.
Global strategic conditions are rapidly evolving, and so too is the necessity of preparing for wars that we neither want nor seek. Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza serve as a reminder of this challenge, as well as a stark warning that the American military must restructure in order to grapple with the realities of the world today.
In recent history, the United States has attempted to build a force and strategy capable of addressing conflicts on multiple fronts, learning critical lessons along the way. Vietnam proved that even what is perceived to be a “small war” requires a significant force, dispelling the Johnson administration’s belief that the military of the time could fight two wars simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific, as well as a smaller conflict in the third world. Under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, we reduced our force structure by thirty percent from its 1990 levels.
A Bottom Up Review from the Clinton administration read, in part, that “one of the central factors in our analysis was the judgment that the United States must field forces capable, in concert with its allies, of fighting and winning two major regional conflicts that occur nearly simultaneously.” Although the report does acknowledge that strategic force reductions could be made and still maintain this capability, then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin qualified it by adding that a series of “critical force enhancements to improve our strategic mobility and strengthen our early-arriving antiarmor capability” should be made.
Developing a national defense structure capable of a multi-front war continued to morph under George W. Bush’s administration, which aimed to build a force which was capable of deterring hostilities in four key regions at any given time. Of those four regions, the goal was to have a force prepared to win swiftly in two of those regions, and of those two, to win decisively in one region.
Since the Obama administration, the national security community consensus has been that China has become the new “pacing threat,” one whose military has rapidly expanded in both size and quality. Accordingly, both the Trump and Biden administrations moved to refocus and reinforce our military preparedness to be effective in a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine reinforced the theory that the military threat out of Russia had not disappeared. Events in the Middle East, including a resurgent terrorist threat, the possibility of broader regional conflict stemming from the war in Gaza, and escalating tensions with Iran, continue to attract both our strategic interests and our military capabilities. Iran’s recent provocations, including direct strikes on Israel and maritime disruptions, underscore its growing regional assertiveness, and highlight the necessity of recent U.S. military action to prevent its continued progress toward nuclear weapons capability and destabilizing global security.
A B-2 Spirit takes off from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, in support of Operation Midnight Hammer, June 21, 2025. Midnight Hammer was a deeply coordinated strike combining air and naval firepower to target Iran’s underground nuclear sites. (U.S. Air Force photo)While the doctrine and the types of adversaries we face have slowly evolved over time, the underlying logic has remained consistent: we must have the capability to deter and defeat multiple threats simultaneously. Still, we continue to ask our military to achieve this increasingly complex goal with an ever diminishing set of resources telling leadership to do more with less.
In my 2021 book, The Ever Shrinking Fighting Force, I argued that the goal of deterring our adversaries from starting a war is only achievable if we actually have the capabilities to take them on. Compared to the past, we are spending way more for a smaller force. We need to get a bigger bang for our buck while reconfiguring our military to deal with an increasingly tangled threat environment. That means we need to prepare and equip our forces for something similar to a two-theater war construct – ready to fight multiple conflicts simultaneously.
Will this require a larger budget allocation for defense? Absolutely. Will it mean a bigger force? Unquestionably. Some of it can be offset through force re-configuration, an expanded reliance on emerging technology, and a vigorous reduction of the Pentagon’s increasingly large overhead. But in order to be truly prepared, we will need a larger Navy for the Pacific, a more capable Army for Europe, an Air Force with longer legs and greater strategic airlift to support and go on the offensive, and a Marine Corps that is a combined-arms force ready for any contingency.
Simply put, if we don’t rework and reconfigure our military to handle multiple conflicts, we’ll be perennially playing catch-up, putting our war fighters into unwinnable situations, and our nation’s security will suffer.
Major General Arnold L. Punaro (USMC, ret.) is the Chief Executive Officer of The Punaro Group and a nationally recognized expert in defense, national security, and government reform. He served for 24 years in the U.S. Senate, including as Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee. His most recent book is entitled, “IF CONFIRMED: An Insider’s View of the National Security Confirmation Process” .
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.Trump should approach improved trade ties with Russia with caution
President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Billy Mitchell Room at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (Official White House photo by Daniel Torok)After a feverish week of negotiations, President Trump’s efforts to facilitate an end to the Russian war against Ukraine have entered a crucial crossroads.
Showcasing a potential carrot, President Trump recently noted Russia would like “to get a piece” of the U.S. economy.
In Alaska, Vladimir Putin himself touted the prospect of expanded business partnerships with the U.S. including in the Arctic.
The administration, however, should proceed with caution.
Easing sanctions, let alone opening the American economy to Putin’s regime would be a tremendous concession, and one very likely to boomerang against the U.S.
Moscow needs Western technology to fully unlock the value of its resources.
Yet for American companies willing to wade in, returns would likely prove lackluster while carrying broader geopolitical risk.
In the Arctic, Russia remains highly reliant on outside technical expertise to drive its resource extraction projects. An inability to access western financing and technology, combined with sanctions have forced Russia to limit its once boundless Arctic LNG ambitions.
In aviation Russia is similarly reliant, grounding over half of its Airbus fleet due to a lack of parts and components. This despite importing $1.2 billion in spare Airbus and Boeing parts via sanctions loopholes and third party transit nations.
Historically, Russia has not been a significant trading partner for America. In 2021, the U.S. exported only $6.4 billion worth of goods to Russia, importing $29.7 billion. Conversely, that same year, the U.S exported $151 billion worth of goods to China and imported $504 billion.
When U.S. trade with Russia plummeted by 90 percent after Putin’s full-scale invasion, the American public hardly noticed.
Even if you squint, it is hard to imagine U.S.-Russian trade booming anytime soon.
Russia simply does not produce much that the U.S. either cannot produce on its own or cannot obtain elsewhere.
For example, while Russia accounts for 24 percent of the enriched uranium the U.S. utilizes for civilian reactors, it hardly controls the market. Even on chemical fertilizers where the U.S. still imports heavily from Russia; the U.S. could, in a pinch rely on alternative suppliers like Canada to help fill any gaps.
John McCain’s famous description of Russia as “a gas station masquerading as a country” still holds true, while appreciating the other important mineral deposits Russia owns.
That, however, has long been the case. During the Cold War, the U.S. secretly bought up the titanium ore needed to build the SR-71 blackbird from the Soviet Union using shell companies and bogus end use certificates.
Despite these resources, there is little appetite amongst American companies to re-enter Russia. An authoritarian state with an ethos of chronic corruption is not an appealing market.
Last year, Transparency International ranked only twenty-three countries more corrupt than Russia, places like Afghanistan, North Korea, and Yemen.
Doing business in Russia remains a perilous enterprise. Russia has put in place stringent caps on foreign ownership, and the ever-present threat of asset seizure by the Kremlin would remain a knife at the throat of U.S. businesses operating there.
There is also significant reputational risk to any U.S. company considering Russian re-engagement. A spring poll found that only 3 percent of Americans view Putin positively.
Recognizing that reality, a former Russian deputy finance minister recently noted, “Stopping the war itself does not significantly reduce the level of political risks.”
Even if thawing U.S.-Russian relations opened a window, the precariousness of the moment would discourage most American companies from seizing it.
Even on crucial rare earth minerals, the possibilities are muted. Despite the world’s fifth-largest reserves, last year Russia produced less than 1 percent of the global total, only slightly more than Madagascar, and far less than China or the U.S.
A harsh climate, stifling business environment, and long wait time for any return would do little to convince U.S. investors to jump into Russian rare earth extraction.
That of course would do little to alleviate the concerns around processing, where China retains a stranglehold with 92 percent of refining capacity.
Considering the stakes and time horizons, U.S. businesses would be far better off betting on new projects to supply these vital components of modern life either inside the U.S. or on allied territory, rather than helping build an adversary’s capacity.
Even if an agreement between Ukraine and Russia is reached, Putin will continue to build up his arsenal facing the West.
Rather than infuse the Russian economy with the legally obtained Western technology and materiel it needs to continue its military buildup and pacify its elite population, the U.S. is more likely to bring about lasting peace by treading carefully.
Today as throughout history, the lure of Russia for U.S. businesses remains a mirage. Moscow desperately desires access to Western capital and technology but in the end offers little in return.
Daniel Kochis is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.
This article was originally published by RealClearWorld and made available via RealClearWire.Jerome R. Corsi's Blog
- Jerome R. Corsi's profile
- 74 followers
