Category: Book Review

Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans: America’s newest sweetheart

When Steve Bannon is talking about the primal scream of a dying regime, this is what he’s talking about: the social reaction to the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Jeans ad.  It has been astonishing, to say the least, to see just how much throwing water on this wicked witch has melted the political left.  Until a few days ago, I had no idea who Sydney Sweeney was.  From my perspective, even looking at her as a sexy American sweetheart is too much.  She’s a few years older than my grandkids are now, so I see a kid in her.  Not a sex object.  However, I have some experience in public relations and marketing. And I have known A-list celebrities and their agents up close and personal, and I have to say, ahead of this new movie release for ‘Americana’ which Sydney Sweeney is in and is a kind of Tarantino movie that I think I’m going to like quite a lot, this young lady made a power move that is going to make her the next Bo Derek and or, Brooke Shields.  Her timing on coming out as a Republican, and shooting guns on TikTok, couldn’t have been better, or more coordinated.  This is an intelligent young lady.  And American Eagle and her agent, manager, and personal advisors knew what they were doing to go as anti-woke as possible with the marketing of these blue jean ads that have so many diabolical leftists so upset.  I love it because, strategically, it exposes something that I have known for a long time and was ripe for someone to take advantage of.  But watching Sydney’s Saturday Night Live monologue from a year ago, this model for all things MAGA wasn’t so obvious.  Now that Trump has won the election and America is certainly headed in a much different direction than the Joe Biden administration anticipated, Sydney Sweeney is poised to become not just America’s sweetheart, but also a mega-explosive model and actress on a scale nobody has seen in a long time.  And I think she knows exactly what she is doing, and I admire her a lot for doing it.

Bo Derek comes to mind when I think of Sydney Sweeney. She gained fame from the movie ‘10’, which propelled her to Hollywood fame in ways that everyone from that period remembers.  But Sydney Sweeney is talented in ways that Bo Derek never could be.  And I make that comparison because both women have large breasts, and they don’t mind showing them off.  Sydney Sweeney has been known up to this point in her young career, at only 27 years old, to enjoy doing nude scenes.  So, she would seem very unlikely to become the spokesperson for the MAGA movement and have President Trump very excitedly endorse her from the White House.  And as long as she was showing her boobs in movies and having very provocative sex scenes in her acting profession, the political left didn’t mind at all.  They put their arm around her and were entirely ready to endorse her as just another actress who was willing to get naked to get film roles.  But like Bo Derek, Sydney Sweeney is a much deeper person that people fell in love with.  The sexiness gave a cover story to the real issue lingering beneath the surface that nobody wanted to see past their boobies, and that was that they were conservative women, and America loves women who are conservative and not afraid to show it.  And Sweeney has fully embraced that conservative appeal as a marketing move she is ready to stand behind, and exploit the woke agenda as one of the first wrecking balls to it in the entertainment industry.

To say that this American Eagle ad for Sydney features great jeans is an accident that coincided with the release of one of the most explosive films she happens to be in is not to understand the industry.  I would say there are hundreds of people behind the scenes who are in on the Sydney Sweeney decision-making process.  There are numerous agents, managers, producers, financiers, and business types who all have a few cents to add to what a fashion model does and when they do it, in an attempt to exploit a new market trend.  And American Eagle decided they wanted to be the anti-Bud Light commercial by putting a very hot and willing young woman into their ad campaign, and Sydney Sweeney just made the Americana movie that spins on its head a lot of social assumptions that we make for a movie set in South Dakota, one of my favorite states.  A lot is happening here that is a direct reaction to Trump’s win back in the White House, and it’s much bigger than just jean sales.  It’s a decision and a gamble that will pay off in a big way for Sweeney.  But it’s also a market indicator for where the entire entertainment industry is headed.  And the goal from the left was to destroy American ideas about beauty and exceptionalism.  And here was Sydney Sweeney making a power move to dominate the landscape at just the right time, and to do it boldly, to the point where she has everyone talking about her.  Like I said, this is a lot more complicated than bare breasts and sex scenes.  It’s about the conservative values under it all that men and women both find irresistibly attractive, and since she has been willing to put her arm around it, it exposes a significant weakness that the political left has always had, and they hate her for it.

Sydney’s parents went bankrupt trying to support her acting career, and they divorced.  And that looks to have had a significant impact on her, so she isn’t planning to waste her opportunity.  And an opportunity that was only given to her because she was gifted with big boobs and a pleasant personality.  But women can’t live very long on just looks, so she is looking to make a much bigger splash, and this move by her is a pretty smart move, that politically exploits something that leftists have tried to destroy in American culture.  And I’m saying that this new movie, Americana, is going to be for Sydney Sweeney what ‘10’ was for Bo Derek, and culture in general.  It is going to capture America’s hopes and dreams at a time when Trump is in the White House, and it will be used to significant effect.  And for Sydney Sweeney to stand firm amid all this criticism, she will see great things happen because of it.  We all will.  We’re not just talking about a young lady who looks good in American Eagle Jeans and the stock price of that company exploding in value.  We are discussing the values of the human race as a whole, as only American culture can display them.  And Sydney Sweeney has gone from an aspiring actress wanting to repay her family for believing in her desire to become an actress, to taking on a political movement and essentially changing the world in ways that few have ever accomplished.  In this case, it has always fallen a little short.  But with Sydney Sweeney, America’s new sweetheart, something much better has happened.  A spell of corruption and hate has been broken, and she was the one who first broke it.  And people are going to be in for quite a treat from her over the next decade.  What good timing, and tremendous guts on her part. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Republicans Need to Redraw the Maps: Redistrict wherever possible, do not play fair with Democrats

Don’t feel bad about winning.  Do Republicans owe it to Democrats to be fair?  Never forget, Democrats want to change the way America works, and we should have learned the hard lessons from playing fair with them in the past; we know what they do when given a chance at fairness.  We are now at a point where we control all branches of government, and there is a chance to gain many seats in the House and Senate, thereby strengthening our majorities.  And that we should do everything we can do, even if it means gaining just a single seat.  It drove me crazy in the 2024 election to see so many close races going to the Democrats, especially in California.  If we had monitored election fraud more closely, there would already be larger majorities in Congress. And yes, there was a lot of election fraud where illegal aliens and mail-in ballots pushed tight races to Democrat wins.  We were all paying attention to Trump and were happy he won.  We were delighted to get majorities in the House and Senate.  But we could have had more.  It should not be as close as it is right now.  So, we owe it to ourselves to stop the midterm trend of giving the keys back to the other party and instead gain deeper majorities. There are several ways we can do that.  And even with all that said, remember what I say all the time, because it’s true.  If you make it harder for Democrats to cheat, they can’t win elections.  Not even in places like Los Angeles and New York.  Democrats only have any trace of power through election fraud and other scandalous activities, so don’t feel bad doing what must be done to keep them from acquiring power ever, especially for these upcoming midterms. 

The biggest news of the moment is that Texas is redistricting some of its congressional seats to favor GOP candidates, which could result in an additional 3-5 seats, a very positive development.  Other states are considering the same approach, particularly in Florida and Missouri, which could result in a few additional seats.  The rule is, if you can pick up one seat, Republicans should do it.  Democrats have only been playing nice because they assume they will take back power in Congress in the midterms, and they plan to be obstructionists on every issue.  And you can bet that they plan to impeach President Trump over every radical issue, just as they did in 2019 and 2020.  The best way to prevent that is to eliminate the threat of power by not allowing them to have it.  They might be upset at gerrymandering intentions with redrawing the maps to take advantage of Democrats, but what they have planned is far, far worse, and at this stage in 2025, completely avoidable. Historically speaking, a president’s party loses 32 House seats during midterm elections because voters swing between parties in frustration with the rate of progress that comes from the White House.  Which is part of the plan in stalling everything Trump is trying to do, including appointing radical judges and even Jerome Powell keeping the Fed’s interest rates high, hoping to hurt Trump’s economy ahead of the midterm elections.  So Democrats are already doing much worse than gerrymandering congressional districts.  The key to success in holding onto Republican seats and even gaining more is for Trump to maintain an approval rating of around 63% and for Republicans to gain advantages in redistricting.  Trump’s approval rating was excellent in June as the bombing in Iran and the Fourth of July events had everyone feeling good.  Lately, with the Epstein talk and Russia causing lots of trouble, Trump is hovering at 44%.  Democrats see that as blood in the water for them to exploit, so they will continue to throw gas on any fire that might hurt Trump.

Republicans, through redistricting efforts, could pick up 5-10 extra seats, which is a significant gain right out of the gate.  There is additionally a Supreme Court case, Louisiana v. Callais, that indicates that Democrats have been accused of severe unconstitutional racial gerrymandering under the 14th and 15th Amendments.  And if this provision were found to be the case, as we should not be making up districts based on race or sex, Republicans could pick up as many as 25 seats.  This Supreme Court case is essentially judging on the premise of election fraud; the system is set up to take advantage of disadvantaged people for exploitation.  Not fairness.  This is the case regarding most things coming from Democrat politics.  The argument in the Louisiana case is expected to occur in the fall of 2025, with a decision anticipated in mid-2026.  And suppose the court rules that the Section 2 requirements for majority-minority districts are unconstitutional. In that case, states across the nation will need to redraw new maps before the 2026 midterms, potentially resulting in Republican pickups of 1-3 seats in states like Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama.  The probability of the strike down of S.B. 8 to limit Section 2’s will likely come down to a 5-4 or even 6-3 decision with Kavanaugh and Roberts siding for the change, which is now racial-based intent that supports unconstitutional gerrymandering.  So do not feel bad about pushing back. Democrats have already made a mess of things for years, and countless Democrats who should never have been in representative government have been elected to seats they never should have had.  And it’s time now to change all that.

Obviously, in the Senate, things are counted a bit differently, as two senators represent each state.  So, gaining majorities requires a different strategy. However, suppose the trend toward wins in the House breaks the cycle of expectation that currently exists, where the party in power loses power during midterm elections. In that case, there is a possibility of gaining supermajorities in 2026 through 2028.  And that is how we should all think about these things.  So drop the pretense of fairness and play these things to win.  And keep in mind the long game.  The things we do today have an enormous impact on tomorrow.  And you win tomorrow by planting the seeds for it today.  I would add that if election reform were implemented alongside these mitigating factors, Republicans could achieve supermajorities in the House and Senate, possibly even before 2028.  Numerous close Senate races fall within the margin of error that Democrats have built into their assumptions.  And if we take that away from them, they will start to drop away like flies.  They won’t be able to win future elections.  So, redraw those maps wherever possible.  Fight the Democrats in court over every issue, and don’t feel bad about wearing them out.  They intend to destroy America; we have seen their actions before.  So when you get a chance to take their head off with a boot to the neck, do it.  Don’t hold back with compassion.  Don’t get caught up in a contention of playing fair.  Play to win, and play to defeat a political enemy that seeks at every turn to manipulate things toward our self-destruction.  We don’t owe them any assumptions of fairness.  The best thing we could do as Republicans is play to win by any means possible.  And let the sums of those wins add up to supermajorities that will take our nation to a much better tomorrow because tomorrow starts today.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

We Have To Teach People Why Capitalism is Good: The Vivek Ramaswamy approach to Zohran Mamdani

I think people misread Vivek Ramaswamy’s comments about Zohran Mamdani incorrectly, for the most part.  However, when Vivek placed an ad in New York challenging the socialist candidate for mayor to a debate, it raised several interesting questions that will undoubtedly be part of future discussions about politics.  Vivek, of course, is jumping into the conversation about New York politics because, as a capitalist who made a lot of money in New York and is now planning to be the governor of Ohio, he is uniquely positioned to have a debate with what the political left thinks of as a bright young star, in Mamdani.  But critics of communism and socialism expect a more visceral hatred of Mamdani than Vivek shows to people.  I’ve had the fortune of knowing Vivek personally, and this is true for most people: bright individuals who can debate any topic with anyone don’t have to get defensive every time a challenge arises to their belief system.  So Vivek can have a very cerebral discussion about Mamdani without getting too upset that the trend in Democrat politics is a radical leaning towards far-left, Marxist policies.  And most people have been taught, through years of Cold War policy from the over 50s crowd and onward, that we are to approach communists and socialists with anger, like they are the invaders we saw in the movie Red Dawn.  Vivek comes from a much younger generation, and that’s a good thing because, in the post-Trump years, many things are going to change.  People are realizing right now, and with Mamdani, just how dangerous all the socialist instruction in our public schools has been.  And most young people have had extensive exposure to it through public education. For too many voters, this issue has snuck up on them, evoking a lot of fear in people like Mamdani.

I have been warning everyone about the problems with socialism for many years.  And while public schools don’t overtly have classes teaching Marxism in general, it is implicit in the background of almost everything done in the teaching process, including in kindergarten, when the teacher instructs you to share your toys with your neighbor.  And that everyone is equal.  Vivek Ramaswamy’s approach to the communist problem is to debate it, because he can.  Not to fight them in the streets or call them names.  There are many young people, like Zohran Mamdani, who will be able to utilize social media to capture the attention of young voters who lack opportunities to surpass their parents’ achievements.  For many young people who can’t afford to buy their own home or have children, life seems unappealing and not worth fighting for.  While most MAGA supporters of today’s politics likely have their own car, their own home with lots of property, maybe even a boat.  Several kids.  A pretty good life, and something that they want to defend from people who want to take all that from them.  Vivek understands that the under-50 crowd has vastly different motivations and perspectives, and that they don’t feel the need to fight for anything, because, from their perspective, they don’t have much to fight for.  Their minds have mainly been rotted out by the public education experience that taught them all the wrong Marxist things about social equality and the value of private property ownership.  Therefore, portraying our political enemies as revolting figures will not win over new voters, because those new voters essentially share Mamdani’s perspective. 

That’s why the future of the MAGA movement needs to include people like Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance, who can debate any issue with anyone, anywhere.  And Vivek certainly can, and that is the way to win over the next generation of voters.  If, during the Trump years, the goal was to overcome all the lies that had been told to us by a government that sought global socialism as its governing principle, now the shoe is on the other foot.  It’s not enough to question the government of socialists and to run them out of office.  The problem that J.D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy will face with young people is that many of them have to be taught the virtues of capitalism from scratch.  We can’t just hold up Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and tell them to read it.  They need to understand it relative to their thoughts as young socialists who we have let get out of control, rob away their hopes and dreams.  Fighting socialism and communism with the kind of Cold War hatred that we have in the past won’t work on today’s social media.  Capitalism has to be sold to people all over again.  It will help to have a successful Trump administration to point to so that young socialists can see for themselves how much better a capitalist system is than their socialist and communist teachings.  In the world’s plans, they never thought a Trump character would ever hold a position of power, revealing just how powerful capitalism could be.  His election was crucial in many ways at this particular point in history.  But do not assume that the new generation will have a hatred for communism as previous generations in America have.  It’s quite the opposite.  Most young people will have to be taught from scratch why capitalism is so much better, because they certainly haven’t been taught why in school, or entertainment, or their social groups. 

The shock everyone has felt at hearing Mamdani utter outright communist sentiment, wanting to be the mayor of New York City, what many think of as the capitalist capital of the world, is the reality that this new generation of young people is more prone to accept elements of Marxism because it’s all they know.  And for many, this issue snuck up on them as they realized how much of modern-day social media is dominated by young people who are just like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and now Mamdani.  We say today they won’t and can’t win elections if this is what the Democrat Party is.  However, this is what the Democratic Party has been for quite some time.  They just hid it all behind a social mask, but it’s always been there, and now that people see it and hear them talk, the realization they have toward it is hatred.  However, be cautious not to demonize all these young socialists, as the goal is to win over that generation in a competitive race for the minds of a new generation.  And understand that capitalism has to be sold to them because they were not taught its value, and they do not have a natural love for it.  It will take someone like Vivek Ramaswamy to explain it to them and show them why it works.  They can’t expect just to read Adam Smith’s book and draw their conclusions.  They will have to be taught, with considerable debate.  And Vivek is just the right mind for all that.  He understands the problem all too well, even as many are just now waking up to it and have been caught off guard.  The next generation in America has to be mainly taught from scratch.  Their minds have been ruined.  And hating them won’t convince them to join you.  We have to earn them to our side person for person. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Greatness of Truth Social: Controlling market viability

Strategically speaking, as history views it, Trump’s commitment to the social media platform Truth Social will be the defining characteristic that was most important in the political movement that has reshaped the world.   And not enough people are talking about its importance.  But as I have said for a long time, and it’s more obvious now than ever, Trump’s creation of Truth Social, after he was kicked off Twitter following the 2020 election, will always be known as the most important thing he did.  And when it mattered most, just as the many court cases against Trump through lawfare were about to collapse upon him and he was facing hundreds of years in jail and things were looking very bleak, it was his ownership of Truth Social that completely reversed his financial fortunes back into the billions of dollars and took the gas out of the efforts against him, legally.  It’s quite an extraordinary story and is a lesson for all who study these kinds of things.  I love Truth Social; I was one of the very first people to join it as a social media platform, and I see it only getting better with time.  Even though the news that Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X has captured everyone’s attention, Truth Social has quietly gained some market dominance worth discussing.  X has been a significantly improved social media platform under Elon Musk’s ownership, but it has seen a decline in influence.  It has maintained its value to some extent, despite Musk’s claim that X is the number one app in Japan.  There is significant growth on these social media platforms.  However, Truth Social under Trump has emerged as the next great thing, and at a considerable time.

Like many people on Truth Social, I received an offer to participate in their Patriot Package, which provides access to what they call Truth+.  It’s like Disney+ but without all the liberal programming.  So I accepted their offer and have been very impressed with it.   As I started using it, I have been thinking that this is the next best thing in entertainment to come out.  It works a lot like Roku and has its lineup of programming, complete with a TV guide that you can access on your television or computer.  But the programming is better, and this is early in the process.  Already, it has Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News, as well as many other shows, such as The WarRoom, which is on Real America’s Voice, a news station that emerged to challenge Fox News during the same period of post-2020 censorship.  However, there is also sports coverage on it, as well as other programming that is growing, making it a viable entertainment option.  So Truth Social isn’t just a social media app where you can express opinions and get some basic news.  It’s becoming a complete entertainment package that is a real game changer for the media in general and decentralizes information in dramatic ways.  Even though Elon Musk restored President Trump’s X account once he gained ownership, and it could be said that a lot of what made Trump a great candidate in 2016 was his Twitter account where people could see him unfiltered from the media, Trump has kept his exclusive content confined to Truth Social out of loyalty and the necessity of development.  And it has paid off. 

I wasn’t sure what to think about Truth Social over these last few years.  I thought it was great that Trump could continue to post his opinions directly to the public, and people could pick up his message and carry it everywhere else.  And it has worked; it has dramatically decentralized the way a president of the White House communicates with the public.  For as long as there has been a media culture, they have had control over how and what communication is disseminated to the public.  This is something I learned several years ago: it is far better to provide your content to the public, even if fewer people initially see it, than to be accepted by a mainstream media outlet that has its own political goals.  Which we certainly saw with Fox News against Trump when they sought to make him a non-person.  That has been a widespread tactic and for well over a hundred years, has been a real problem regarding free speech.  Sure, you can say and think what you want, but what if nobody can hear it?  For a long time, newspapers and broadcasting dominated the narrative.  Twitter wasn’t the first social media platform to emerge, but it was among the first to provide alternatives, even if, under different leadership, it had a controlled intelligence narrative to steer society toward mass socialism, until Elon Musk changed that.  However, it remains that Truth Social is the official mouthpiece of President Trump, making it historically significant, and now emerging as something that I think will push the rest of the cord-cutters over the edge.  And Trump will replace people like Ted Turner as the king of entertainment options.  A sitting American president has never had the advantage of a personal media platform, which has been a source of incredible frustration for many American presidents, especially Theodore Roosevelt.  What Trump has been doing with Truth Social has been epic, but its significance is just getting started.

And when you control the message, or can’t, it decides what people want through the freedom of information.  In this way, people can express their political opinions without the filter of tampering to determine market viability.  Since the invention of mass media, essentially the printing press, human beings have never had this option authentically.  And now, through Truth Social, and subsequently Truth+, which you access through your regular social media account, there is a competitive option to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Hulu.  Once you pull up Truth+ on your television, it navigates through the channels just like Roku and Spectrum.  So this is a significant improvement for a social media platform that emerged essentially to give President Trump, sent into exile in the world, a voice to continue stating his opinions, and not to let him fall into the dust of history, as Rupert Murdoch indicated they would make him, which was a non-person.  Trump, out of necessity, has become the next entertainment mogul, and that is what it has taken to preserve the concept of free speech, even as we saw from the world just how dangerous it was to have all entertainment controlled by a radical leftist few.  Truth Social, through market capitalism, has emerged as a surprising frontrunner, and the world is changing dramatically as a result.  The goal isn’t to tell people what to think, but to let market viability determine which ideas emerge, as the speech is truly free for the first time. People tend to gravitate to where they can most express themselves through entertainment consumption, making Truth Social more than just a social media platform that communicates President Trump’s opinions.  But an entertainment platform that can replace what we have known in the past with something much better.  And if you are thinking of joining the Patriot Package for yourself, you can’t go wrong.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Radicalism of Stephen Colbert: Trying to kill off toxic masculinity as been very expensive and not worth it

There is a much deeper reason that the news about Stephen Colbert being taken off the air is such big news.  Or why ABC is re-thinking some of its daytime programming, such as The View.  There will be numerous television changes because many of these big production companies have been so committed to progressive causes that the financial impact of it is finally starting to catch up to them.  However, in everyday conversation, the real reasons for economic failures have been largely unexplored.  People know they are generally happy to hear that the Trump-hating Colbert is losing his late-night show, and that many of the other late-night hosts are in danger as well, because of the anti-Trump agenda.  Anti-Make America Great Again agenda points are not popular for good business.  And typically, CBS Studios, a division of Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, would not hesitate to donate $40 million to progressive political causes.  Which is what they are saying the show is losing per year.  It’s not about the money; it’s about the viability of the position.  Losing that much money by putting Stephen Colbert on television every night to attempt to destroy the Trump agenda is more or less a financial contribution to their political platform.  The problem for them is that they spent all that money and committed so many resources to it, yet they were unable to move the political needle at all.  Trump did not end up in jail, or bankrupt as radical liberals had fantasized about.  Instead, six months into his re-elected term, he is doing great, and there are no signs of him slowing down.  And he’s more popular than ever, which is breaking the back of the production companies and their commitment to communism that dates back to the fifties and sixties. 

I know quite a bit about all this as I have been discussing it for years.  For many people, it has been hard to connect the dots.  However, I hosted a major radio show on this topic, specifically centered on the release of the Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, where Disney killed the very popular character of Han Solo.  A friend of mine and I discussed the poor decision that Disney made in killing off the white hero Han Solo and replacing him with a DEI cast that nobody ever took to.  And now, ten years later, the things we said have turned out to be hauntingly accurate.  After that big, popular show, my friend received an offer to work at Disney for an excellent salary.  I always thought they did it to shut him up and get him off the air.  It is much easier to throw money at controversial voices to contain them somewhat.  My friend loved the Disney Company and hoped to improve it, so more power to him.  I told him there was no saving the company, but he had to try.  But the point of the matter is this: Disney didn’t need to kill off the original heroes of the Star Wars saga.  But they did it anyway, and they did it for purely political reasons.  That’s how radical the hatred in Hollywood is for the Make America Great Again movement, which was emerging openly as Disney was committing to these new Star Wars movies that had a DEI cast, and a killing off of the strongest character of them all, Han Solo, who was made popular by the very popular actor, Harrison Ford.

Now I’ve heard it all before.  People tell me that old Harrison Ford always wanted to kill off the character of Han Solo.  As an actor, he hears all the stories about toxic white masculinity, which he has made a lot of money over the years popularizing.  So, for him, to sacrifice one of his roles to the gods of progressivism is a logical choice.  And he has been saying for forty years that Han Solo should die in the Star Wars series.  However, George Lucas knew better, so they brought him back for The Return of the Jedi, and that character went on to become one of the biggest and most popular in the Star Wars brand.  If Han Solo is on the movie posters, people are excited for Star Wars and the toys that came from that series of movies.  But if the movie posters, as they turned out to be, were just diversity, equity, and inclusion characters, then the public was going to reject the offering.  And in that process, Disney killed the Star Wars brand forever.  I don’t think it will ever come back. The damage was so significant that they begged Harrison Ford to return and make an appearance in the last Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, but it was too late by then.  And Disney has not been making any more Star Wars movies because their DEI characters were being rejected left and right.  A similar controversy arose on The Mandalorian television show involving Gina Carano.  She turned out not to be a DEI hire, but a conservative fighter, and Disney tried to punish her for it, and it blew up in their faces in terrible ways.  We are seeing entertainment that is not intended to entertain, but rather to convey political messages through popular franchises, and it has turned out to be a disastrous business decision. 

So, the writing was already on the wall when Trump was re-elected, and Disney was already undergoing its assessment process.  They had to learn, as a large entertainment company, that their public would reject them if they did not produce content that they wanted.  Kathy Kennedy should have known better about the Han Solo character.  Her husband, Frank Marshell, should be able to help her understand it.  He produced all the Jurassic Park movies and was the German mechanic in the very popular Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, notably in the fight scene.  He’s not a progressive lunatic.  However, he and Kennedy are fans of Jimmy Buffett and music from that era, so they have a left-leaning side that certainly comes through in their movies.  Kathy, as a woman CEO, went completely DEI and began pushing for female directors and characters.  I mean, they killed off Han Solo, knowing he was the father figure of the series, and they gave his famous spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, to some girl that nobody knew, as if the public would just accept it.  And they never did.  And the franchise took a permanent hit that it will never recover from.  I tried to tell them.  My friend and I laid it all out on that now-famous radio show, so we know the Disney bigwigs heard it and offered us jobs afterwards.  I have had numerous companies offer me money to try to keep me quiet, essentially.  I don’t blame my friend for taking the money.  Many people do, and it can lead to a fulfilling life.  And that is essentially why nobody understands these kinds of things structurally.  But that’s what’s going on with Stephen Colbert, and many others that will follow.  The man-hating Hollywood has not been working, and if they want to survive at all, they will have to make adjustments because the consumer is the boss.  Not the studios, and they have had to learn some tough lessons, too late.  The ramifications of all those bad decisions are only now becoming well-known and prominent.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Don’t Cry for Obama: They opened the door for punishment of their many crimes

Don’t cry for Obama; he put himself in this mess.  And certainly don’t think that Obama is too privileged to do a perp walk in handcuffs in front of the media.  I will never forget it, or forgive it, when they marched Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, down a hall in handcuffs and put him in jail for four months, as they did Peter Navarro.  I will never forget the Trump mug shot when they booked him in Fulton County.  And when they did everything they could to destroy him with legal cases meant to kill his entire family, I will never forget what they did to Alex Jones, to Roger Stone, to Rudi Guiliani, Sydney Powell, and General Flynn.  What I watched happen over the last several years was nothing short of a coup against our form of government, and it was a communist revolutionary type like Barack Obama who was dead set to use all the powers of government to destroy our government in just the same way that Che and Fidel Castro did in Cuba.  Or any communist revolution for that matter, around the world, whether it be in China or Russia.  What they tried to do in the United States was every bit as bad, and they went for our jugular.  So now the shoe is on the other foot.  We have extensive evidence of what Obama directly did as president, which only confirms what we already suspected.  The evidence is significantly worse.  They didn’t just talk about destroying the people around Trump; they tried actually to do it, and where they could, they did.  So yes, when people ask me if it’s even possible to prosecute Barack Obama, a former president, it is because Democrats already opened the door to the possibility in the way they handled Trump.  Remember, the goal here is to define who runs our country, and if we let Obama and his gang of thugs loose, we surrender to their domestic terrorism in a way that will encourage others to do so in the future.  So I would argue that we can’t afford to let them get away with it.

After Trump made his feelings very clear about what Tulsi Gabbard had released to the public about what Obama’s role in the Russiagate scandal was, Obama released a statement essentially trying to hide his crime behind the dignity of the Oval Office, just as it was expected that the Deep State would hide his terrorist intentions behind his skin color.  Obama was created to undo the notion of a free country run by free people who picked their elected representatives.  And there are a whole bunch of malicious characters behind Barack Obama who need to be snuffed out and destroyed within American society.  It doesn’t just end with Obama.  But, Obama was caught trying to hold power as he was a sitting president, and he orchestrated a coup against the incoming administration that was every bit as radical as when the Castro brothers overtook Cuban society.  And Comey, Clapper, Clinton, Brennan, and many, many others deep within the CIA and FBI were in on it, and they paid for a doctored-up dossier working with foreign governments to undo a sitting president.  They broke every kind of protocol to destroy the results of a free election.  And all those involved must be punished because they didn’t respect our system the first time.  They laughed at our sense of justice and counted on their ability to hold office and control the legal outcome.  And when they had power, which people took away from them in the 2024 election, they abused their power, making it so that a counteraction is now mandated.  It’s not compassionate to let them go with all we know; it would be foolish.

There was always a notion behind the crimes Obama committed during his presidency that by the time everything caught up to him and his partners, America would be a different country.  In no scenario did they think that a person like Trump would become president, let alone twice.  And there were no calculations that Trump would survive all they threw at him to stop him from running for a second term.  Because they understand this, they know they have been winning elections through election fraud for years, and they are aware of what I have been saying about elections, whether we are talking about 2020, 2024, or any of the upcoming elections, such as 2026 or 2028.  If we keep Democrats from cheating, or make it harder for them, they can’t win elections because they are a dramatic minority, just as in the communist uprisings around the world had been, minorities taking control of majorities through the illusion of force.  And that was tried here in the United States by many members of our intelligence departments, and Obama was put in place to be the inserted wrecking ball, hiding his communist intentions behind his skin color, so that we couldn’t have an opinion on his actions because we had to prove we weren’t a racist country.  Or that we couldn’t prosecute him for what he did during his term, or as a puppeteer during the Biden years, because of some respectability of the office he held as a former president.  Trump was a former president, and they tried to destroy him and all his associates ruthlessly.  So now that the shoe is clearly on the other foot, we must have justice, and that means Obama in handcuffs, a mug shot, and jail time for the gross abuses of government he used to keep his party in power.

Don’t forget, if not for the whole Russiagate issue that Obama started, there would not be a war between Russia and Ukraine right now.  It was because of this deteriorated relationship with Russia that diplomacy crumbled, and a war was started that has killed many millions of people.  The war was always a cover story for the Steele Dossier and the people behind it, who were guilty of committing treason against our country to remove an elected president from office.  Trump isn’t the first time; they did it to Nixon, and they outright killed President Kennedy. Many of us have long suspected that those things happened, but now we have the proof, and we can’t just turn away from it.  We can’t allow a Deep State to think it’s in charge of our government.  And we have to punish their agents as we catch them, and Obama has been caught, without question.  Trump didn’t enter office looking to punish his political rivals.  However, he can’t disregard the crimes committed against him leading up to this point.  He has no obligation to turn away from justice, and that’s what we elected him to do.  People want to run a self-ruled government.  They don’t want a bunch of loser Deep Staters running their country for the benefit of globalism.  We have been too lenient in the past, which has given these people a false sense of security, leading them to believe they could get away with anything.  So yes, we have to send a message.  But don’t fret over the methods.  Obama and many others already went too far with Trump, and now the shoe is on the other foot.  So don’t cry for Obama.  It won’t start color revolutions in the streets to see him arrested and marched down the street in chains.  He did it to himself, and now he and many others must pay for the crimes they committed.  And no amount of fancy talk will help him now.  He’s busted!  And if people take to the streets to protest the arrest of Obama, we will bust them too, arrest by arrest, and if they get violent, with bone-crushing force. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Thank Goodness Kristi Noem Thought to Ask the Question: We don’t have to take our shoes off at the airport anymore

Thank goodness Kristi Noem thought to ask the question, because many things in government are just like this.  Someone comes up with a stupid rule, and we end up following it for the rest of our lives without question, even though it was dumb to begin with.  And that was certainly the case when it came to the security measures that were implemented after 9/11.  Our FBI and CIA didn’t do a very good job in detecting a terrorist cell within the United States training to fly planes in Florida, but not caring to land them, and our security got caught napping, so those terrorists were able to get onto commercial planes and use them as weapons of war.  And the crises of that moment made people clamor for corrective action, which human beings most often overreact to.  And the Department of Homeland Security was created, giving us the TSA, and the dumb policy of removing shoes at the airport while going through security.  Now, over twenty years later, it hasn’t saved anyone anything, but it has certainly cost a lot of time and misery.  And until Kristi Noem was put in charge of Homeland Security and asked everyone working there why we were still taking off our shoes at security checks, nobody had an answer.  The only thing they could say was that we were doing it because we had always done it.  Never was the question asked whether we should be doing it at all.  Thankfully, Kristi Noem, due to the weak reaction to that question, changed the policy, and we no longer have to remove our shoes at airport security checkpoints.  It’s a significant step toward addressing many issues that amusement parks have already identified.  An overreaction to security to cover the impediment of actually doing the job the first time is a dumb idea, and it’s good to see that policy go.

It has been terrible to deal with the security procedures since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The entire creation of the unionized TSA has been a disaster, making traveling by plane a miserable experience.  I try not to do it unless I have to travel overseas, because essentially it takes all day to travel.  I never feel comfortable arriving at the airport less than two hours before a flight because many things can go wrong, especially at security.  Nobody is saying that we don’t want security on flights.  However, it’s the kind of overcompensation that we see with the TSA that’s the problem.  Private security would be much better than unionized labor, which often fails to perform effectively in any field.  There is plenty of technology these days that can detect bomb making equipment just through a quick scan.  We don’t need to take off half our clothes through the demeaning process of vulnerability in front of hundreds of other people.  This idea of stripping away your identity into a near locker room vulnerability is just dumb and lazy.  And it never made us a safer society.  It just made us feel that way.  If people just did their jobs the first time, many of the well-known terrorist attempts that we know of on airplanes wouldn’t have happened.  However, these days, the technology is so advanced and intrusive that there’s no need to take off all your clothes to board an airplane.  With domestic flights, and I fly out of Cincinnati, if the destination is east of the Mississippi River, it’s much better and faster to drive.  And because of that, think of how much money airlines lose because of the TSA rules.

People don’t talk about it as much as they should. Think how much money Homeland Security has cost airline companies by being such a pain in the neck that people don’t buy plane tickets.  It’s a massive opportunity cost.  Before the creation of Homeland Security and the introduction of the TSA’s overly restrictive rules, many airlines had significantly larger hubs.  Delta operated a central hub that served numerous destinations from Cincinnati well into the 1990s.  Because flying was easy and not so intrusive, people chose to do it.  Once they turned the experience into essentially a locker room at the YMCA, it has cost airlines a lot of money in lost opportunity cost.  Some of the low-cost carriers have found a way to adapt somewhat.  However, the experience of flying has deteriorated significantly.  If you want to dress up and go somewhere to show the best version of you to the world, you don’t fly in a plane.  Because it’s such a demeaning experience.  And for a long time, amusement parks were just as bad.  However, they have recently upgraded their scanners, and as a result, they wave everyone through much faster.  The scanners can practically see through your clothing, leaving nothing to the imagination.  But at least you don’t have to strip down almost naked to go through security.  We live in a society that needs to do things faster, not slower, or safer.  We need people to do their jobs better the first time, and everything would work so much better.  And to Kristi Noem’s point, nobody had even thought to ask the question, “Why are we doing this dumb thing?” all this time.  When the answer was, “because we have always done it.” 

The convenience of flying and getting somewhere far away quickly has become a ridiculous compromise of personal merit, and it never should have been.  The airport’s safety policies have ruined the experience of traveling with others because people often show up in their pajamas, knowing that their travel day is going to be intrusive and demeaning. When you pay that much money for something, it shouldn’t feel the way it does.  It should be fun and rewarding.  People should dress nicely when going to the airport.  By default, due to excessive regulations, airports have become unpleasant places with excessive security, ineffective communication systems, and dirty and uncomfortable seats.  And the staff treat the whole experience like you’re lucky to be there, rather than being grateful that you bought a ticket that funded all their jobs.  The concept of prioritizing safety over profits, when in reality it was always laziness that was the real problem, has made owning an airline too complicated and a draining experience for customers.  And if not for Homeland Security and the TSA specifically, we’d have many more consumer options in airports that are much better for us than what we currently have.  And most of the time, it always starts with asking the right questions from leadership. “Why are we doing this dumb thing?”  And when nobody can answer it, you eliminate the policy.  Thank goodness, because of Kristi Noem, we no longer have to take our shoes off at the airport.  And hopefully, we can roll back many other misguided ideas that were implemented in haste to make people feel safe, when the reality was far from the case.  In all things economic, whether it’s amusement parks or airports, faster is better, and more options are always preferred.  And we don’t want dumb, mindless rules to ruin economic activity that should bring us joy and opportunity.  Just because lazy security guards don’t take their jobs very seriously and have to be turned into a union-led monstrosity to give an illusion of effectiveness, the truth is very far from it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Showing Courage on Ohio Property Taxation: It was always a socialist game that should have never started

It takes a lot of guts to try to override a governor’s veto, and that is just what Matt Huffman and the House Republicans are poised to do on July 21st, 2025, in Columbus, Ohio.  They have been trying to reform property taxes in House Bill 96 in three key areas, eliminating replacement levies, which often lead to tax increases.  Republicans want to phase them out.  The second thing is that they wish to implement county-level cuts, giving county budget commissions the authority to lower property taxes if the local governments or schools collect more than they need.  Then the third thing is to adjust the 20-mill floor, changing how the formula is calculated to reduce school funding as property values continue to rise, potentially.  DeWine vetoed these parts of the bill, arguing that they’d create enormous problems for schools by disrupting funding stability.  It takes a lot of guts for Huffman and other Republicans, including the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, to stand behind these reforms and push for a 60-vote majority.  It will be close.  If the House can get it over to the Senate, the Senate has the votes, so it really will come down to whether Republicans dare to part with DeWine and override him as they should.  Many people talk tough on the campaign trail, and this is one of those times when real courage is needed.  It would be beneficial if Republicans could step up and take the lead at this critical juncture.  Many people would take pride in a good government headed in the right direction.  Because what DeWine is protecting is loaded with bad government misery that is headed for reform regardless.  There is no stopping the reforms to private property that are going to take place. 

I feel like everywhere these days, I have to say it, and there are a lot of people who don’t think about these things very much who don’t want to hear it.  However, I’ve been pointing it out for years, so the road to this July 21st vote is a very long one.  And it’s just the start of many things to come.  The next governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I had the chance to discuss this very topic with just a few weeks ago, is looking at major reforms on private property taxation.   President Trump is discussing the same concept, namely, the elimination of private property taxation all together.  It will take several years to get there, but that’s where the current sentiment is headed.  And people like Mike DeWine, who have been a part of building that old system, know that it will disrupt the way they envisioned funding for government and services.  However, those old trends are what have put us in our current budgetary situation.  We are going to have some tough discussions, just as we are currently with the Federal Reserve.  A group of independent bankers can’t be allowed to strangle billions of dollars of opportunity cost out of our economy just to protect lenders’ profit margins, when the growth potential of reform could generate so much more than the old static measures.  For those who think that punishing property ownership is the way to fund the level of government we may want as a society, it essentially comes down to choice: do you trust the free market, or the minds of humanity to impose burdens to pay for government services, such as school funding?  For DeWine, he’s just never going to be ready to admit that years and years of socialism are behind the creation of property tax penalties to pay for public education.  And, of course, the teachers’ unions control that entire industry, leading to cost overruns that our out-of-control local governments must deal with, leaving behind expensive chaos.

So you can’t help but talk about socialism, communism, and Marxism in general when we discuss how taxation against private property came into our culture to begin with, because we have gone through a period where Democrats and soft shelled Republicans didn’t want to believe to what level Karl Marx influenced legislative policy making going back to the beginning of the last century.  Much of the American expansion period, from 1850 on, saw a significant influx of European socialists who entered the country and introduced their Karl Marx-inspired ideas, which ultimately infected our free enterprise system with penalties against private property.  And it has gone on for so long that we just assumed that’s the way it has to be.  However, this has led to runaway costs, as we have seen in public schools currently, and penalties against those who own property, as they pay more for the same services than, say, an apartment dweller who requires far more tax services, far more than they pay.  It’s a very unfair system that undermines the premise of private property, destroying the American idea, and it was baked into all the progressive taxation policies that came with the creation of the Fed in 1913, a mistake at its inception that has only worsened over time.  There are old politicians, like DeWine, who have carried these mistaken ideas throughout their entire political life, and they are trying to preserve them for all kinds of unhealthy reasons.  However, the temperament lies in reforming that basic concept. 

Of course, what would replace these revenue devices would be a use tax of some kind, as well as sales tax in general.  However, that relies on the market’s growth mechanisms, similar to Trump’s tariffs.  People were against those for the same reason, and only now, a few months into his second term, are people beginning to see the logic, fruitfully.  After a few years of Trump, many significant economic developments will become a reality that people cannot see now.  Yet, as with the trend on private property, we should incentivize people to own as much private property as possible.  The taxes on it are part of a socialist scheme from the beginning that was always part of the plan to grow government.  There is no way to determine the correct funding model for public schools if property owners bear the burden for the benefit of those who can’t afford property.  It’s a wealth redistribution scam that’s baked into the policy of collecting taxes to grow government in ways that nobody can reliably control, because it’s a tax against the few for the needs of the many.  And it takes away the incentive to invest and create.  What we know now is that encouraging growth would generate significantly more revenue through optimism, as opposed to the current system of oppression.  In short, take the socialism, communism, and Marxism out of the legislative process, and the economy works far better, and at that point, you can see what your actual revenue stream would be, and can make much better decisions for how to construct society, such as elements of school funding and per-pupil budget needs.  With the system as it is, we can’t even have the discussion.  There is a significant chance for the Ohio House to take a bold, Trump-like action.  However, the trend, regardless, is working against old politicians like DeWine and is moving away from penalizing private property ownership.  Whether that happens on July 21st, 2025, or at a later time, the taxation of private property is headed for significant reform and disruption of the current methods.  It would be better sooner if people could find the courage.  But eventually, it’s happening anyway, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.  Because it never should have been created in the first place.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Bernie Moreno is Doing Great as a Senator: The Fed interest rate should be at 2%, not 4

I am pleased with the work that my new Senator, Bernie Moreno, is doing in Washington, D.C. It’s almost a shame that Trump is doing such a good job that great people like Bernie Moreno are being overlooked amidst all the goodness.  But that’s a good problem to have.  Bernie, in particular, has been great at keeping up the pressure on the Fed, and specifically, Jerome Powell.  So, let’s answer a common question first: No, our Federal Reserve doesn’t need to be independent of politics.  That is the dumbest thing perhaps ever said.  That our political system needs to be separate from our fiscal policy is an entirely dumb idea that needs to be destroyed in our era.  The Fed’s independence is only suitable for one entity, and that is the banks.  It’s there for their protection and nothing else. And because of that assumption, banks and all financial institutions have gained way too much power in the world, and they need their teeth knocked out in substantial ways.  Old man Jerome Powell and all the rest who came before him at the Federal Reserve need a reality check, and I’m more than happy to see that Bernie Moreno has been leading the charge to reform.  Warren Davidson, my congressman, has also been excellent on this issue.  Criticism of the Fed is a very good thing, and here’s why.  I have recently received more education than I ever wanted regarding banking practices, and the more you learn, the more obvious it becomes that many of these banking types have been influenced by comfortable terms that have inspired very anti-American activity.  The way the Fed was created was outside our Constitution, and the belief over the years that it should be separate from other social concerns has only benefited banks by providing a stable environment for them, even if harm is being inflicted on the people who are voting. 

This idea that our elected government would not have direct control over fiscal policy is an absolute joke, but that has been the assumption.  When people say that Bernie Moreno, Warren Davidson, or President Trump should respect an independent Fed, they are smoking crack.  Currently, the economy is humming along nicely, with excellent job reports, energy costs coming down, and a significant amount of money being generated from tariffs. However, this activity has not had the intended effect of raising fears of inflation, as the Fed had anticipated.  Inflation, generally speaking, is when you have too much money chasing too few goods.  The Fed has been accused of printing too much money, which causes inflation to saturate the market.  The Biden administration had too many rules, which constricted market saturation for desired goods and services, leading to inflation.  Inflation is usually caused by standing in the way of human enthusiasm.  Price breaks occur due to market saturation, revealing the actual price that a person is willing to pay for a product or service.  You can usually figure that out if you have four fast food restaurants selling their version of a hamburger.  If you have only one, they can charge whatever they want for a hamburger.  However, if you have four places to choose from, then they must compete for your attention.  Therefore, when a government effectively removes barriers to market entry, a tangible value can be expressed.  However, when a government creates obstacles, we can say that we witness inflated values due to the restriction of that enthusiasm.  And that is precisely what the Fed is currently guilty of doing. 

Currently, the rates set by the Federal Open Market Committee, FOMC, are in the range of 4.25% to 4.5% which equates to about $600 billion of money generated for lenders.  Nobody is saying that banks and other financial institutions shouldn’t pay a fair wage.  Credit card companies make it extremely easy to spend money with the swiping machines and chips that we have today, where nearly every transaction for a mature adult is monitored by their computer systems, making it easy for all of us to spend money.  That is a valuable service, but it is currently being done at an artificially high rate because the Fed policy protects lenders at the expense of the public, the voters.  As Trump and Bernie Moreno have been saying, we are probably sitting on at least two interest rate points too high for what this Red-Hot American economy should be, holding back over a trillion dollars from money flowing into our financial system.  The excuse from Jerome Powell for keeping interest rates as high as they are is to keep inflation in check.  However, as it stands, the Fed has been contributing to inflation, rather than preventing it.  And that has been grotesquely obvious with their sinful relationship with BlackRock.  The Fed printed too much money, which was then distributed through Wall Street, as seen through people like Larry Fink, and this money was used to acquire companies, effectively taking away private ownership and control, which is why I have been discussing this issue so intensely.  The foundation of communism is to abolish the concept of private property, and the Fed has been facilitating the subversion of this foundation at the bank level in very detrimental ways.  And when we have tried to address it, we keep hearing that the Fed needs to be independent of political theater.  No, that’s only good for one party, the banks.

Trump’s approach to the economy has been brilliant.  Usually, we rarely find political figures who understand fiscal policy as well as banks do, so there is always an unfair advantage.  But in Bernie’s case, and Trump’s, they have had to slug it out with banks in the past and understand the games as opposed to the typical loser politician who has done nothing else in their life but get elected to a public position.  And once you know that the name of the game is to take away as much risk as possible from banks and to give them enormous power in the process, then the errors become very obvious.  If we got rid of Jerome Powell at the Fed and put in someone who truly represented the Trump administration, and would bring down interest rates into the 2% range, we would see wealth creation beyond the scope of what anybody thought previously to be possible.  And everyone would make a lot of money in the process, including the banks.  However, this 4.5% approach is excessively restrictive and primarily focuses on exerting power over the political process and securing international financing.  And no, the Fed doesn’t have to be independent of our elected representatives.  We need a monetary policy in America that is representative of the people, who seek representatives to run their government on their behalf.  And the Fed is only suitable for shielding international banks from the whims of political sentiment.  The only people profiting from these high interest rates are the banks.  However, in the process, they restrict economic output, such as having only one place to buy a hamburger, as opposed to four.  And if Powell wants to fight it out to hold his term to its close, he should feel the pressure that people hate him for artificially restricting their options.  Interest rates should be at 2%, not 4%.  And when that happens, the grip that socialism and communism around the world have on all this centralized banking will lose control over mass populations, and a real era of prosperity can begin.  And Bernie Moreno gets it, and I’m proud that he does.  The Fed stronghold is breaking, as it should.  And we are seeing the light on the other side, perhaps for the first time in all human history.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

I Would Have Shot Them: No protestor has a right to throw rocks, under any conditions

I would have shot them, the protestors who were throwing rocks at the ICE vehicles leaving the illegal immigration raid on the pot farm in California.  Rocks are considered a deadly weapon, and any federal agent who is hit by a rock is no different than having some lunatic lunge at them with a knife, or to fire a shot from a gun.  And throwing rocks into the driver’s side window of a Federal vehicle, shatter-resistant or not, is solid enough ground to use deadly force to stop.  With shatterproof glass, once a window starts to become compromised, and some of those vehicles were, continued impacts in the same area could allow the rocks to get through, and those could have been deadly.  The ICE agents did not have an obligation to flee, which they were trained to do, and that is part of the problem.  We are a stand-and-fight country, especially when it comes to law enforcement.   Those agents were just doing their jobs, and those rock-throwing ICE protestors were crossing the line with encouraged violence.  And part of that encouragement was that they did not think that the ICE agents would fight back, which encouraged the violence in the first place.  The reason many of these protests are so violent and dangerous is that there has grown an expectation that all government employees have been trained to flee rather than fight, and this has caused unwarranted aggression to grow with the expectation that violence would only flow one way.  And it would be far healthier for society to understand that impeding government operations with deadly force opens the door for a deadly response.  And as hard as those protestors were throwing those rocks at those fleeing vehicles, their deadly motivations couldn’t have been presented more obviously. 

I know it’s a pain in the neck to fill out the forms when you do shoot someone, but this California case called for it.  And it would have made future protestors think twice before doing it again.  All they would have had to do upon a rock impact striking the driver’s side window was to get out of the car and open fire into the nearest perpetrator, shooting to kill.  The paperwork processing would have been fine.  I know that the bosses of the ICE agents, trained under years of progressive understanding, have been taught to use non-lethal force and to play patty cake with these kinds of people, and none of them want to kill protestors on their watch.  So they put these ICE agents out knowing that the environment is more dangerous because of their policy decisions, because they encourage violence by not meeting it when it presents itself.  And now an entire generation of protestor types believe they can exert deadly force without having it turn back on them, and nobody takes it seriously any longer.  Nobody should think that throwing a rock at anybody is appropriate under any condition.  And at some point, ICE agents need to fight back.  Rubber bullets and stun guns just aren’t enough to use against stringy-haired socialists and radical left-wing America haters.  Before a protester arrives on the scene to throw a rock, they need to be aware of the potential consequences.  And these kids in California had no such fear, even to the point of running right up to the passenger’s side window of fleeing vehicles and tossing big rocks with all their force into windows they didn’t know were shatter-resistant or not.  At the least, they cause a lot of property damage that taxpayers are on the hook for, and the preservation of their mangy lives wasn’t worth it.  Once they decided to throw a rock, all consideration for their preservation was no longer relevant.

And is this what we’re talking about preserving, as far as the jobs illegal immigration performs, to work as underage pot pickers on a farm that provides marijuana to an already sketchy market?  I love the work ethic of immigrant labor.  I always appreciate hard workers.  But we’re supposed to believe that we have to accept tens of millions of illegal immigrants to cover jobs like this pot farm in California?  These are the kinds of jobs that I find personally useless, and if that’s what it takes to bring down the price of pot in legal states, then let the prices fall off the rocker.  Clean operations that are financially solid wouldn’t need illegal immigration to perform basic tasks.  And now watching some of the ridiculous comments from some of these ICE protestors, such as the current L.A. Mayor, are grotesquely overstated.  Even going so far as to say that we won’t be able to get our cars washed if we deport all these illegals.  If we deported tens of millions of illegals, it’s evident that legitimate businesses would be just fine, and people would not notice.  But what would be impacted are all the illegitimate businesses that are operating under the table, and that sounds like a good thing, not a bad thing.  Eliminating under-the-table labor would force many companies to clean up their current employment practices, which the California facility was found to be guilty of.  And defending that way of life was why rocks were justified in being thrown?  I don’t think so.  This isn’t a free speech issue; it’s an insistence on breaking the law issue, and ultimately comes down to law enforcement and whether everyone respects the basic premise of law and order. 

So I would have shot those protestors on the spot after the first rock had been thrown.  Granted, my profile type would likely keep me from any kind of federal employment.  I am a very aggressive concealed carry individual.  I openly walk around ready for violence all the time, and everyone knows it.  I would prefer not to shoot people, but I am always prepared to do so as soon as danger presents itself.  And my thinking on that is to call a spade what it is, and not to feed the perpetuation of violence with passive presentation of my livelihood.  And if everyone had that attitude, there would be a lot more respect for federal agents than we currently have.  However, the kind of administrative personnel we put in these jobs do not hire people like me; they have made a lot of DEI hires who would prefer not to blame people when bad things happen.  So that’s certainly part of the problem.  But until we do start seeing people shot for perpetuating violence into an otherwise peaceful society, we’ll see increases in violence that we just can’t tolerate, such as in the ICE raid on that California pot farm, a place of business that shouldn’t have been operating on a good day.  To keep a company like that alive is only making society worse upstream by producing the product it does.  So it would have been good for the government ICE agents to stand and fight, rather than flee and retreat as rocks were being thrown at their vehicles.  The moment a rock struck a car, the entire engagement changed, and deadly force should have been used.  We have to stop playing nice with these anti-American forces.  I would even go so far to say that lethal force should be used upon the burning of the American flag because such a jesture isn’t a free speech right, it’s a purposeful display that the laws of America are being cast aside, which makes the people doing so very dangerous, and in need of removal to maintain the peace.  And those are the discussions we need to be having.  And if I were driving those cars, there would have been less rock throwing, because those protestors would have been shot where they stood.  I would have gladly filled out the paperwork and still been home in time for dinner without a second thought.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707