Category: conronavirus

The Impairment Playbook: One of the biggest threats to American infrastructure

One of my many roles is Vice President of Manufacturing, Facilities, and Program Management at CTL Aerospace. At Senator George Lang’s fundraiser on November 1st, 2025, everyone I spoke with was primarily interested in an update on the Chapter 11 filing for the company.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago when Vivek Ramaswamy came to CTL to announce his run for Governor, so there were lots of people cheering that the company would find a way through to the other side of a challenging financial situation.  And to make matters worse, our case was not one of not having customers or income, but rather part of a widespread suppression campaign by our bank that many privately owned Tier 2 suppliers have experienced over the last decade.  Only in the case of CTL Aerospace, the ownership has shown a very rigorous desire to hold ownership rather than to be pushed aside, essentially by pirates who just wanted to raid our ship and steal all the plunder for a quick flip on the market, as a turn and burn, as they like to say.  The context and legal positioning regarding CTL Aerospace’s Chapter 11 proceedings, specifically the compelling basis for equitable subordination under 11 U.S.C. §510(c). The facts of our case, supported by documented creditor misconduct and predatory financial behavior, are now a very public matter, so the personalities involved are in the public record. 

CTL Aerospace—a 79-year-old aerospace manufacturer—has faced targeted financial suppression during a period of global supply chain instability. The aggressor in this case refused to extend forbearance, coupled with abrupt covenant enforcement and term manipulation, directly impaired our ability to procure raw materials and maintain operational continuity, resulting in massive damages for which everyone in the crowd I was speaking with was very interested. These actions were timed to coincide with industry-wide distress and reflect a pattern of bad faith and strategic impairment.  And the target against us was the “goodwill” of our business, the brand that we had built over a long period of time, the intangibles that are often overlooked in modern business because nobody prosecutes those kinds of cases anymore.  Even though they certainly should and would otherwise if the costs weren’t so prohibitively high.  Once you get into something like this, you see a real menace to the infrastructure of America that is determined to erode our manufacturing base by international banks, who, just like pirates, are seeking short-term plunder and quick sales on the hedge fund market.  When you attack a company’s “goodwill” through purposeful suppression techniques, which a bank can do since it is the mechanism through which all cash for a company flows, if it breaches that fiduciary trust, it can really wreck a business.  And as I found out during this process, it’s not just CTL Aerospace going through this kind of thing, but it’s common in the nation right now, as many private owners we know closely have had to step out of the game and get into the name change cycle every few years, which has caused all kinds of supply chain instability.  Again, much of this is now public record, and people have been following the case. They wanted me to provide an undercover perspective, as this is a very political problem, a matter of national security, which is undoubtedly the case at CTL Aerospace.

Case law supports our position, which is to fight back and seek damages for the massive financial impact on our company’s goodwill. In Citicorp Venture Capital, Ltd. v. Committee of Creditors Holding Unsecured Claims (In re Papercraft Corp.), 211 B.R. 813 (W.D. Pa. 1997), the court subordinated a creditor’s claim due to inequitable conduct that harmed other creditors and the debtor’s reorganization prospects. Similarly, In re Fabricators, Inc., 926 F.2d 1458 (5th Cir. 1991), emphasized that insider status and control over the debtor’s financial decisions can trigger subordination when used to the detriment of the estate.  And that was certainly the case at CTL Aerospace in really extraordinary ways.  But often, such defenses are never applied because by the time you go through the Chapter 11 process, a company doesn’t have the money to fight, which means you essentially have to hire $3000 per hour lawyers to run the case.  Because the banks certainly have those types on their side. In this case, the conduct—potentially documented in internal communications and covenant enforcement timelines—suggests a deliberate strategy to induce distress and position itself for asset acquisition or impairment accounting. We are actively pursuing discovery to uncover these records and may seek engagement with the DOJ or OCC for a lender liability review.  And based on the evidence we have and the timeline, which many have told us from an insider perspective is a classic case of “The Playbook,” would be an easy case to prosecute.  And likely a large settlement.  But that’s not where my mind is, or some of the people involved in this with me.  We want to see much deeper punishment for the entire financial industry, because this hasn’t just happened to us.  It’s a significant impediment to the economic backbone of the entire American manufacturing industry.  It’s not enough for us to survive, which we look poised to do.  However, to illustrate what was done. 

I explained it like this to many people at the fundraiser, and it was good to chat with Senator Bernie Moreno, who is doing a great job in D.C., and Congressman Warren Davidson who has been fantastic over the role of the Fed in government and is very cerebral in problem resolution, imagine you are a big deer with a full rack of antlers, a 10 pointer.  You have lived a long time, and it shows in the development of your antlers.  But one unfortunate day, you try to cross a road and you get hit by a car, breaking your hip or leg.  The driver keeps going.  You are lying there helpless.  Then a cringy pick-up truck comes along with a very loathsome character getting out, who sees an opportunity for a free mount on his cabin wall to brag about.  He sees the big deer with the whole rack and thinks it’s an excellent opportunity to kill the deer and hang the head on his wall for bragging rights.  He didn’t do the work of hunting the deer, but nobody will ever know.  Typically, in a business cycle, the deer would find a way to crawl away into the woods to heal and restore itself to life after such an accident.  In CTL’s business, a global supply chain issue put us under significant stress.  However, rather than helping CTL, the bank adopted a suppression strategy, essentially running the deer over with a car so they could hang the easy kill on their portfolio management wall for bragging rights and a path to easy money.  And from my perspective, based on the evidence, there is a prominent political position in all this, too, a hatred for the Trump administration and this notion of Making America Great Again.  Patriotic companies like CTL Aerospace, which are privately owned and conduct a significant amount of defense work, are prime targets.  They are the 10-point bucks that would look great on a very progressive trophy wall for financial institutions.  However, the facts of the case are sufficient.  It was a sloppy case on the opposition’s part; they made numerous mistakes that they thought they could hide behind expensive lawyers.  But the case law certainly doesn’t favor them. 

When everyone asked me what needs to happen in this case, I gave my point of view, which is prosecution on equitable subordination under 11 U.S.C. §510(c).  The attacker is demoted from a secured creditor, and their impairment play is wrapped up in a case law lesson.  However, the issue would have to be taken out of their control, as they currently hold a monopoly status in the courts and the financial mechanism.  At the very least, this is a case of predatory accounting that should serve as a cautionary lesson for similar cases.  And as long as it’s going on, it violates any notion that Ohio, or America, can sustain new business activity when these practices are hindering the behavior.  It’s a significant threat to our economy and national security.  Over the course of the last year, we spoke to a lot of people to get involved, and once they realized that CTL was in the squeeze play, they didn’t want to get wrapped up in the whole effort for fear of being sucked in themselves.  Like the deer example, they felt sorry for the deer but didn’t dare to help, fearing they would be poached themselves. 

I told the same story over and over, but it has a lot of details, so I wrote it down here, as most of the attendees are very interested in the topics I discuss.  This financial behavior is actually part of a larger collapse of political and social order that is occurring in most industries. This lack of respect for goodwill, for instance, is precisely why the Disney Company is struggling these days, as it owns intangibles such as movie rights, brand names, and amusement parks.  But they have, through woke corporate practices, destroyed the “goodwill” of the company that Uncle Walt built, and people wanted to be associated with.  Hedge fund people think in terms of tangibles, such as the head of a 10-point buck on their wall to brag about.  However, what truly adds value to the marketplace is the intangible of “goodwill.”  And that’s what the fight at CTL Aerospace is really about, and why so many people were interested in an update.  Most of these tier 2 companies don’t put up much of a fight.  Once wounded, they sell off to make the pain end as quickly as possible.  And that is what the opposition thought was going to happen here.  Only it didn’t, and the stand and fight part was not something they were quite ready for.  And that’s where the case is as of now. Significant reforms to the finance industry are needed, as this is certainly not the only example.  And suppose we really want to make America Great Again. In that case, we need to punish these predatory practices of fiduciary terrorism through “goodwill” destruction because it’s a real problem for virtually everyone whose lives are touched in terrifying ways by it.

Rich Hoffman

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

Trump’s Big Beautiful Ballroom: Leading the world starting with real bathrooms

Of course, it’s been a suppression effort from the start, but that’s all behind us now.  Trump has torn down the East Wing of the White House and is building his Big Beautiful Ballroom, and Democrats are having a major meltdown over it.  But of course, the opposition isn’t about money, which the whole effort is being funded privately by Trump and his supporters; the goal is a continuation of what we have seen from Democrats going all the way back to the Clintons in the White House.  Remember when they would put sex toys on Christmas Trees when they were in the White House, and the scandal of them selling access to the Lincoln bedroom?  I’ve pointed it out here many times: the deliberate effort not to give speeches in the Oval Office and, as much as possible, to dethrone the role of the White House on the world stage, in their efforts to erase America and usher in the age of the global citizen.  Barack Obama was really obvious about taking as much of the Office of the White House —the role of the President of the United States — and diminishing it in the world, rather than propping it up.  And when we would point it out, it was called a conspiracy theory, a wild right-winged illusion!  But the truth has come out in the actions of Democrat presidents based on their behavior and their hatred of this Trump ballroom says it all, because it defies the logic of someone who wanted to be proud of their country.  It is conducive to someone who wants to see it destroyed.  And I say all this because my wife and I recently visited the White House, and I can report that the place is a lot different than when Biden was there. 

Remember when Biden would give speeches at that little film studio they did to replace the White House?  That was on purpose, to diminish the White House’s role in the world.  And they’ll tell you that much at the museum and visitors’ center for the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, just to the east.  The White House was deliberately built small to avoid poking Europe in the eye.  We had built a nation that was throwing off the kingly role of government leadership, and the point was to downplay aristocracy as much as possible.  But we all knew what Trump was before we elected him.  Trump has always been about gold and showing off his winnings in the competitions of life.  And that’s one of the reasons we wanted him in the White House.  America was the world’s leading economy and offered the best opportunities for a good life to anyone who dared work for it.  And we wanted to inspire the world, not bend the knee to it, as Barack Obama had been doing.  When the White House was built, it was meant to send a message that Americans weren’t going to try to mimic the palaces of Europe, that America was planning to mind its own business, do the basic work of government, and retire to the countryside once the Executive jobs were done in the People’s House.  But that was a time when America was a new country trying to find its way.  What emerged defines the role of the White House, and it has needed something like a ballroom for a very long time.  Visiting the White House, nobody should be using a porta-potty for an important event. 

The new ballroom is over 90,000 square feet and costs around $300 million, with $200 million from private donors, including Trump himself.  Trump did get a legal settlement from YouTube for $22 million, which has gone toward the construction budget, so it’s a grand affair, being funded privately.  Certainly not by the taxpayers.  The goal is to have the ballroom finished by the end of Trump’s term in 2029.  The buzz out there says that only 25% of the public supports it, according to the Democrat suppression polls that are out there, which still hope to keep America in a state of depression.  That game is why Biden would speak at that weird little studio set rather than in and around the Oval Office.  They only used those traditional backgrounds when they had to.  But now everyone knows the game of suppression, that’s why Biden had people on his staff who would film themselves having sex in important buildings, a gay rights protestor was its spokesperson, the autopen became the real president that anybody could sign.  The decentralization of the White House was well at play during Biden’s term, which most reasonable people understand now was an overthrow of Trump’s first term.  And the point was to put him and the idea of a glorified and proud America out of the public eye.  And now, Trump is back and building a ballroom that would rival his private estate of Mar-a-Lago in Florida.  And it will be around for a long time.  It’s time that America stopped apologizing for being good and an inspiration to the downtrodden.  And start showing the world what adopting capitalism is all about, and why they should do it.  The ballroom should be their experience when visiting the White House, and when they leave, they should remember it for the rest of their lives. 

I recently sat down with a good friend of mine, Senator George Lang, and we talked about our years together fighting all kinds of issues.  His latest battle is one with stage 4 cancer, which many people consider a death sentence.  He doesn’t, and neither do I.  I think we have cures for cancer right now.  What we have is an oppressive healthcare system that wants people to die to rid the earth of their breathing presence.  And that same hatred is reflected in the attitude toward the White House.  Democrats want people sick and dependent.  And they want them to use the bathroom in a tent on the White House lawn when they visit.  But the senator and I agreed that we would celebrate him being cancer-free when we visited the White House together when the new ballroom opens, which tells you what he thinks about his chances of survival.  But by then, a lot will have changed for the better, and the White House improvements are just the cosmetic aspect of it.  America is learning to be what the world needs out of it.  And the bad guys who have been standing in the way are now getting run over.  So why appease them even slightly?  Why not build a grand ballroom with working bathrooms where people from around the world can come to the White House and be inspired to take capitalism home with them?  And George’s optimism about his own future isn’t rooted in blind sentiment and delusional hope, but in the facts of the matter.  Democrats have wanted American culture dead, and they certainly wanted to downplay the White House and its global significance.  We elected Trump to elevate the office because we didn’t like what Democrats had been doing to it during the Clinton years, during Obama’s time, and indeed when Joe Biden was inserted in as a stage puppet and his entire administration was run by consultants and public relations firms through the autopen.  As a country, we are turning away from all that, and the Trump Big Beautiful Ballroom is the result of that effort, which will usher in a whole new age for the world with America as the example of goodness, which is how it’s supposed to be.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Lakota Levy of 2025 is Just the First Step: Until there are conservatives on the school board, public schools will seek tax increases

I’m really proud of the interview I did with Senator George Lang just ahead of the election of 2025.  George, first and foremost, is a friend of mine, so I tend not to drag him into things I’m involved in, and when it comes to politics, he and I agree on most everything.  The only significant difference is that he tends to be more considerate of people than I am.  He gives the other side more of a voice than I think they deserve, because he’s a nice guy.  During our interview, when he said that he thinks of Lakota school board members Julie Shaffer and Kelly Casper as friendly people, I disagreed with him.  I think between the two of them at a drunken school board meeting out of town, you couldn’t find enough clothes to half-dress one mannequin in the back of a Dillard’s.  Lakota’s school board is very liberal, and those two individuals lead it, which is embarrassing.  And expensive.  But George is good to everyone.  He has his opinions, but he gives everyone a fair shake, and I often don’t get to show that to people.  Neither does he, as the Majority Whip of Ohio’s Senate, a significant position with considerable influence.  He knows that around me, he can be himself and that I won’t run off and talk about anything that we discuss privately.  It was pretty unique that I got to put him on camera and talk for an hour about everything, from the upcoming Lakota levy to his battles with stage 4 cancer.  However, to clear up some misconceptions people had about George and a donation he was shown giving for the pro-Lakota levy efforts, we conducted an interview together that I think was better than he could have achieved anywhere, by any modern media method, news outlet, or podcaster. 

The only people who do the level of interview at the level of what George and I did were someone like Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan, and I don’t think either of them could have done a better job.  George and I have known each other for several decades, but we had never sat down and just talked in front of the camera like that. What was captured was very useful to many people who wonder about various things.  I even asked George before the interview, “What’s off limits?  Is there anything you don’t want to talk about?”  He said quickly, “No, nothing, anything, and everything is on the table.”  So, we just talked like a couple of people and let others in to observe, and I was able to show them why I like George so much, even though he has evolved into a powerful politician and a prominent figure in Butler County politics.   And over the course of that interview, which was mainly about the upcoming Lakota levy, the most significant tax increase in the history of Ohio, I think he said a mouthful, which I completely agree with.  We all believe that the Lakota levy is going to crash and burn.  But don’t assume that this wasn’t their plan all along: to give the public a considerable blowout number and lose badly in an election.  Then, to say in the spring or summer that they listened to the public and came back with a reduced number.  Just because we defeated this levy in the 2025 election, it doesn’t mean it won’t come back in some form or another.  These public schools are only known for one thing: wasting tax money and asking the public for more, often on the back of property tax increases, to fund an overly progressive society. 

As George said, he thinks that the Lakota school board and its satellites, which include the treasurer and superintendent, are smart people.  I think what he calls “smart” is very maliciously manipulative, even evil.  But Genghis Khan was considered intelligent too, and so were most of the mass murderers of the world.  People thought that Jeffrey Dahmer was smart, even as he dismembered people in his kitchen and stored their remains in his refrigerator.  I would say that the Lakota school board members are very manipulative, which they have to be, given their liberal leanings.  Because people on the left often have to figure out how to get others to do things for them that they can’t do for themselves, they become pretty skilled at it over time.  However, as George and I reflected, this levy attempt is merely them dipping their toe in the water to see how the public reacts.  The details of that kind of election scope are why I think that interview is better than any other outlet could have pulled off, because we covered a lot of ground that most people would blank out after 15 minutes.  However, what we covered was essential to nearly every living, breathing human being, especially those residing in Butler County, Ohio.  It’s encouraging that in Butler County, an effective resistance to the Lakota tax increases has emerged in the No More Taxes group, which is fighting the Lakota levy.  And there are some really good people involved, and they have raised money not just for this levy, but for several upcoming ones as well.  However, for voters who have to show up and vote, they really need context on the scope of the problem.

So, how do we prevent more tax increases from being imposed in the future?  Well, don’t put liberals on the school board, and right now, there are four solid Democrats.  They call themselves other things to avoid the stigma of not being conservative in Butler County, but they are hard leftists on most policies.  And lefties love to waste money.  So, to stop wasting money, which Lakota already has a quarter of a billion dollar budget for a school, which I argue is just a dressed-up babysitting service, elect conservative school board members.  For this election, Ben Nguyen is the guy.  But in future elections, we need more people like Ben.  You need at least a three-vote majority, which we had for a while at Lakota.  And as soon as we didn’t, Lakota went for a tax increase.  That’s all they know to do—because they are liberals, and because liberals are never smart with money.  They might be manipulative, deceitful, scandalous, or monstrously unprincipled.  But they are spendthrifts who want to live off the efforts of others, starting with the real estate of Butler County.  Once Vivek Ramaswamy is the governor of Ohio next year, and Trump continues to dismantle the Department of Education and unleash the power of School Choice, all the public schools will have to change and do a lot more with less.  Their cost structure is significantly inflated due to their collective bargaining agreements, which stem from their union membership. We are all aware that unions often disrupt cost structures wherever they emerge, as they allow the mediocre to receive disproportionately high incomes.  And that is certainly the case at Lakota schools.  So, yes, the levy will likely fail in a big way on election day, provided people don’t sit on their hands and watch Netflix instead of voting.  People need to go out and vote.  But this is only step one.  People are going to have to dig in and fight to keep our taxes reasonably low until there is a new school board with conservatives on it.  Because, as sure as you are reading this, Lakota is planning the next levy, once the smoke clears from this one, because they have spent themselves into oblivion.  And only higher taxes can satisfy their never-ending hunger for more money to waste.

Rich Hoffman

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

Six Flags is Ruining Kings Island: They have turned it into just another money grab revenue stream

Ownership matters. When a large company goes public and is traded among the slack-jawed loser clan, which is the vast majority, the company’s personal identity gets lost, and its value disappears most of the time.  That was certainly the case when Lucasfilm was sold to Disney.  George Lucas wanted all his Star Wars employees to have something to do while he retired, and the Disney people ruined the franchise, much to his frustration.  But that is the cost of private ownership that goes public and is traded among thieves, losers, and short-term bandits.  And that was what I was thinking at this year’s Halloween Haunt at Kings Island, which was recently bought out by Six Flags as they merged with Cedar Fair Amusement Parks.  Six Flags has made Kings Island worse, not better, and its brand has pulled down the popular Cincinnati amusement park.  When we talk about problems with capitalism, the flow of money, and the protection of private ownership, what has happened to some of these companies that go public is an important lesson.  And in the case of Kings Island, I have watched it all my life as it was initially owned by the Taft Broadcasting Company to create a family-friendly entertainment destination near Cincinnati. Back then, its rival to the north, Cedar Point, forced the two to outdo each other constantly, and the two parks developed their identities through direct competition, which made them what they are today.  But of course, when you build something good, there are always people who will want to take that value for themselves, so this concept of publicly traded companies is a real problem, because it facilitates the sale of value, and once that happens, a company loses itself once its personal identity is sold to the whims of collectivism.  In 1992, Paramount Communications bought Kings Island in an attempt to turn it into more of a Universal Studios, but that didn’t work out well, so they sold it to their rival, Cedar Point, owned by Cedar Fair Entertainment, in 2006.   

I thought Cedar Fair Amusements did an excellent job with Kings Island and the other parks it owned, because it understood what Midwest thrill parks were all about.  The problem was that amusement parks in the northern part of the state had to close during the off-season because it was too cold.  And competition from Six Flags, which operates mainly in the south and runs year-round, strains cash and makes shareholder returns challenging.  So, looking to generate year-round revenue as a large company, Six Flags joined with Cedar Fair and kept Six Flags as the parent company.  And Kings Island has suffered because of it.  Not that I’m thinking cheap about things, but this is the first year the Halloween Haunt has charged for its haunted houses on site.  I get it, it’s an expensive operation to hire all those actors and dress them up every night for full-scale haunted houses that rival everything on the open market during Halloween season.  Halloween Haunts is my favorite time to visit Kings Island.  I love the late-night operating hours, the cool nights, and the general atmosphere.  We invest pretty heavily in Gold passes for our entire family every year so we can all go there together, and that is my favorite time to attend.  So I was not happy to see that Six Flags started charging separately for all the haunted houses, and that they were taking Kings Island down the money-grab hole deeper than they had before. 

Now, this is the problem with publicly traded amusement parks.  During COVID, Kings Island was hit hard by ridiculous health regulations that nearly killed the company for a few years and drained it of cash.  And without question, it pushed them into this merger with Six Flags, seeking all year revenue on cash flow, making them appear to the public desperate.  Which then blows the whole entertainment vibe.  If people are having fun, they’ll spend money.  But if an amusement park starts looking desperate — which the year-round parks do, including Disney World — it becomes a drain that causes a lot of pain.  And not very fun.  What Six Flags has done to Kings Island is similar to what has happened to Disney World.  All the parks have fallen into the Fast Pass game, where they try to make the wait lines for rides excessively long so visitors will buy a Fast Pass to skip them.  They have done that at Disney World and Universal for years, and now they have adopted it at Six Flags and, ultimately, at Kings Island.  And when a Gold Pass doesn’t buy you much of anything special anymore, it’s almost cheaper to get general admission when you do want to go and to go less often.  Because the advantages of going all the time go away.  At Kings Island this year, the ride lines were really long —several hours long for the premier rides —because people weren’t waiting in the lines for the haunted houses like they usually do, since they cost money.  This forces people to buy Fast Passes to shorten the lines.  And it just took the fun out of the whole experience.

For instance, we were at Disney’s Hollywood Studios not that long ago, and my grandkids wanted to ride Slinky Dog.  We weren’t crazy about it because it’s not as exciting as the kinds of rides they have at Kings Island.  But it was a Toy Story-themed ride, and all my kids love that movie series, so they wanted to ride it.  It just so happened it had been raining heavily and had just stopped.  So they reopened the ride, and we were standing right at the front of the line when they did.  So we figured we’d jump right on.  The ride would be worth it if we only had to wait a few minutes.   We ended up waiting 45 minutes in line because they opened the fast-pass lane and let everyone ride first.  The standard line was now a holdover non-premium experience, and the girl at the front, who had a chart on how to fill the lines, tried to explain it all to me, not very well.  I had spent $20,000 on a vacation package to Disney World for my family, and here I was being told that wasn’t enough.  Give me a break.  And now, Kings Island had that same attitude, and it was a real turn-off.  A money grab to make shareholders happy with short-term gains, by destroying the long-term viability of the entertainment value.  And nobody cared because now everyone was doing the same thing: Six Flags, Universal, and, of course, Disney World.  It was a shame to see that Kings Island was now just like everyone else.  And it all started with COVID-19, another thing permanently ruined by the government’s overreach in the healthcare industry.  And it was not nearly as fun as it used to be, as most things are when they lose their identity as a privately held company, now driven by public sentiment, which is often short-sighted and greedy in its narrow scope.  And at Kings Island now, it shows.  What made Kings Island better than other parks was that at least they were owned by a Ohio based company that understood the Midwest, and they were different from the other parks.  But now, they are all the same, and none of them very good.  

Rich Hoffman

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

Fighting Back Against Lawfare: What happened to Peter Navarro is unforgivable

I knew it was going to make me mad, and it certainly did.  I took my time with Peter Navarro’s new book, I Went to Prison so You Wouldn’t Have To: A Love and Lawfare Story in Trump Land, and I read it a few times before commenting on it.  I’m a law-and-order kind of guy, but if it had been me, what happened to Peter wouldn’t have turned out so nicely for the FBI.  The way they humiliatingly arrested him in the loading armature, almost on the plane he and his fiancé were taking to Nashville to appear on the Mike Huckabee show there, I wouldn’t have done it.  There would have been a fight that would have really hurt people, because some things in life are more valuable than compliance.  A lot of things are.  I’m not a very compliant person, and things like what Peter went through are where you draw the line.  So Peter’s book really made me mad, so I had to read it a few times to take the edge off.  Because it was infuriating.  When you have a legal system that pirates and criminals have essentially hijacked, something has to give. Peter Navarro, one of the top economists in the White House and a top advisor to President Trump, made the best out of it, and putting myself in his shoes, I would have done things much differently.  But it’s nice that he did, because the story he came back to tell was really remarkable.  I was really mad that he and his friend Steve Bannon went to jail for claiming immunity from appearing for the January 6th Committee, which was a completely crooked court pushed forward by Nancy Pelosi.  No, we are not obligated to yield to terrible forces and comply with them even when they openly break the law.  When someone like Peter does it to prove a point and protests without violence, we can learn a lot.  And we did. But punishment for the vile conduct is required in this case, and for me, that would have happened during the attempted arrest.  You can only play nice for so long. 

Peter Navarro was nice about everything, and the book is essentially a day-by-day diary of his experience in a Miami prison, where he was sentenced to 4 months.  The way the FBI went about it was unforgivable.  The way Peter was treated while in prison was also inexcusable.  Four months isn’t very long, but I’m not a fan of this Gandhi defense, of peaceful protest.  I think bad guys should be eradicated from the face of the earth.  And that when bad people present themselves —when are we going to learn from history, whether it’s Jesus Christ or John the Baptist, we must punish them?  For all the things that a person means to other people, you can never let them know that the world has more power over the people they care about, and to let them down under the pressure of a vile system.  And that is what happened to Peter in prison.  Yes, he made his point in support of the exiled President Trump.  Yes, everyone lived to fight another day, and Peter is now back in the White House. 

People can say that God was watching over Trump, Peter, Bannon, and a whole host of other people during a really evil process of lawfare, where an inserted president was put in charge of our country and had way too much power that wasn’t granted to him through a proper election.  People did not “consent” to be governed by the Biden people.  And what happened was essentially a coup of our entire government, and we tried to beat it with non-violent protest.  Peter Navarro allowed himself to be humiliated at that Miami airport, strip-searched, and treated like a rag doll in leg irons to be turned into an example of a police state that had power over the mass population.  And that is reprehensible in every way and cannot be tolerated.  We saw what they did to the J6 prisoners.  And this book says what they were willing to do to a top White House advisor.  And for me, individuality is more important than compliance with a hijacked legal system.  The FBI was way out of line.  The prison staff was terribly abusive to a person who deserved great respect.  And all that happened to Peter Navarro is, I think, a declaration of war.  So I think this punishment of all these people who worked against Trump and his supporters needs to go to jail themselves, or they need to be executed in a town square as a deterrent for all in the future who might try the same.  Sacrificing yourself to tyranny is never a good idea.  Fighting it is.  And Peter chose to fight it by exposing it.  But boy, it was a hard book to read, and to see just how bad that system truly is.  As I was reading that book, I kept thinking about what I know about prisons.  I have done stories on the Butler County Jail, which is a good one.  I have toured it and understand what those cell blocks are like.  I have met all the people involved from the top to the bottom, eaten the food, and I know what life is like in prison enough to put myself in Peter’s shoes as he reported his day-to-day circumstances.

I had friends in the audience who were there to meet Peter Navarro the day he was released, and he gave his famous speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.  They asked me what pictures I wanted, and I told them the most important person at the convention, aside from Trump, who had just a few days before, almost been assassinated with a bullet to the head, was Peter Navarro.  What he went through was terrible, and I was wondering what damage it had caused him.  I could tell something was off about him as he spoke, and I was disappointed in his speech.  He put on a good face, but there was a broken element to him.  Four months of having your personal freedom ripped away for purely political theater just wasn’t forgivable.  We are better off for it, and everyone should read his book.  They’ll learn a lot from it. But we just can’t have a society that arrests former members of the White House who are the best economic minds in the world, and puts them in jail, and parades them around in leg irons, to show the world that the best people of our society can be arrested like dogs and have everything taken from them.  The movie Rambo makes much more sense to me, except for the ending, where he eventually gives up.  If you are a criminal, you should be punished, and I think public executions are excellent, especially for the kind of people who put Navarro in jail.  Who wants to pay a lot of tax money to keep people like that in jail, alive?  Just get rid of them, and save the money.  But when you are innocent and you know it, fighting back is the best deterrent.  And it would be better never to give them leverage over you, as they did, and to abuse Peter Navarro.  He might be living a decent life now, but to yield ever to those clowns, he can never undo that.  And that is simply unforgivable.  What the FBI did to Peter Navarro is not forgivable.  Law enforcement cannot be allowed to be weaponized, which it clearly was, and there are still a lot of people who have to be punished for what they did. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Beware of the “Time Eaters: Ways of attacking leadership in the world

As we talk about people who live in the back of the train and are not the leadership type, using Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality, there are sure ways to detect their destructive attributes.  I call them “time eaters”: people who are afraid to do things in the world and disguise their impact by consuming time, hiding their lack of leadership.  Because they are too timid to live life in front of the train, they make a lot of noise to seem helpful in a fast-moving world.  They are the kind of people who want to consume your time with small talk or discussions about small things that are not important to the task.  And when you are doing important things in life, they seek to take up your time to associate themselves with some level of success without committing to fulfilling the endeavor.  And the really insulting thing about it is that when they want to waste your time, they fail to recognize that, as a fellow human being, you must be suffering from the same ailment as they are.  When people don’t know what to do, they seek means to disguise it with nonsense and waste time trying to look productive, but only with meaningless chatter.  A good example of this is the occasional salesperson who tries to sell you something in a shopping complex and stops you with “can I have a moment of your time?” as if that moment were not infinitely valuable.  The assumption is that, as two fellow human beings, you have some obligation to waste time on someone else just because they request it.  And in so doing, a lot of unproductive output occurs.  Being nice and accommodating will often leave you feeling empty because these people seek to drain you of your effort to fill up what’s empty inside them.

Using the metaphor of the speeding train, the people in life at the back of the train are always trying to bleed you of information when you are the leader type at the front.  So they are always trying to get you to come to the back, where they are, so that they can feel part of the process.  They, of course, wait for you to do something meaningful, then try to associate themselves with the success.  But because they are the back of the train types, they need to eat your time to gain something they didn’t earn.   And when you take the time to give it to them, trying to be nice, they fill the time of the exchange with nonsense, hoping to blend in and to look helpful.  They talk about sports, about the lottery, about wine, donuts, and college football teams.  But they never have the guts to talk about the things that really matter because they are in the back of the train and are only trying to appear as if they are part of a team.  When we talk about teams, there are usually leaders.  Then there are the people who like to spend time talking about silly things, trying to associate with success in the exchange.  I find wasting time with people in the back of the train talking about nonsense is a sure path to failure, because leadership is about being on the cutting edge, seeing things as they come, and dealing with them there.  Not talking about cutting the grass and what your neighbor is doing.  If it doesn’t involve life on the cutting edge, it’s mostly about wasting time. 

And in that way, I see a different kind of tyranny in the modern world designed by people who live in the back of the train.  They want you to always read their terms of service agreements for every little thing.  They want you to waste time figuring out a new software update for your smart TV that adds all-new control features to your remote.  They want to drag you into meaningless states for baseball stats and sports while the world outside burns away.  There is an evil in these time eaters that tries to keep you from getting to them by trying to trap you in the back of the train and away from the front so that they can work their malicious schemes.  And before you know it, on any given day, you have wasted 24 hours of your life and achieved very little.  Because your day was filled with “time eaters” who took away precious time to be on the leading edge with analysis from the back, trivial nonsense that are observations, not leadership-led.  And even in that sentiment is the notion that success should never be achieved at the cost of our humanity, of not communicating effectively, or of volunteering to waste time with people in the back of the train out of compassion for their position.  And that no achievement matters more than talking to another human being.  Even if what everyone is saying to each other is meaningless in the scheme of things.  The point of communication is to validate the lack of leadership that the other parties are terrified of, and the point of existence is to make them feel better about it. Not to actually achieve things. 

So beware of the “time eaters.”  I avoid them as I would any disease.  There is a real menace in their actions that intends to destroy the world, and I don’t like it at all.  And I say all this not to be mean, but to explain why I don’t allow myself to get stuck in projects or circumstances that are “time eaters.”  When I see and hear that the people I’m dealing with are “time eaters,” I remove myself from their company quickly and move on to something much more interesting.  If I feel what I’m doing isn’t important, then I don’t do it for long.  And people do take offense to it, but that’s OK.  I see value in the back of the train only in the analysis it provides.  But it only helps in a kind of future state, as leadership is fast and furious, and is not a team exercise.  The concept of teamwork is designed to be a time-eater of shared consumption of resources to appear busy and proactive.  When, in reality, it’s just intended to keep leaders from the front of the train and to trap them in the back with all the other slugs.  And the more time they waste keeping essential things from happening, the worse the world is.  Whether the issue is a discussion about a meaningless topic or wasting time with the TV remote, “time eaters” are a real problem imposed on us by an evil that lurks just beyond our senses.  And the war they have against us is a very real terror against the human race.  The lure is in compassion, wasting time with people who can’t contribute to success because they lack the ability.  And in that effort, the whole ship sinks, and this is by design.  So, to prevent that eventuality, beware of the time-eaters.  They will seek to destroy the world with nonsense and sell it as a value because of the human need to feel wanted by other human beings.  And in that exchange, vast evils are expressed and injected into society to undo all thoughts of goodness.

Rich Hoffman

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

Democrats Will Die on the Government Shutdown Hill: Who needs Obamacare when people will live for hundreds of years in greatly improved health

Democrats were already on the outside looking in politically, and for a lot of bad reasons, they have decided to die on this government shutdown hill.  Now that we are well into October 2025, Democrats have insisted on a shutdown of the government, pushing for subsidies on Obamacare, which has always been about socialized healthcare, and control over a large segment of the economy.  And this is a particularly foolish thing to do for many reasons, not just politically.  Healthcare is changing, so the kind of political control over it that Democrats want is already a thing of the past; therefore, their position on it really spells doom for them as a party going forward.  Nobody is missing government services, except for an inconvenience.  We live in a world where many other things can be done, and people are willing to do them.  When they find out they can’t get something because of a government shutdown, it only reminds them that the government shouldn’t be involved in holding things up, but rather in providing the service they are seeking.  Shutting down the government only solidifies the bad feelings toward the government that people already have.  It doesn’t make people feel like they need to go out of their way to accommodate government workers, but rather to find a way to eliminate them so as not to inconvenience them.  So this position of a strike essentially to get what they want, “they” being democrats, is really out of step with reality.  They aren’t going to out-market Trump. Democrats are going to get the blame for the whole thing because Republicans have been trying to pass CRs to get the government going, so Democrats are going to eat the entire thing, which is fine with me.  I want to see the Democrats destroyed and obliterated from politics.  And I see more people will join me as a result of this shutdown.

However, being tone deaf to the world, the healthcare market has changed tremendously in just the last six months.  Not to mention, since Obamacare first came into effect in 2010.  Healthcare changed forever when the industry itself made a significant move with COVID-19 to take over the world, essentially.  Everything dangerous about Obamacare came to people’s minds just ten years later, internationally, with COVID-19, healthcare workers essentially trying to take over the management of everything.  At that point, people began to lose trust in doctors and the industry as a whole, and they started asking numerous questions.  And now, five years later, the whole healthcare assumption has come unraveled, and just as many medical breakthroughs are hitting the market as we speak, such as cures for cancer and repairing tissue that deteriorates typically as we age.  The way we treat illnesses is going to change dramatically by 2030, and many of the legacy costs of the healthcare industry are expected to decrease.  The cheapest form of healthcare is not needing it, as our bodies are capable of repairing themselves.  The best way to not get sick is to stay healthy, and that is the future of healthcare.  Not continued insurance costs to fund an industry that nobody wants anymore.  Democrats view labor in healthcare completely wrong and assume that doctors and nurses are going to be needed, and that isn’t the case.  AI is better than a doctor, heck, and Apple Watch replaces a lot of the need for a doctor’s visit.  And when something is found, it will be stem cells and nanobots that are used to repair the body to its infinite state of healthiness. 

Most of healthcare is a scam, where the industry itself is controlled by the influence of pharmaceutical companies.  Many people have always been suspicious of it, but many of our fears were grotesquely confirmed during the COVID pandemic, and as a result, healthcare as we know it will likely never return to the trust it had before 2019.  People who don’t know any better will use healthcare as it has been sold to the public; they’ll go to the doctor, go to the hospital, and take the drugs that they tell them to take.  However, the future of healthcare is likely to involve nanobots, AI, and stem cells derived from placentas—waste from newborn baby births.  I have a few friends who are fighting off stage 4 cancers right now, and just a year or two ago, these would have been death sentences with a short time to live.  But there are treatments, primarily out of the country right now, that are shrinking their tumors and giving them a path to full recovery, which is what healthcare should be.  In a few years, to kill cancer, you’ll take a simple pill or get a vaccine, and the cancer will be destroyed, and people will live.  People could, and should, live as many years as biblical characters did, for hundreds of years, if not longer.  These lifecycles that we have endured for the last several thousand years are ridiculously short, and that is a consideration that the Schumer Shutdown never understood.  They are trying to preserve a system that is dying year by year.  They are funding for an industry that people would love to move away from.  They are late to a party that ended yesterday, and they are too ignorant to realize it, so they have dug in, seeking more than a trillion dollars in funding that taxpayers simply aren’t going to pay.

This will only help Republicans in the midterms.  It certainly won’t hurt them.  And remember what I say all the time, Democrats don’t have the numbers.  Without illegal immigration, they do not have party support.  Their only hope is to convince illegals to come into America to vote for them because of free giveaways like Obamacare.  However, the industry itself is already too far advanced for an Obamacare-like medical approach.  My advice to everyone is to avoid major surgeries if you can.  Instead of letting people cut away things from your body, wait for the stem cell treatment that is becoming commonplace.   Much of the world is further along in developing new therapies that repair the body because pharmaceutical companies in America have gained too much control over our government, which has received constant funding to cover their operational inefficiencies.  The future of medicine is not in the legacy costs, the hospitals, the doctors’ offices, and all the employees who care for the sick.  They will have to find other jobs in the economy, because more than a fifth of it will change as people stay healthier longer and treatment involves self-healing.  Looking back on this government shutdown over Obamacare credits will be really stupid, but it’s obvious how the Democrat party essentially died as if it wasn’t viewed that way already.  This just put the nail in their coffin.  They have no negotiating room and, out of desperation, are shutting down the government as a last-ditch effort to exert political power.  And all that will ultimately happen is that more people will realize what Republicans have always said.  And support for the GOP will increase dramatically.  Who wants Obamacare and perpetual sickness when you can heal and live much longer?  Which we need because of declining birthrates.  People need to do more because we don’t have a next generation that can take over like we did in the past.  And that means even worse for Democrats, who count on an uninformed youth as another part of their base support; they are going to lose them in this process, too.  But we warned them, and they didn’t listen. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Too Much Compliance Will Destroy Your Business: When they put a gun to your head, don’t follow their rules

One of the most foolish things anyone can be is too compliant.  It’s one thing to follow the rules, as everyone agrees to them.  However, compliance for its own sake is a misguided approach.  People should question reality more, and they certainly should question the kind of people who make the rules by considering the cost of those rules.  Many individuals in the world create rules that primarily benefit themselves and rely on a group of people who are too compliant to question those rules, thereby fueling a great deal of evil in the world.  I interact with many people in high-compliance industries, so what I’m talking about is based on a lot of personal observation that is a serious impediment to productive enterprise, and it’s such a problem that it deserves a topic of its own.  Something that doesn’t get dealt with nearly enough.  When a robber holds a gun to your head and says, “stick ’em up.”  And then proceeds to rob you of everything you’re worth, leaving you entirely at the mercy of the villain; that’s a bad thing.  Then, once the robber has robbed you and you have complied with everything they said, hoping that they would then reward you by letting you live another day, everything you gave up would be expected to pay that price.  But the robber shoots you in the head anyway.  We could point to many times in history where this kind of thing happens, nice, compliant people end up dead and thrown away like dogs, just because they did what they were told to do by people making rules intentionally meant to get control over masses of people for malicious purposes.  And as much as it’s uncomfortable to hear, many of the rules we have in society were made by people with bad intentions. 

So in high-compliance industries, like finance or the legal profession, doing what you’re told to do is a bad idea.  Because the rules never favor the person with a gun to their head.  So if you do what they ask you to do, don’t be surprised when they shoot you after they’ve robbed you blind.  As I have said many times and have made it quite clear in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, the rules in the world are often made by the losers so that they can have a world that makes them competitive to their betters, people who actually know what’s going on.  Many people in the world are not very intelligent, and they want to feel equal to those who are exceptionally skilled. To achieve this, they often enter professions that involve creating rules, thereby feeling more equitable.  And if allowed, which they have been in America to far too great an extent, they will ruin society as a whole.  And people, most people are too lazy to question the rules that are made for them, so they fall on the crutch of compliance to justify their laziness.  “I was just doing as I was told,” as if to justify evil with the merit of following directions.  This isn’t the kind of rule following that would make it logical not to go out and kill people, or not to speed down a sidewalk with a motorcycle that is crowded with people as a reckless operation.  This is an overly litigious society full of know-nothings who hide their cowardness behind too many rules and regulations to the point of personal destruction that they use to feed off the very few in life who actually do anything. 

The way to win against those who count on compliance to rule the world is to do what they don’t expect you to do.  Do not let the hoop setters dictate the battlefield, as they intend to impress observers by setting them on fire as you jump through them.  Do not be compliant with the rules that those types of people make, and allow them to rule over you with the fake value of compliance.  Because once the show is done, they will do away with you, as people have always done through history, and that is, they’ll shoot you in the head anyway.  After they’ve taken everything you’re worth.  The people holding a gun to your head are not ever going to be your friends.  They aren’t concerned about your well-being.  You can appease them with niceness and hope to be given a break.  You must reclaim from them what you have given away through compliance.  You need to break the rules they have set up to trap you by being defiant and forcing them out of their comfort zone if you genuinely want to win at life.  You will never win if you follow the directions of those who wish to destroy you.  Playing by the rules that evil people come up with will only lead you to your own destruction, because these are the kind of people who live off the lives of others.  They are ruthless beyond logic, and they exist in the multitudes.  So don’t be a sucker, and certainly don’t be compliant.  To me, being a sucker and being compliant mean the same thing.  Nothing good comes from it, and your eventual destruction is all those rule makers really care about. 

Obviously, I’m speaking to a lot of people here.  I’m thinking of several things at once that are equally applicable, involving many hundreds of people directly and many thousands indirectly. I take opportunities like this to speak to them all at once.  And when you take the gun out of the hands of the bad guys and turn it on them to pull the trigger ruthlessly, everyone will understand why.  But as a general practice, it’s worth pointing out that you can’t make America Great Again if those who aren’t very great are making rules that punish good people from doing good things in the world.  If bad people are making the rules, we will have a bad society.  We enjoy Trump in the White House because he understands how to turn these rules against the perpetrators, and he has made a lot of money over the years by exploiting the systems that bad people have created against them, which is what everyone should be doing.  Don’t follow the rules that bad people have made.  Do not be compliant with fools.  The world needs more good people to push back against stupidity.  And that is far more valuable than following directions when someone puts a gun to your head.  Remove that gun before they get too comfortable, and turn it back on them.  And use that gun to save yourself, and the goodness you have in you to make the world better.  The world can always lose a few more parasites, and most of the rule makers in the world are nothing more.  We’d all be better off with fewer of them.  So, don’t feel bad about taking their evil intentions and turning them against them.  And be ruthless in the process.  They deserve it.  They asked for it.  And for God’s sake, don’t listen to their cries for mercy.  Destroy them, because that’s what is best for the world. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Nancy Nix and I Discuss Friendships, Corruption, and the Future of Politics: Why we can’t support Roger Reynolds for Butler County Commisioner

Nancy Nix and I have strong feelings about Roger Reynolds’ decision to run for Butler County Commissioner.  We have been very supportive of Roger after he found himself in a lot of trouble with a court case that accused him of abusing his office.  While we believe what happened to him was not fair, and we have both worked to help him restore his name, we have been surprised by his behavior, especially his attempt to return to public office in the way he is.  Politically speaking, we have moved on to the next generation of consideration and have selected Michael Ryan to be the next Butler County commissioner in a race that presents some challenges.  It involves an incumbent, so support for a challenger needs to be focused and have the backing of the party.  And now that Roger Reynolds, aware of these difficulties, has decided to split the vote even further, making it even harder for Michael Ryan, it has a personal aspect to it that Nancy and I chose to discuss in front of a camera, rather than on the sidelines somewhere.  Nancy had stood by Roger throughout his court case and was really the only friend he had left in county politics.  So when he turned around to sue her for his old job back, after she had stepped in as Butler County Auditor to make sure his old office didn’t fall off the rails, the hurt was quite defined.  We both wanted to see good things happen to Roger, but the way he was going about trying to restore his name was an all-too-grotesque reminder of what had gotten him in trouble to begin with.  Because, in truth, even though we feel that what happened to Roger was unfair, the cause of the problem in the first place was a personality issue that was now manifesting itself, working against the people who had tried to help him the most in the first place, and it was alarming to discuss.

Roger is not a political newcomer.  He understands what he’s doing by joining the commissioner race this late in the process, which is the same kind of self-centered action that got him into trouble in the first place.  Even if you have political enemies within the Republican Party, how you deal with that problem says a lot about the kind of person you are.  And that personality trait is what now has Nancy and me talking as an answer to the many people who think that we should automatically support Roger Reynolds because he decided to run for public office, due to our previous support.  While our opinions about the case didn’t change, the court case process did reveal elements of Roger’s character that give us pause.  I can promise I would never find myself in the situation that Roger Reynolds did.  I have a lot of enemies who are always looking for me to stumble upon something, and that is part of the cutthroat world we live in.  And when it comes to the testimony that was most damaging to Roger Reynolds in his dispute against Sheriff Jones and Ohio Attorney General David Yost, it was his personality that ultimately turned out to be his downfall.  The love of seeing his name in lights after winning a political seat and the feeling of redemption that such an office brings with it.  Obviously, the need to run for public office is mainly for Roger Reynolds, not for the benefit of the seat.  Because Nancy Nix stepped into his old auditor role and has done an excellent job, the job performance in that position actually improved, and the people of Butler County were well served in the exchange. 

And that is where things start getting nasty in this commissioner race.  Nancy and I have been thinking about the next generation, the kind of politicians who have a clean slate and many years ahead of them.  And we endorsed Michael Ryan because of the extended runway he has ahead of him, which doesn’t have court cases and corruption charges attached to it.  And honestly, as cutthroat as politics can be, I doubt Michael Ryan will ever find himself in the kind of trouble that Roger Reynolds did, because he knows how to work with people instead of against them.  One thing that got Roger in trouble, which is why Nancy and I decided to take a pass on him for an endorsement for the commissioner job, is that he seems to like the titles that politics gives him too much.  That certainly came out in the trial.  The testimony that Jenni Logan, the former treasurer of Lakota schools, showed in his trial was embarrassing to me.  As it turned out, I still supported Roger, but with considerably less enthusiasm.  Knowing Jenni as I have for many years, there are elements of that conversation that should have never happened.  I would never find myself in that same trouble, that is for sure.  And that is a sign of a deeper problem that Roger Reynolds needs to work out.  Private sector work is a good place to do that kind of thing.  Getting back into party politics in a helpful way would be another.  However, attempting to emerge with a crash-and-burn strategy to recover name recognition was the kind of bad decision that made the trial, with Jenni Logan’s testimony, so damaging. 

For Nancy, as we discussed on camera, the breaking point came when Roger sued her to regain his old job and decided to turn against her.  It deeply hurt her.  As we were talking, her eyes welled up as she fought back tears.  It took a lot of courage for her in the height of that political situation to go against the logic of self-preservation and to stay by Roger’s side during that complex court case, as a friend.  Because that same arrogance that got him in trouble in the first place was now being turned on her, because the title of a job that doesn’t pay that much was much more important to him.  And now, as she was trying to build a team in politics that actually got along and worked together for the benefit of voters in elected offices, Roger was seeking redemption by tearing it all apart for his own purposes.  And while we can certainly understand wanting to restore a name, we don’t understand burning down positive things as a means to do it, which is why he found himself in court in the first place.  We all have political enemies.  Some of them are vicious.  I have a lot of nasty enemies who would love to bring significant harm to me if they could.  But it’s up to me not to fall into those traps.  Nancy Nix is a very popular and influential character.  She has the Vice President of the United States just a phone call away, as well as Vivek Ramaswamy and many other national figures of great significance.  The chance to make the kind of mistakes that Roger made is frequent, yet she avoids them and maintains a good reputation, despite the desires of her political enemies to see her downfall.  And that begins with being a good person in all phases of life, not in seeking a public position to hide personality flaws at the expense of taxpayers and voters in general.  And that is why Nancy and I had a conversation about why we couldn’t support Roger Reynolds for this Butler County Commissioner position.  There are steps that he could have used and teams he could have been a part of building.  But instead, he went for the kind of slash-and-burn strategy that got him into trouble to begin with, which was a decision he clearly made on his own, regardless of the cost.

Rich Hoffman

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Carrying the Weight of the World: Trump’s UN Speech and earning the right to be blunt about escalators

Who wouldn’t love the UN speech of 2025 that President Trump gave, as the escalator broke as soon as he and Melania put their feet on it?  That’s the world we are living in, and obviously, the escalator incident was no accident.  Employees joked about the escalators’ malfunctioning leading up to that speech as a radical means of protest, hoping to garner more funding for the United Nations, as if additional resources would solve all the problems.  Instead, Trump and his wife walked up the escalator without a whole lot of drama and gave a speech that essentially wiped the smile off the face of a very radical world that has failed dramatically since the creation of the UN after World War II.  It wasn’t the usual speech of placation that often accompanies these kinds of things, with calls for unity, peace, and all that kind of rhetoric.  No, Trump had earned the right to call out everyone, right in front of their faces, and tell them what a bunch of low-life characters they all were.  And that is what earning the right by carrying the weight of the world earns you.  And why Trump changing positions on Russia is so important, because only by earning that trust, by enduring the weight of the world, can a person like Trump say the things he does in public.  The UN speech was a remarkable statement by a world that the United States was clearly leading.  All nations were not there equally.  Running the world by committee has turned out to be a disaster, and it took someone like Trump to point it out.  Not through the media with some passive-aggressive protest, but live, to their faces.  And while everyone was on their heels from what he was saying, they complained that the UN doesn’t work, and neither do its escalators or its teleprompters.  Technical sabotage was meant to throw Trump off his game, but it ultimately played to his advantage.

But to earn that right to be as blunt as Trump has been, carrying the weight of the world comes first, and when people wonder why people like Melania Trump and her husband would want to trade in their life of the rich and famous for this demanding job of being President of the United States, the answer comes from speeches like the one Trump gave.  Watching their faces on the 9/11 ceremony this year, the day after Charlie Kirk, a former friend of theirs, was assassinated in cold blood, was obviously hard for them.  And on the day of the speech, the would-be progressive assassin Ryan Wesley Routh was convicted on all counts in trying to plot the murder of Trump at his golf course, just a few months after the attempted assassination of the President at Butler, Pennsylvania, that drew blood, but had only clipped his ear.  Charlie Kirk wasn’t so lucky, and that was obviously weighing on Trump as he and his wife went through the rituals of 9/11 ceremonies to pay tribute to the most significant act of terrorism that ever occurred on American soil.  More terrorism on a larger scale than the escalator sabotage at the UN, but the same in principle.  And the knowledge that after someone of good character had just been killed on a college campus, many on the Democrat side of politics cheered about it, and to discover that so many of our public school teachers were happy that Kirk was dead, and were gloating about it.   The weight of all that evil when you are in a job like the one in the White House can really make you not want to get up out of bed in the morning.

Then, to add to that, the deceit of Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has been saying one thing about peace all along, while turning around and killing many thousands of people on both sides, ruthlessly can really shake your faith in any kind of relationship.  Even Benjamin Netanyahu has been deceitful in his platitudes of peace, while turning around and acting contrary, being very aggressive, knowing that the United States would always bail him out of any trouble he got into.  So he was picking fights anyway, putting Trump in a terrible position.  The evil that people showed, and being in a position to see it so bluntly, was really wearing on the President, as it does most people who find themselves in that perspective.  Leadership is hard when you know so much truth that most people get to dance through without too much thought.  And that leads to the question of why anyone would want to be a leader of anything, whether it’s the President of the United States or the CEO of a company.  Why would anybody want to put themselves through the ordeal of all the trouble?  Especially when they are wealthy and could choose otherwise?  Knowing the worst in people, because your perspective reveals it to you, why would anybody want to do it?  To know too much and to carry around so much weight, knowing the level of hatred in the world around you.  Most people never encounter this kind of situation because their relationships maintain an illusion of civility.  But Trump is seeing the raw evil that can come from people, and he never gets a break from it.  It’s tough to use the Power of Positive Thinking to overcome such menacing negative thinking, and the Democrats are the party of negativity and below-the-line victimization.

Well, you do it so that you get a chance to go to the United Nations and tell them all what you think of them.  You endure the pain of life so that you can throw it in their faces.  And in doing so, you make the world a bit less crappy because of the people in it.  The United Nations was a failure from the start, but it was able to hide its poor performance behind the evils of humanity.  And as long as people kept the speeches nice, nobody talked about the tough stuff.  And everyone could party on the town, buying prostitutes while away from home, and go to fancy restaurants without any real cares in the world.  But to pull that off, everyone needs to be equally trashy and guilty of the crimes that the world enjoyed.  But by carrying the weight of the world the way that Trump does, from a leadership perspective, he can break protocol and tell people what he thinks of them, because everyone he’s talking to knows they can’t do the same.  Their guilt weighs heavily on their minds, burdening them with the truth of it all.  And that is why it’s worth being in a leadership position.  And without all the pain and the desire to carry it from the White House, nobody earns the right to talk about the real problems.  And this United Nations meeting would be just one more eventless charade.  But because Trump has suffered through some terrible weeks where the worst that people can do to each other was made evident, and he smiles his way through it like nothing in the world can bother him, he earns the right to be critical of escalators that don’t work, or global organizations that fail just as spectacularly.  And that he can broker peace with the biggest nations of the world, who are up to no good, because he has been willing to carry the burdens of knowledge that comes from really knowing the deceit that people are capable of.  And we are all better off for it.

Rich Hoffman

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