I have been sitting with Sheriff Richard K. Jones’s book for about 24 hours now, turning the pages the way a man turns over an old photograph that still has the power to surprise him. They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America is not a polished political memoir written by committee. It is the voice of a man who has spent a lifetime walking the same ground I have walked in Butler County, speaking the same language of family, order, and personal accountability that once held communities together before the experts decided those things were negotiable. Jones has always been the Sheriff who runs his office the way Andy Griffith ran Mayberry and Marshall Dillon ran Dodge City, with a healthy dose of Waffle House common sense thrown in for good measure. You show up, you tell the truth, you do the job, and you do not apologize for the results. That approach has kept Butler County safer than most places that spend three times the money and twice the consultants, and it is why so many of us who live here still call him simply Jones.
What kept pulling me back to the book was not the policy talk or the war stories about the jail, though those are solid enough. It was the cautionary tales about family and the slow corrosion of the values that once made a man accountable to his own house before he tried to run anyone else’s. Jones and I share a deep and permanent hatred of the drug culture that has hollowed out so many families in this county and across the country. We have both watched too many good people lose children, lose marriages, lose the simple ability to look their grandchildren in the eye without shame. He writes about those losses without the usual soft language of the therapeutic class. He writes like a man who has had to clean up the mess afterward. That kind of honesty is rare now, and it is the reason the book feels less like a campaign document and more like a dispatch from someone who has been on the wall for a long time and is finally willing to say what he has seen.
But the story that made me laugh out loud, the one that sent me straight back to October of 2016, is the one about the night he opened for Donald Trump at U.S. Bank Arena. I was there. Not in the sense that I was sitting in the same row or riding in the same car. I was backstage, working the edges of the same event, trying to find a quiet corner where I could take a conference call with people on the other side of the world while the whole building shook. And I watched the exchange Jones describes in the book unfold in real time.
It was Thursday, October 13, 2016. The Access Hollywood tape had dropped only six days earlier, on October 7, and the professional political class was still in full panic. Most of the Ohio Republican establishment had already decided Trump was finished. They had lined up behind Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or John Kasich, the local favorite who was still twisting arms for support even as the primary season was long over. Supporting Trump in those weeks was not the fashionable choice. It was the choice that got you labeled a crank, a risk, a man who did not understand how power actually worked. Senator George Lang, I, and a handful of others had been in that camp early. We had met Trump, sat with him, watched him operate before the primaries even heated up in Ohio. We knew the ground. Most of the smart people in the room did not.
Jones was one of the few who never flinched. By the time the campaign asked him to warm up the crowd at U.S. Bank Arena, the atmosphere was thick with the kind of nervous energy that only comes when the people in charge are not sure the candidate is going to survive the next news cycle. The director of the program that night wanted a script. He wanted to know exactly what the Sheriff was going to say. He wanted control. Jones looked at him the way he has looked at a thousand people who try to put a leash on him and said, essentially, that is not how I work. I talk from the hip. I have been talking all year. You tell me how long you need and I will fill the time. I do not need a teleprompter or your talking points.
I was standing close enough to hear the exchange while they were trying to get me upstairs to a box where I could take that overseas call. Giuliani was somewhere in the mix. The production people were frantic. Trump’s plane was still in the air. The arena was filling from the floor to the upper decks, and the noise was already starting to build. Jones went out there anyway. He did not have a prepared speech. He walked onto the stage and did the thing he has always done: he talked to the people the way a man talks to his neighbors when the subject is serious. Fifteen minutes turned into something closer to thirty. The crowd answered him the way Butler County has always answered him. They roared. From the high box where I finally closed the windows and tried to finish my call, Jones looked like a small figure on a distant stage, but the sound of that arena was impossible to shut out. I had the volume turned up on my headset and still could barely hear the people on the other end of the line. Part of me was irritated that my business meeting was being drowned out by a Sheriff who refused to stay on script. Most of me was very proud.
Trump claimed the crowd that night was 21,000, with thousands more outside who could not get in. Mike Pence put the number around 19,000 the next morning. The arena’s concert capacity sits somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,500, and some of the upper seats behind the stage were empty according to the reporters who were counting chairs instead of energy. The exact headcount is the kind of detail the media loves to argue about when they do not want to talk about what the crowd actually felt. What I saw from that box was a building packed tight enough that the noise had nowhere to go but up. People had not been paid to be there. They had not been bused in. They had decided that the Access Hollywood tape and the coordinated media effort to sink the candidate were not going to decide the election for them. Jones understood that before most of the professionals in the room did.
I have watched Jones make hard calls for more than twenty years. We have not always stood on the same side of every primary or every local fight. There have been nights when we were polite but cool because we were representing different candidates or different issues on the ballot. We have always found our way back to the common ground, because the common ground is larger than the temporary disagreements. Supporting Trump when it was still radioactive inside the Ohio Republican Party was one of those moments when the ground became visible. The same people who told us we were going to destroy our own political futures are now the ones who want their picture taken with the man. That is how these things usually go. The smart set picks the wrong horse for the wrong reasons, and then they rewrite the story after the race is over.
Jones has always had a gift for seeing through the fog. When Corey Lewandowski came through Ross’ Big Bull later, the first person he sought out was the same Sheriff who had refused to read from a script on a night when the campaign was still bleeding. That is the kind of quiet authority that does not show up on a résumé. It shows up when the building is full, and the professionals are nervous, and somebody still has to walk out there and speak without a net.
I recommend the book without reservation. Read the parts about family and the slow destruction of the old rules. Read the parts about the jail and the daily work of keeping order in a county that still believes order is possible. And read the part about that night at U.S. Bank Arena, because it captures something essential about the man. He is not a performer. He is not a consultant’s idea of a lawman. He is the product of a certain kind of American stubbornness that refuses to be managed, and on the nights when it matters most, that stubbornness turns out to be the smartest thing in the room.
I was proud of him that night. I am proud of him for putting the story down on paper without sanding off the edges. Some of us were right when it was expensive to be right. Ten years later, it is still a pleasure to remember it.
Footnotes
1. Richard K. Jones, They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America (publication details as available through standard retail channels, 2025–2026). The account of the U.S. Bank Arena appearance appears in the sections dealing with early Trump support and the political pressures of the 2016 general election campaign.
2. The Access Hollywood recording was published by The Washington Post on October 7, 2016. See “Donald Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005,” Washington Post, October 7, 2016.
3. Attendance estimates for the October 13, 2016, rally at U.S. Bank Arena (now Heritage Bank Center) varied. Trump publicly claimed 21,000 inside with additional thousands outside; Mike Pence cited approximately 19,000 the following day. Contemporary reporting noted the arena’s concert configuration capacity near 17,500 and observed some empty upper-level seats. See “How many people attended Trump’s Cincy rally? No one seems to agree,” WCPO, October 13–14, 2016; and arena capacity data from Heritage Bank Center / U.S. Bank Arena historical records.
4. Photographic and contemporaneous coverage confirming Sheriff Jones’s appearance as a speaker that evening can be found in the Cincinnati Enquirer photo gallery, “Trump supporters rally at U.S. Bank Arena,” October 13, 2016, and related local television reports from WCPO and WLWT.
5. On the broader context of early Ohio support for Trump amid establishment resistance, see contemporaneous reporting on the positions of figures such as then-Senator Rob Portman, Governor John Kasich, and local Republican organizational dynamics in the weeks following the Access Hollywood release.
Selected Bibliography for Further Reading
Jones, Richard K. They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America.
Fahrenthold, David A. “Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005.” The Washington Post, October 7, 2016.
“How many people attended Trump’s Cincy rally?” WCPO 9 News, October 2016.
Heritage Bank Center (formerly U.S. Bank Arena) venue history and capacity documentation.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I sat there the other day listening to the typical pre-speech coverage of President Trump’s primetime address on election security, and it was the same tired script I’ve heard for years now. The reporters and anchors could barely contain their eagerness to frame it as the desperate act of a man who cannot bring himself to abandon the most unpopular policies, no matter how toxic they may be for his own people running for reelection or for the party itself. They talked about his “gambit,” about how he was going to try to convince Republicans that the sky is falling on voting machines and foreign influence, and they already had the line ready: the president is expected to release declassified intelligence about China’s role, but of course it will all be false. How do they know it’s false before anyone has even looked at the documents? Because the network producers and the people who own those networks already decided it was false. That network of people is the real problem. They take bits and pieces, glue them together into a predetermined conclusion, and then run with it as if they have done any real analysis. One thing Donald Trump is not incapable of is putting actual evidence in front of the American people. That was the coverage before the speech even aired, right in the middle of July, while Trump was still out there logging the hours and trying to lock in the system’s security for the long haul. It is disconcerting, and it is exactly why I have spent more time than most going down the rabbit hole of what is really running our political order. When every talking head gets the same memo and says the same thing about elections, you start to wonder whether they are all that stupid or whether a lie can be denied until you die and everybody will play along.
We have known Democrats have been cheating for decades. It was not invented in 2020. I knew something was fishy in 2012. I knew it again in 2016 when Trump obviously won Florida. The panhandle results came in early, and they were overwhelmingly Republican, just as anyone who understands the state would expect. Then you had the usual delays out of the bigger Democrat-leaning counties, Brevard and the rest, where the reporting slowed to a crawl on election night. What they found was that Trump’s lead was too large to overcome with the remaining ballots, so they finally had to turn the results in. This was before COVID and the great expansion of mail-in ballots, signature verification theater, and the endless counting until the other side got what it needed. We just kept counting. That is the pattern. Now people are paying closer attention, and the same act is still necessary for Democrats and the media that cover for them. I heard the ABC reporter come straight out and say the President of the United States was going to give an address to the nation on Thursday night talking about the SAVE Act and election security, and the framing was already that he was pushing something false. Trump is not going to run again. He will be well into his eighties when he leaves office. He has done the job he set out to do and will ride off into the sunset. So why does he care so much? Because the midterms are lining up to be an overwhelming Republican year if the elections are actually secure. Democrats are going to have a hard time if everybody is watching the results carefully. I will say it again: if you are a Republican and you do not want to have to compete against another Democrat who should never have been on the ballot, you need to pay attention to making these elections as secure as possible. They cannot cheat if the system will not let them. How do you know they have been cheating? You can tell by the way the coverage is handled. They know something is there. The same ABC voice that said “President Trump falsely claims there was election fraud in 2020” did not wait to examine the evidence he was about to release. They just declared it false. Trump does not need a personal reason beyond the upcoming midterms and the simple fact that he does not want Democrats taking the House through the same methods they have used for years. The projections already lean Republican, but those projections assume a relatively clean process. Force voter ID. Make people show identification to vote. Why is that so controversial? Because Democrats cannot win if they cannot cheat, and that is a real problem that has been with us not just for a few years but for decades. That is how they have kept it close since Reagan was in office.
Both Bushes knew it was going on, and the Republican establishment did not stand up for itself. I am not a typical Republican in that sense. I knew Rob Portman pretty well before he became a senator, and I watched him drift. You get to Washington, and people start leaning on you. You start sympathizing with the other side a little. You eat lunch with them every day in the cafeteria. They have good hamburgers down there, by the way. You stand in line with the people you are supposed to be fighting, and they talk about the movies and their kids and where the kids are going to college. You develop a liking for them. Pretty soon you are voting more similarly than you ever intended, and you might even suspect that some of them only got into office through fraud, but you do not want to see them embarrassed. You do not want to expose it because friendships have formed. Fair enough. It happens in almost every industry. But that is not what voters are voting for. Voters want representative government. When you soft-pedal the problem, you are voting not to give it to them. The 2020 election was the clearest case yet of the system deciding that President Trump would not be allowed a second term, so they threw him out. They rigged it the way they do in other nations, the way Russia and much of Europe keep their people in power. Democrats have kept it close in the United States through election fraud for many decades, and reporters are being deliberately disingenuous when they refuse to admit it. They know it. When they come out and say “President Trump falsely claims” before they have even looked at the reports he just released, they are not doing journalism. They are taking the corporate byline and running with it. He put the evidence out there. No one analyzed it. They just declared the claim false.
I happen to know precisely where a lot of the theft took place, and there were a lot of crooks involved. Now that more people are open to looking at it, we have to talk about it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. That is what Trump’s national address was about: why we need secure elections, what we have learned, and what needs to happen going forward so the SAVE Act can finally pass. He went to the public and laid it out, and the criticism from the media types was extraordinary in its uniformity and its arrogance. How do they have the right to say he provided evidence of fraud involving China and then act as if they already know more than he does? They were given a line by the producers and the owners of their media companies: Trump is crazy, there was no election fraud in 2020, even though everybody who has looked at the data knows there was an abundance of it. Most Democrats currently in office should not be there because the elections that put them there were compromised. Look at Kentucky. The teachers’ unions and the college towns in Louisville, Lexington, and Frankfort were able to push a candidate over the top with enough votes collected without proper identification. Anywhere you have low election security, you are going to find Democrats excelling and winning even when the broader population is not actually voting for them. That is the problem. If you do not have secure elections, you do not have representative government. You have a system that has seized power and is using its influence to destroy the free will of the voters. That is not acceptable. Before you say “he falsely claims,” you should at least look at the evidence. Trump put it out. There is a lot of it.
The documents released with the speech show that over a period of years starting in the 2020 cycle, China carried out what is described as the largest compromise of election data in history, acquiring roughly 220 million U.S. voter files. Those files included names, home addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that could be used to register voters or engage in other forms of interference. Intelligence assessments indicated that China assigned a specific data-exploitation unit to the project. U.S. agencies began learning about the compromise of tens of millions of voters’ data across 18 states as early as 2020, yet the information was suppressed and downplayed. The same set of documents underscores long-known vulnerabilities in electronic voting and ballot-counting systems. Adversaries including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea can compromise election infrastructure, particularly centralized repositories such as voter registration databases, poll books, and official election websites. A DHS review of available state voter rolls and public records identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections, and the actual number is almost certainly higher because several Democrat-controlled states refused to share their full files. These are not fringe theories. These are the findings that the administration declassified and put before the country. The media response was to declare the claims false before the public had time to read a single page.
That is the conspiracy. The people who run the corporations that own the major media outlets want to reserve the right to insert Democrats into office and play kingmaker through illegal or insecure election means, whether through machines, mail-in ballots with no reliable chain of custody, or perpetual counting that continues until the desired margin appears. There is no voter ID on many of these ballots, so votes can be manufactured until the numbers work out. There is a great deal of evidence that this is exactly what has happened in multiple cycles, and it is a big story. A primetime address should have received far more serious treatment. Instead, you see how the media handled it, because they are part of the problem. Corporations want to control who gets into office, which is why so many policy outcomes look the way they do. It is not because we freely chose them. It is because the system has been captured by people who treat free elections as an obstacle rather than the foundation of self-government. Free and secure elections are how a people maintains its own government. They are taking that away, and that is why Trump went on primetime and talked about it. We had a hard lesson in 2020. We are still fiddling around with the facts when we should have taken decisive action years ago. He went to the airwaves because the matter is serious, and it will remain serious for every election going forward.
The media voices who dismiss all of this without examination are in bed with the same forces trying to rob people of their ability to maintain their own government through honest elections. That is supposed to stay here. Until we address it, we will keep having the same problems. The SAVE Act needs to pass. If you are serious about representative government, demand it. Call your representatives. Pay attention to the midterms. Make the process as hard to cheat as possible. That is the only way the people who actually show up and vote get the government they intend.
If you have ever read my book on business and the gunfighter approach to dealing with reality as it is rather than as the comfortable prefer it to be, you already know where I stand on these matters of discipline and clear-eyed assessment. The larger story of how power actually operates in this country, and the deeper forces that shape the political order, is something I have been exploring at length. Disclosure of the full picture requires understanding the politics of heaven itself. The evidence is there for anyone willing to look past the daily bylines.
Footnotes
1. Pre-speech and post-speech framing by ABC, NBC, and CNN treated Trump’s claims as predetermined falsehoods; networks declined to air the July 16, 2026, primetime address live on their main channels. See ABC News, “Key takeaways from Trump’s election speech,” July 17, 2026; The Hill, “James Carville criticizes networks for not airing Trump’s election security speech,” July 17, 2026.
2. On 2016 Florida reporting patterns, panhandle counties reported early and heavily for Trump while certain larger counties lagged; contemporaneous accounts noted the scale of the Republican margin forced earlier reporting. See Politico, “How Trump won Florida,” November 8, 2016.
3. The SAVE America Act (also referred to as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act) mandates documentary proof of citizenship for registration, photo identification for voting in federal elections, and greater state sharing of voter-roll data. House passage occurred in February 2026; subsequent efforts attached provisions to other legislation amid Senate resistance. See Bipartisan Policy Center, “Six Things to Know About the SAVE America Act,” updated July 17, 2026; Congress.gov, H.R. 7296 and related measures.
4. White House release accompanying the July 16, 2026, address: “Over a period of years starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history—resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” Includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and party preferences; intelligence community assessments spanning 2020–2026 document adversary capabilities against election infrastructure. Official White House page, “Election Integrity,” July 2026, and linked declassified packages on China’s acquisition of American voter data and vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems.
5. DHS review cited in the same release identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote based on available state rolls and public records; the administration noted the figure is incomplete because certain states declined full data sharing. White House, “Election Integrity,” July 2026.
6. Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database contains more than 1,400 documented, proven instances of election fraud across multiple categories (as of late 2025 updates exceeding 1,600 sampled cases). Heritage Foundation, Election Fraud Map and Database, electionfraud.heritage.org.
7. Kentucky races have repeatedly featured claims of irregularities concentrated in urban and university-adjacent counties with weaker identification practices; former Governor Matt Bevin and others publicly alleged absentee and machine issues after close contests. Courier-Journal, “What officials, experts say about Bevin’s voter fraud claims,” November 2019; ongoing Kentucky Attorney General election-integrity inquiries, 2026.
8. Intelligence Community assessments (January 2020 onward) state that U.S. adversaries including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea possess the capability to compromise election infrastructure, with centralized voter databases and poll books judged most vulnerable: declassified materials released July 16, 2026, White House Election Integrity portal.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I did not set out to become the UFO guy. I woke up asking practical questions about power, motivation, and politics—the same way I have solved engineering and organizational problems my entire career in aerospace and executive roles. Something was broken in our understanding of how the world actually works, and I wanted to fix it by following the evidence wherever it led. That path started with the Bible, the divine council, and the politics of heaven itself. It took me through anthropology, local Ohio archaeology along the Little Miami River valley I know so well, and straight into the work of Jacques Vallée. The synchronicity is very interesting.
When I began writing The Politics of Heaven, my goal was straightforward: to understand the motivations of the characters we pray to and interact with in scripture. The Bible is not a collection of moral fables; it is a chronicle of encounters with super-characters—angels, demons, principalities, powers, and the divine council. Job’s story alone shows Satan as a member of that council, maneuvering Yahweh into testing a loyal man. That is politics. Pure, raw politics. If we are going to engage with these forces through prayer, ritual, or culture, we had better know what they want. Human politics is not enough. We need to map the agendas of the non-human intelligences that have been shaping events from the beginning.
That line of inquiry naturally led me to anthropology. Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough remains one of my favorite books after years of reading it. It opened the door to how cultures worldwide have interacted with the spirit world—the “great spirit,” ancestors, and other intelligences. Modern anthropology grew out of that comparative study, but it largely stopped at human societies. It cataloged myths, rituals, and shamans without seriously asking whether the beings on the other side of those rituals had their own coherent politics, territories, and long-term strategies. I propose we need a new branch: an anthropology of non-human intelligence and its impact on human history, culture, and current events.
Living here in the Cincinnati area, with deep roots in Butler County and the river valleys, the evidence was literally under my feet and in my backyard. The Little Miami River corridor is thick with Hopewell-era ceremonial earthworks. Fort Ancient sits on a plateau overlooking the river, just a short distance from Loveland and Milford—3.5 miles of precisely engineered earthen walls enclosing roughly 100 acres, with documented astronomical alignments with the solstices and lunar standstills. It was not a fort in the military sense; it was a monumental ritual and observational complex.
Further down the valley, in what is now Terrace Park, there once stood one of Hamilton County’s largest prehistoric earthworks—an enclosure of about 80 acres along the bluff above the Little Miami. In 1820, it was still visible, six feet high and twelve feet wide at the base. Today, homes, gardens, and part of a school sit atop it. Other mounds in the area were leveled for roads like Wooster Pike or disappeared under development. These were not random piles of dirt. They shared the same sophisticated geometry and mathematics seen at the great Newark Earthworks—precise circles, octagons, and alignments that encoded lunar cycles (the 18.6-year standstill), solar events, and what appears to be practical knowledge of π and equal-area constructions between squares and circles.
Newark itself is staggering. The Great Circle and Octagon complex once sprawled over several square miles. Researchers like Ray Hively, Robert Horn, Bradley Lepper, and William Romain have documented alignments of breathtaking precision—every major lunar standstill direction embedded in the architecture when viewed over the local horizon. These were not defensive works or casual gathering places. They were cosmic engines, ritual machines designed to connect heaven and earth, time and space. Shamans almost certainly used them in altered states—likely with psychedelics or other techniques—to communicate with the spirit world. The geometry stripped away ordinary filters and tuned the participants to frequencies where non-human intelligences could interact.
If we had not paved over so many of these sites with neighborhoods, roads, and golf courses, places like the Terrace Park earthwork and others around Milford would rank as world-heritage-level marvels alongside the pyramids or Stonehenge. The precision of their construction, the labor involved, and the astronomical knowledge encoded in them point to something far beyond ordinary tribal engineering. Either the Hopewell independently achieved mathematical and observational sophistication that rivals anything in the ancient world, or they were receiving information and instruction from intelligences that already understood these patterns.
That brings me to the frogman.
Just a few miles upstream and downstream from these lost or buried ceremonial centers along the Little Miami, people have been seeing something that does not fit ordinary biology. In 1955, a businessman near Loveland reported three or four humanoid figures, three to four feet tall, with leathery skin and frog- or lizard-like faces, gathered near a bridge or along the riverbank. One version mentions a wand-like object emitting sparks or light. In 1972, Loveland police officer Ray Shockey encountered a similar being on Riverside Drive near the old Totes boot factory and the river. It stood up in his headlights. His partner, Mark Mathews, later claimed to have shot one; decades afterward, he said it was a large tailless iguana that had escaped a pet owner and was living near warm factory pipes. The legend persisted anyway—scrape marks on guardrails, a creature climbing over or under them and vanishing into the water. In 2016, near Lake Isabella (right across from Indian Hill and close to the old Terrace Park area), Pokémon Go players reported seeing a large, frog-like figure standing on its hind legs.
My family has turned the Loveland Frogman into a running joke with the grandkids. “Let’s go catch a frogman tonight down by the river.” It is fifteen minutes from the house. We laugh, but the pattern is hard to ignore. These sightings cluster in the exact river corridor where major Hopewell ritual sites once stood—sites now largely erased by modern development. The beings show up looking for something that is no longer there: the shamans, the rituals, the precise geometric invitations that once opened doors between worlds. They arrive a couple of thousand years too late or too early, stepping over guardrails on Kemper Road or near Lake Isabella, still drawn to the old power spots along the Little Miami.
This is where Jacques Vallée enters the story through pure synchronicity. While sharing early drafts of The Politics of Heaven with agents, publishers, and consultants, multiple people independently told me the same thing: “You sound like Jacques Vallée. You need to read Passport to Magonia.” I had avoided deep dives into UFO literature because I did not want to be labeled the UFO guy. I knew Vallée had consulted on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but I had not read his work. When the book arrived from Amazon the next day—waiting at a distribution center as if it had been pre-positioned—I opened it and immediately recognized the territory.
Vallée’s central argument in Passport to Magonia (1969) is that modern UFO occupants are not new. They are the fairies, elves, sylphs, demons, angels, and aerial beings of folklore repackaged for a technological age. He draws on medieval accounts of ships from Magonia—a legendary realm in the clouds whose sailors collected grain knocked down by storms—and shows the same encounter structure repeating across centuries: aerial craft, non-human entities, interaction (sometimes seductive or revelatory, sometimes disturbing), and departure. The beings adapt their appearance and story to the expectations of the witnesses. They leave physical traces but behave in ways that violate the physics implied by their appearance. They operate as a control system or an influence mechanism, interacting with human consciousness over time.
Magonia, in Vallée’s reading, functions like a rival sovereignty—a political order operating just outside or alongside our dimensional reality. That matched exactly what my research into the divine council and biblical politics had already led me to conclude independently. These are not simple visitors from another planet dropping in for disclosure or friendly ET chats. They are ultra-terrestrials or interdimensional intelligences with their own agendas, territories, and long game. They have been shaping human culture, religion, and politics for millennia—sometimes as gods or angels, sometimes as tricksters or tormentors. The Hopewell geometers and shamans were engaging them through precise ritual architecture. The frogman sightings suggest they still patrol the old contact zones.
I am not claiming every sighting is profound. Some are misidentifications or hoaxes. But the pattern—ancient ceremonial precision along the same rivers where cryptid activity persists, the synchronicity of arriving at Vallée’s conclusions through biblical and political inquiry, the consistent folklore structure across cultures—demands serious attention. Steven Spielberg captured a sanitized version in Close Encounters and E.T. The cute, friendly aliens who want to take us for a ride or phone home. The real record includes missing time, abductions, trauma, and manipulation. Vallée documented the disturbing side; mainstream disclosure narratives often soften it.
Understanding their politics matters. If these intelligences have motivations—territorial, informational, or influence-based—then treating them as either nonexistent or purely benevolent is a form of strategic blindness. Just as we map human political actors, we need to map theirs. The Bible already does some of that work. Anthropology and archaeology can do more if we stop pretending the “spirit world” was only a psychological projection. The evidence from Newark, Fort Ancient, the lost mounds of Terrace Park and Milford, the persistent frogman activity, and Vallée’s comparative folklore all point in the same direction: non-human intelligences have been here, interacting with us, and they have their own order.
I did not chase this rabbit hole for fame or money. There is little of either in the following evidence, this far outside the box. I followed it because the questions were honest and the evidence was insistent. The Politics of Heaven is the result—a treasure hunt through scripture, history, archaeology, and personal experience that refuses to stop at comfortable boundaries. The synchronicity with Vallée’s work was not a coincidence; it was confirmation that the evidence converges.
We are long past the point where we can afford to dismiss these patterns as mere folklore or swamp gas. The beings that built—or inspired—the precise geometries of the Hopewell earthworks, that still appear along the same rivers in forms adapted to our expectations, and that the Bible chronicles as members of a divine council with political agency, are operating with agendas. Mapping those agendas is not a conspiracy theory. It is the next necessary step in anthropology, political strategy, and honest theology.
The frogman is still out there, or something like him. The old sites are still under the neighborhoods. And the politics of heaven—and of Magonia—continue whether we pay attention or not.
Footnotes (selected key references; full bibliography follows):
1. Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (1969; various editions). Core thesis on continuity between UFO occupants and historical aerial beings/fairies from Magonia and similar traditions.
2. Reports on Loveland Frogman: Singular Fortean Society coverage of 1972 officer sightings (Shockey/Mathews); WCPO 2016 interview with Mathews identifying the shot creature as a large iguana; 1955 Stringfield report of businessman sighting near Loveland/Little Miami bridges; 2016 Pokémon Go sighting near Lake Isabella.
3. Terrace Park earthwork: Historical Society of Terrace Park records noting a large ~80-acre enclosure visible into the 19th/20th century, now largely covered by development, homes, and school grounds—other local mounds destroyed by road construction.
4. Fort Ancient: Descriptions of hilltop enclosure overlooking Little Miami River, ~3.5 miles of walls, astronomical alignments (solstice, lunar). See National Park Service and archaeological summaries.
5. Newark Earthworks geometry and astronomy: Foundational work by Ray Hively and Robert Horn (1982 onward) on lunar standstill alignments in the Octagon; Bradley Lepper and William Romain on geometry, “squaring the circle” relations, cosmic/ritual function, pilgrimage center aspects. UNESCO World Heritage designation for Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks (2023) includes several Ohio sites.
6. Hopewell culture context: Widespread ceremonial earthworks across Ohio river valleys (Scioto, Little Miami, etc.), ~200 BCE–500 CE, advanced mathematics, astronomy, trade, likely shamanic ritual use of geometry and altered states. Many sites were lost to agriculture and urban development.
7. Biblical references: Job (divine council politics, Satan as a member testing Yahweh’s servant); broader Enochic and prophetic traditions on principalities, powers, and heavenly politics.
8. Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough (various editions). Foundational comparative study of myth, ritual, and interaction with spirit/great spirit across cultures; inspiration for expanded anthropology.
Bibliography (selected; expands on footnotes for depth):
• Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia.
• Hively, Ray, and Robert Horn. “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio.” Journal for the History of Astronomy: Archaeoastronomy Supplement (1982 and subsequent papers).
• Lepper, Bradley T. Multiple works on Newark Earthworks as ceremonial landscape, pilgrimage center, and geometric/astronomical achievement.
• Romain, William F. Works on Hopewell geometry, astronomy, cosmology, and Fort Ancient.
• Squier, Ephraim George, and Edwin Hamilton Davis. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848). Foundational survey including Ohio earthworks.
• Historical Society of Terrace Park records on local prehistoric earthworks.
• Singular Fortean Society, WCPO, and contemporary newspaper accounts of Loveland Frogman incidents (1955, 1972, 2016).
• National Park Service and Ohio History Connection materials on Fort Ancient and Hopewell sites.
• Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough.
• Biblical texts (Job, Enoch traditions, references to divine council and principalities).
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I have been saying for months that this Ohio governor’s race was never going to be as close as the liberal media and the Democratic machine kept insisting. As long as Amy Acton could raise and spend roughly equal amounts of money, they could buy enough advertising to keep the “horse race” illusion alive. That is how the game works in modern politics. Fundraising and media buys create the perception of competitiveness long after the fundamentals have already decided the outcome. But we are now in the middle of July 2026, and the gap is becoming impossible to hide. Elon Musk just put $5 million into the super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy. That single check changes the entire dynamic, and the other side knows it.
I have watched David Pepper and the Marc Elias-style operatives do this routine before. They treat elections like a production where money buys the narrative, and the narrative buys time. They prop up candidates who cannot stand on their own record by flooding the airwaves with ads that soften the edges and attack the opponent on personality or wealth rather than substance. It works until the money runs short. Then the horse stops getting free drinks at the strip joint, and reality walks in. Right now, the money is tightening up for Acton, and the media that was happy to call this a toss-up while the checks were clearing is suddenly quieter about the fundamentals.
Vivek Ramaswamy is the exceptional candidate in this race. He is a Cincinnati native who built real companies, created real value, and succeeded on merit in competitive fields. He is a successful author and thinker who has already proven he can operate at the highest levels of government efficiency efforts alongside Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency. He understands free markets, individual initiative, and the dangers of centralized government that tries to manage every resource and outcome from above. That is the opposite of the society Acton and her backers have spent years promoting—one that empowers mediocre administrators while punishing the very people and policies that generate prosperity.
Acton, by contrast, is a textbook product of the empire of mediocrity. She was the face of Ohio’s COVID lockdowns as state health director. She helped shut down businesses, kept drive-throughs and dining rooms closed at places like McDonald’s under ever-shifting rules, and contributed to the destruction of countless small enterprises that never recovered. Those policies were later exposed in court as unconstitutional overreaches. I had conversations with members of the Ohio Supreme Court back in 2020 as those cases were being prepared, and it was obvious even then that the lockdowns could not survive constitutional scrutiny. Governor DeWine eventually had to back away because the legal foundation was collapsing under him. Acton resigned under pressure from angry citizens protesting in the streets with no clear end in sight. None of that is the record of an exceptional leader. It is the record of someone who followed the centralized script, expanded bureaucratic power, and left real damage behind.
DeWine’s endorsement of Vivek took courage. It is never easy for a term-limited governor to put his name behind a successor who is positioned to outperform him, especially when that successor is running against the person DeWine himself appointed during the pandemic. The fact that he did it anyway tells you something important about where the party and the state are headed. Vivek is not an insider continuation of the old order. He is the disruption the old order needs if Ohio is going to stop losing ground on taxes, education, and economic freedom.
The money tells the real story right now. Vivek’s supporting super PAC has raised serious resources—tens of millions—and is deploying them aggressively. The $5 million from Musk is not just symbolic; it is a signal that serious people who create wealth and understand results are backing him. Acton cannot match that pace. When the advertising dollars dry up, the media loses interest in pretending this is a close contest. Voters are left with the actual records: one candidate who built success and wants to bring that same energy to Columbus, and another whose signature achievement was helping lock down the state economy in ways that proved unconstitutional and economically destructive.
I have been consistent on this since the race took shape. Vivek was always going to outperform the low expectations the media set for him once people looked past the noise. He is rolling out plans on property tax reform, real education choice that puts parents back in charge, and cooperation with a Trump administration that remains popular in Ohio for delivering results on the economy and border security. Acton’s side is still trying to run the old playbook—lawfare, media narratives, and enough cash to keep the “horse race” story alive. But the cash is not keeping up, and the voters are not buying the illusion the way they once did.
This race is a clear choice between two different visions of government. One side believes in self-initiative, free markets, and limited centralized power—the approach that actually lifts societies. The other side believes the government should take from producers and redistribute according to political priorities, the same model that has produced mediocrity and dependency wherever it has been tried at scale. Ohio does not need another governor who manages decline while protecting the administrative class. It needs a governor who will cut waste, reform taxes, fix the schools, and let exceptional people and exceptional businesses thrive rather than punishing them.
We are still a few months from November, but the trajectory is clear. As the funding gap widens and the media can no longer afford to prop up the fiction of a close race, Vivek Ramaswamy is going to pull away. The fundamentals were always on his side. The money is now confirming what the fundamentals already showed. Ohio has a real chance to choose exceptional leadership over the empire of mediocrity that has dominated too much of state government for too long. I have been saying it for months. The evidence is now impossible to ignore.
Footnotes
1. Elon Musk contributed $5 million to V-PAC, the super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor. Cleveland.com, July 15, 2026.
2. Vivek Ramaswamy won the Republican primary for governor on May 5, 2026, with approximately 82.4% of the vote. Ballotpedia, “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026.”
3. Amy Acton served as Ohio’s state health director and played a central role in the state’s early COVID-19 response and lockdown policies under Governor Mike DeWine.
4. Multiple court challenges in Ohio and elsewhere during 2020–2021 found various lockdown and business closure orders unconstitutional or beyond executive authority.
5. Governor Mike DeWine endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy for governor in 2025–2026, despite Acton having been his appointee during the pandemic period.
6. Ramaswamy’s campaign and supporting super PAC have raised and spent tens of millions, significantly outpacing Acton’s fundraising in key periods of 2026.
Bibliography (selected for further reading)
• Ballotpedia. “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026” (primary results and candidate profiles).
• Cleveland.com. “Elon Musk puts $5 million behind ex-DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy’s governor bid.” July 15, 2026.
• Forbes. “Ramaswamy Wins Republican Primary In Ohio Governor’s Race.” May 5, 2026.
• AP News. “Trump-backed Vivek Ramaswamy wins Ohio Republican Party’s endorsement in 2026 governor’s race.” May 9, 2025.
• Vivek for Ohio campaign materials and platform statements (vivekforohio.com).
• Ohio Capital Journal and other Ohio political reporting on super PAC spending and fundraising totals, 2025–2026.
• Court records and contemporaneous reporting on Ohio COVID-era lockdown litigation and constitutional challenges (2020–2022).
• Various polling aggregates from mid-2026 showing the general election contest between Ramaswamy and Acton.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I’ve been watching this unfold for years, and here we are in the middle of July 2026 with everything lining up just about the way I described it would. Starship 13 was stacked and ready at Starbase, the gigafactory turning out vehicles at a pace that feels almost routine now, and then yesterday the launch attempt scrubbed right at T-0 because a couple of those Raptors didn’t light. No long delay, no laundry list of reasons to push everything out for months. They’re swapping a couple of engines and coming right back at it in a few days. That quick recovery says everything about the mindset that’s driving this whole thing forward.
Starship 12 flew right after Memorial Day. Now here comes the next one, barely a month later, with the factory knocking them out faster all the time. I look at that ramp, and I see the future of manufacturing staring back at us. The old aerospace ways—the thick binders, the endless reviews, the comfortable schedule slips—are getting replaced by something that moves at the speed of learning. Blow something up, pull the data, fix what broke, and roll out the next one. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s honest, and it’s fast.
I remember talking about the space economy and SpaceX specifically for a long time. A lot of people paid attention. Some bought in and held through the noise and the short cycles. The value held up better than many of the loud projections predicted it would. Those who stuck with it saw something bigger than a quick flip. I’ve been in aerospace long enough to recognize when the ground is shifting, and this shift feels different. The cadence is the story—every month for the rest of the year, then multiple flights a month, heading toward weekly by 2027 if the line keeps delivering. With my popcorn ready, I can’t wait to watch the next attempt. The visuals alone—the tower, the chopsticks, the glow of those engines—are worth the price of admission.
This is forcing everyone else to look in the mirror. The people who learned the business in the seventies and eighties with their old tricks are going to have to reinvent or get left behind. SpaceX isn’t improving the legacy model. They’re building a new one from the ground up, and the rest of the industry is feeling it. Blue Origin took a real hit with the New Glenn explosion at the Cape back in May. Pad damage, hardware gone, the kind of setback that could have turned into years of finger-pointing. Instead, they cleared the debris in nine days, started reconstruction, shifted to a new hybrid operations plan, and said they’re still aiming to fly again before the end of the year. That’s the right attitude—fix it fast and pull the schedule back in.
China watched the leader and made its own move. They just recovered their first reusable booster with the Long March 10B using a sea-based net system—different engineering, their own solution, but clearly inspired by the reusability standard SpaceX set. A giant net on a ship caught the booster after its flight. Not chopsticks, but effective in its own way, and a big step for them. Competition like that keeps everyone sharp.
I’ve seen this kind of culture before. Back in the nineties, I ran a facility that built conveyor systems for Amazon’s early distribution centers. I talked with their teams about how they planned to hit those aggressive delivery promises and keep scaling without the whole thing falling apart. They had that same focused confidence you see at Starbase now—the look of people who know they’re part of something that’s going to win. When I recently went hunting for a particular book on manufacturing excellence and the kind of disciplined execution these environments demand—one I’ve kept coming back to for over a decade—I did it the old way first. Drove all over Cincinnati, walked into the physical stores, and looked on the shelves myself. Nobody had it. They offered to order it for Monday with an extra fee. I wanted it in my hands sooner.
So I turned to Amazon and had the physical copy on my doorstep from across the country in about six hours. That efficiency still impresses me every time. I love holding the actual book—the direct line from the author’s work to my hands with nothing digital in between, tracking how long I linger on a page or what I underline. No screen time logs, no middleman analysis. Just the book and me, off-grid, the way I prefer to absorb the hard-earned knowledge someone poured years into. The hunt in the stores reminded me why I still do it the old way when I can, but the modern logistics machine made sure I didn’t have to wait.
That same drive shows up in the Starship program. The factory isn’t sandbagging. They’re not hiding behind excuses or perpetually pushing dates. They build, test, learn, repeat. The Raptor issues from yesterday have been fixed, and the next window opens soon. That rhythm is what I’ve been pointing to for a long time. It changes the economics of everything above the atmosphere—Starlink expansion, lunar missions, orbital manufacturing, the whole space economy taking shape. Vertical air vehicles like what Archer and others are working on feel like the natural extension down here on Earth. The hot ticket is clearly in these high-cadence, reusable systems that treat hardware like it’s meant to fly again tomorrow.
I’ve spent my career in aerospace seeing both the old ways and the new possibilities. Watching Starship 13 get prepped, scrubbed, and prepped again reinforces what I’ve observed over and over: the organizations that impose discipline on the schedule and treat setbacks as data points are the ones pulling ahead. The visuals of the tower with its arms ready, the sound of those engines lighting, the sheer scale of the vehicles rolling out—few things get me more excited than a Starship launch day, even when it turns into a quick scrub that shows the process working. I’m rooting hard for SpaceX, for Blue Origin’s recovery, for the whole industry to rise with the tide they’re creating. China’s chasing the reusability standard is part of that rising tide too.
The age of disclosure is here in the most practical sense. What used to be hidden behind years of slow development and classified programs is playing out in public test after test. The limits are being shown for what they are—breakable. The manufacturing practices that make rapid iteration possible are being laid bare for anyone paying attention. I keep my physical books close for the same reason I keep watching these launches: there’s something honest and direct about the transfer of capability and knowledge. No filters, no delays, just the real thing moving from one place to another faster than the old models ever allowed.
I’ll be right here with the popcorn when the next attempt rolls around, watching the Raptors light and the vehicle do its work. The cadence is real. The factory is delivering. The future I’ve been describing is showing up on schedule, one Starship at a time.
Further Reading
• SpaceNews coverage of Starship Flight 13 abort and recovery plans.
• NASASpaceflight and Ars Technica reporting on V3 vehicle cadence, modifications, and Starbase production.
• Reports on China Long March 10B net recovery success.
• Blue Origin updates on LC-36 reconstruction and return-to-flight goals.
• The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business by Rich Hoffman.
• Classic manufacturing texts like The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt for the operational mindset behind high-velocity systems.
• Ongoing SpaceX program updates from the company site and independent space media for the latest on launch cadence and Starlink integration.
This is the raw flow of what’s happening out there right now, the way I see it and the way I’ve been living it.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I haven’t seen the Supergirl movie yet. From everything I’ve heard and read about the promotional run and the way the numbers have come in, I’m not in any rush. It’s the same old story playing out again, the one that keeps repeating itself in Hollywood these days like a bad loop on an old VHS tape. The actress, Milly Alcock, went out there during the press cycle and made some comments that landed exactly the way these things always do when the people in charge forget who actually buys the tickets. She talked about online critics and how a lot of them were just “Dad of four, Christian” types with no profile picture or burner accounts, and she said it was hilarious to her. Then she added that if you’re pissing off the right kind of people, you’re doing okay.
That kind of talk might play well in certain rooms in Los Angeles or New York, but it doesn’t play well with the people who were supposed to be the core audience for a big summer superhero movie built around Superman’s cousin. Christian dads with a couple of kids aren’t some fringe group you can mock on the way to the bank. They’re the ones who used to load up the minivan, buy the tickets, get the popcorn, and make these movies cultural events. When you go out of your way to signal that their worldview is a punchline, they notice. And they stay home. Then the box office comes in soft, everybody starts pointing fingers, and the same executives who greenlit the messaging act surprised.
This is the same playbook that wrecked the live-action Snow White over at Disney. Rachel Zegler went out there and called the original story dated, took shots at the prince character, and sprinkled in enough political commentary that a big chunk of the traditional family audience decided they had better things to do with their Saturday afternoon. The movie opened okay but collapsed fast, and Disney ended up losing something like $170 million on it once you factored in the budget, the reshoots after the set fire, and the marketing. It wasn’t just one actress. It was a whole system that decided the audience needed re-education more than it needed entertainment.
Supergirl opened the weekend of June 26, 2026, to about $37 million domestically. That was well below the $50 million range some trackers were expecting and a steep drop from what Superman did the year before under James Gunn’s watch. Superman opened to $125 million domestically and finished with roughly $355 million here in the States and over $618 million worldwide. Supergirl, with a reported $170 million production budget plus heavy marketing, was tracking toward the low $60s, or maybe $70 million, domestically if it held on through the holiday frame, with worldwide totals hovering around $110-115 million. That’s not enough to break even on a movie this size. It’s the kind of number that makes everybody downstream from the studio—crew, vendors, theater chains—feel the pain while the people who made the decisions move on to the next project.
The demographic split on opening weekend told the story in real time. The audience was skewed heavily male and over 25. The young women and families the movie was supposed to bring in large numbers didn’t show up in force. That’s what happens when the lead actress spends part of the promotional cycle telling a big slice of the potential audience that their very existence as profile pictures with kids and a faith is funny to her. You don’t have to agree with every dad out there. You don’t even have to like them. But if you’re getting paid millions to stand in front of a camera in a cape and sell a $200 million piece of intellectual property, your job during promo is to get as many people as possible to buy a ticket. Not to litigate culture war points from a Variety interview conducted months earlier.
I’ve been around this business enough over the years to know how it works. I had a stretch where I thought I might direct or at least write and produce films. I wrote a few things, got them in rooms, and sat across from people who controlled real money. What I saw up close was that a certain faction had already decided the product came second to the politics. I remember one conversation where I pitched something and the response wasn’t about whether the story would connect or make money. It was about whether the script had the right messaging baked in. When I realized the game was rigged that way, I made a decision. I wasn’t going to spend my life compromising on things that mattered to me to get a seat at a table that was already serving a different meal. I walked away from chasing that particular brass ring and put my energy into the Tea Party and then the broader movement that became MAGA. The checks in Hollywood can be big for a minute, but they don’t buy back your integrity once you’ve traded pieces of it away.
That’s why these promotional disasters keep happening. The people in charge keep hiring talent who treat the job as a personal activism platform rather than a professional obligation. Zendaya is the counterexample people should study. She’s a good actress; she’s in big franchises; she married Tom Holland; and she mostly keeps her head down and does the work. She doesn’t feel the need to go out on every carpet and unload on half the country. That’s why she keeps getting hired. The ones who treat every interview like a chance to settle scores or signal to the online choir end up with one big movie and then a lot of quiet time afterward.
James Gunn has been in an interesting spot through all of this. He came in with real goodwill from the Guardians movies, which proved you could take obscure characters, give them personality and humor, and make a fortune. Superman last year was a genuine hit—fun, hopeful, well-reviewed, and profitable. It looked like maybe the new DCU under Gunn and Peter Safran had found a lane. Supergirl was supposed to build on that momentum. Instead, it landed with a thud. Gunn didn’t direct this one—Craig Gillespie did—but he and Safran produced it and shaped the vision. The character on screen is described as more jaded, sarcastic, impulsive, a bit of an anti-hero who parties on red-sun planets where she can actually get drunk. That’s a valid take on the comics, but when you pair it with a promotional tone that mocks the audience that grew up on the classic Superman ideal of truth, justice, and the American way, you’re asking for trouble.
There’s already talk in the trades about whether this soft opening puts Gunn’s position under more scrutiny. Some agents are whispering that another miss like this and the corporate structure might decide it’s time for a change, even though Superman succeeded and the long-term plan is still being sold as sound. That’s how it goes in these big studios now. One regime comes in promising to fix the mess left by the last one, spends a fortune on a new slate, and then the same underlying problems—audience alienation, messaging over story, talent who can’t or won’t sell the product—show up again. Gunn has more runs on the board than most, but the Supergirl numbers are a reminder that goodwill has a shelf life when the results don’t follow.
I keep coming back to the Indiana Jones situation because it shows the pattern so clearly. In the last film, there were persistent rumors that the original plan involved killing the character off or erasing him in some way that felt like a deliberate gut punch to the legacy. The director denied reshoots for that specific reason, but a lot of us who watched the sausage get made over the years didn’t buy the full denial. Extra money got spent, the ending got massaged, and the movie still underperformed relative to what an Indiana Jones picture should do. The people in charge wanted to make a statement. The audience wanted one more ride with the character they loved. When those two things collide, the audience usually wins by staying home, and the studio eats the difference.
Captain Marvel followed the same arc. Brie Larson went out and did the whole “toxic masculinity” circuit after the first movie made money. The sequel, The Marvels, became one of the bigger bombs in recent Disney history. The pattern is consistent: the first project coasts on existing goodwill and curiosity, the star or the messaging starts treating the core audience like the enemy, and the follow-up craters. Then the same executives who approved the approach acted shocked that families and longtime fans didn’t line up again.
What’s happening now is bigger than any single movie or actress. Hollywood went hard left years ago, and the corporate layer that runs these places decided DEI checklists and cultural re-education were more important than selling tickets. They hired people who shared that worldview, gave them big platforms, and then acted surprised when the people who actually pay for the content walked away. The trust erosion is real. Once families decide a brand doesn’t have their kids’ best interests at heart—whether it’s live-action remakes that lecture them or kids’ programming that slips in stuff no parent asked for—they don’t come back easily. You see it in the vinyl revival, the return to physical media, people wanting to own their libraries instead of renting everything from a streaming service that can memory-hole a title whenever it wants. We went through this with music. The industry told everybody they’d rent forever from iTunes and Spotify. Now people are buying records again because they want something they can actually hold when the power goes out or when the algorithm decides they shouldn’t hear a certain song anymore.
The same principle applies to movies. These big corporate entities keep treating the audience like a resource to be mined and then scolded. The audience is responding by treating Hollywood as an optional expense rather than a weekly habit. Supergirl didn’t fail because the character is unlikable in the comics or because superhero fatigue is total. It failed because the promotional campaign handed the opposition free ammunition and because the underlying calculation—that you could insult a big chunk of the paying public and still get their money—turned out to be wrong.
I’ve said for years that the best movies, the ones that actually shaped generations, came from people who cared more about the story than the politics of the moment. Star Wars in its original run was a phenomenon because it gave people something to line up for, something to argue about in the schoolyard, something that felt bigger than the daily grind. The merch drops were events. Families participated together. When the machine decided it needed to lecture instead of entertain, the cultural grip loosened. The same thing is happening across the board now. The pushback isn’t coming from some organized cabal. It’s coming from millions of individual decisions by people who are tired of paying premium prices to be told their values are the problem.
James Gunn still has a runway because Superman worked and because he has a track record of making things people actually want to watch. But the Supergirl results are a warning shot. If the next projects keep treating the core audience as something to be managed or mocked rather than served, the DCU experiment will end up in the same pile as every other attempt to force-feed ideology through expensive capes. The audience has options now. They can wait for streaming, skip it entirely, or see something else that doesn’t require them to check their beliefs at the door.
Look, I’m not saying every actor has to be a robot with no opinions. I’ve got plenty of my own, and I’ve never been shy about sharing them on my own platforms. The difference is I built those platforms myself. When you’re handed a lead role in a $170 million studio movie, the job description includes not actively driving away the people who are supposed to fill the seats. That’s not censorship. That’s basic professionalism and basic math. The Christian dads with kids aren’t asking for a sermon from the screen. They’re asking for two hours where the good guys win, the hero stands for something worth standing for, and nobody on the promotional tour calls their existence hilarious. When Hollywood forgets that simple transaction, the box office reminds them. And the reminders are getting more expensive every year.
I’ve watched this industry from the outside for a long time now, close enough to see the decisions but far enough away that I didn’t have to compromise to keep a seat. What I see is a system that keeps choosing the same losing strategy and then acting confused when the results don’t change. The audience didn’t leave because they hate superheroes. They left because the people making the movies began to hate the audience. Until that calculation flips, these soft openings and outright disasters will keep happening. The ones who figure it out first—the ones who treat the job like a privilege instead of a pulpit—will be the ones still standing when the dust settles. The rest will explain to their next meeting why the numbers didn’t work out again.
That’s the reality on the ground in the middle of 2026. Superman proved there’s still an appetite for hopeful, well-made comic book movies. Supergirl proved that even a strong foundation can be undermined in a single promotional cycle when the people involved forget who they’re talking to. The pushback is real; it’s measurable at the ticket window, and it’s not going away until the people writing the checks decide that making money and telling stories people actually want to see matter more than scoring points with the crowd that already agrees with them. I’ve made my peace with walking away from that table years ago. Watching it wobble from a distance confirms I made the right call.
Sources and Further Reading
• Box office figures and analysis for Supergirl (2026): TheWrap, Box Office Mojo, USA Today, ComicBook.com reports from late June and early July 2026.
• Milly Alcock Variety interview comments on critics and “Dad of four, Christian” profiles: Originally conducted mid-April 2026, widely discussed after May publication and post-release.
• Snow White (2025) financial losses and promotional controversies: Forbes, Variety, Box Office Mojo.
• James Gunn DCU context and insider speculation post-Supergirl: Slashfilm, Screen Daily, ComicBook.com.
• Broader industry patterns around audience alienation, DEI priorities, and promotional missteps: Multiple trade coverage 2023–2026 on Captain Marvel/The Marvels, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny rumors and reshoots (director denials notwithstanding), and shifting audience behavior toward physical media and selective viewing.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I woke up in the middle of July 2026 to a couple of pieces of news that landed with a familiar weight, the kind you feel when patterns you have watched for years finally play out exactly as expected. Senator Lindsey Graham had died suddenly of a heart attack, or more precisely, what the reports called an aortic dissection tied to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. It was a brief and sudden illness, they said, and the flags were ordered to half-mast. Around the same time, or perhaps the very same night, depending on time zones and fight cards, Conor McGregor stepped back into the Octagon at UFC 329 in Las Vegas against Max Holloway and lasted just sixty-nine seconds before a knee injury from one of his own flashy opening kicks forced the stoppage. A suspected blown ACL, the kind of thing that ends careers or at least sends fighters into long nights of the soul.
Neither outcome surprised me, though both carried that sting of unnecessary diminishment. I have never been a big fan of Lindsey Graham. He and John McCain represented a certain strain of Republicanism that always felt more interested in maintaining a seat at the table than in actually winning the fight for the principles they claimed to hold. They were the “Three Amigos” with Joe Lieberman, globetrotting on foreign policy, cutting deals, positioning themselves as the reasonable voices who could work across the aisle. In practice, that often meant the Republican brand took on water while the more aggressive side kept advancing. Graham bristled early when Trump criticized McCain’s war record, called Trump names, and destroyed phones in a stunt when his number got out. Later, he became a golfing buddy and defender. It was transactional. Hang around the winners long enough, and maybe some of the fire rubs off, or at least you stay relevant. I do not disparage a man on the day of his passing out of basic politeness and respect for the family. That is not what I will do. But as far as the political work goes, the vacancy he leaves in the South Carolina Senate is an opening. Governor McMaster will appoint someone as interim, and then there will be a special election. The question is whether that seat goes to someone who actually carries the eye of the tiger or to another placeholder who thinks proximity to power is the same as having it.
The McGregor situation felt even more avoidable and therefore more disappointing. I have always respected what he accomplished in his prime. The speed, the left hand, the way he made the entire sport bigger by sheer force of personality and skill. He changed the game. But watching the buildup to this comeback, I could see it coming from a mile away. There was a vacancy in his face during the face-off. The look was not there. The walk to the arena hours ahead of time already told the story. He was going through the motions that had once been fueled by something deeper. When the fight started, he opened with the jumping, theatrical kicks that signal a man trying to manufacture intensity he no longer feels in his bones. Within seconds, the knee buckled on landing; he tried to continue, but the referee waved it off. Max Holloway did not even have to do much. He just had to be the one who still had the gas in the tank and the willingness to press when the other man was already compensating with showmanship.
I felt sorry for Conor McGregor before the fight even started. I said it out loud to myself and to anyone who would listen in the days leading up to it. He should have stayed retired. Go out on the legacy you built when you had the eye of the tiger, when you were the hungry kid from Dublin knocking people out and changing divisions. Instead, he stepped back in, got the big paycheck and the big stage, and now he walks away with another loss and a serious injury that will linger. That is how legacies get complicated. The record book will show the late-career defeats, and the highlight reels will always include the moments where the body betrayed the intention because the intention itself was no longer pure. I have torn my own ACL. I know what it feels like when the leg suddenly is not under you anymore, when the bones shift, and you realize in an instant that something fundamental has given way. It is not just pain. It is the body telling you that the architecture you trusted has limits, and theatrics do not change those limits. McGregor knew it the second it happened. You could see it in the way he tried to keep throwing and then had to stop. The opponent did not have to finish him with strikes. The injury did the work because the preparation and the mindset had already left the building.
This is bigger than one fighter or one senator. It is about the eye of the tiger and what happens when you lose it. I go back to Rocky III every time this comes up. Apollo Creed sits Rocky down after the loss to Clubber Lang and tells him straight: you had that eye of the tiger, man, the edge, and now you have got to get it back. Rocky had gotten comfortable. He had the money, the fame, the big house, the training that had become routine instead of desperate. He was still strong on paper, but the hunger that made him dangerous had been replaced by the soft belief that reputation alone would carry him. Apollo drags him back to the old gym, strips away the comforts, and forces him to remember what it felt like to have nothing but the will to impose himself on the moment. That is the lesson. The eye of the tiger is not about being loud or theatrical. It is about the quiet, relentless knowledge that you are willing to do what the other person is not, and that you have prepared your mind and body for the exact second when everything is on the line.
McGregor used to have it. You saw it in the old fights, the way he walked through opponents with that left hand and that certainty. The theatrics were there too, the entrances, the predictions, the psychological warfare. But they were backed by the real thing. When the real thing started to fade, after the losses to Khabib and the leg break against Poirier and the years away, the theatrics became the main act. He tried to win the fight in the buildup, in the face-off, in the flying kicks that look spectacular on a highlight but leave you vulnerable the moment your timing or your body is even slightly off. That is what entitlement looks like in combat sports. You start believing your own press clippings and your bank account. You think the name and the history will do some of the work for you. The young hungry dogs see it immediately. They do not care about your past glories. They see the vacancy in the eyes, and they know that if they stay disciplined and scrappy, they can take the perch. McGregor invited it by trying to overcompensate with movement and show instead of the cold, patient application of skill and will.
That is why I felt the same way about Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey in their moments. You could see it a month in advance in some cases. The eye was gone. The comfort had set in. The performance became about protecting an image rather than dominating the moment. Rocky III nailed it because Apollo was not just talking about boxing. He was talking about any arena where human beings test themselves against each other or against circumstances. Business, politics, raising a family, teaching a grandson how to launch model rockets on a windy, rainy day when every instinct says stay inside. You impose your will on the environment anyway. You troubleshoot when things go wrong. You recover the drifted rocket, and you turn the failure into a story about resilience. That is the eye of the tiger in everyday form. It is not glamorous. It does not trend on social media. But it is what actually builds lasting legacies.
Lindsey Graham spent a career learning that he could hang around winners and borrow some of their credibility. McCain had the maverick brand and the war hero story. Trump had the unmistakable fighter energy that resonated with people tired of the old accommodations. Graham positioned himself as the bridge, the one who could translate between worlds. It worked for a long time. He accumulated influence, especially on judicial appointments and foreign policy. But the underlying pattern was the same one I saw in McGregor. When you are operating from a place of borrowed fire rather than your own, eventually the bill comes due. People remember how you carried yourself when the pressure was highest. They remember whether you were willing to stand alone or always needed validation from the current power structure. Graham’s death leaves a vacancy, and vacancies are opportunities. South Carolina and the broader Republican ecosystem now have a chance to put someone in that seat who does not need to borrow the eye of the tiger because he already carries it.
McGregor has his own vacancy to reckon with now. The physical one in the knee will heal or it will not, but the deeper one is in the approach to competition itself. He has advocated for Christianity in public ways that I respect. He has weighed in on Irish politics with a directness that cuts through a lot of the usual noise. Those are good things. But you cannot carry those convictions into the Octagon on theatrics alone. The cage does not care about your brand deals, your past knockouts, or your social media following. It cares about whether you are willing to impose your will on another trained human being who is trying to do the same to you. When that willingness is replaced by the need to perform the role of the dangerous man, the outcome becomes predictable. The hungry young fighters are already circling. They watched the same face-off I did. They saw the same vacancy. They will be ready when the next opportunity presents itself.
I have carried large-caliber handguns for personal protection for years. I vary my routes. I pay attention to how people move and how they look at you when they think no one is watching. You learn to distinguish between real readiness and the kind of posturing that comes from people who hope the image will do the work. The ones who are truly prepared do not need to announce it with every step. They are. That same discernment applies to politics, business, and every other competitive space. The eye of the tiger shows up in the small things: the consistency of preparation, the refusal to make excuses, the willingness to do the boring work that makes the dramatic moments possible. When that is missing, no amount of jumping around or clever marketing changes the underlying math.
There is a broader context to all of this that I keep returning to in my own writing and thinking. We are living through a period in which many of the old structures are being tested, and in which entitlement and performance have been elevated over substance in too many corners of culture. The media rewards the loudest voices. Politics sometimes rewards those who can perform the role of a fighter without actually having to fight on the hard issues. Sports and entertainment industries create stars and then watch them fade when the underlying fire goes out. It is not just about individual choices. It is about a cultural atmosphere that makes comfort and image more attractive than the daily discipline of staying sharp. That is why the lessons from the cage and from the Senate floor matter beyond their immediate arenas. They are microcosms of the same human dynamics that play out everywhere.
I have written before about the gunfighter ethos as a skeleton key to understanding Western success in business and in life. The willingness to draw when necessary, to be precise under pressure, to accept that reputation is earned in the moment of truth rather than in the buildup. McGregor in his prime embodied a version of that. Graham, for all his years in Washington, never quite projected the same self-contained readiness. He was effective in his own way, but the effectiveness often depended on the company he kept rather than on a solitary, unmistakable center of gravity. When that center is missing, time eventually exposes it. For Graham, the exposure came at the end of a long career. For McGregor, it came in sixty-nine seconds under the bright lights.
The vacancy left by Graham’s passing is an opportunity for someone who understands that politics at its best is not about hanging around winners but about being willing to fight for the right things even when it is costly. The lesson from McGregor’s fight is an opportunity for every young athlete, every entrepreneur, every person who steps into any arena: do not go out there unless you have the eye of the tiger. Do not try to fake it with theatrics or reputation or the hope that the other side will respect your past. The cage, the marketplace, the ballot box, and life itself have a way of finding the vacancy and exploiting it. The ones who win consistently are the ones who wake up every day knowing they are still hungry, still willing to do the work, still prepared to impose their will on whatever stands in their way.
I felt sorry for both men in different ways. For Graham, the human reality of a sudden exit after decades of service. For McGregor, the avoidable nature of the loss and the way it complicates a legacy that did not need complicating. But I am not surprised by either. When you operate without the eye of the tiger, the outcomes become foreseeable. The body, the political environment, or the competitive landscape eventually calls the bluff. The only real choice is whether you recognize it in time to either rekindle the fire or step aside with dignity while the fire is still remembered for what it once was.
That is the lesson I keep returning to, whether I am watching a fight card, reading political news, or whatever the issue. The eye of the tiger is not a feeling that comes and goes with the crowd or the paycheck. It is a decision you make every day about how you will meet the moment. Some people never lose it. Others let comfort, distraction, or the accumulation of small compromises take it from them. The ones who keep it understand that every fight, every negotiation, every election, every personal test is an opportunity to prove it is still there. When it is not, the smart move is to recognize it before the knee buckles or the vacancy becomes the story everyone tells about you.
Conor McGregor should have stayed retired if the fire had not been there in full force. Lindsey Graham’s seat now belongs to whoever is willing to occupy it with something more than borrowed credibility. Both situations point to the same truth. You cannot win on theatrics when the other side is still willing to do the real work. You cannot fake the eye of the tiger. Either you have it or you do not, and the arena always finds out which.
This is why I keep writing and talking about these things. The surface events, the fights, the elections, and the headlines are never just about themselves. They are reflections of deeper patterns in how human beings handle pressure, power, and the passage of time. If you want to understand why certain people rise and others fade, why institutions get captured or renewed, why cultures either strengthen or decay, you have to look past the performance and into the actual state of the will. That is the work I have tried to do in my books, and it is the work that feels more urgent now than ever.
Footnotes
[1] Reports on Lindsey Graham’s death on or around July 11-12, 2026, described the cause as an aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, following a brief illness. He was 71. See contemporaneous coverage from Reuters, The Washington Post, and The Guardian (July 2026).
[2] Graham served in the U.S. House before winning the election to the Senate in 2002, representing South Carolina. He formed a close political and personal alliance with Sen. John McCain, often traveling together and working on foreign policy and judicial matters. They were part of the informal “Three Amigos” grouping that also included Sen. Joe Lieberman for a period. Graham initially criticized Donald Trump sharply during the 2016 campaign, including over Trump’s comments about McCain, but later became a supporter and frequent golf partner.
[3] Conor McGregor returned to the UFC at event 329 in Las Vegas, facing Max Holloway in a welterweight bout. The fight ended at 1:09 of the first round when McGregor injured his right knee (suspected ACL tear) upon landing from an opening flying left roundhouse kick. He had not fought since breaking his leg against Dustin Poirier in 2021. Holloway was awarded the TKO victory. Post-fight commentary and McGregor’s own statements reflected significant disappointment.
[4] McGregor’s fighting style has long combined elite striking (particularly the left hand) with significant showmanship, psychological warfare, and theatrical elements in entrances and pre-fight interactions. Analysts have noted both the effectiveness of his mental game in his prime and the risks when physical tools or timing are compromised. His history includes notable leg injuries that affected mobility in later bouts.
[5] The phrase “eye of the tiger” originates in the film Rocky III (1982, directed by Sylvester Stallone). After Rocky loses to Clubber Lang, Apollo Creed tells him he has lost “that eye of the tiger, man—the edge,” and must recover the hunger and intensity that defined his earlier success. The song “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor was written for the film and underscores the theme of reclaiming drive after comfort sets in.
[6] The author’s perspective on competitive mindset, resilience, and Western strategic traditions is developed in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business: A Skeleton Key to Western Civilization, which draws on gunfighter ethos, Lean manufacturing experience, and practical leadership lessons from decades in aerospace and business environments. Personal experiences with high-stakes situations, personal protection, and teaching resilience (including model rocketry with family) inform the analogies used throughout.
[7] Broader themes of spiritual and historical patterns that underlie visible political and cultural conflicts are explored in the author’s forthcoming work, The Politics of Heaven, which examines biblical conspiracies, ancient history, non-human influences, and the nature of power and moral alignment across time.
Bibliography / Recommended Reading
• Stallone, Sylvester, dir. Rocky III. United Artists, 1982. Film.
• Survivor. “Eye of the Tiger.” Eye of the Tiger, Scotti Brothers Records, 1982. Song.
• Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business: A Skeleton Key to Western Civilization. (Available editions emphasize practical Western strategic thinking for business and life.)
• Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. Forthcoming / completed 2026. (Explores deeper spiritual warfare, historical conspiracies, and power structures.)
• Contemporary news reporting on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s career, alliance with Sen. John McCain, evolution regarding Donald Trump, and death in July 2026 (Reuters, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Roll Call).
• MMA technical and career analysis of Conor McGregor, including striking style, psychological approach, injury history, and the UFC 329 bout against Max Holloway (various fight coverage and breakdowns, July 2026).
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I heard the news the other day about this Graham Platner loser dropping out of the Maine Senate race, and it struck me the same way it probably struck many people who watched his video statement. Here was a guy who had just won the Democratic primary in a big way, an oysterman and Marine veteran out of Sullivan, Maine, who beat the establishment favorite and raised something like sixteen million dollars in contributions for a race against Susan Collins. Then a former girlfriend comes forward with a story about him forcing himself on her back in 2021 while drunk, ignoring her repeated objections, and the whole thing unravels in a matter of days. He denies it outright, calls the claims false and not real, but still suspends operations and files the paperwork to withdraw before the July 13 deadline so the party can scramble for a replacement by the 27th. In his eleven-minute video, he says it is not an admission of guilt, that some will think it is, but it most certainly is not, and that they are stepping aside not because of the allegations but because those in power are taking away the structures and access. For the movement to continue, it cannot be him.
That surface reaction, the astonishment and the quick takes, does not get deep enough. What happened here is not just another politician caught in a mess of his own making. It is a window into something larger about how certain kinds of people rise in the current version of Democrat politics, especially the populist left strain that has been building since Bernie Sanders and now carries elements of what some are calling a blue MAGA or communist-adjacent energy. Platner fits a pattern that keeps showing up. Multiple ex-girlfriends have described intimidating behavior, one saying he twisted her arm and locked her in a bedroom until she calmed down, another recounting comments about raping intruders to show dominance, and still another alleging he removed protection without consent during sex. There was the chest tattoo, a Totenkopf that he first claimed he did not understand, just a skull and crossbones from a drunken night with Marines in Croatia in 2007, but ex-girlfriends say he knew exactly what it was, bragged about it as a reminder that the United States was the evil bad guy overseas, and called it his Totenkopf. Then came the old Reddit posts where he described himself as a communist, said all cops are bastards, and made other remarks disparaging women, rural White Americans, and various groups. He had also been sending sexually explicit texts to other women during a rough patch in his marriage, something his wife publicly defended while saying they had a great marriage overall.
When the latest allegation hit from Jenny Racicot, the pressure from national and state Democrats mounted fast, and endorsements started peeling away. The party machinery that had lifted him after Governor Janet Mills stepped aside suddenly found the strings being pulled. Platner framed it as the establishment taking away his ability to run, his access to funding, and the mechanisms of power, even though he had beaten their preferred candidate in the primary. It sounded like an admission that the machine believed the story or at least believed it would stick and cost them the seat. Susan Collins, for all the complaints about her being a RINO Republican at best, suddenly looked like the safer bet in a race that matters for Senate control. The whole episode felt familiar, like watching the same movie the Republican side lived through a decade ago, only now it is the Democrats’ turn and the characters coming forward to fill the populist void on their side carry different baggage.
I have been saying for a long time that the Tea Party movement was never really about pulling the Republican Party back to some Chamber of Commerce comfort zone. It was the start of something bigger: MAGA, a demand for individual accountability and pushback against the permanent class that had captured both parties. The RINOs like McConnell, Romney, and Kasich types resisted Trump because they saw the threat to their control. They got pushed to the margins or had to adapt. What we are watching now on the Democrat side is their version of that purification, except the energy they are riding is collectivist at its core. Bernie Sanders gave it shape, and now you see candidates who talk about Medicare for All, banning billionaires from buying elections, ending wars forever, and strong unions, but the people who step forward to lead that charge often bring personal conduct that would get them run out of a more individual-responsibility culture. Platner is not an outlier in that environment. He is a predictable product of it.
The warm blanket of collectivism is what draws these characters and protects them for a while. When you tell people that the individual does not matter as much as the group, that judgment on personal behavior is bourgeois or oppressive, or whatever the current phrase is, you create space for someone with a Nazi tattoo, a history of rough treatment of women, and a trail of denied allegations to present himself as the champion of the working class. The cause becomes the excuse. Personal integrity gets subordinated to participation in the movement. If you are out there advocating for the collective good, for the masses against the oligarchs, then who cares if your private life shows a pattern of dominance, non-consent, or simple low character? The ideology says do not judge the individual; judge him by his alignment with the larger project. That is why you keep seeing the same types of behavior surface. They find a home where their dysfunction does not trigger the same social cost it would elsewhere.
I have watched enough of this over the years to know that sexual conduct is one of the clearest windows into character. People who live for self-pleasure, who chase validation without scrutiny, who treat others as means to an end, often gravitate toward environments that promise no judgment. Liberal politics has been that environment for decades for a certain kind of man. It is not that every liberal man is like this, but the ones who are find it easier to operate there. The women who get drawn in, the ones who are insecure and looking for collective cover, often end up in situations they later regret. They talk about wanting a strong, dominant presence, but they do not look for it on the side that might actually hold them accountable or demand standards. They stay inside the circle where the bad behavior can be reframed as a moment of weakness, or the fault of the system, or something the collective will forgive because the higher cause matters more. You see it in the wine-tasting crowds, the middle-aged women who start hitting on everyone once the drinks flow, the husbands standing off to the side, embarrassed, while their wives seek validation in a group setting. It is the same impulse that makes collectivism attractive to people who do not want their personal record examined too closely. Four or five abortions, repeated cheating, substance issues, whatever the story is, the group provides the blanket. Do not judge me for my individual choices; judge me for my participation in empowering the masses.
That is the danger with someone like Platner. On the surface, he looked like a fresh face, a veteran oysterman who could connect with working people in a state facing real economic pressures. Underneath was the same pattern that had shown up with other figures on that side of the aisle in recent years. The party did not know what to do when the stories kept coming, so they did what machines do: they pulled the plug once it became clear he could no longer win or raise money effectively. Platner’s response was to blame the structures rather than own the conduct that had turned the structures against him. That is also classic. It is never the individual’s fault in a collectivist frame. It is the machine, the establishment, the powers that be who are threatened by the movement.
The Republican side went through its own version of this a decade ago and is still sorting some of it. The difference is that the underlying philosophy on that side, even when imperfectly practiced, still holds room for individual responsibility and personal conduct as legitimate standards. Trump himself came out of a Playboy background in the eighties and nineties, lived that life openly, and the people who supported him later knew what they were getting. Melania came out of that same world, and they built something that has lasted. He did not hide behind a collective excuse when things got hard. He used his brand and his willingness to fight the permanent class to deliver on borders, energy, judges, and pushing back against the administrative state. The voters who backed him were not endorsing the 1990s lifestyle; they were endorsing the man who would impose limits on government power and restore some sense of sovereignty. That is why the purification worked on the right. It was messy, and it took years, but it produced a filter that still operates. People who cannot meet a basic standard of personal integrity or who treat politics as cover for their own appetites get exposed and sidelined eventually.
On the Democratic side, the filter is currently weaker because the ideology itself discourages individual judgment. The populist energy they are trying to harness is being filled by characters who would have been laughed out of a serious movement on the other side. You are going to see more Graham Platners before this cycle finishes. They will keep coming forward because the environment rewards the ability to perform the collectivist script, while their personal lives stay hidden or are excused. The more they double down on that direction, the more the low-character actors will find it a comfortable place to operate. Republicans already paid the price and did the work of cleaning house. Democrats are just starting their version, and it looks like it is going to be uglier because the philosophy they are embracing provides better cover for dysfunction.
That is why some of the dumbest outcomes in politics keep happening. People who would never tolerate certain behavior in their own families or businesses will defend it or excuse it when it comes from someone aligned with their political tribe. They will vote for policies that demonstrably harm the vulnerable, erode family formation, import incompatible cultures, and centralize power in unaccountable bureaucracies, all while insisting it is compassion or progress. On the surface, it looks like ideology run amok. Deeper, it looks like influence is amplifying the parts of human nature that are already broken.
Platner’s short rise and fall is just one more data point in that larger story. A man with a documented pattern of behavior that should have disqualified him from any position of trust found a lane in the current Democrat populist moment because the ideology provided cover and the machine needed a fresh face who could raise money and excite the base. When the cover began to fail, the machine cut him loose, and he blamed it. The cycle will repeat with the next candidate who can perform the script while carrying similar baggage. On the other side, the work of insisting on personal conduct and individual responsibility continues, however imperfectly. That insistence is not just political hygiene. It is resistance to the older pattern that wants humanity to dissolve responsibility into collectives so the real influences can operate without resistance.
Footnotes
1. National Review and multiple outlets reported Platner’s formal withdrawal letter and video statement on or around July 8–10, 2026, including his phrasing that the structures were being taken away and that it was not an admission of guilt.
2. Politico, CNN, and Washington Post reporting on Jenny Racicot’s allegations of forced sex in 2021, including details of the incident and her decision to come forward after Platner’s public denials of abusive behavior.
3. New York Times reporting on multiple ex-girlfriends describing physical intimidation, locked rooms, and other conduct, including Lyndsey Fifield’s accounts from 2013–2015.
4. New York Post and other reporting on the Totenkopf tattoo, ex-girlfriends stating Platner knew its meaning and used it as a reminder that the U.S. was the “evil bad guy overseas,” and his initial public claim that he did not understand the symbol.
5. Reporting on deleted Reddit posts from 2009–2021 in which Platner described himself as a communist and made various disparaging remarks; also coverage of sexually explicit texts sent during marital difficulties and the wife’s public defense.
6. Campaign finance totals and primary results showing Platner’s strong performance after Mills suspended her campaign and his subsequent withdrawal before the July 13, 2026 ballot deadline, with the Maine Democratic Party given until July 27 to name a replacement.
Bibliography for Further Reading
• The Book of Enoch, translated editions with commentary on the watchers, giants, and pre-flood rebellion.
• The Bible, particularly Genesis 6, Daniel on principalities and powers, Ephesians 6 on spiritual warfare, and Revelation on the ongoing conflict.
• Dead Sea Scrolls materials and related scholarship on Second Temple period views of heavenly politics and fallen entities.
• My own forthcoming book, The Politics of Heaven, explores these threads through history and current events.
• The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and its developing sequel, which apply lessons of individual will, resilience, and integrity to institutional and political environments.
• Tail of the Dragon and The Symposium of Justice for narrative treatments of personal conduct, justice, and hidden power structures.
• Standard works on UFO disclosure and non-human intelligence, including historical government documents and researcher compilations on reported entity types and their interactions with human systems.
• Histories of the Tea Party movement and its evolution into broader populist realignments on the right, with attention to the internal purification process.
• Accounts of Bernie Sanders’ influence and the subsequent development of progressive populist currents on the
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I have watched this story unfold with a mixture of anger, sadness, and that familiar sinking feeling that comes when you realize the system is working exactly as designed—not for the kids, but for the adults who feed off the perpetual motion machine of public money and institutional self-preservation. A mother filed a federal lawsuit on July 1, 2026, alleging that a Lakota Local Schools teacher groomed and sexually abused her daughter over roughly three years, starting when the girl was 13 years old in seventh grade at Liberty Junior School.
According to the detailed complaint, the teacher—identified in court documents as Ronald Henrich—did not even teach the girl in any of her classes. He welcomed her into his classroom during study hall periods, showed her “special attention,” and began building a relationship. Messages started on the district’s own Remind app. The student confided personal struggles, including mental health issues. The communications continued and escalated even after the mother tried to set boundaries. By ninth grade, the meetings moved to a closed-door “mindfulness room” for Friday lunches. Communications shifted to district email and Google Docs when access to Remind was curtailed. In March 2025, the mother discovered the teacher actively typing “extremely sexually graphic content” into a shared Canva document with her daughter. She recorded it. She called the Butler County Sheriff’s Office.
The district’s response, according to the lawsuit, was to promise administrative leave and restricted access to technology, then quietly allow the teacher to take Family and Medical Leave Act leave instead. Less than two weeks after the explicit messages surfaced—and while investigations by the district, sheriff, and children’s services were still open—the district approved his retirement. No public discipline. No immediate report to the Ohio Department of Education, as many parents would expect. The teacher walked away with his pension and benefits intact while the family was left to pick up the pieces.
The superintendent, Ashley Whitely, issued the standard institutional denial: the district “denies all allegations” and claims student safety is its top priority. Meanwhile, the mother’s lawsuit also details earlier reports she made that went unaddressed, repeated class pull-outs without parental notification, and even troubling lapses in how the school nurse handled the student’s medication—stockpiling Tylenol that contributed to a suicide attempt and failing to manage anxiety medication on a trip properly. These are not small administrative hiccups. They paint a picture of a system that had multiple opportunities to intervene and chose not to.
Then there is the part that really sticks in my craw. According to people who have followed the internal handling, the HR director—Jeff Rouff—essentially shrugged and said something to the effect that the age of consent in Ohio is 16, so what’s the big deal? Two consenting adults. Nothing illegal happened. That line of thinking is exactly why these situations metastasize. It ignores the entire grooming process that began at 13, when the girl was under the care and authority of this adult in a position of power inside a public school building. It ignores the use of school-issued devices and district apps to conduct the relationship. It ignores the closed doors, the missed classes, the emotional manipulation of a vulnerable child who had already suffered prior sexual abuse. Age of consent statutes were never intended to give cover to adults in positions of trust who spend years cultivating access to minors. That is not a gray area. That is the precise reason we have laws and professional conduct codes for educators in the first place.
I heard about problems surrounding this teacher roughly a year before the lawsuit dropped. Other parents and observers had been talking. The circle had already started to form. When the story finally broke across local media—Channel 5, Local 12, FOX 19—the superintendent’s immediate public move was not a somber address about accountability and root-cause fixes. It was a cheerleading video hyping a fall tax increase, talking about hiring dozens more staff members, rolling out a corporate “roadmap” with “stakeholders,” and reminding everyone to keep supporting public schools. The timing felt deliberate. Distract, then reassure the taxpayers who write the checks. Keep the money flowing.
That is the game I have been describing for years. Lakota, like many large suburban districts, is constantly in or approaching levy mode. The narrative must be controlled: we are great, we are improving, we need a little more of your property tax money to keep doing the wonderful things we do. Bad stories—especially stories that suggest adults in the building are preying on children and that leadership circled the wagons—threaten that narrative. So the wagons circle. The teacher retires quietly. HR offers the age-of-consent talking point. The superintendent films the upbeat video. The teachers’ union, which exists in large part to protect its members from consequences, stays largely silent or issues the usual generic statements about due process. And the machine keeps turning.
This is not an isolated incident. The lawsuit itself references a pattern of other cases involving Lakota employees over the years—some that resulted in convictions or license revocations, others that were handled with quiet exits. Former board member Darbi Boddy, who has remained a vocal parent advocate even after her time on the board ended, issued a clear public statement criticizing the handling of this situation. Good for her. We need more people willing to say the obvious out loud rather than hide behind “stakeholder engagement” jargon.
What troubles me most is how predictable the protection response has become. When something like this surfaces, the institution’s first instinct is not “How do we make sure this never happens again and how do we support the victim?” It is “How do we contain the damage to our brand and our funding pipeline?” The HR director’s reported comment about 16 being legal is a perfect example of that mindset. It treats the endpoint—the moment the child turned 16—as the only thing that matters, while erasing the years of grooming and boundary erosion that got her there. It treats a minor student in a teacher’s care as just another “consenting adult” the second the calendar flips. That is not how any responsible adult in education should think. It is how an institution thinks when its primary loyalty is to itself and the revenue stream that sustains it.
Public education in its current monopolistic, union-protected, tax-funded form has structural problems that make these failures almost inevitable. When you combine compulsory attendance, massive budgets, powerful collective bargaining agreements that make firing even grossly negligent employees difficult and expensive, and a culture that treats any criticism as an attack on “the children” or “public education itself,” you create exactly the conditions for cover-ups. The money keeps coming in as long as the bad stories stay buried or get spun. Parents who raise hell are dismissed as “haters” or people with “unrealistically high moral standards.” Meanwhile, the actual standard on the ground—don’t have sex with kids in the classroom or via school devices, don’t groom them for years, don’t let it slide when a parent reports it—somehow becomes negotiable the moment it threatens the budget or the reputation.
I am not saying every teacher is doing this, but too many are. The vast majority are not. But the ones who are counting on the system’s reluctance to act decisively. They count on the HR director who will find the legal technicality. They count on the superintendent, who will film the upbeat video instead of cleaning house. They count on the union that will fight to the last dollar of taxpayer money to protect a member who should never have been in a classroom with minors. And they count on enough parents staying disengaged or intimidated for the story to fade before real accountability arrives.
The mother in this case did what too few parents feel empowered to do: she documented, she reported, she refused to let it disappear. Her lawsuit is now public. The allegations are serious and detailed. Whether every claim is ultimately proven in court is for the legal process to decide. But the pattern of institutional response—quiet exit, legal denials, distraction videos, and the age-of-consent shrug—is already on display for anyone willing to look. That pattern is what should alarm every parent in Lakota and every parent in any district that operates the same way.
How many other kids right now are in unhealthy dynamics with adults who hold power over their grades, their schedules, their daily lives inside these buildings? How many school-issued devices are carrying messages that would make any decent parent’s blood run cold if they saw them? How many times has a concerned parent been told some version of “nothing to see here, move along, and please vote yes on the next levy”? I would be willing to bet the number is higher than any of us want to admit. This case only became a story because one mother refused to be quiet. The rest stay invisible because the system is optimized for exactly that outcome.
We keep being told that more money, more staff, more programs, and more “roadmaps” will fix what ails public education. I have watched this play out locally for years. The money keeps increasing. The problems—academic stagnation in too many areas, cultural capture, and now these horrifying failures of basic child protection—persist or worsen. At some point, parents have to ask whether the institution itself is the problem, not the lack of funding. When the first instinct of leadership is to protect the adult and the budget rather than the child, the social contract has already been broken.
Summary of Doe v. Lakota Local Schools (Filed July 1, 2026)
Important: This is a civil complaint containing allegations made by the plaintiffs. The allegations have been filed in federal court but have not been proven in court unless and until established through litigation. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
Overview
A mother (“Jane Doe”) and her daughter (“Jill Doe”), a minor student in the Lakota Local School District, filed a federal lawsuit against:
Lakota Local Schools
Former teacher Ronald Henrich
Superintendent Ashley Whitely
Principal Bill Brinkman
The lawsuit alleges that Henrich groomed and sexually abused Jill over approximately three years and that district officials failed to prevent, investigate, or properly respond to the misconduct. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
Timeline of Alleged Events
2022–2023 School Year (7th Grade)
According to the complaint:
Jill was 13 years old and had documented mental health struggles and prior trauma.
Although she was not formally identified as a gifted student, she began attending a gifted-program study hall supervised by Ronald Henrich.
Henrich allegedly began developing a special relationship with her and communicating extensively through the district’s Remind messaging app.
Jill reportedly disclosed personal information, including mental health struggles and prior abuse.
The lawsuit alleges the district failed to monitor or investigate the growing relationship. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
January 2024 Suicide Attempt
The complaint alleges:
Jill stockpiled Tylenol obtained from a school nurse over several days.
On January 22, 2024, she consumed approximately 4,500 mg in a suicide attempt while at school.
She was hospitalized and spent four days in psychiatric care.
Henrich continued communicating with Jill during summer break.
Messages allegedly became increasingly personal.
Jill’s mother became concerned and restricted access to the messaging app outside school hours.
The complaint argues district monitoring failed to detect inappropriate communications. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
2024–2025 School Year (9th Grade)
The complaint alleges that:
Henrich was assigned to a different school building but continued visiting Jill’s building.
He allegedly met her weekly for private lunches.
He brought her food and regularly pulled her from class for mentoring sessions.
Communications allegedly shifted to district email and Google documents after the Remind app was discontinued.
Jill reportedly missed significant class time due to meetings with Henrich.
Teachers allegedly expressed concerns about her absences, but her mother was not informed. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
January–March 2025 Escalation
According to the complaint:
Henrich allegedly contacted Jill’s therapist directly without parental permission.
The two allegedly arranged a meeting at a driving range.
On March 14, 2025, Jill participated in a gifted-program event where her parents observed what they considered unusual interactions between her and Henrich. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
She discovered a shared Canva document allegedly being used for communication between Jill and Henrich.
The mother and stepfather reportedly recorded nearly an hour of sexually explicit messages allegedly typed by Henrich.
The complaint includes graphic excerpts from those messages.
Butler County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the home and allegedly observed additional messages being typed while officers were present. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
After Discovery
The lawsuit claims:
The Sheriff’s Office informed the district on March 21, 2025.
The family was initially told Henrich would be placed on administrative leave and barred from district property.
Later, the parents discovered through board records that Henrich had instead been granted Family Medical Leave and subsequently retired.
The complaint alleges the district failed to investigate adequately and failed to report misconduct to state authorities. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
Children’s Services Finding
The complaint states that:
Butler County Children Services substantiated abuse allegations involving Henrich and Jill.
The family argues the district still failed to take meaningful disciplinary action. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
Return to School
The lawsuit alleges:
Jill was prohibited from using a Chromebook as a safety measure.
Teachers allegedly failed to provide equivalent paper assignments.
She allegedly faced stigma and negative treatment related to the abuse investigation.
The complaint argues Henrich’s case reflects a larger pattern within Lakota Schools.
It references previous incidents involving:
Justin Dennis
Nick McGill
Former Superintendent Matt Miller
George Merk
Robert Supinger
Angela Johnson
The plaintiffs argue these incidents demonstrate a longstanding failure by the district to identify, stop, or adequately respond to staff misconduct involving students. These allegations, presented by the plaintiffs as evidence of a pattern, have not been adjudicated in this case. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
Claims Filed
The lawsuit includes numerous claims, including:
Federal Civil Rights Claims (42 U.S.C. § 1983)
State-created danger
Special relationship doctrine
Conduct that “shocks the conscience”
Equal protection violations
Inadequate district policies and protection systems
Disability Claims
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
State Law Claims
Negligent supervision
Negligence per se
Negligent infliction of emotional distress
Intentional infliction of emotional distress (against Henrich)
The complaint alleges that a Lakota teacher groomed and sexually abused a vulnerable student over several years using district facilities, technology, and access to the student, while school administrators allegedly ignored warning signs, failed to take corrective action after discovery, and inadequately protected the student afterward. The lawsuit seeks damages under federal civil rights laws, disability laws, and Ohio tort law. [Doe v Lakota Schools | PDF]
Based on the civil complaint, the accusations and behaviors of Ronald Henrich against the minor plaintiff include a systematic pattern of grooming, manipulation, and sexual abuse over three years:
**Grooming and Relationship Development**
**Unauthorized Access:** Henrich allowed Jill to attend his “gifted” program study hall instead of her assigned one in seventh grade, despite her not being a designated gifted student.
**Targeting Vulnerabilities:** He built a relationship with Jill by showing her “special attention” and exploiting her personal struggles, including her history of anxiety, self-harm, and past sexual abuse, which she shared with him.
**Mentoring Pretense:** He repeatedly pulled Jill out of her regular classes for one-on-one “mentoring” sessions, claiming it was necessary for her anxiety and mental health.
**App-Based Communication:** He messaged Jill frequently on the District’s Remind app, often outside of school hours, with messages that became increasingly personal, such as saying “good morning” and “good night” and discussing their dinners.
**Switching Platforms:** When the District ended its contract with the Remind app, Henrich continued his daily personal communications through Jill’s District email and Google Docs accounts.
**Boundary Violations and Stalking**
**Secluded Lunches:** During Jill’s ninth-grade year, Henrich—who was no longer assigned to her building—visited her every Friday to eat lunch alone with her in a “mindfulness room” with the door closed, often bringing her food from outside the school.
**Inappropriate Physical Presence:** He “stalked” Jill by visiting her after band practice in a building where he had no official responsibilities.
**Circumventing Parents:** He reached out directly to Jill’s therapist without her mother’s consent to discuss “developments” in Jill’s mental health.
**Orchestrated Meetings:** He arranged to meet Jill at a local driving range outside of school hours and feigned that their encounter was a “coincidence” to her family.
**Inappropriate Conversation with Mother:** He told Jill’s mother that he had lost sleep and weight over their relationship and that he “missed how things used to be,” when teachers could drive students alone in their vehicles.
**Sexual Abuse and Graphic Misconduct**
**Canva Incident:** On March 20, 2025, Jill’s mother discovered Henrich was actively typing and immediately deleting extremely sexually graphic messages on a live Canva document shared with Jill.
**Graphic Content:** These recorded messages included detailed descriptions of Henrich engaging in rough sexual foreplay and penetrative acts with Jill, which he referred to as “punishment.”
**Physical Abuse:** The messages depicted Henrich causing Jill pain, pulling her hair, and smacking her.
**Post-Discovery Misconduct**
**Unauthorized Contact:** In December 2025, after Butler County Children’s Services had substantiated the abuse, Henrich communicated with Jill during the school day via another student’s phone.
**Physical Encounter:** A few days later, Henrich picked Jill up from a mandatory school band practice and drove her to a park where they “laid together” in his vehicle before he returned her to school.
Footnotes
1. Details of the federal lawsuit filed July 1, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, as reported in contemporaneous coverage by the Cincinnati Enquirer and Journal-News.
2. Allegations regarding the timeline, use of the Remind app, Canva document, mindfulness room meetings, and district response drawn from the complaint were summarized in multiple local outlets.
3. District statement denying allegations and emphasizing student safety priorities, reported across local media following the lawsuit filing.
4. References to prior incidents and pattern allegations contained within the 2026 lawsuit filings and prior local reporting on other Lakota employee cases.
5. Ohio age of consent is 16; however, professional conduct codes for educators and laws regarding persons in positions of authority create additional prohibitions on sexual conduct with students that do not turn solely on the general age of consent.
Bibliography for Further Reading
• Cincinnati Enquirer, “Parent says Lakota teacher groomed and abused her daughter,” July 8, 2026.
• Journal-News, “Lawsuit: Lakota teacher ‘groomed and sexually abused’ a student and was allowed to take medical leave, retire,” July 7, 2026 (updated July 9).
• FOX19 / Local 12 coverage of the July 2026 lawsuit and related statements.
• Ohio Department of Education professional conduct standards for educators (ongoing reference for context on boundaries and reporting obligations).
• General resources on educator sexual misconduct patterns: U.S. Department of Education reports and studies on employee misconduct in K-12 settings (searchable via ED.gov).
• Local coverage of prior Lakota cases involving Justin Dennis and others referenced in the 2026 lawsuit for pattern context.
• Darbi Boddy’s public statements and commentary on Lakota issues (available via local media archives and her public channels).
• Ohio Revised Code sections on sexual battery, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, and school employee reporting requirements.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I told you so. That phrase has been rolling around in my mind a lot lately, especially as I watch the country grapple with forces that were plain as day more than a decade ago if you bothered to look. I’ve spent a lifetime studying human nature, history, and the patterns that repeat across civilizations, and one thing I’ve learned is that people rarely listen when the warnings don’t fit the comfortable narrative of the moment. They prefer the glossy corporate packaging, the safe conventional wisdom, the voices that promise everything can go back in the bottle, and we can return to the George W. Bush days of polite Republicanism. I saw it clearly back in 2012, and I’ve been proven right in ways that still make me shake my head and chuckle, even as the consequences play out in Ohio and across the nation.
I remember those days on Clear Channel radio vividly. I was a frequent guest, then hosting segments on weekday and weekend shows, reaching millions. The topics were hot: the cost of labor in public schools, the socialist bent of public-sector unions, and how collective bargaining funded with taxpayer money created an unsustainable beast. I laid it out plainly—labor unions in America, particularly public ones, carried the DNA of communist organizing imported from Europe. They weren’t just about fair wages; they were about wielding power over government, education, and culture, funded by confiscated property taxes. The pushback was immediate. Executives pulled me aside. Corporate types whispered that communism was a bad word, that I was going too far, that I was alienating the audience. They wanted sports talk, grilling tips, lighter fare. The orthodoxy believed the Tea Party energy could be bottled up and the old establishment restored. I warned them it wouldn’t work. Human nature doesn’t let genies stay bottled once the cork is out.
Around that time, John Kasich pushed Senate Bill 5 in Ohio, a serious attempt to curb public employee collective bargaining. It passed, but the unions mobilized, and it was repealed by referendum. I had been vocal in support of reforms, and when it blew up, the knives came out. People who had listened to me suddenly distanced themselves. I was labeled extreme. Invitations dried up. Some higher-ups at Clear Channel and in political circles thought the radical voices like mine needed sidelining so the respectable Republicans could take back control. Fast forward, and Kasich himself has shown more progressive stripes over time. Mike DeWine, another Republican governor, appointed Amy Acton as Health Director despite her abortion advocacy and later watched her become the lockdown queen during COVID. The pattern repeats: reach across the aisle, accommodate the left, and wonder why the ground keeps shifting. I’ve been saying for years that many of these figures are Democrats in Republican clothing, and the internals bear it out.
When Trump rose, the corporate conservative media—Fox News chief among them—had a similar moment. They treated him like an interloper, elevated more conventional types like Ron DeSantis, and seemed ready to exile the populist wave. I watched it with the same sense of déjà vu I felt in 2012. The proper conservative establishment wanted the genie back in the bottle. They couldn’t stomach the raw challenge to the system. On the left, Bernie Sanders represented a parallel populist surge, but it got channeled into radical socialist figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The media tried to polish it up, but the undercurrents were Marxist through and through. I said then that MAGA was the natural evolution of questioning the rot, and ignoring or silencing voices like mine wouldn’t make the questions go away. Here we are in 2026, and the same dynamics play out in Ohio with Amy Acton running as a Democrat, backed by the usual progressive machinery, while Vivek Ramaswamy draws fire precisely because he represents successful capitalism. The anti-rich mantra is straight out of the communist playbook.
I’ve never been one to chase popularity. I study the totality of human endeavor—ancient history, biblical patterns, philosophy, the way power really operates behind the scenes. That’s why I could see where public sector unions were heading. They were created out of movements with communist roots, designed to infiltrate and control. Taxpayer-funded bargaining gives them leverage over policy, especially in education. Property taxes confiscate wealth from owners to fund what amounts to Marxist indoctrination in many classrooms. The Department of Education, created in the late 1970s, accelerated it. Kids dropped off for what amounts to free babysitting come home with attitudes shaped by collective bargaining agreements that prioritize ideology over basics. I warned about this on air relentlessly. The response? “You can’t talk like that on corporate radio. We’re here to entertain and sell ads, not tell uncomfortable truths.” So I stepped away from a lot of it, preferring independence. I turned down opportunities that would have chained me to the corporate structure because I value longevity and truth over short-term access.
One broadcast that sticks with me came around 2013-2014. I was on with Matt Clark from Ann Arbor, Michigan and others, and we read the planks from The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen right on the air. That 1958 book, expanded with 45 goals in later editions, lays out the strategy: infiltrate schools, unions, media, churches; soften curricula; promote pornography and moral breakdown; discredit the Constitution and Founding Fathers; capture one or both political parties. It was all there, drawn from congressional records and deep research into Marxist tactics. The alignment with what I was seeing was uncanny. Communists don’t need to win elections outright when they can reshape the culture that produces the voters. Get control of the schools, use them as transmission belts for socialism. Infiltrate the press. Break down the family. It’s all documented, and we’re living through the harvest.
People laughed or got uncomfortable. “You’re making enemies,” they said. “You’re upsetting the donors.” But I’ve always played the long game. I don’t let consensus or teamwork dictate my path because those are often vehicles for diluted truth. I’ve been pushed aside more than once—business, politics, media—but I don’t hand over power by needing their approval. That independence lets me look back and say, without bitterness but with a certain satisfaction, “I told you so.” When lives or societies run into the wall, I don’t jump off a bridge with them. I giggle a bit because the warnings were sincere, offered freely from years of study, meant to help. Most don’t want help; they want scapegoats and comfortable narratives. They fly the flag on the Fourth of July, cheer the Bengals, call themselves patriots, but won’t confront the cultural Marxism embedded in daily life. Soccer, for instance—I’ve called it a socialist game. Penalizing forwards for being offside, low scores, and an emphasis on the collective over individual brilliance. Contrast that with American football: strategic, explosive, rewarding excellence and preparation. Little cultural markers reveal bigger philosophies.
Now, as we celebrate another Independence Day, the ironies pile up. Fireworks light the sky while radicalized generations, trained in public schools funded by the very property taxes I warned about, push policies that erode the foundations of that freedom. Amy Acton embodies it in Ohio: lockdown authoritarian during COVID, abortion advocate before and after, now running with backing from figures like David Pepper and the election mechanics crowd. Vivek draws hate because he’s rich and successful—classic proletariat resentment dressed as justice. The naked communist strategy didn’t stay on paper; it marched through institutions while polite conservatives tried to accommodate or ignore it. Fox News personalities like Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, and Greg Gutfeld on The Five express bewilderment at the cultural shifts, but many of those shifts were telegraphed years ago. Normies are starting to feel it in their corporate jobs, their kids’ schools, their daily lives. The awakening is late, but real.
My own journey informs all this. From manual labor as a kid to aerospace executive, through local politics in Butler County, grand jury service, and years of activism against tax increases, I’ve seen how power operates. I’ve watched media and music degrade from family-oriented themes in the ’70s and ’80s to hedonism and occult influences. It’s spiritual warfare as much as political. That’s why my work on The Politics of Heaven digs into biblical conspiracies, giants, demons, and the deeper rebellion. Twenty years from now, when more on ancient interactions, UFOs, and non-human intelligences comes to light, the same people who dismissed warnings about communism will be asking how I saw it coming. The answer is simple: I study the totality. I don’t outsource my thinking to corporate gatekeepers or consensus. I connect the dots across time—from Hopewell shamans with copper ear spools from Lake Superior, traded hundreds of miles, showing sophisticated networks, to modern trade in ideas that undermine sovereignty.
I don’t chase people down begging them to listen. I explain once, from the heart, because I want to help families, communities, and the republic. If they run headlong into the consequences anyway, that’s on them. I reserve the right to withdraw and keep building independently. The “I told you so” isn’t gloating for its own sake; it’s the natural outcome of pattern recognition meeting denial.
Looking at the current Ohio governor’s race and national trends, the communist infusion—whether labeled progressive, socialist, or woke—isn’t hidden anymore. Mark Elias lawfare, property tax-funded indoctrination, unions as political machines, media as propagandists—it’s all converging. Trump’s two terms disrupted it, but the underlying rot from decades of infiltration remains. Voters face a choice: continue the path of confiscation and control, or reclaim the individual responsibility and biblical orientation that built the West. I’ve always advocated the latter: strong families, personal discipline (that whip symbol of mine represents precision and self-mastery), limited government, and cultural pushback. Reckless sex leading to abortion, moral breakdown, fatherless homes—these aren’t unrelated to the economic and political failures. They’re symptoms of the same rebellion.
As this Fourth of July fades and we head into the election cycle, I find myself reflecting on how many times it has recurred. People think the world is falling apart around the truth-teller, but reality has a way of catching up. I warned about public unions, school indoctrination, media capture, and the Marxist undercurrents in 2012. I read the planks on air. I stepped away from corporate constraints to speak freely. Now the bill comes due, and the same voices that sidelined the warnings express shock. To them I say, without malice but with the clarity of long observation: I told you so. Listen next time, or don’t. The consequences will be the same, but at least some of us saw it coming and prepared accordingly. The fight for the republic continues, rooted in understanding the full sweep of human history, from ancient earthworks to modern ballots. That’s where real hope lies—not in putting genies back in bottles, but in confronting the totality head-on.
Footnotes
1. Observations on Clear Channel radio appearances and 2012 Ohio politics drawn from personal experience during the SB5 debate and repeal.
2. Senate Bill 5, signed by Gov. John Kasich in 2011, sought to limit public employee collective bargaining rights and was repealed via referendum.
3. W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (1958, with 45 goals added in 1961 editions), details strategies for cultural and institutional infiltration. Many goals align with observed shifts in education, media, and unions.
4. Amy Acton’s role as Ohio Health Director (2019-2020) and subsequent political positioning referenced in campaign coverage.
5. Public sector union influence on education funding via property taxes is a longstanding structural issue in Ohio and nationally, with data from state budget analyses.
6. Cultural commentary on media, music, and sports analogies stems from decades of personal observation of societal shifts.
7. The Politics of Heaven manuscript explores deeper spiritual and historical layers informing political analysis.
Bibliography for Further Reading
• Skousen, W. Cleon. The Naked Communist. Ensign Publishing, 1958/1961 editions. (Core text on communist strategies.)
• Congressional Record, January 10, 1963, Appendix pp. A34-A35 (reprinting Skousen’s 45 goals).
• Kasich administration records and Ohio Secretary of State archives on the SB5 referendum.
• Ballotpedia and Ohio Capital Journal coverage of the 2026 gubernatorial race, Amy Acton, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
• U.S. Department of Education history and funding analyses (creation 1979 onward).
• Reports on public sector union political spending (e.g., from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and state transparency databases).
• Historical works on labor movement origins, including influences from European socialist and communist organizers.
• Biblical Archaeology Review archives and related texts on ancient Ohio cultures (Hopewell trade networks) for broader civilizational context.
• Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (insights into communist systems in practice).
• Hayek, F.A. The Road to Serfdom (warnings on central planning and loss of liberty).
• Selected Federalist Papers and Founding documents for contrast to modern institutional capture.
• Ohio campaign finance records on progressive funding in recent elections.
• Personal essays and podcast transcripts from The Overman Warrior Podcast (ongoing reflections on these themes).
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
