Tag: Capitalism

Affordability in Crisis: Why Price Hikes Are a Symptom of Deeper Economic Mismanagement

 The Illusion of Prosperity

Affordability has become one of the most pressing economic issues of 2025. Everywhere you look—groceries, housing, dining, even basic services—prices have surged. Politicians blame “corporate greed,” consultants preach “raise your prices,” and consumers wonder why their paychecks don’t stretch as far as promised.

I warned about this years ago in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. The affordability crisis isn’t a mystery—it’s the predictable outcome of government interference, consultant-driven short-term thinking, and a cultural abandonment of lean principles. What we’re seeing now is the result of artificial wage inflation, cost-plus pricing models, and a failure to defend capitalism’s core logic.

Section 1: The Wage-Price Spiral—How Policy Broke the Market

The roots of today’s affordability problem lie in political decisions, not market forces. When Democrats pushed for a $15 minimum wage, they claimed it would lift millions out of poverty. On paper, that sounds noble. In reality, it distorted the entire wage structure.

• Minimum wage hikes ripple upward: When entry-level pay jumps, mid-tier and senior wages follow. Businesses face higher labor costs across the board.

• Inflationary pressure kicks in: To cover these costs, companies raise prices. Consultants reinforce this with “cost-plus” advice—pass it on to the customer.

• Purchasing power stagnates: Even if workers earn more nominally, real wages barely improve because goods and services inflate proportionally.

• Nominal wages rose 78.7% since 2006, but real wages (inflation-adjusted) grew only 11.9%.

• Inflation spiked to 9.1% in June 2022, while wage growth lagged at 4.8%, creating the sharpest negative gap in decades.

• From 2024 to 2025, inflation cooled to ~3%, but real wage gains remain modest—about 0.58%.

Timeline of Key Events:

• 2020: COVID pandemic disrupts labor markets.

• 2021: Stimulus checks and remote work incentives distort supply-demand.

• 2022: Inflation peaks amid supply chain chaos and wage hikes.

• 2025: Affordability crisis persists despite cooling inflation.

Section 2: Consultants and the Cost-Plus Trap

Post-COVID, businesses faced unprecedented disruption: supply chain chaos, labor shortages, and regulatory burdens. Enter the consultants—the self-proclaimed saviors of industry. Their universal advice? “Raise your prices.”

This is the lazy solution. Instead of driving waste out of operations, consultants push cost-plus models that normalize inefficiency. Every added layer—compliance costs, consultant fees, expedited shipping—gets baked into the price. Customers end up paying for waste, not value.

I warned about this in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business:

“Consultants rarely take risks; they profit from yours. They stand on the sidelines, leeching off success, and when times get tough, they tell you to ‘charge more.’ That’s not strategy—that’s parasitism.”

Section 3: Global Contrast—Lean vs. Bloated

While American firms inflate prices to cover inefficiencies, Japanese manufacturers pursue the opposite: lean manufacturing. Rooted in the Toyota Production System, lean focuses on eliminating waste, optimizing flow, and maximizing customer value.

Toyota vs. Boeing: A Tale of Two Philosophies

• Toyota: Continuous improvement (Kaizen), Just-in-Time inventory, and employee empowerment drive costs out of the system.

• Boeing: Historically relied on cost-plus contracts with government clients, but has adopted lean principles in recent years to remain competitive.

• Boeing’s move toward Toyota-style production—standardization, automation, and flow lines—helped reduce assembly time for the 777X and 737 programs.

Key Insight: Toyota’s lean culture treats waste elimination as a moral imperative. Boeing, under pressure from SpaceX and Airbus, is learning that lean isn’t optional—it’s survival. 

Section 4: SpaceX—The Lean Disruptor

SpaceX represents the next generation of manufacturing efficiency. By vertically integrating production and reusing rocket boosters, SpaceX slashed launch costs by over 90%—from $25,000/kg to under $1,500/kg.

Compare that to Boeing and Lockheed’s United Launch Alliance (ULA), which historically charged $400 million per launch. Even after aggressive cost-cutting, ULA’s Vulcan rocket costs $110 million—still far above SpaceX’s $69 million Falcon 9 price.

Why SpaceX Wins:

• Reusability: 98% of Falcon 9 boosters reused.

• Vertical Integration: In-house production of engines and avionics.

• Lean Thinking: Eliminates waste at every stage, from design to launch.

Section 5: Post-COVID Price Chaos

COVID didn’t just disrupt supply chains—it rewired pricing behavior. Firms increased the frequency and size of price changes, often without corresponding improvements in value.

Drivers of inflation post-2020:

• Supply shocks: Energy volatility and shipping delays.

• Demand surges: Stimulus-fueled spending and pent-up consumption.

• Labor market distortions: Remote work incentives and wage bargaining power.

Instead of addressing structural inefficiencies, businesses defaulted to price hikes. Consultants validated this approach, creating a culture of inflationary complacency.

Section 6: Affordability vs. Value—The Chef Ramsay Analogy

Not all high prices are bad. I once paid $4,500 for a dinner at Chef Ramsay’s flagship restaurant in London. Why? The experience justified the cost, offering world-class cuisine, impeccable service, and a behind-the-scenes kitchen tour. That’s value-driven pricing.

Contrast that with a $12 fast-food burger inflated to $18 because of wage mandates and consultant fees. The product didn’t improve; the price did. That’s the essence of the affordability crisis: customers paying more for the same—or worse—experience.  In these examples, it’s all food. The only difference is essentially in the value of the brand built.  Nobody is going to confuse a Chef Ramsey restaurant with the McDonald’s experience.  But even McDonald’s these days is showing really high prices for something where the real value is in affordability.  And the less they cover their margin, the more temptation there is to raise their prices, which then makes fewer people use them for a cheap hamburger on the go.  Everyone loses when prices are raised in this process.

Section 7: Solutions—How to Restore Market Logic

1. Reinstate Market-Driven Wages

    • Stop politicizing pay scales. Let supply and demand set labor value.

2. Drive Waste Out

    • Adopt lean principles: eliminate inefficiencies instead of passing them to customers.

3. Reward True Value

    • Premium pricing should reflect premium experience—not bureaucratic overhead.

4. Reject Consultant Dependency

    • Build internal expertise. Consultants should advise, not dictate.

5. Defend Capitalism

    • Capitalism thrives on competition and efficiency—not government micromanagement or parasitic intermediaries.

The Gunfighter’s Perspective

In The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I infused into this discussion:

“If you want to shoot down the bandits in the street, don’t hire a posse of consultants who only loot the carcass after the fight. Learn to aim, pull the trigger, and own the risk.  And take the rewards for yourself, don’t share them with the parasites.  The dandies, who only come after all the hard stuff is done, only steal what is won in the fight after.”

That philosophy matters now more than ever. Affordability isn’t about price tags—it’s about value, efficiency, and courage to reject easy answers.

From the book:

“Shooting from the hip is an example of quality and delivery that should be sought after, not avoided.”
(The book reframes quick, decisive action as a strength in business.) [amazon.com]

“America’s Art of War — this book should be taught in every business school in America.”
(Positioning the book as a modern interpretation of strategic classics.) [amazon.com]

“They may have traded their six guns for ties, pens, and emails, but the goals are the same as they have always been: success!”
(Drawing parallels between gunfighters and modern professionals.) [amazon.com]

“A new view of management is unleashed here, termed by the author as ‘ghosting it.’”
(An original concept in the book about leadership and obscure objectives.) [bookstore….ishing.com]

“The old West is not dead but instead is very much alive as we aim our business goals toward space and look to conquer the next frontier.”

Closing Thoughts

America’s affordability crisis is self-inflicted. We let politics override economics, consultants override common sense, and waste override value. The solution isn’t another round of price hikes—it’s a return to market discipline and operational excellence.

If you want more on this, read The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. It’s not just a book—it’s a manifesto for reclaiming capitalism from the parasites and restoring sanity to the marketplace.  I knew when I wrote that book that a tough time was coming, and everything is happening exactly as I said it would.  So I’m not just trying to sell you a book so I can fly my family to London to take them out to eat at Chef Ramsey’s signature restaurant again. The book has been out for a few years now, and it’s done what I intended.  But it would help everyone with this current crisis.  At the point where I wrote that book, I had watched for decades as consultants gutted the businesses they intended to help, because they were essentially parasites by nature.  Not that they meant to be that way, but that was their character.  And when it comes to all these affordability problems, it has been layers of Marxism hiding behind capitalism for a long time that caused the problem, and by another kind of evil, that is precisely what is driving people toward more Marxism because the consultants have essentially blamed the free market for everything, when it is too much tampering and collective value that has caused all the trouble.  So with this debate fully resurrected in a healthy Trump economy, it’s time to talk about the details, and when it comes to that, I literally wrote the book on the subject.  Something I have found is that everyone else in the consulting firms is only dancing around because they can’t look in the mirror and admit they’ve always been part of the problem.

Rich Hoffman

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

Mystery of The Copper Scroll: Lost Treasure, and the Rise of a Global Ideology

Every great mystery has a ripple effect, and few are as intriguing as the Copper Scroll discovered near Qumran in the early 1950s. Unlike the other Dead Sea Scrolls, this one wasn’t written on parchment—it was etched into copper, listing 64 hiding places for gold and silver from the Jewish Temple. Scholars estimate its value at over $1 billion in today’s terms, with some claims reaching into the trillions. Yet, despite decades of archaeological interest, none of these treasures has ever been found. Why does that matter? Because when you look at the explosion of wealth in the Middle East—cities like Dubai rising from sand into skylines—it’s hard not to wonder if oil alone explains it. Or was there an older, deeper source of capital fueling this transformation?

The Copper Scroll isn’t just a curiosity; it’s a potential key to understanding how wealth and ideology intersect. If even a fraction of that treasure had been quietly recovered, it could have seeded fortunes that later shaped geopolitics. And here’s the main problem: you can’t dig under the Temple Mount today. Religious and political tensions make it a no-go zone for serious archaeology. That means the truth—whether the treasure was looted and monetized—remains buried, literally and figuratively. But the circumstantial evidence is compelling: a region that was economically stagnant for centuries suddenly becomes a global financial powerhouse in less than 50 years. Oil was the public story. Was the Copper Scroll the private one?  I would say that the answer is an emphatic yes.  And yes, that could easily be validated by archaeology at the Temple Mount, by digging in the places indicated by the Copper Scroll.  The Dead Sea Scrolls in general have been very trustworthy, and regarding the Copper Scroll specifically, the dismissal of it as suddenly fiction makes you raise your eyebrows at those who say so, especially as you trace their personal ideology to Islam. 

To understand the modern Middle East, you have to rewind to the Crusades. Between the 11th and 15th centuries, Islamic states controlled lucrative trade routes, enriching themselves and European city-states like Venice and Genoa. But after the Ottoman Empire’s decline, the region languished economically—until the 20th-century oil boom. In 1970, Saudi Arabia’s GDP per capita was under $1,000. Today, it’s $34,441, projected to hit $65,847 (PPP) by 2027. The UAE tells a similar story: Dubai went from a sleepy port to a global hub of finance and luxury in just a few decades. Yes, oil explains part of it—but not all of it. The sheer scale of wealth, the speed of transformation, and the ability to bankroll ideological movements worldwide suggest deeper roots.

Consider this: the Copper Scroll describes treasure hidden during times of crisis—likely when the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE. That wealth didn’t vanish; it was concealed. If recovered centuries later, it could have provided the seed money for dynasties and states. And when you combine that with oil revenues and modern financial engineering—hedge funds, private equity, sovereign wealth funds—you get a perfect storm of capital capable of reshaping global politics, which brings us to ideology.

 Here’s a statistic that should make you pause: Two-thirds of U.S. Muslims favor larger government and social welfare programs, according to Pew Research. Globally, Islamic socialism has deep roots, blending Quranic principles like zakat with Marxist ideals. Movements in Iran, Pakistan, and Palestine during the 20th century openly embraced socialist frameworks. Why does this matter? Because when you look at radical Islamic movements today, many share ideological DNA with Marxism—centralized control, anti-capitalist rhetoric, and revolutionary zeal. You don’t see mosques preaching free-market capitalism; you see calls for redistribution, resistance, and dominance.

This ideological overlap isn’t accidental. It’s strategic. Marxism offers a political playbook for dismantling Western systems, while Islam provides a religious framework for mobilization. Together, they form a potent alliance against Western civilization as a whole. And when you add money—lots of it—you get influence campaigns, political candidates, and cultural incursions. Case in point: the election of a devout Muslim mayor in New York who also espouses socialist policies. Twenty years after 9/11, that’s not just irony; it’s a sign of a long game being played.

So where does this leave us? With a hypothesis that deserves serious consideration: the Copper Scroll treasure, if recovered, could have been the silent catalyst behind a century of upheaval. It’s not just about gold and silver; it’s about what wealth enables—power, ideology, and the ability to shape civilizations. Oil was the cover story, but perhaps the real story began in a cave near Qumran, etched into copper by hands that knew the stakes. Today, that wealth—whether ancient or modern—funds a movement that isn’t just religious but deeply political, aligned with Marxist principles and aimed at dismantling Western civilization.

You won’t hear this theory in mainstream discourse. It’s too uncomfortable, too complex. But look at the patterns: sudden wealth, ideological aggression, political infiltration, and a region locked in perpetual tension over a piece of land where archaeology could blow the lid off everything. Until someone digs under the Temple Mount, we may never know for sure. But the circumstantial evidence is strong enough to ask: Is the greatest crime in history still shaping our world today?  That’s not just a rhetorical question, it’s a serious one about the rise of a global power and the funding of an anti-capitalist movement against the United States, the New Atlantis: seed wealth and its origin.  The Copper Scroll indicates that something of great value was in those locations.  And whenever there is a treasure map, of course, there will always be treasure hunters who will seek fortune and glory in the wake of such a discovery.  But that none of that vast treasure has ever been found, with all the attention applied to it, and that investigation into the matter is not allowed, due to religious zeal, paints a different picture as to what happened to all that wealth.  Based on merit, we can trust that the Copper Scroll wasn’t just a work of fantasy, so what happened to all that treasure? 

The answer is simple and can be validated by science: there are many tunnels under the Temple Mount, but the restrictions under Islamic occupation prevent any serious investigation.  And that concealment is what we should take note of, especially when you see how Zohan Mamdani refrained from his speech after he won the election in New York as not only a radical member of the Islamic community, but an open Marxist.  He went from a friendly TikToker to a vile Marxist overlord, like a Fidel Castro type.  And when you see a friendly face in front of vast amounts of wealth, trying to prevent an investigation into the historical circumstances of that wealth creation, now you have something much bigger than a Scooby Doo mystery.  Without the Copper Scrolls, we wouldn’t even know to ask the question, but their discovery causes a pause in assuming that everyone has been honest with each other.  Knowing that one culture stole the treasure of another would cause significant global tension if the victimized culture were still around.  Usually, when treasure is stolen from one culture and transferred to another, the previous culture is left for destruction.  But the Jewish people are still around, and in many ways, the Christian crusades never came to a resolution.  Only the emergence of Western civilization led to their continued growth, as capitalism became the new treasure, replacing the old.  And now two powers stand at odds against each other, propped up through time in ways that history usually doesn’t endure.  And the source of all the tension likely comes down to the stolen treasure indicated in the great and magnificent Copper Scrolls of the Dead Sea, found in the caves of Qumran.

Rich Hoffman

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

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

Under New Management: Why companies fail and how leadership works

All over my town of West Chester, Ohio, there are signs everywhere indicating that new management is running a business.  Most of them are restaurants and bars, but they have been unusually placed in front of all kinds of companies, even manufacturing facilities.  Which was another thing I said would happen as a result of the catastrophic stupidity of COVID, where a global Marxist strategy of micromanaging how people were going to do work was imposed on all of us through the ridiculous means of a doctor’s office.  White coat losers in the form of health professionals were trying to scare us into open socialism, and it was always going to be a disaster.  And now, five years later, the world has turned to populism, specifically to capitalism.  If you really want to get philosophical about the Trump administration at this particular time, it’s because the human race knows what’s good for it, and all forms of Marxism have not been it.  There was never a plan for Trump to be in any authority position.  The plan was to take over mass society and make people afraid of a virus that was made in a Chinese lab, by people who wanted to make a bioweapon to use against the world, to steal elections, and take over economies.  People saw this happening, and they put Trump in office as the rest of the world has been supporting their own version of pro-capitalist populism.  Its not because they were that great of a candidate, but because people didn’t like the direction the world was turning, which brought about out of desperation, the Covid year of 2020 and the complete collapse of the global economy that was so tragic that most people didn’t even want to discuss what happened because they wanted so badly to put it out of their minds. 

So the mindset of the economic shutdowns has taken a few years to recover from, and it has taken a while for people to get their feet under them again.  And what we’re talking about are all the DEI hires and the work-from-home mentality that has been socially disastrous—social policy cooked up in a lab, with everyone’s books open to Karl Marx’s literature.  Even Microsoft was in on the gag, trying to push everyone into Teams meetings from home in their pajamas.  Nobody was betting on a complete economic recovery in those dark months of 2021, as Biden took office, Trump was forced into exile, and Covid protocols were imposing themselves on every one of us.  People should have been more intelligent to see the obvious.  We were under attack by an extensively laid plan of a complete Marxist takeover of the world.  And I said it at the time, and said all this was going to happen.  Nobody listened until it was too late.  And I would go around town and talk about all the businesses that were working from home, and how they were going to fail, and all the fast food places that closed their dining rooms because they didn’t have enough staff to stay open.  I told everyone what was going to happen, and now it is.  And I saw it clearly because of the way I live my life, in front of the train. At the same time, most of the world lives in the back, where it’s safe.  We’re talking about Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality as he talked about it in the great book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  It’s a very popular book, though largely misunderstood.  Its sequel, Lila, has not been read by millions, but by a very select few in the world who are audacious rarities. 

The metaphysics of quality, as I explained in my video with a train roaring by, is essentially a perspective on leadership and decision-making. Outstanding leadership is done at the front of a metaphorical train, where you can see what’s coming as it approaches.  You can turn the train, slow it down, tell people what you see coming.  But most people don’t dare to lead from the front.  So they have built an administrative bureaucracy in the back of the train to provide analysis, which is useful.  But it’s not leadership because by the time the moving train reaches the point of decision, the caboose has passed it entirely too late.  Decisions have to be made at the front to ensure the quality people expect.  That is why great generals who lead from the front are great.   Great business leaders are so rare.  And why political efforts succeed or fail.  If leadership is at the back of the train, a management effort will likely fail every time.  If, under scarce circumstances, an organizational leader is at the front of the train —where few people dare to be —then great success is possible.  Success that is often beyond people’s wildest dreams.  So when a business is failing and wants the public to know they are making changes, they put up signs saying they are under new management, hoping people will give them a second chance in the economy, implying that their leadership change will be different.  After COVID, a lot of companies got suckered and put their leaders all in the back of the train, where it was safe, and it was a disaster for the world’s economy under a hostile takeover. 

Karl Marx was always an idiot and a coward.  He died broke because he was a back-of-the-train theorist.  The world is full of them.  But because there were a lot of cowards in the world who ended up in government, health care, and were second-generation titans of industry who didn’t have the same guts their previous generation had, they adopted Marxism to hide what losers they were.  But in a marketplace where free will is expected, that kind of back-of-the-train micromanagement was never going to work.  And I said so all along.  And now that the money is flowing again and Trump is back in the White House, leading from the front, it has exposed this plan for the fraud it was.  And now everyone is scrambling to find people at the front of the train, and their “under new management” signs are hopes that people will assume that there is leadership at the front of the train instead of everyone functioning from the back, where all the wimps hang out.  And that’s why there are suddenly so many signs.  At least the owners of these businesses are trying.  But it shows clearly the danger that arises when we micromanage society, with back-of-the-train personalities who are not equipped to lead.  Even in a bar or nightclub, where leadership isn’t even considered.  People expect the lights to work and the beer to be cold.  And when everyone is hiding in the back of the train, they often order those things too late to arrive for a Friday night gathering that nobody thought would happen because of COVID social distancing rules.  Only people in the front of the train were ready, because they saw well in advance what a dumb idea everything was.  And most businesses that lacked those unique personalities failed, are now trying to recover, and want the world to know they are looking for front-of-the-train management.  And even if they haven’t yet found them, they are at least looking.

Rich Hoffman

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

Proverbs 22:7: Why America rules over the rest of the world

It is a topic that has come up a lot, especially since Trump has been trying to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine and end the war there.  Why the United States?  Why do we get to set a dollar standard?  Why do airports have to speak English universally?  Why is it that the United States thinks it needs to be, or can be, involved in the world’s affairs?  How can the world be equal if the United States consistently views itself as the best or wealthiest country in the world, and that somehow gives it power over all other countries?  And the answer is simple: only the United States has adopted capitalism as an economic model, while all other countries in the world have some degree of socialism in their economies, which restricts their financial growth.  A friend of mine recently brought this to my attention with a nice quote from Proverbs 22:7, which says, “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”  And that’s very true.  If a country penalizes itself from wealth creation, it loses the ability to be equal in any discussion.  And being poor, especially by choice, will always leave a member of a negotiating party at a disadvantage.  America has the power that it does because it’s a rich country, and it’s rich because of capitalism.  And you’d think other countries would have woken up to that fact, because they are poor by choice.  The reason America has the power and influence it does is that it has a population of only 300 million, yet it produces the largest GDP in the world, competing directly with countries like China and India, which have populations of over a billion each.  Because all other countries in the world have adopted Marxist ideas, they have limited their wealth generation and ultimately their influence at the table regarding the fate of the world.

The issue of fairness arises frequently in these discussions.  Is it fair that the world is designed like this, where human beings are valued more for their wealth than for their better values, which reflect power and influence?  It’s a matter of leverage; people in the world want money and will do this or that or something else to get it.  And when too many artificial restrictions are created to access money, then naturally, people with less of it are on the wrong side of any negotiations.  So, by choice, those who have very little money are in that position because they chose to do other things than make money, and the world does not honor their choice. We have invented money and wealth as measures of achievement, and in all human cultures, achievement is highly respected.  Gaining wealth is a measure that, by default, is universally understood by all people.  And to lobby for making some other value more critical, such as compassion for the weak, or valuing vacations over working too hard, will ultimately leave the one without money at a disadvantage, leveraged by those who do control the money, because they have more of it.  Money comes in many forms but what the book of Proverbs has always struggled with as a foundation of Christianity for instance, because even Jesus struggled with this problem by attacking the vendors at the Temple which led to his crucifixion, is that the meek are overlooked and often oppressed by the rich people of the world, and that everlasting life in Heaven might give them relief from that reality.  This is a debate that has been ongoing since the beginning of time, but the rules have remained unchanged—he who owns the gold rules.

Trump has been effective because he understands how to control leverage in negotiations, as he always puts himself on the side of smart money.  And whoever does that will win the argument every time.  Not some of the time.  All of the time.   And the question of fairness is then a universal law that is the same here as it would be on the other side of a black hole in space, on the other side of reality.  This rule would never change.  The Bible struggled with the same idea: what power does the Lord in Heaven have over the earth if people will do anything for money and what it can buy.  And the answer is a hard one, because money represents wealth creation and how people measure such things in polite society.  The rest of the world has chosen to rebel against the premise of money, and they counted on peer pressure to create other value systems that the world respected, such as transgender rights, or helping people experiencing poverty when people have been deliberately made poor with terrible social policy.  For instance, because of capitalism, a poor person in America is infinitely wealthier than a person in a Marxist hellhole, like some African country that has deliberately suppressed capitalism.  Their poor state is a result of a desire to control wealth creation, so that people can be ruled over, and that they won’t acquire personal wealth to compete with their overlords.  When a government seeks to exert power over its people, it must limit their access to wealth so that private individuals cannot undermine the government’s authority over them.  So that decision ultimately constricts their ability to generate wealth. 

Trump has spent his life accumulating wealth, and his ability to do so has given him the capacity to negotiate at multiple levels.  Being rich for him means he gets to win the argument.  And from that perspective, he can command the world to sit at his feet, as the members of NATO remarkably did in front of his desk in the Oval Office recently, after Vladimir Putin came to Alaska to visit with Trump after quite a spectacle.  The world came to Trump to appease him because of the power of the American economy.  And because they don’t have money themselves, due to poor economic decisions, they find themselves at a disadvantage in the discussions they have with all other parties.  With all the talk about Russian power and military might, it’s worth noting that they don’t have a very robust economy, which leaves them at a disadvantage at the negotiating table.  People can talk about how mean Putin is as a tyrant, but because of his need to maintain control over his people, the Russian economy is too restricted and always at a disadvantage to a capitalist country like the United States.  And when push comes to shove, the capitalist country will always outleverage the authoritarian government that has put too many barriers on personal wealth.  So that is why America plays the role in the world that it does.  Fairness is a sentiment, not a value.  It’s an intellectual observation that doesn’t align with the realities of the world.  Jesus might have struggled with the same issue involving the money changers at the temple, as many are declaring that America shouldn’t have the kind of power in the world that it does.  However, it has that power because humans use money to measure value, and value is derived from the things we do.  And when things are restricted by policy, then who is to blame?  Or, if individuals refuse to work, they are always at a disadvantage in life compared to those who work hard and have financial means.  Who is to blame?  America has given upward mobility to many people through the premise of freedom.  And that is why the United States has a better leverage position over all other countries that are too restrictive on individual wealth creation.  And in that moral quandary is the ethics of wealth creation, and why the world is much better off because of it.

Rich Hoffman

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

Trump Should Go To Moscow: Keeping Putin from pulling the rug out from under peace

I think President Trump should visit Moscow and meet with Putin ahead of any other meetings they might have, to demonstrate that he has done everything possible.  There are a lot of villains at work; Ukraine is surely not innocent as a maniacal globalist power, and when a very sketchy former KGB agent invites you to come to his country to talk, I think Trump could get a ceasefire out of the deal in exchange, because Putin would have to do something big in response. Regarding the Alaska 2025 meeting, which was productive, I thought it was over the top to conduct the flyover and escort Putin down the red carpet to view the stealth fighters.  It also wasn’t good for Trump, a much larger man, to walk next to Vladimir Putin for such a long time in the open, because it made Putin look small.  Putin handled things well, but what he did was demonstrate his willingness to go to America and make a deal, even if it meant appearing vulnerable in the process.  Observing his body posture, there was a significant amount of KGB manipulation involved.  And Trump knows what he is doing on these kinds of things.  It was mostly a show, and the world was watching intently.  And it will likely lead to an end of the war because all sides have already talked about everything proactively.  Putin has lost over a million people in this war with Ukraine, 100,000 just this year.  I’d say he feels like a sucker the way that the Biden administration coaxed him into the conflict as a cover story to all the Russian strawman efforts of the European Union and the Democrat Party in general.

I heard a lot of dumb stuff from the media during the whole meeting with Trump and Putin.  You can see who the cheerleaders are for global conflict and who profits from it.  Nothing Trump could have done would have made them happy because they only want war and conflict to be a cover story for major corruption in this whole process.  Putin, no matter what people think of him, is very popular in Russia because he has in his mind a restoration of the Russian borders before 1991, when communism fell and the country fell apart under that weight.  There were numerous United Nations problems with the entire process during the 1990s, particularly between global governance and sovereign nations.  But Putin is willing to throw away millions of Russian lives to retake Ukraine from what he sees as globalist conspirators.  And we would be just as upset if we lost parts of Florida and California to Mexico or Spain.  Russia, as the Soviet Union, was the American enemy during the Cold War, so we are not suddenly sympathetic to a communist cause.  But all the characters in this story are pretty evil and manipulative.  Ukraine is a creation of globalism and is a power grab from that direction, so before anybody can talk about anything, you have to know where everyone is coming from.  And for Putin, he wants his borders back and to help guide his country to its former glory, when he was a much younger man.  Trump was brilliant to let Putin speak first after their three-hour talk.  There were many master class moments from people who have mastered the art of communication, which much of the world completely missed while it was happening.  However, when Putin said in English at the end of his comments to the press that Trump should meet with him next time in Moscow, Trump needs to consider it. 

It’s great to bring all these world leaders to convenient places in the United States.  But imagine how the media would go crazy over Trump going to Moscow.  And how bold it would make Trump appear to the world.  As a former Cold War enemy, having an American president in Moscow with all the pomp that Russia could put on would win over the Russian people and give Putin a straightforward off-ramp from the war.  To have an American president come to his doorstep would be quite an accomplishment for him, and the Russian media would have the story of the century.  They would support Putin in almost anything he did thereafter, even if Russia didn’t regain as much land as they originally wanted.  When we have global media that wants, like nothing else, to decide who talks to whom and when, the best way to stick it to them would be to take the entire meeting out of their hands by holding it in Russia under a grand ceremony, ahead of any other talks with Ukraine or the EU.  It’s always good to get people to talk to each other, rather than adhering to false contentions, and those who have a desire for political outcomes that do not align with America First.  To give Putin that kind of attention would put him on a path to earn respect once again on the world stage and would be a great follow-up to Melania’s letter to Putin, urging him to save the children in this conflict.  There needs to be a mediating step, and when Putin suggested it, he understood the difficulties and set the stage to say he at least suggested it. 

But if Trump doesn’t go to Moscow, under these specific circumstances, Putin will have an excuse to withdraw from everything.  He went to America and made himself vulnerable for his motherland, and the Russian public well received him.  And he invited Trump to continue talks in Russia.  If Trump doesn’t go, it seems like the American president is only happy to talk on American soil with minimal risk to himself.  That was the KGB in Putin as he walked boldly next to a much larger American president, while a B-2 flyover was taking place overhead.  Putin wanted to convey to the world that he had done all he could for peace by meeting with Trump in America.  But he’s winning the war and could easily throw away a million more lives to take back all of Ukraine and topple the country.  It’s a waiting game that he can afford to play.  But Zelinsky and the European Union can’t.  So before Putin pulls the rug out from under everyone, Trump should go to Russia and advance talks of at least a ceasefire while these other details are worked out.  Because if he did, Putin wouldn’t be able to pull out of this deal, because the peer pressure of his country wouldn’t let him.  Nobody thinks Trump would go to Moscow to make a peace deal, including Putin, when he said it.  So the most extraordinary thing that Trump could do would be to take his show on the road and address the Russian people directly, with the same courtesy that was shown to Putin.  Many good things would happen as a result.  The media would have a meltdown, as would all the globalist types.  However, it would prevent Putin from undermining the efforts, save a lot of lives, and be monumentally historic.  And if I were speaking with Trump, I’d encourage him to do it this upcoming week, while the opportunity is still available. 

Rich Hoffman

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

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

Dumb, Lazy, Losers, Hide in Large Organizations: What is being exposed in the world by Trump

There is a scientific explanation for what is happening in the world, and this has been brewing in the background for some time.  It’s easy to see in all large organizations, and ultimately, it’s a massive failure provoked by a progressive strategy that was unleashed upon the world and exposed dramatically during the artificially created COVID-19 crisis of 2020.   But the way that President Trump is dominating on all fronts is not a surprise.  Even in the darkest days of threatening to throw Trump in jail, and the rest of us with him.  I certainly had plenty of maniacal characters plotting my demise and going to great effort to make it so.  But I always said, and people can read all that I’ve said on the subject, and watching my thousands of hours of videos talking about these things, it’s clear that I’ve been predicting exactly what is happening now with great accuracy, even though nobody else in the world even thought to ask the question.  And that the problem is more psychological than political.  The politics of the movement was created to mask the actual psychological problem of collectivism in general, the insecurity that most people feel, but conceal it through organizational effort.  Trump is exposing this global trend that is at the heart of communism in general, and has been the social policy behind the United Nations as a government assumption for how to control mass populations.  You see it in every college and almost every large corporate organization.  The hordes of bureaucrats from the administrative state have not, and will never, be able to replace the valiant efforts of great individuals and their ability to function independently.  This is scary to the majority of people who thought that the philosophies of collectivism would destroy the rules of capitalism, but it was never going to achieve that feat.  And now the world is being forced to wake up and smell the coffee for what it is, causing the world to catch up in ways they were never prepared for.  They should have listened. 

I’m old enough to remember how different it was just a few short years ago.  However, the level of corporate competency has declined significantly over the last decade, to the point where mediocrity is now considered a commendable trait in the typical office environment.  And that is because our education system seduced most people into thinking they could hide their timid natures and fear of social engagement behind a mass corporate structure.  This has always been a problem in large organizations, such as the cubicle culture prevalent in most businesses, where the higher the cubicle walls a person has, the more valuable they are perceived to be to the company.  And if a person has a door to an office that could be closed, they would be considered even more critical to that corporate social structure.  And if you had an office that had a window, you were to be considered very important, and that the rest of the world would assume that you were much more valuable than you actually were, because you could check off those institutional boxes and society would naturally recognize them within the social hierarchy of compliance to peer engagement.  However, I often find that most people in large organizations conceal their inadequacies from the world behind the merit of institutional protection.  That is why there is a perceived arrogance among government workers, because they have functioned under the assumption that the power of the organization would conceal their true lack of worth and skill from the world’s eyes.  If they could check off the boxes that human resource departments valued, they might avoid the criticism of a society that expected them to do something meaningful in their workday. 

Trump is proposing to the world the opposite of that trend, and the world can’t respond because it exposes them at a fundamental level.  Their seduction into institutional environments, where the size of the organization provided cover for their actual lack of skill, and through corporate structure, similar personality types would surround them, meant that ruse could last if only everyone in the world played by the same rules.  And that was the intention. But now that Trump has come along and proposed a merit-based society, and that individual efforts isn’t being penalized these days, but is encouraged and rewarded, financially, and otherwise, the panic that we are beginning to see is something that we should have been dealing with all along, but the promises made to kids leaving high school, and endeavoring through college where socialism was taught to them, did not prepare them for what is happening, a merit based world where the brightest and most brilliant would directly compete with the corporate structure of a communist foundation.  And we see this now falling apart everywhere, the kind of policies that were rushed to the world under Covid, the work from home ideas, the short work weeks, the perpetual out of office email responses that people who think they are essential, project to the world as if they were too important to answer even email.  Because the email recipients were too busy traveling and attending to important matters to do any work, such as attending a wine tasting.  The downside has been that most corporate environments, as well as governments everywhere, are not prepared to compete in a capitalist climate.

I find that employees working for smaller organizations, without the protections of mass employment and large human resource departments, are the most innovative and hungry for out-of-the-box solutions, as opposed to those who crave the safety and security of the herd.  And that same assumption could be applied to countries, where it was believed that America was just one of many countries in the world and that there was nothing special about it.  That allowed countries like France and the Netherlands to believe they could compete and function in the world by taking two months of vacation per year and that they could get rid of their corporate structure within their organizations, getting rid of the concept of a personal office all together, to show their work force that nobody was more important than anybody else.  To maintain the illusion, they used the size of the organization to conceal their ineffectiveness.  However, in truth, most corporate environments are collapsing under their own weight; they can no longer communicate effectively with each other because they still work from home and have their leadership scattered all over the world, having bought into the concept of the global citizen functioning without earned merit.  And they thought that was how it was going to be forever, which, of course, it won’t be.  And isn’t.  And for those who have been raging against that institutional system for a long time, they are enjoying this new world where a plumber has more value in the world than just another corporate social climber who doesn’t do much of anything, and is exposed in a world of competition where performance is measured.  And the belief that a person working in a large organization is better and brighter than those who choose to work in smaller, more nimble structures is being shattered by the truth it reveals.  In a merit-based society, the large organization had the burden of too many employees hiding their lack of worth from the world, which was rotting them from the inside out.  And now, they find themselves grotesquely exposed.   

Rich Hoffman

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

Daddy Trump: Passing the Big Beautiful Bill and changing the world

Now you can see why Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, called Trump “daddy” during a press conference at the NATO summit in The Hague.  I watched with great zeal as Trump rallied support all night just before July 4th to pass his Big Beautiful Bill after a few extraordinary weeks, the most remarkable of any president the world has ever seen.  Taking Iran off the table as a threat, then turning around and getting his economic package for the Big Beautiful Bill passed under such extraordinary circumstances has been a pleasure to watch, and we are all lucky to be alive in a time to witness it all happen.  On the downside, the world has been coddled into neglect by an overbearing parental structure, essentially making everyone into the kind of children that Mark Rutte was referring to.  When people wonder why Trump is so successful, I could point to many of his books and the techniques he developed on television shows like The Apprentice.  But this is even beyond all that.  The world had been trained for globalism by a government parental structure that was intended to usher in communism to every country.  However, that effort has been hindered by the election of Trump and all he has endured, and it’s simply a pleasure to witness.  I couldn’t say I have ever been prouder of a political process than what I saw while watching C-SPAN all through Wednesday into Thursday, as the House votes were whipped into submission, much like a dad would make a deal with his children to accomplish some family objective.  I knew something special was happening when Warren Davidson changed his vote late Wednesday evening to a “Yes,” which opened the door for others to do the same and eventually get enough votes to pass the Big Beautiful Bill. 

I genuinely love that legislative spot in Washington, D.C., and watching the sausage being made into the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.  After just being there in that Capitol building with my wife, it made it extra special to watch the House pull an all-nighter for the good of America’s future.  When globalist schemers were planning for a one-world government, they were not prepared for Americans to vote for someone like President Trump, who would come along at an elderly age and essentially take the role of the world’s dad.  The issue of debt and realignment of it for the benefit of America is exactly how Trump survived the 1990s and built his business into the monster powerhouse that it became in Real Estate, there was a point where Trump was probably not going to make it and the world bet against him, which was well chronicled in the fantastic book, The Art of the Comeback, not the book that many people think of when they think of Trump.  But it’s the one that I have been saying for years would be the key to the next Trump term, well before anyone thought Trump would even survive the system to return to the White House.  Trump reconfigured his debts from a liability to an asset, and that was the key to his business dealings; he hasn’t looked back since.  And that is proving to be the exact model that America is using against a world built to topple it, but for our self-preservation, we elected Trump to do for America what he had proven to do for himself.  And in the end, the House members recognized that and voted for a leap of faith that only a secure father could give his children in a time of crisis. 

The amount of leadership President Trump has shown during the first half of his second term has been extraordinary, and there have been few books on business that could have predicted any of it, although I did.  There is no consulting firm in the world, anywhere, that could have put their finger on the level of leadership that would be broadcast from the United States, except for me.  And I am proud to have been right and to see the world waking up to what I have said all along, as people have been acting like children scrunching their noses at a parental figure because they didn’t like what was being said.  But this is how America takes the kind of leadership in the world that it was always poised to do.  And now there isn’t any choice.  Through globalism, the world wasn’t ready to resist President Trump, and only capitalism could have made him as effective as he is.  Only capitalism could produce the dad that the world has been hungry for.  The plan was for mass collectivism to rule through a bureaucratic administrative state.  However, the value of leadership emerged in the space left behind, and Trump has filled it in a way nobody was prepared for.  And it all culminated in the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.  That success has changed politics forever in ways the Democrat Party is even less prepared for than the election of 2024.  The world had been built to crush people like Donald Trump well before they ever stepped into a leadership position, and they were meant always to be subservient to an administrative state run by children who never grew up to be adults.  Now that Trump has established a parental structure as the father of a nation that the rest of the world is listening to emphatically, everything takes on an entirely new meaning.

What does all this mean? We have just witnessed a generation-defining moment that will be remembered for years to come.  We are looking at an economic scenario that will far surpass the post World War II days where the rest of the world was digging out from a costly war and capitalist enterprise paved the way for significant economic expansion that wasn’t slowed down until the communists unleashed the hippie movement in the 1960s on American universities, in an attempt to sabotage all the optimism.  But this time, those lessons were hard-learned and won’t be repeated, leaving America essentially as the only bastion of a parental role in the world that remains, and now it will be stronger than ever.  There are no other countries that can chide at American leadership.  And there is nobody in the world who can stand up to Trump, not even the financial institutions.  They lost power with the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.  Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve will not be able to hold down the American economy, as they have been trying to do.  The enthusiasm Trump has created will burst that dam, and many good things will follow.  And it happened because the world sees Trump as the dad they always wanted.  And finally, people are listening.  Trump had to round up the children and convince them to vote for the Big Beautiful Bill, which gave tax cuts to many capitalist endeavors and broke the cycle of wealth redistribution that was wrapped up in the debt structure that had been imposed on the American public for far too long.  The only people who will suffer from the passage of this bill are those who have been trying to hold America down.  But not any longer.  Daddy Trump has told the kids how to behave.  And now everyone is a lot better for it.

Rich Hoffman

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

Destroying Iran: The magnificance of capitalism

I’m not that surprised that President Trump attacked the Fordow site in Iran, along with two others, where the nuclear program was reported to be in the process of development.  From what Trump knew, taking away any leverage of fear from a nuclear power development plan from the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and the Revolutionary Army of the current regime was on their heels, the timing was right.  With this move, Trump can accomplish several essential things simultaneously.  Given this air raid of Iran, it might look risky to be pulled into a prolonged war.  But the reports told Trump what he needed to know in the wake of the conflict between Iran and Israel.  Iran was out of missiles.  They had been able to bomb Israeli cities like Tel Aviv and get through the Iron Dome defense network by overwhelming the system.  But missiles cost money, and Obama isn’t around anymore to sneak money to the Iranian government to antagonize Western civilization, and the rockets ran dry.  To make a show of continued force, Iran has still been launching missiles into Israel, but at a much reduced rate, leaving the Iron Dome to pick them off easily.  Iran was in trouble.  The Ayatollah was in hiding.  Many of the senior revolutionary leadership were killed off or in disarray.  So the time was ripe for a strike, and Trump did it.  If he had resisted, he would have lost an opportunity. Iran was already falling, so it was a good time to send a message to the rest of the world, pass the Big Beautiful Bill, and crush the Russian resistance to end the Ukraine war.  Cut the ties China has with Iran by taking them off the map.  And pave the way for the people of Iran to take back their country and remove it from being a Marxist stronghold in the Middle East.  With the bombing of those three sites, Trump was able to get a lot done, so the time to strike was open.

Trump could have crushed Iran just with his mouth, as he had been doing.  However, an opening was obvious, and people often need to see decisive action. Moreover, nothing unites people more than military action.  As controversial as it is, Trump needs the Big Beautiful Bill to pass the Senate because the tax cuts in it, if made permanent, are key features to the future of the American economy and the improvements we have been seeing in all our wallets.  With the Fed resisting a lowering of interest rates, the tax cuts become even more critical. To unify everyone in passing the Bill for a very nice Fourth of July in 2025, destroying a long-known enemy of America was a smart move to drive resistance to the Bill to act quickly and decisively.  For Trump, he will be remembered as the President who crushed Iran with a marvelous attack that was very successful.  However, for the rest of the world, it was a significant statement and a display of military force.  And it was just enough to get the war hawks on Capitol Hill engaged enough to cheerlead passage of Trump’s Bill, which will secure all his campaign promises.  It will also add a lot of debt to an already escalating pile.  But strategically speaking, this raid on Iran in the middle of the night was an all-in poker move, and Trump has been successful at those before. This is undoubtedly what I voted for, and so did many others.  Likely, even people who didn’t want Trump are suddenly quite happy that he’s in the White House.

Regarding Article II powers, Trump is well within his rights as President to call such a strike.  All this talk of impeachment by Democrats isn’t going to go anywhere.  Ground troops were not involved, so that kept things straight legally on the side of Trump’s decisive action.  For those who fear retaliation, and that, because of Trump’s actions, it puts everyone at risk, they have been deceived into believing that Iran was more powerful than it really was.  The fear is that Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz, located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.  The simple answer is that ships traveling through the area can hug the coast of the United Arab Emirates and avoid Iranian patrols.  However, in truth, Iran lacks the firepower to establish a blockade that would prevent ships from traveling through it.  These are not the Obama days when ships could be stopped by Iranian patrols and harassed.  The Iranians know that they can’t afford retaliation, so there isn’t any real way to provoke more trouble to pour on themselves.  So, any fear of such a thing is misplaced in those who thought of Iran as more potent than it was.  The media and their leftist partners in the world propped up Iran to be a bully so that Marxist ideology could thrive.  And Trump just took that leverage away from the world with that one act.  Ultimately, the fight was always between capitalism and various degrees of communism hidden behind religious fundamentalism, which is why Democrats are so unhappy with the attack because it exposes what they already know but were trying to hide from the world.  Iran was a paper tiger of antagonism that was keeping the world in a terrible state.  And that they used that leverage to spread big government socialism as a reaction to it.  And now that paper tiger is gone. 

When it’s said that nobody else in the world could have performed an attack like this, with B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropping six GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators, (bunker busters) that could destroy targets 300 feet underground, every country suddenly has to perk up differently when Trump picks up the phone, especially China, and Russia.  And the European Union.  And all the bill whipping that Trump will do in the last week before the Fourth of July to pass his bill and seal his campaign promises, which will fund a repayment of the debt incurred, and then some, will take on a whole new meaning.  As China plans to replace the dollar as the world’s currency standard at the upcoming BRICS summit, set to take place on July 6, 2025, just a few weeks away, it will now have to reconsider all its thoughts.  And in that vacuum of consideration, Trump’s economic plans will have a chance to take flight, and the world will be reeling from their commitments to global communism and socialism.  And only capitalist governments will find success, with the United States pulling way out in front of everyone.  And all the posturing of China to antagonize Taiwan are suddenly not very attractive when America can send bunker busters from halfway around the world and devastatingly cripple a target, essentially ending the life of a country in a few minutes, and still be home in time for dinner.  No, this attack was about more than helping Israel.  It was a final blow against communism, forcing the world to compete in ways they weren’t ready for.  And it will be remembered as one of the most incredible achievements of any American president, not for the action itself, but for what came after. 

Rich Hoffman

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