Hope for America with Heather Delaney Reese

Donald Trump’s vanity will be his downfall

Heather Delaney Reese — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 06:51:57 GMT

At 5 a.m. this morning, an interview Donald Trump was apparently warned not to give went live for the entire world to see. “A lot of people said, ‘Don’t do this interview,’” he admitted. Within minutes, we understood exactly why he was advised not to give it. The President of the United States is consumed with building monuments across Washington, the bigger, the gaudier, the better. He is obsessed with making sure as many things as possible are left behind when he is gone, going so far as to admit that when confronted with the accusation that he is quite literally building monuments to himself, Trump didn’t deny it. He agreed. “That’s true,” he said. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.”

The interview, published by New York Magazine and written by Ben Terris, showed a Donald Trump who did not appear particularly concerned about how anyone would interpret what he was saying. What quickly became obvious was how focused the president was on everything but actually carrying out the duties of the presidency. How, instead of focusing on the mounting crises facing the country, he wasn’t shy about his plan to make as many things as possible bear his name and, in some cases, his image, whether the country wants it or not.

He bragged about his pet project and favorite thing to talk about, the ballroom, and how it was being accented with gold that Trump refers to as “God’s favorite metal.” He told Terris it shares design aspects with the Palace of Versailles but will be, in his words, “more beautiful.” He bragged about the concrete: “You could take a jackhammer and go to those columns and stand there for two days at full blast and you wouldn’t even see a mark. It’s nuclear concrete. It’s meant for if there’s a nuclear attack. I’m not sure you could take it down.”

But it was in that moment that he slipped. He actually shared that he was not just building a ballroom; he was building a nuclear fortress because, as much as he loves vanity projects, there are reports that he has also grown more fearful about the risks of retaliation after starting a new forever war, something else he was warned not to do.

With Donald Trump, his agenda is never just one thing. He leads his life from one impulsive decision to the next, but some of the things he does are multifaceted. Right now, it is about righting perceived wrongs that he has created in his mind, protecting himself from his increasing unpopularity here at home and abroad, and building monuments and buildings designed to outlast him and the democracy he is hell-bent on destroying.

Trump told Terris exactly where this obsession began without even meaning to. In the spring of 2010, he called David Axelrod, then President Obama’s senior adviser, and pitched himself as a ballroom builder. “I build ballrooms,” Axelrod recalls Trump telling him. “I build the greatest ballrooms in the world. You have these state dinners, and you have them in these shitty little tents in the back. It’s not befitting. Let me build a modular ballroom for you.” Axelrod passed the message along. Nobody called Trump back. Fifteen years later, Axelrod told Terris: “If we had let him build his modular ballroom, perhaps we wouldn’t have had to demolish the East Wing. And in that sense, I kind of regret not doing it.”

Trump said he holds no grudge, but he still said this: “They’re not good businesspeople. If somebody offers you a free ballroom, take it, right?” Because for Trump, everything is transactional, and he never misses an opportunity for a money grab even if it is not in the best interest of the country. For nearly a decade and a half, he could not let it go. By the time he returned to the White House, he was ready for revenge in all shapes and sizes, including that perceived snub from Obama about the ballroom. “In the first term, I was under siege,” he told Terris. “I didn’t feel it was the atmosphere.” Then he added: “Now is a much more powerful time.” That is how he sees this presidency. A vehicle to carry out all of his worst impulses.

With all of the pushback on the ballroom project and his other vanity projects, the Trump administration has leaned heavily into national security as the justification for some of their projects and the high cost to taxpayers. Trump told Terris that when top generals heard about the ballroom, they arranged a meeting: “They said, ‘Sir, we’d like to build things, it would be a dream, but there’s never been anything like this proposed. If we could build underground, we could go down five stories.’” Terris asked if there was currently a bunker at the White House. “Not much of a place,” Trump said. Then Terris asked the question that so many of us think about when we consider how this all ends, if it ever does. What if a president just decided not to leave? What if he holed up in his new bunker after the 2028 election?

Laughing, Trump said, “I haven’t heard that one,” continuing with, “But I tell you what, it would be awfully tough to get you out. Nobody would be able to get you out.”

If you have some time this weekend, this piece is worth your time to read in its entirety; there is much more in it, and Terris masterfully connects a lot of what Trump has done in the past with what he is doing now, and what he plans to do urgently before the midterms and after.

Beyond the ballroom itself is something much larger. What Trump is doing to the physical landscape of our country, and especially Washington, D.C., is exactly what he is doing to everything else behind the scenes. He is tearing down what came before him, erasing what others built, and replacing it all with himself. We know the policies he has gutted, and the alliances he has destroyed. The institutions he has hollowed out are not forgotten either. And we can’t forget the invisible things he has attacked with the disinformation campaigns around facts in the trafficking ring files and science. But the construction projects and what he has torn down are tangible, visible in your face proof of what he is doing. The two sit in the same space. A madman is tearing down what we can see and what we can’t.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.

Something I haven’t been able to process myself was the dismantling of “Blue” at the Kennedy Center earlier this week. The twenty-four-foot cobalt blue sculpture created by the artist Joel Shapiro, who passed away just last year, has stood outside the Reach annex since 2019. It was a beloved piece of public art that Shapiro described as “a celebration of possibility.” That is what this administration chose to tear down.

This week, the administration also announced that construction will begin in two weeks on the 250-foot triumphal arch planned for Memorial Circle, directly between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, where generations of our war dead are buried. This deeply unpopular construction project would stand more than twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial, and cast a shadow over one of the most sacred resting places for the bravest amongst us. A place where the monuments already there were built to remember the sacrifice of the people who came before us. Donald Trump knows he can never compete with the likes of those buried there, so the next best thing in his mind is to build himself a monument to literally overshadow them. He thinks this will make him appear greater than them, and more historically significant. Someone to never forget. We know it will do the absolute opposite. It will make him look exactly as he really is, small and weak. When Trump was asked about the size of the arch, he said, “I’d like it to be the biggest one of all. We’re the biggest, most powerful nation. I’d like it to be the biggest one.”

I am still exhausted from the federal actions that took place around my house yesterday. Some days it feels like the weight of paying attention in this time of history is more than any of us should have to carry. But we do. Each and every day, because the alternative is silence, and silence in this moment is something none of us can afford.

On Wednesday, Trump gave a truly unhinged speech in the Rose Garden, full of his usual propaganda and scare tactics. But what I zeroed in on was when he inadvertently told us his plan for the midterms. Trump said: “We’re going to take that final 30 days; you don’t want to go too much before that because people forget.” He was referring to his campaigning schedule and how he wasn’t going to put his efforts into it until those last 30 days. This is something that we can all use to plan our resistance to his authoritarian takeover. We now have the advantage of something he is going to wish that he still had: time.

Tonight we are exactly two months from the midterm elections. Trump just told us he is not getting serious for another 30. We have double the time he does. That means that every single conversation we start right now, every voter that we help register, and every door we knock on between now and the beginning of October is ground he will never make up. His incompetence is a strategic gift, and it may be one of the most important things we have going for us.

If you’re tired, I understand. I am too. But this is not forever. If we do all we can and take back Congress, it won’t solve all of our problems, but it will slow his destruction and finally bring back accountability and checks and balances. When the road gets long and hard, hang onto that hope and let yourself imagine what that could do in the moments that feel overwhelming.

I’ve started adding a new element of my resistance this past week. I’m actively injecting Trump’s failure and incompetence into as many conversations, big and small, as I can. When someone talks about the rising cost of gasoline (I just filled up at almost $6.50 a gallon!) I remind them what wars in the Middle East do and that Trump started one without permission and without support from allies other than Israel. When I recently had to explain why people we knew had moved away, I gave the long explanation that they were scientists, and their company made the rare decision to move them to Europe to safeguard their work. When local corruption surfaces, I point out that corruption at the top gives those down below what they see as permission to commit their own corruption. Our biggest challenge is that people have to feel it themselves to care, or they have to see the destruction with their own eyes. We need to guide their sight and understanding so they know it is here. It is already impacting their lives, and if we do not vote against the Trump machine in November, it will get a lot worse.

Leave a comment

The MAGA movement has never been shy about wearing its beliefs and loyalty in the form of red hats and Trump merchandise. They follow the assigned talking points and never question their leader. In the past, they would have been worried and scared to show their ugly views to their neighbors and the world. Now they wear them like a badge, and it is time for us to flip that. We have to take a stand and remind people that hate never made a country great, nor did standing beside and empowering a strongman.

Our odds of a major upset in November just keep getting better, especially the more interviews that Donald Trump gives. Democrats currently lead the generic congressional ballot by six to seven points, the largest margin since the 2018 blue wave that flipped 41 seats. Trump’s approval sits at roughly 38%, with 58% of Americans disapproving. Among independents, his approval has fallen to 34%, below the level that preceded that wave. Independents are one of the strongest groups of voters we have. Their abandonment of Trump could make or break most elections and especially this one. They are not the die-hard Trump loyalists. They are loyal to no one. The stat that carries a heavy weight is just how many are sick and tired of their costs going up while the president spends copious amounts of money on his ego-building, with 65% of Americans dissatisfied with his vanity projects.

We are two months away from sending a powerful message to the White House and to our allies. We need to make sure it is crystal clear. The message must be that Donald Trump’s grasp on our country has come to an end. That we, the people, control this country, not a power-hungry man obsessed with a gold-plated ballroom and certainly not his sycophants. All signs point to the message already reaching those who need to hear it most. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: Years ago, I had a doctor who always prescribed 20 minutes at the beach, no matter what was ailing you. Today, I decided I was in need of that treatment. It was peaceful up until the last minute, when this crafty seagull stole a fellow beachgoer's snack. They eventually caught up with it, took the granola bar back, opened it, and gave it back to the bird. That doctor was right; I did feel better.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-white-house-ballroom-helipad-reflecting-pool-supreme-court.html

https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/kennedy-center-disassembles-blue-sculpture-grounds-136148565

https://abc13.com/post/trumps-proposed-arch-gets-preliminary-approval-key-agency/19481380/

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/09/03/trump-campaign-35-republicans-midterms/4891788448351/

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5984107-democratic-poll-leads-gop/

https://intel.morningconsult.com/mc-content/trackers/2026-midterm-election-generic-ballot-polls

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/08/nx-s1-5810515/us-war-trump-nato-iran-europe-canada-germany

When Donald Trump’s cruelty hits home

Heather Delaney Reese — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 01:20:13 GMT

Just after 8:00 in the morning, while I was still in my pajamas, I heard crashing and men screaming outside my bedroom window. My daughter ran in, terrified, telling me there were men with guns surrounding our house. Masked men, unmarked vehicles spilling into the street, tactical rifles, and an armored vehicle that looked like it belonged in a war zone. While my kids hid in a safe room we had practiced using but I never believed they would need, I went outside and asked the only question that mattered: what department are you with? I was ignored, again and again, until one of them finally answered almost casually. “HSI.” They were ICE. And even as relief should have come, it didn’t, because while my children were safe, someone else’s loved one was being taken from our street, and for that family, this was only the beginning.

What I watched next I don’t think I will ever forget. An older man with no shoes, not resisting, not armed, was surrounded and taken away, his vehicle is still sitting in the driveway. I watched an agent remove what looked like a gold cross from around his neck and slip it into his own pocket like a souvenir. And as they left, knowing I was recording, they taunted me. One pointed two fingers from his eyes to mine. Another blew kisses. Another made a heart with his hands. Armed federal agents who had just terrified families and disappeared people into a system where people have died, driving away laughing. Underneath the intimidation was a complete absence of accountability. They knew they were being recorded and behaved that way anyway, like men certain there would be no consequences.

Accountability does not always arrive as fast as we want, but videos can last forever. They survive administrations, a GOP-controlled Congress, and every person in power who looks away, assuming this will be forgotten. It won’t be. There will come a day when the footage, the names, and the evidence become a record of this authoritarian takeover and everyone who participated in it. The masks will come off, but what they did while wearing them will remain, and it is our life’s work to make sure history remembers. Minutes before I stood on that sidewalk, the president was online calling journalists who accurately report on his war “treasonous SCUM,” because the one thing people on the wrong side of history have always feared most is a record of what they are actually doing. They wanted us to be afraid. I wasn’t. I was disgusted. Because fear is their weapon.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

We are living through a pivotal moment for our country, and my goal is to reach as many people as possible with clear, factual information about what is happening. The more people who understand what is unfolding, the better our chances of pushing back against chaos, cruelty, and corruption ahead of the midterms.

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Independent media is under attack. You can make a difference with a $5/month paid subscription. Your support allows me to keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in our country, defend myself from constant pressure from MAGA extremists, and ultimately spread the message to more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 9-3-2026.

Sources:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/12/us/el-salvador-torture-of-venezuelan-deportees

https://www.hrw.org/report/2026/06/25/dying-in-detention/rising-deaths-in-an-expanding-us-immigration-detention-system

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-deported-venezuelans-endured-at-cecot-60-minutes/

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/17/nx-s1-5721174/rights-groups-raise-alarm-over-fate-of-salvadorans-deported-from-us-trump

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-08-13/tracking-the-record-high-deaths-in-ice-custody

https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/07/immigration-raids-who/

https://theintercept.com/2026/01/28/ice-cbp-patches-guide-to-identifying-immigration-agents/

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/this-deceptive-ice-tactic-violates-the-fourth-amendment

Today I became part of the story

Heather Delaney Reese — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 07:07:06 GMT

Just after 8:00 this morning, while I was still in my pajamas and working on my computer, I heard a crashing sound and men screaming right outside my bedroom window. I struggled to understand exactly what they were saying, making out only that they were demanding that someone “come out immediately,” followed by threats about what would happen if they didn’t. Before I could even process what they were saying, my daughter came running into my room absolutely terrified, telling me there were men with guns surrounding our house.

Before I go any further, I want you all to know my family is fine. But in that moment, nothing felt even close to okay. There is a feeling that comes over you as a parent when your child says those words to you, as you hear the fear in their voice. It is almost impossible to describe because there isn’t really time to think. Your brain doesn’t calmly sort through possibilities or wait for more information. Your body reacts before your mind has even caught up. My stomach dropped, and my heart started pounding. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my robe while my daughter immediately went into action. She locked up the pets and got her sisters into a safe room, something we have practiced many times before but that I never actually thought my children would have to do. Once they were safe, they called my husband and told him to come home while I tried to figure out who was outside our home and what was happening.

There were masked men everywhere. Unmarked vehicles surrounded our house and spilled into the streets, and armed men carrying what appeared to be tactical rifles were moving around outside. There was even a massive armored vehicle that looked like something you would expect to see with a SWAT team during a violent conflict.

As I stepped outside, I realized they weren’t actually there for our house. They had simply used the area directly in front of our home as a staging ground, with their unmarked vehicles and armed men spreading from our house up through the street. That was when I saw at least one man wearing a vest that said, “POLICE.” But I knew something wasn’t right. We don’t have a city police department where I live. Our law enforcement is handled by very professional sheriffs. I’ve interacted with sheriff’s deputies here for years, and I knew immediately these were not our local law enforcement officers. One of my sisters even works for a police department, and nothing about what I was looking at reassured me that these men were in any way police officers. So I asked the closest masked man who they were and what department they were from because, in that moment, that question was the only thing that mattered to me.

Before I understood what was happening, my mind went to places I wish it didn’t have to go. My first thought was that one of the radical far-right extremists who sends me horrific threats had finally decided to come to my home and harm me or my family. Almost immediately after that came another thought that scared me just as much: that this was the federal government, and they were here because of what I write.

So I asked, “What department are you with?” I was ignored. I asked again, and again. I explained that I had a child inside my home who was terrified, that armed, masked men were right outside our house, and that I had a right to know who they were. Finally, one of them answered me almost casually, like he assumed the answer would reassure me. “HSI.”

Suddenly I understood exactly what was happening. All I remember saying was, “You’re ICE.” Maybe that should have made me feel relief, but it didn’t. Because while my children were still hiding in a room, terrified but safe, someone else’s child was living through a trauma that wasn’t about to end when these men drove away. For another family, this wasn’t a terrifying misunderstanding or a moment they would eventually come down from. This was just the beginning. Their loved one was being kidnapped. They could be taken from that street to a detention center, then shipped from one detention center to another, held in horrific conditions while the people who love them desperately try to figure out where they have been taken. They may never come home if they are one of those sent to prisons known for torture in a country they have never been to. Their family, waiting for them, slowly realizes that they have simply disappeared into a detention system where people have died.

That was all I could think about as I checked on my kids and told them what was happening. Then I threw on some clothes, grabbed my phone, and started recording while I tried not to be sick to my stomach.

What I saw next is something I don’t think I will ever forget. From what I could tell, at least two people were taken from our street. The one I witnessed was an older man with no shoes on, who did not appear to have a weapon and was not resisting. From everything I could see, he looked like someone who had simply gotten up that morning and gone to work on a neighbor’s property, never imagining that before the morning was over he would be surrounded by masked men with rifles and taken away. His vehicle is still sitting in that driveway tonight, exactly where he left it. They just grab them and disappear them into the system. And then I watched something that made my stomach turn. Agents removed what appeared to be a gold cross necklace from around the man’s neck. But instead of putting it into an evidence bag or securing it with his belongings, I watched one agent hand it to another agent, who then put it directly into his own pocket like a souvenir.

Leave a comment

What happened as the agents were leaving told me more about who these people are than almost anything else I saw. They had already made sure they all knew I was videotaping, pointing me out to each other as they prepared to leave. Then, as they drove their unmarked vehicles slowly through our street, windows tinted dark, every single one of them slowed down as they passed me. One agent put two fingers to his eyes and then pointed them directly at me. “I’m watching you.” Another leaned forward and made a heart with his hands as he drove past. Another blew kisses at me. These were armed federal agents who had just descended on a residential neighborhood in masks and tactical gear, taken people away, terrified families, and now they were driving away laughing and trying to taunt a woman who had dared to stand on the sidewalk and record them.

I asked one of the few unmasked agents standing nearby what he thought about his fellow agents making hearts and blowing kisses at me, behavior I would expect from a creepy teenage boy still learning social skills, not a grown man carrying a gun and calling himself a police officer. He just shrugged, as if this was normal, like he sees this behavior often from the men he works with.

In that moment, I couldn’t help but think about what real law enforcement officers must be feeling right now. About how much more dangerous their jobs become when untrained wannabes put “POLICE” across their chests and behave like this, pretending to be them when they clearly have neither the training nor the understanding of the enormous responsibility that comes with that job. Real police officers should be furious.

That’s what concerns me most. Underneath the intimidation was a complete absence of accountability. They knew I was recording them, and they behaved that way anyway. They didn’t care that someone might see the video. They acted like men who knew there would be no consequences.

But the thing about accountability is that it often doesn’t arrive as quickly as we hope. Videos, however, can last forever. They can survive administrations. They can survive a GOP-controlled Congress. They can survive every person in power who looks the other way and assumes that what happened today will eventually be forgotten. It won’t be.

There will come a day when the videos we are taking, the names we are recording, and the evidence we are preserving will be compiled into a record of what happened during this authoritarian takeover and who participated in it. There will be investigations and testimony. Where crimes were committed, there will be prosecutions and trials. The masks will eventually come off, but the record of what they did while wearing them will remain.

What they did will be their legacy, and it will be our life’s work to make sure history remembers exactly what happened here, who did it, who enabled it, and who stood by while it was happening. They may believe there will never be consequences. We will make sure they are wrong.

They tried to intimidate me, but I was not scared. I want to be very clear about that. I was disgusted. I was embarrassed for them. What I saw were people who do not belong in society at large and certainly not in any position of authority. The difference between me and those men is simple. Every night, I write under my full legal name. My face is right here. I stand behind every word. They hide behind masks and unmarked cars. They think they are strong and powerful, but they give themselves away every single time.

I’ve been thinking about those unmarked cars ever since they drove away. Because we have seen before what happens when governments normalize masked men and unmarked vehicles moving through neighborhoods, taking people away while everyone else is left wondering who they were, where they went, and whether those cars might come back tomorrow. And the men carrying it out this time are not fundamentally different from the men who have carried it out before. They enjoy the fear their power creates without understanding that the power was never really theirs. They are being used by rich and powerful men who will remain safely removed from the cruelty they have ordered others to carry out. History is filled with men like this. Men who mistook proximity to power for power itself, who believed the uniform or the weapon made them important, and who learned far too late that authoritarian regimes have always considered men like them expendable.

Minutes before I stood on that sidewalk, recording what they were doing, the President of the United States was posting his own message about people who document what he doesn’t want documented. At 10:56 this morning, Trump shared:

The President of the United States once again attacked the press, calling journalists who accurately report on his war “treasonous SCUM”, while also bragging about ammunition stockpiles. It is an attack on the one thing people on the wrong side of history have always feared most: a record of what they are actually doing. Because the truth is dangerous to people who depend on secrecy, intimidation, and lies to maintain their power. They don’t want the witnesses, or their words preserved, or their actions documented because someday, when the fear is gone, that record will still exist.

Every time Trump attacks the press, I do the same thing. I support more independent voices who are putting it all on the line to report what is happening in this country. Because until we can vote in the midterms, we can vote with our dollars. If you are able, and this does not create a hardship of any kind, please think about who your go-to people are, the ones who bring you the truth of what is happening to our country. Please think beyond just me. Think about your other favorite voices and see if they have a paid membership option. If they do, please support them. Let’s make sure they are well funded for the fight ahead. For those of you already supporting me in this way, thank you. Thank you for making sure I am able to keep doing this work. Our path to better days right now is to protect the people who tell the truth, because what showed up in San Diego this morning is coming for every single one of us, and the only way through this is to make sure we still have voices able to warn and inform.

Those men wanted us to be afraid. They want us to second-guess everything we say and do. They wanted me to wonder whether it is worth it. But we are not afraid. Because fear is their weapon. It has never been ours. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Edited to add: I see the requests for the video, and unfortunately I can’t share it. With all the tools available these days, it would be very easy to pinpoint exactly where I live, putting my family at risk.

Subscribe now

Picture of the day: Another day I’m thankful that there are dogs on this planet.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/12/us/el-salvador-torture-of-venezuelan-deportees

https://www.hrw.org/report/2026/06/25/dying-in-detention/rising-deaths-in-an-expanding-us-immigration-detention-system

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-deported-venezuelans-endured-at-cecot-60-minutes/

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/17/nx-s1-5721174/rights-groups-raise-alarm-over-fate-of-salvadorans-deported-from-us-trump

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-08-13/tracking-the-record-high-deaths-in-ice-custody

https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/07/immigration-raids-who/

https://theintercept.com/2026/01/28/ice-cbp-patches-guide-to-identifying-immigration-agents/

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/this-deceptive-ice-tactic-violates-the-fourth-amendment

Trump’s Oval Office press conference was filled with lies and propaganda

Heather Delaney Reese — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 01:22:17 GMT

At 1:48 in the afternoon, reporters were summoned to the Oval Office for an event the White House had clearly staged, with 15 travel executives arranged behind the president to project strength as he struggled through his remarks: “American flies, they, they, uh … American skies were loaded up with planes.” He was there to celebrate a “historic summer travel season,” even as the real numbers show an industry collapsing under his own policies, with international visitors avoiding the United States and Las Vegas suffering what locals now call the “Trump slump.” Then, in the same breath he stumbled over the word “skies,” he boasted about bombing Iran overnight and mused about renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself. That is the Trump presidency: no understanding of the gravity of anything he says.

One question that the press did not ask the president is: If Iran is such a grave danger, why does he keep praising the man helping Iran fight back? This week, Putin publicly pledged to keep supporting Iran, and we know Russia has been sharing satellite imagery to help Tehran target American forces. That same day, Germany formally blamed Russia for a sabotage attack at Leipzig airport, and Europe’s leaders called it “state sponsored terrorism.” These are the allies who stood with us after September 11th and buried their own children in Afghanistan. Yet while they faced a direct escalation on their soil, Trump quietly sent his CIA director to Moscow and said Russia had “behaved quite well.” We elected a man who insults our friends while praising the people who threaten them.

To our allies abroad: I understand why you must keep your distance and prepare for a world where America may not stand beside you. But please do not turn on each other, because division is exactly what these strongmen want. Even in these darker days, there was light. This week, an anonymous whistleblower revealed that the Postal Service had secretly been building a system to screen and potentially reject mail-in ballots, continuing even after a court ordered them to stop, a system that could have silently disenfranchised millions. One person, with everything to lose, stood between millions of voters and an election that could have been stolen before it began. We may never know their name, but they reminded us the regime has not captured everyone. There are still people inside these institutions who remember who they work for and what their oath means.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 9-2-2026.

Sources:

President Trump Meets with U.S. Travel Executives: YouTube Video
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/02/trump-travel-industry-world-cup-tourism-airlines-hotels.html
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/vegas-tourism-is-down-some-blame-trumps-tariffs-and-immigration-crackdown
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/iran-war-us-strikes-strait-of-hormuz-larak-island/
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/09/02/von-der-leyen-russian-drone-incidents-in-europe-are-the-new-normal
https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/01/politics/usps-whistleblower-mail-ballot-rules-trump
https://www.notus.org/2026-election/whistleblower-secret-usps-plan-endanger-mail-in-ballots

Donald Trump chooses dictators over democracies

Heather Delaney Reese — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 06:47:38 GMT

At 1:48 pm this afternoon, reporters were suddenly summoned to the Oval Office with almost no notice. The president’s schedule had listed no media events, catching the White House press corps off guard on this very muggy day in Washington, D.C. When they were ushered inside, it quickly became clear that the White House had been preparing for this event, even if the press had not. Surrounding the back and side of the president were 15 men, mostly travel executives, all in deep blue and black suits, the president’s preferred uniform for the men who are allowed to be near him. Their places were strategically chosen to give the illusion of strength and authority to Donald Trump as he struggled to read page after page of prepared remarks. “On 11 separate days, more than three million travelers flowed through the American flies, they, they, uh … American skies were loaded up with planes.”

Donald Trump’s press office said the event was, “to celebrate the accomplishments that produced a historic summer travel season and delivered a strong boost to our local economies and small businesses,” even as the actual numbers showed an industry struggling under the weight of declining international tourism and billions of dollars in lost visitor spending as international visitors increasingly choose to avoid the United States for fear of being detained, denied entry, or caught up in Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown at the border. Others simply refuse to spend their money in a country whose president and policies they no longer want to support.

Las Vegas, “The Entertainment Capital of the World,” ended 2025 with its largest annual visitor decline since the pandemic, closer to 2010, when the city was still climbing out of the Great Recession. By June of last year, hotel occupancy fell roughly 15%. Visits from Canadians practically collapsed. Air Canada passenger numbers fell 33%, with WestJet coming in close with a drop of 31%. The low-cost carrier Flair reported even worse numbers with a 62% decline. Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley said tourism from Canada has dried up from a torrent “to a drip.” Ted Pappageorge, head of the Culinary Workers Union, called it the “Trump slump.” When I was in Las Vegas last year on two separate occasions, drivers also called it that and expressed how concerned they were about their survival once again.

Fontainebleau and Resorts World have both laid off workers. Trump’s new bond program, requiring visitors from 50 countries to put up thousands of dollars just to enter the United States, has contributed to an 80% decline in visitors from those countries. Even the travel executives sitting behind Donald Trump in the Oval Office acknowledged the problem after they walked outside the room. Geoff Freeman, the head of the U.S. Travel Association, told reporters directly, “We cannot get to 100 million travelers with a bond program that would discourage travelers.” Just moments earlier, Freeman had been sitting behind Donald Trump, thanking him on camera.

Once it was time for questions, reporters quickly turned to Iran. They asked about the war and about the regime crackdown on protesters. Trump said, “The only answer is they’re being shot. The regime is getting weaker and weaker by the day, and at some point, they’re not going to be able to shoot so easily.”

Then he turned to what the United States military did overnight. “We hit them very hard last night. We took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz. It was a very heavy attack last night, and we’re prepared to do another one any time we want.”

The reality of the moment we are living in is that the President of the United States can be garbling a sentence about tourism one minute and the next he is excitedly sharing about bombing a country and, by extension, the civilians he supposedly went to war to save. That is the Trump presidency. He has no understanding of the gravity of anything he says.

Earlier this morning, he even posted on Truth Social to suggest that there be consideration made for the Strait of Hormuz to be renamed after himself. “Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???” he wrote. “Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!”

American service members are in harm’s way. People all over the region are being killed, and Donald Trump is talking about putting his name on another body of water that does not belong to him. He cannot read a prepared sentence about tourism without stumbling over the word “skies,” but he thinks he deserves to steal the naming rights to foreign geography.

But here is what makes all of this worse, and it is a question I wish one of the reporters in that room had asked him. Trump loves to talk about Iran and how much we are winning. But if Iran is such a terrible danger to the United States, why does he keep defending and praising the man who is helping Iran fight back?

Just yesterday, on September first, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Vladimir Putin sat beside Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and pledged to keep supporting Iran with what the Kremlin described as “necessary goods” and economic assistance. “During this difficult period, we are striving to provide you with the necessary assistance,” Putin said. He didn’t even say this behind closed doors or in a secret meeting. He made a public declaration of support for the country American forces struck just hours later.

And we have known about this support for a long time. We know that Russia has been actively aiding Iran throughout this war. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that Russia has provided expanded intelligence sharing and satellite imagery to help Tehran target American forces. Ukraine revealed that Russian orbital surveillance assets captured images of the UK-US base on Diego Garcia, NATO’s Incirlik base in Turkey, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and oil and natural gas fields in Saudi Arabia. Every one of those locations was later attacked by Iran. Russia is helping Iran.

So when Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office and tells us he hit Iran “very hard last night,” he does not mention that the equipment Iran built along the Strait of Hormuz, the very equipment he claims to have destroyed, may well have been supplied or guided with intelligence from the man Trump still refuses to condemn. Putin, the man he still calls a friend.

And it goes deeper than that. Russia is not just arming our enemy, it is also attacking our allies. The same day Putin pledged support to Iran, Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt made a formal announcement, publicly attributing the August fourth drone sabotage at Leipzig airport to Russia, stating that the means used to carry out the attack are “known to use from other hybrid operations conducted by Russia and its war against Ukraine.” Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stood beside him and called it part of a “long series of attempts at destabilization, disinformation, threats, sabotage and aggression directed at Europe.”

Germany is taking this action and the greater threat it revealed seriously, even going so far as ordering the closure of the Russian consulate in Bonn, and it terminated the agreement allowing the Russian House in Berlin to operate. German police have also opened a separate terror investigation into a deliberate attack on an electricity substation in eastern Germany, suggesting that Leipzig may not have been an isolated event on German soil.

Then today, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stood alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels and made clear just how serious this has become. “Leipzig marks a new escalation on European Union soil directly attributed to Russia,” she said, warning that if the attack had succeeded, “this would have resulted in enormous damage, and possibly even loss of life.” Then she said the part that needed to be said, but also felt like a punch to the gut to hear. “Europeans are faced with a hard truth, that this is the new normal.” According to von der Leyen, Europe has now entered “a new era of European security.”

Standing beside her, Rutte warned that Russia has become “increasingly reckless” and that the threat is now reaching directly onto European soil. EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas was even more direct, calling what happened in Leipzig “state sponsored terrorism.”

What von der Leyen made clear today is that none of this is random. Russia is deliberately targeting Europe to make supporting Ukraine more dangerous. The message is simple: keep helping Ukraine and your airports, power grids, railways, and other critical infrastructure could be next.

These are our closest allies. These are the countries that stood beside us after September 11th, when America was wounded and afraid and needed the world to stand with us. They sent their sons and daughters to fight alongside ours. They buried their own because they believed that an attack on one of us was an attack on all of us. For generations, we built something together that was never perfect, but was rooted in the belief that democratic nations were safer when we stood together against the dictators and strongmen who wanted to tear us apart. Now those same allies are watching Russian drones enter their airspace, sabotage reach their cities, and threats move closer to their homes, their airports, their power grids, and their families. Yet they are still standing together. They are naming what Putin is doing. They are refusing to be frightened into silence. They are doing exactly what we once promised one another we would do when one of us was threatened. What makes this moment so painful is that the country that once helped lead that promise is now being led by a president who seems far more comfortable praising the man threatening our allies than standing beside the allies who have stood beside us for decades.

What transpired over the last two days makes what we only learned after reporters started asking questions even more disturbing. While our closest allies were dealing with what they now describe as a direct escalation by Russia on European soil, our president was sending his CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, to Moscow for an unannounced meeting. The visit took place on August 25th, days before Germany went public. There was no show of strength alongside Europe. Instead, Donald Trump just quietly sent the CIA Director to Moscow for these secret talks with Russia’s intelligence chiefs.

When reporters asked Trump about it, he called it “standard business.” He said he was “not at all concerned” about Russia targeting a NATO country. “There is no problem,” he said. He did not condemn what happened in Leipzig or stand with Germany. He did not use the word sabotage, terrorism, or aggression. He treated the entire situation as though it were a minor inconvenience that his people had already handled.

Yet somehow, none of it changed the way Donald Trump talked about Vladimir Putin. When a reporter asked whether Russia should face consequences for supporting Iran in a war where American forces are dying, the president said this just a few days ago: “So far, I think Russia’s behaved quite well, having to do with the Strait of Hormuz.”

One of the hardest parts of living through this moment is the weight of watching terrible people do terrible things and feeling, in some deep and constant way, helpless. People scream that we are not doing enough, while others do nothing at all. Both of those realities exist side by side, every single day, and the tension between them is exhausting in ways that are hard to explain.

Because the cruelty does not stay at the top. It never does. When the president of the United States behaves this way, it gives permission to every lesser version of him to unleash the worst parts of themselves. He sets the tone. Not just for America, but for the world. He empowers the most evil among us. He emboldens the strongmen who lead other nations, showing them just how much they can get away with, too.

This is how the world begins to hate us, and this administration seems determined to give them every reason to. This is how our closest allies, rightfully so, now look at America with suspicion and anger instead of trust. We elected a man who has spent years insulting our friends while praising some of the very people who threaten them, and there was always going to be a cost for that. We are watching that cost come due. Our allies in Europe now know that they have to move forward without us. Their governments are adjusting, and their citizens are pulling away. They are building a future in which America can no longer automatically be counted on to stand beside them on the right side of history. As painful as that is for me to write, I cannot blame them. They must protect themselves from what we have become.

To my readers here at home, we have to look out for each other. We are truly in a moment where like-minded people protecting one another is not optional, it is the only way we get through this. It is how we make sure the people around us do not feel completely alone when everything they thought they could count on seems to be disappearing. Check on each other. Pay attention when someone is being targeted. Stand beside people when it would be easier to stay quiet. There are going to be days when some of us have more strength than others, and on those days, we carry each other. It is how we come out the other side still standing.

To my international friends, I understand keeping us at arm’s length right now. I hate writing that. I hate knowing that there are people around the world who once looked at America as a friend and an ally who now have very good reasons to wonder whether we can ever be trusted again. I understand the anger and the resentment. I understand why your governments are preparing for a world in which America may not be there when you need us, or worse, we are the aggressor, because right now, we are giving you every reason to prepare for exactly that. Protect your countries and your democracies. When you see this kind of movement taking root in your politics, stop it before it spreads. Please learn from what happened to us. Do not wait until the cruelty becomes normal. Do not tell yourselves that your institutions are too strong or your people are too decent or that something like this could never happen where you live. We told ourselves versions of the same thing, and look at us now.

But please, do not turn on each other. Whether you are here in the States or reading from afar, please heed this warning above all else. Do not let what is happening to America destroy the trust between the rest of you too. Do not let our failure convince you that every alliance is worthless or that every country is better off on its own. That is what they want. That is what this type of movement is built upon. The people doing this to us benefit every time another democracy becomes isolated, when old friends begin looking at one another as enemies, and when fear replaces solidarity. The division they have fed inside this country was never going to stop at our borders. They want it everywhere because divided people are easier to frighten, manipulate, and control. Democracies standing alone are easier for strongmen to break.

So be angry with us. Keep your distance from us to protect yourselves right now. I understand it, even though it breaks my heart to say that. But please do not give up on each other. Do not let what has happened to America become permission to stop believing in one another, or even in all of us. Millions of us are still here. We still remember what our country was supposed to stand for, and we are fighting with all our might in the ways each of us is capable of to find our way back.

These are the darker days we knew were coming. But even through the darkness, there was some light. Yesterday, an anonymous federal official inside the United States Postal Service did something remarkably brave. They filed a whistleblower disclosure revealing that the USPS has been secretly building a new system called the “Federal Ballot Mail Portal” since June, designed to carry out Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting. They continued building it even after a federal court order issued on June 25th commanded them to stop. In just months, they built a project with the complexity that would normally take years to develop and test. Under this new system, the Postal Service would, for the first time in American history, have the power to decide which ballots get mailed. It would screen ballot barcodes against information uploaded by state election officials, and one bad barcode could cause an entire batch of ballots, potentially thousands, to be rejected and never mailed.

The whistleblower’s disclosure, prepared by Whistleblower Aid, warned that USPS leadership “has discarded all best practices as they speed the project to be ready for a September first implementation, raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug.”

Leave a comment

The whistleblower knew what that meant. They understood that if this system went live without anyone knowing, millions of Americans could be silently disenfranchised before they ever realized what had happened. So they came forward, and they risked their career. They put everything on the line to protect the one thing that still gives us power in this country: our vote.

Senator Richard Blumenthal released the disclosure and sent a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner demanding the agency explain whether it followed court orders. He called the changes a “deeply troubling departure” from the role USPS has traditionally played in our elections, and urged the agency to “abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS.”

Libby Liu, the CEO of Whistleblower Aid, said: “We are crossing the Rubicon of American elections. This dangerously defective mail-in ballot process could disenfranchise millions of voters, ensnaring ballots in red tape under the guise of solving a non-existent problem.”

With some mail-in ballots set to go out this week, one person inside the system saw what was happening, understood the stakes, and refused to stay silent. One person, with everything to lose, stood between millions of voters and an election that could have been stolen before it even began. We may never know the name of this true patriot, but millions of us now know what they did. What the whistleblower did was also remind us that we are not alone, and that they have not captured everyone. It means there are still people inside these institutions who remember who they work for and what their oath means. Most importantly, it means that when our moment comes, whatever that moment looks like for each of us, I believe enough of us will know exactly what to do. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

Picture of the day: After avoiding berries nearly all summer because of food safety concerns, I finally found a truly local fruit stand. I’m happy to report that I paid nearly a car payment for them, but the strawberries alone were worth it. They tasted exactly the way I remember strawberries tasting, when a neighbor down the street grew them in his garden and shared them with us kids.

He was a very kind older gentleman who had lost his wife the winter before and decided to carry on with her annual garden that following summer. It was his first time gardening, and with his wife gone and no family around, it was just him at home. One day he saw my friends and me walking by and told us to ask our parents if we could bring home some fresh fruits and vegetables from his garden. Our parents gave permission, and nearly every day that summer, there would be huge bags filled with fresh produce waiting for us.

Toward the end of the summer, he even started baking his wife’s famous cookies for us, and we would sit on his front porch and eat them with him. He was gone before the next summer, reunited with his wife, but none of us ever forgot him.

Anyway, the berries were delicious. I didn’t mean to get this nostalgic over a carton of strawberries. I guess for a few minutes they reminded me of being eight years old, of a lonely man who found a reason to keep his wife’s garden growing, and of a time when neighbors looked out for each other simply because that was what neighbors did. I miss those slow days and that kind of community and kindness. Maybe I’m missing it a little more than usual right now.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

Pete Hegseth just posted his incompetence for the entire world to see

Heather Delaney Reese — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 01:22:34 GMT

Last night, after the only event on his schedule all week was canceled, the Secretary of Defense took to social media to humiliate what he thought was a member of Canada’s military, sharing a photo captioned “(this is real),” expecting the world to laugh at the body of the person in uniform. But the account was called “cadets.vernon.” It was a photo from a youth cadet program for children ages 12 to 18, showing a young person being awarded a medal by a volunteer. The man responsible for running the entire Department of Defense could not read what was in front of him, and used his position to mock a child’s body. Canada’s leaders called it “beneath the office,” and one reminded him that 158 Canadians died in Afghanistan after our country was attacked. The Pentagon did not take it down or apologize.

None of this is new. Hegseth has been telling us who he is for years. His own mother once wrote that he was “an abuser of women.” He was confirmed by a single tie-breaking vote amid concerns about his drinking. He leaked strike plans on Signal and lied about it. He recited a Pulp Fiction line as a prayer at a Pentagon service. And on the first day of the Iran war, a U.S. missile struck a girls’ school, killing at least 110 children, and he blamed Iran. Now his own Pentagon is falling apart. Six four-star commanders formally warned the Iran war is unsustainable, with over half our cruise missiles gone and deployments extended into 2027, and the Army Secretary resigned rather than stay. Hegseth’s answer to remove anyone who tells him the truth.

I keep thinking about how a true military leader acts. On the night before D-Day, General Eisenhower walked among the paratroopers, looked them in the eye, and wrote a note taking full personal responsibility should the invasion fail, before a single soldier hit the beach. The distance between that man and Pete Hegseth is the distance between everything this country was supposed to be and everything it is becoming. Trump has now announced strikes had resumed on Iran, Iran retaliated, and a U.S. strike hit a home during a wedding, killing four, including a child. Our country and the world are in serious trouble. But even now, people are willing to call it wrong. Six commanders said no in writing. An Army Secretary walked away. There are far more of us than there are of them. November is when we prove it.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 9-1-2026.

Sources:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pentagon-hegseth-canada-cadets-controversy-9.7327986

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/pete-hegseths-mother-defends-sons-fitness-lead-pentagon-changed-man-rcna182786

https://www.congress.gov/119/crec/2025/01/24/171/15/modified/CREC-2025-01-24-pt1-PgS363.htm

https://www.thedailybeast.com/humiliating-reason-pentagon-petes-wife-jennifer-hegseth-travels-with-him-revealed/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-hegseth-cites-fake-pulp-fiction-bible-verse-in-bonkers-prayer-meeting/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/usa-iran-those-responsible-for-deadly-and-unlawful-us-strike-on-school-that-killed-over-100-children-must-be-held-accountable/

https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2026-08-31/army-secretary-driscoll-resigns-22714790.html

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/21/media/pentagon-stars-and-stripes-reporters-hegseth-fired

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/politics/video/ebof-stars-and-stripes-ombudsman-fired-pentagon-kate-bolduan

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/us-launched-large-powerful-strikes-iran-trump-says-rcna595581

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/31/first-on-cnbc-transcript-us-treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-speaks-with-cnbcs-sara-eisen-on-squawk-on-the-street-today.html

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/highlight/2026/09/02/iran-red-crescent-says-4-killed-50-wounded-at-wedding-by-us-attack

https://www.ncpedia.org/media/message-drafted-general

Pete Hegseth is a danger to the world

Heather Delaney Reese — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 06:49:25 GMT

Last night, at 9:08 PM, after the only event on his public schedule for the entire week was canceled at the last minute, the United States Secretary of Defense, or as he now calls himself, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, took to social media to humiliate a member of one of our closest allies’ militaries. Or at least that’s what he thought he was doing when he shared a photograph from a Canadian account with the caption “🇨🇦 (this is real),” apparently expecting millions of people to laugh along with him at the body of the person wearing the uniform. He thought he was being clever and exposing the weakness of Canada’s military. Instead, in one extraordinarily stupid post, Hegseth exposed something much more disturbing about himself: that the man entrusted with overseeing the most powerful military in the world is not only cruel enough to use his position to publicly humiliate someone because of their appearance, but apparently too ignorant or too lazy to read what was directly in front of him before doing it.

Because the photograph wasn’t what Hegseth apparently thought it was. The account itself is called “cadets.vernon.” The photograph came from a Canadian cadet program in Vernon, British Columbia. This was not Hegseth catching some supposedly embarrassing glimpse of Canada’s fighting force. It was a photograph from a youth cadet program for children 12-18. The picture shows a young person and what is most likely a volunteer for the program awarding them a medal. Somehow, the man responsible for advising the President of the United States on matters of war and national defense could not figure that out. That tells us far more about Pete Hegseth and the other people Donald Trump has put in extraordinarily powerful positions than it could ever tell us about Canada.

The response was immediate. Canadian journalist Terry Reith wrote, “Is the US secretary of defence trying to shame cadets in Vernon? These are cadets, high school kids. How dare you be such a complete asshole to imply this is our military, and shame on you for body shaming our young people. This is reprehensible.” Canadian Member of Parliament Garnett Genuis responded by reminding Hegseth of something he apparently never learned or chose to forget: “158 members of the Canadian military gave their lives in Afghanistan after your country was attacked. Canada and the US have a great history of fighting together for freedom and justice. It’s history worth remembering.” Prime Minister Mark Carney called the post “beneath their office.” Defence Minister David McGuinty called it “below the dignity of the office he holds.”

The Pentagon, however, stood behind it. They did not take it down. Did not apologize. Did not even attempt to explain how a youth leadership program for teenagers in British Columbia ended up in the crosshairs of the Secretary of War of the United States. Because many of us, parents or simply people who care about children, want to know why Pete Hegseth was even looking at children’s bodies in the first place.

I kept thinking about that young person in the photograph. Still finding themselves. Standing there proud of something they had earned, captured in a moment that was supposed to be theirs. I kept thinking about the volunteer standing next to them. A woman who obviously loves her country and loves children, who believes they are the future, and that is why she was there. She showed up, gave her time, and put on the uniform, because she believed in what that program could do for the next generation. And the United States Secretary of Defense saw that photograph and decided it was an opportunity for humiliation.

One of the most patriotic things a person can do is serve. I’m using the word “patriotic” carefully because this administration has twisted it into something performative, but real service is quiet and selfless, even when the person doing it does not fully realize they are choosing selflessness. Military service means low pay compared to the private sector. It means a lack of control over your own life. It is not easy, mentally or physically. It does not matter whether that service is American or Canadian or any other one of our allied countries, because the choice to show up for something bigger than yourself looks the same in every uniform.

When I think of Canada’s military, I do not think of something to mock. I think of them standing beside ours. So many times, when we needed someone, they were there immediately. Afghanistan. The Cold War. Canada joined WWI and WWII years before the US was involved militarily, and we fought side by side. So many families live on both sides of that border, connected by the same roots. When one branch of my own family came to this continent, some went to Canada, and some came to the United States. We are not strangers. We are neighbors in the deepest sense of the word. Real Americans will never look at a Canadian and see an enemy, or a freeloader, or weakness by any stretch of the imagination. But what we are seeing is those things in our own government. We see the people running our government right now, and we see corruption, cruelty, failure, and embarrassment. What Pete Hegseth and anyone who cheered him on were doing was not being an American. And they were certainly not being good human beings either.

None of this is new. Pete Hegseth has been telling us exactly who he is for years. His own mother, Penelope Hegseth, wrote him an email in 2018 that was later read on the floor of the United States Senate during his confirmation. “You are an abuser of women,” she wrote. “That is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man, and have been for years, and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.” She continued: “On behalf of all the women, and I know it’s many, you have abused in some way, I say, get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” She later said she regretted the email. But the words were already in the Congressional Record, spoken aloud in the chamber where his confirmation was decided. Senator Tim Kaine asked Hegseth directly whether sexual assault, spousal abuse, or working under the influence would disqualify someone from being Secretary of Defense. Hegseth refused to answer. He was confirmed by a single vote by the Vice President, JD Vance, who had to break the tie.

Before that confirmation, NBC News reported that ten current and former Fox News colleagues said his drinking was a persistent concern, with two saying he smelled of alcohol before going on air on more than a dozen occasions. One colleague said the problem was so well known that “everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air.” He pledged to stop drinking if confirmed. Today, his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, reportedly travels with him everywhere he goes because, as an insider told the New York Times, the Secretary of Defense relies on her to “keep him out of trouble.” Twenty current and former administration officials confirmed that she has become his most influential adviser, prepping him for appearances, sitting in on meetings with journalists, interviewing potential staff, and helping brainstorm Pentagon videos. She attended a classified meeting between U.S. and U.K. officials about military intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Pentagon staffers reportedly refer to her as “The Leash.” Former Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot called it “bonkers that a defense secretary would involve his wife in his sensitive official duties, including sharing details of an impending military operation, and face zero consequences.”

We can’t forget when he leaked war plans to a journalist on the encrypted messaging app Signal in March of 2025 after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally included in a group chat where he shared precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing for strikes on Yemen. Then he stood on a runway in Hawaii and told reporters, “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.” The Pentagon’s own inspector general later concluded that his actions could have resulted in “potential harm to US pilots.” Even after that, he created a second Signal chat that included his wife, his brother, and his personal lawyer.

This is the man who stood at a Pentagon prayer service in April and recited what he presented as a prayer inspired by Ezekiel 25:17. It was not. It was a fictional speech written by Quentin Tarantino for the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character immediately before he murders someone. “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” Hegseth intoned, asking his audience to pray along with him. When the mistake was caught, his spokesman Sean Parnell did not apologize. He called anyone pointing it out “ignorant of reality.”

Maybe the most horrific example of what happens when Pete Hegseth’s arrogance and incompetence collide with the power he has been given came on February 28th of this year, on the first day of Operation Epic Fury, when a U.S. Tomahawk missile struck the Shajareye Tayabeh girls school in Minab, Iran. According to Amnesty International, at least 156 people were killed, including at least 110 children, most of them girls between the ages of 7 and 12. U.S. military investigators later concluded that American forces were likely responsible. The strike was reportedly caused by outdated targeting data that still identified the school as part of an Iranian military complex. When asked about it, Trump said, “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” Hegseth backed him. “The only side that targets civilians is Iran,” he said. This from the man who had previously declared that U.S. strikes in Iran would not be bound by “stupid rules of engagement.” That is Pete Hegseth, that is his record, and now his own Pentagon is falling apart around him.

In a classified document obtained and published by the Washington Post, it was revealed that six of the military’s most senior four-star commanders formally warned Hegseth that the Iran war is unsustainable. The heads of U.S. European Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and U.S. Southern Command, along with multiple other combatant commanders, all issued a formal “non-concur” to his plan to keep troops deployed in the Middle East through September and others into 2027. The Navy’s top admiral, Daryl Caudle, gave the starkest assessment, telling Hegseth the service “cannot sustain its current level of support” because there is no end date to the conflict. The leaked document revealed what we have feared for months: the United States has depleted more than half of its cruise missiles and advanced air-defense missiles during six months of this war. The military has had to redeploy its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missiles from South Korea and pull the USS George Washington from Japan, removing the only aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Families of soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division were told this week that their deployments will extend to 12 months, into 2027.

Hegseth’s response to anyone who tells him the truth has been the same every time. He removes them. Since taking over the Pentagon, he has fired or forced out more than two dozen senior military officers. He fired Army Chief of Staff General Randy George in April for objecting to Hegseth’s decision to block officer promotions, many of which involved Black and female officers. He has not nominated a replacement in four months. He fired the editor, publisher, and a reporter at Stars and Stripes, the independent military publication, about ten days after they reported on the hardships Navy sailors were facing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose deployment was extended to nine months because of the Iran war. Those journalists are now suing him. He fired the Stars and Stripes ombudsman for speaking out about what she called the Pentagon’s “attempts to control the editorial content” of the publication. She is suing him too.

On Monday, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll submitted his resignation after months of being frozen out by Hegseth. Driscoll, a combat veteran and close ally of Vice President Vance, was asked by the White House to stay through the midterms. He refused. His departure means the Army now has no Senate-confirmed civilian secretary, no Senate-confirmed chief of staff, no confirmed operations chief, and no confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe and Africa. The largest branch of the United States military is being led by no one confirmed by the United States Senate. And the man Hegseth reportedly wants to replace Driscoll is Sean Parnell, the same Pentagon spokesman who fired the Stars and Stripes journalists.

I often find myself thinking back to times when the people entrusted with this kind of power understood the weight of what had been placed in their hands. They were never perfect. Our country was never perfect. But there were still moments when the people at the very top understood the responsibility that came with leadership, and that asking other people to risk their lives required something more from you than the spectacle Hegseth has made of the position. I keep coming back especially to one night, more than 80 years ago, when an American general was preparing to send tens of thousands of young men into one of the most dangerous military operations in history.

On the night before D-Day, June 5, 1944, before the largest amphibious invasion in human history, General Dwight Eisenhower did two things. First, he went to visit the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne before they boarded their planes. He walked among them, and he talked to them. He asked where they were from. He looked them in the eyes, knowing deep down in his soul that many of them would not come back. Then he went back to his quarters, sat down, and wrote a note. It was short, and in it he took full personal responsibility for the failure of the invasion, should it fail. “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” he wrote. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” He put that note in his pocket before a single soldier set foot on that infamous beach. The invasion succeeded, and he never had to send it. But he had already decided that if it did not, the failure would be his and his alone.

That is what military leadership looks like. A man who visits his troops, who looks them in the eye, who writes a note of personal responsibility before the first shot is fired. The distance between that man and Pete Hegseth is the distance between everything this country was supposed to be and everything it is becoming under this administration.

The President, who ran on “no new forever wars,” announced earlier today on Truth Social, just after noon, that the attack has resumed on Iran. “The United States is, as we speak, striking Iranian Targets near the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote. “The strikes are large and powerful.” He followed with a threat: “If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” When asked in a Fox News interview whether he was interested in a deal, Trump said, “I think an agreement with them isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. We gave them a lot of chances.” Meanwhile, at the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked by CNBC’s Sara Eisen what happens if economic pressure does not change the behavior of Iran’s leaders. Bessent’s answer was, “My experience with people like this… the main thing they care about is their head staying attached to their neck.”

Iran responded with missiles and drones. Thirteen Iranian ballistic missiles entered Jordanian airspace. Ten were intercepted. Three fell in remote areas. Iran targeted Bahrain. In the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan, a U.S. strike hit a residential home. An Iranian official went on state television and said, “A residential home was attacked while people were holding a wedding ceremony. Two people were reported martyred and a number of others wounded.” The death toll has been updated to four people, including a child.

Our country is in serious trouble. The world is in serious trouble. We have not just an incompetent and dangerous leader, but a man who has deliberately surrounded himself with equally reckless, unqualified, and morally bankrupt people to advise him and carry out his orders. But even now, there are still people willing to call what is happening wrong, including from inside the institutions these people are trying to bend to their will. Inside the Pentagon itself, six four-star commanders put their names on a classified document and said no through the formal chain of command, in writing, on the record. The Army Secretary looked at what Hegseth had built and decided he would rather walk away than become part of it. And this planet still has people like that volunteer in Vernon, British Columbia, who put on a uniform and showed up to award a medal to a young person she believed in. In doing so, she demonstrated something Pete Hegseth has never understood about service. She served without needing millions of people to see her do it. She served without needing to humiliate anyone else to make herself feel powerful. She simply showed up, did something good for another human being, and did it honestly and with her whole heart.

Leave a comment

Tonight, even with all of the corruption, cruelty, cowardice, and incompetence we are watching from some of the most powerful people in our country, we are being reminded that they are not everyone. There are still good, honest, decent people everywhere. There are still people who understand that power carries responsibility, that leadership means service, and that strength is found in what we are willing to do for one another, not in who we are willing to hurt. The Pete Hegseths of the world are real. They are dangerous, especially when men like Donald Trump hand them extraordinary power. But most people are not like them. We must always remember that there are far more of us than there are of them. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.

Edit: The following sentence was added for clarification:
Canada joined WWI and WWII years before the US was involved militarily, and we fought side by side.

Subscribe now

Picture of the day: My youngest sent me this picture from her riding lesson this evening, and I felt something I had not felt all day: peace. I have been battling embarrassment, sadness, and anger since I saw Pete Hegseth’s post earlier today. No child should grow up in a world where someone like him holds power.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pentagon-hegseth-canada-cadets-controversy-9.7327986

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/pete-hegseths-mother-defends-sons-fitness-lead-pentagon-changed-man-rcna182786

https://www.congress.gov/119/crec/2025/01/24/171/15/modified/CREC-2025-01-24-pt1-PgS363.htm

https://www.thedailybeast.com/humiliating-reason-pentagon-petes-wife-jennifer-hegseth-travels-with-him-revealed/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-hegseth-cites-fake-pulp-fiction-bible-verse-in-bonkers-prayer-meeting/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/usa-iran-those-responsible-for-deadly-and-unlawful-us-strike-on-school-that-killed-over-100-children-must-be-held-accountable/

https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2026-08-31/army-secretary-driscoll-resigns-22714790.html

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/21/media/pentagon-stars-and-stripes-reporters-hegseth-fired

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/politics/video/ebof-stars-and-stripes-ombudsman-fired-pentagon-kate-bolduan

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/us-launched-large-powerful-strikes-iran-trump-says-rcna595581

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/31/first-on-cnbc-transcript-us-treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-speaks-with-cnbcs-sara-eisen-on-squawk-on-the-street-today.html

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/highlight/2026/09/02/iran-red-crescent-says-4-killed-50-wounded-at-wedding-by-us-attack

https://www.ncpedia.org/media/message-drafted-general

Trump’s White House meeting casually revealed their twisted logic

Heather Delaney Reese — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 01:10:27 GMT

At 3:05 in the afternoon, the President of the United States sat behind his desk for what was billed as a major announcement on lowering prescription drug prices. Instead, within seconds of finishing his remarks, he began to fall asleep, struggling to keep his eyes open as his cabinet praised him, at least the 20th time he has been caught nodding off in public. He then snapped at a reporter who asked whether he had ruled out using a nuclear weapon against Iran, calling it “a stupid question.”

Next, Dr. Oz, now overseeing the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans, who said the goal was to get people “so healthy” they would “want to work just one extra year,” because “that’s worth a trillion dollars to our GDP.” There it was, said out loud while the president slept beside him: the point of lowering drug costs is not to ease suffering but to squeeze one more year of labor out of every worker. That is the philosophy underneath everything they are doing to our health. Productivity was always the goal, not people. Once a government measures human worth by economic output, we have crossed into far darker territory than healthcare policy.

These benefits are real, and that is the point. Authoritarian regimes have always understood that visible perks buy silence, crumbs to keep people fed while the loaves are stolen. The Supreme Court’s conservatives allowed Trump’s ballroom project to keep being built even as Chief Justice Roberts, dissenting only once the outcome was safely decided, called it “likely unlawful.” But something is shifting. More people are talking now, even the ones who stayed quiet, because eventually the gap between the story a government tells and the life people are actually living gets too wide to ignore. The next few months will be hard, and he will pull out every distraction to survive November. Our job is to keep calling out the corruption and to keep having the uncomfortable conversations, not to convert anyone, but to open eyes and let people reach their own conclusions.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 8-31-2026.

Sources:
President Trump Makes an Announcement on Healthcare Affordability, Aug. 31, 2026: YouTube Video

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-80-nods-off-during-oval-office-sycophancy-session/

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/6061821-trump-medicaid-drug-pricing/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/08/31/trump-posts-bizarre-ai-video-claiming-attack-on-kharg-island-after-us-resumes-iran-strikes/

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/trumprxs-worlds-lowest-drug-prices-put-task-cross-country-comparison-nyt

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/31/politics/supreme-court-white-house-ballroom-trump
https://www.notus.org/congress/white-house-secret-service-funding-congress-ballroom-construction

Trump’s Truth

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

https://bnonews.com/whpool

The president keeps selling us lies

Heather Delaney Reese — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:35:53 GMT

At 3:05 this afternoon, the White House press corps was quickly ushered into the Oval Office, where the President of the United States was already seated at his desk with toy airplanes and helicopters carefully placed around him. With more than a dozen men and women in dark suits packed in behind him, Donald Trump spoke for exactly 14 minutes before inviting others to address the press. Within seconds of finishing his remarks, the President had already started to fall asleep. He struggled to keep his eyes open nearly the entire time, occasionally snapping them back open, only to close them once again. Near the end of the event, Trump fully woke up just in time to answer questions, including one people around the world wanted answered, especially after an AI-generated video he posted the night before appeared to show mass-destruction weapons being used against Iran.

A reporter asked the President, “Have you ruled out using a nuclear weapon against Iran?”

“Well, I would never say that, but, uh, the answer is yes,” Trump snapped back. “What a stupid question that is, actually.”

Beyond the absurdity of what we were watching was that this was supposed to be a major White House announcement about lowering prescription drug prices for millions of Americans. Instead, the President of the United States sat behind his desk, struggling to stay awake, before snapping at a reporter for asking whether he would use a nuclear weapon against Iran.

The tragedy of this moment is that if everything Trump said today is true, parts of it could genuinely help Americans, especially when it comes to the cost of healthcare. Trump claimed that 26 pharmaceutical companies had agreed to offer their drugs to state Medicaid programs at most-favored-nation prices, calling it the largest reduction in drug costs “in the history of medicine.” He said it would save Americans more than $600 billion, and he insisted nobody else could have done it. He claimed it was so big that the media would refuse to cover it, and that it was so big, “It’s not even believable.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over the microphone soon after, and immediately began the flattery. “This could not have happened under any other president except for this one,” Kennedy said, while the president was nodding off in front of the press and their cameras. Howard Lutnick followed, telling the sleeping president, “It’s all thanks to you, because nobody thought that this was possible.” The Daily Beast reports this was at least the 20th time Trump has been caught falling asleep during a public event. The White House has previously insisted he was simply “blinking.”

But the most concerning part of the whole event was when Dr. Oz cut to the heart of everything they are doing right now when it comes to our health when he said, “If we could just get the average American to feel so healthy, so with it, so vibrant, that they want to work just one extra year, that’s worth a trillion dollars to our GDP every year.”

That was the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the man responsible for the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans, telling the American people, while the president slept beside him, that the real purpose of lowering drug costs is to keep them working longer. Not to ease suffering or improve lives, but to squeeze one more year of labor out of every working American so the GDP number goes up, and so there is more money for Trump and his enablers to take from our government. And once again, nobody in that room even flinched when he said this.

Because that is the philosophy underneath everything this administration is doing to our health. It explains the attacks on vaccines, the dismantling of public health agencies, the weakening of food safety protections, and the endless amount of disinformation about the very medicines they now claim they want to make more affordable. Every one of those decisions pushes us in the same direction: toward a sicker, more vulnerable country.

When the consequences of all they are doing arrive, more people will become chronically ill. More families will be crushed by medical debt. More Americans will become too sick to work. They won’t see that as a moral or a policy failure. They will see it as an economic problem with only one clear solution. Something too horrific to even say out loud.

That was the real message behind Dr. Oz’s comments. Health was never the goal; productivity was. People aren’t being valued because they’re human beings deserving of dignity and care. They are being valued because they contribute to the GDP.

Once a government starts measuring human worth by economic output, we’ve crossed into something far darker than healthcare policy. We’ve crossed into the belief that some lives are simply worth investing in more than others. History shows us where that kind of thinking leads: eugenics.

Even if we were to take Trump at his word and ignore everything else this administration is doing to our health, the numbers still don’t add up. That was true even on TrumpRx, the website he proudly called “the hottest thing there is.” Reporting earlier this year found that the site has not delivered what it promises. In some cases, medications listed on TrumpRx cost roughly double what the same drugs sell for in comparable countries. The site does not offer the lowest prices in the world. It offers the illusion that it does. That is what we are watching.

The illusion doesn’t stop with healthcare. It has become the governing philosophy of this entire administration and all of its enablers, including the Supreme Court. Because today, in a five-to-four ruling, the Court allowed Trump to continue building that ballroom. Construction is roughly 65 percent complete, with 250 people working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. It has also ballooned in cost. What started as a $200 million project reportedly now is expected to cost at least $600 million, with $352 million in taxpayer money quietly redirected from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this summer, despite Trump’s claim of “zero taxpayer funding.”

The five conservative justices sided with the Trump Regime. That is Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, all three Trump appointees, who were joined by Alito and Thomas. They ruled that the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely lacks standing to sue. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, and wrote the dissent stating that the construction is “likely unlawful.” He wrote, “The White House is not just any building.”

Those are strong words coming from Roberts, but we have seen this before. Roberts dissents when the outcome is already decided. He dissents when it costs the institution nothing and buys it something it has not earned: the appearance of independence. It is the same move we have watched senators like Susan Collins make for years. Vote no when the votes are already there. Express concern after the damage is done. Preserve the image of accountability without ever producing the real thing. Maybe Roberts felt strongly about this case. We do not know. But when it truly counts, on the cases that determine whether this president can consolidate unchecked authority, the Chief Justice has not been the firewall we needed him to be. His dissent today changed nothing. The ballroom is still being built.

What we see day after day is a pattern, and it is increasing in strength and number. But this pattern is not new. And it is not uniquely American. Authoritarian regimes have always understood that visible, tangible benefits buy silence. In Nazi Germany, the Kraft durch Freude program, Strength Through Joy, gave loyal workers subsidized vacations, resort stays, and even cruises on ocean liners. The Winterhilfswerk relief drives made sure families had food in winter. These were real benefits, and they were things that actually impacted people’s lives. That was the whole point. They had to feel like generosity so that the people receiving them would not look too closely at what was being taken from them. A fed population does not resist. A comfortable population does not ask questions. A population that believes the government is looking out for them does not notice when the same government is building the machinery to strip them of everything else.

Trump’s version follows the same logic. Drug pricing deals timed for the midterms. A healthcare website with his name stamped on it. A ballroom made of gold rising from the rubble of the East Wing. These are crumbs designed to keep people fed while loaves are being stolen. They are stealing from public health and food safety programs. They are stealing from the institutions that were built to protect the very people who are being told they no longer need protecting.

But something is shifting, and I think many of us can feel it. More people are talking about what is happening now than they were even a few months ago. Not just those of us who have been sounding the alarm from the beginning, but people who stayed quiet. People who thought it would never reach them. People who believed the spectacle because it hadn’t yet touched their own lives.

That only lasts for so long. Eventually, reality catches up. And when the gap between the story a government tells and the life people are actually living becomes too wide to ignore, something changes. The illusion starts to crack. People stop applauding the performance and start asking questions. That’s when the ground begins to shift.

Leave a comment

The next few months are going to be hard. He is going to pull out every stop. Every manufactured win, as many staged announcements as he can manage to sit through, every gold-plated distraction will be aimed at one thing: surviving November. It is going to feel like a fight for our country and our lives, because it is. And we know what is at stake. We know that even if we take back one or both chambers of Congress in what should still be free and fair elections, the fight does not end on election night. We have already watched Mike Johnson play games with seating duly elected members. There will be challenges and even delays. There will be battles we cannot yet see coming. But those are fights for another day.

Right now, we have to stay focused on November. We have to keep calling out the corruption, cover-up, and distraction, every single day. That means not shying away from the conversations that make people uncomfortable. We are not going into those conversations trying to convert anyone. We are going into them to open eyes. To share what we see. To shine a light and let people come to their own conclusions. People are ready to make this connection. They are sick of living this way. They want change. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

Picture of the day: Today, for the first time in more than a month, the humidity finally broke. On our evening walk, we felt a cool breeze that reminded me fall is just around the corner. It’s always been my favorite time of year.

This sunset was beautiful, but it also brought me right back to the fall of 2024 and the night Trump won the election. Funny how our brains can attach even the most beautiful seasons to painful memories.

I’m hoping that when we take back Congress, it rewires that memory for me. I’d much rather associate crisp evenings, colorful sunsets, and the beginning of fall with the moment our country started finding its way back.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

President Trump Makes an Announcement on Healthcare Affordability, Aug. 31, 2026: YouTube Video
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-80-nods-off-during-oval-office-sycophancy-session/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/6061821-trump-medicaid-drug-pricing/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/08/31/trump-posts-bizarre-ai-video-claiming-attack-on-kharg-island-after-us-resumes-iran-strikes/
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/trumprxs-worlds-lowest-drug-prices-put-task-cross-country-comparison-nyt
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/31/politics/supreme-court-white-house-ballroom-trump
https://www.notus.org/congress/white-house-secret-service-funding-congress-ballroom-construction
https://trumpstruth.org/
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/
https://bnonews.com/whpool

Trump’s new attack on the press is threatening the First Amendment

Heather Delaney Reese — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 01:12:18 GMT

Late last night, after the press was released and the staff had gone home, the President of the United States was still awake and posting. In under two minutes, he shared three things: an announcement that “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!”, a cartoonish video of an oil complex in flames, and then a three-second clip of himself teeing off on a golf course. There was just one problem. Kharg Island was not bombed. The real strikes hit Larak Island, the first American action against Iran in over a month, and Iran retaliated by launching ballistic missiles at two American air bases in Jordan. So while American service members were bracing for incoming missiles, their commander in chief posted a fake video of the wrong island on fire, then a video of himself playing golf.

But the most dangerous thing he did yesterday was aimed at the free press. After invoking the “FCC TO THE RESCUE,” he singled out Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, announcing she would be “reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” and added four words every reporter should take seriously: “she is not the only one.” Her offense was calling his primary endorsement record “mixed results,” a phrase backed by NBC, CNN, and Newsweek’s reporting. The FCC does not actually have this power, but that does not matter. The threat itself is the weapon. You do not have to follow through to silence a free press. You just make enough threats that reporters start doing the math before they report the truth, and it disappears quietly, one story at a time. This is how fascism spreads, by turning our own institutions into enforcement arms against the truth.

There is a lesson in who he targeted, too. Just five weeks ago, Welker was filmed laughing with Stephen Miller at a Washington dinner, playing the access game so many believe will keep them safe. It didn’t. It never does. The people who enable these strongmen are not spared, they are simply the last to be devoured. Every story we learn reaches us because a journalist reported it, and without a free press, we cannot have a free country. When this is over, I won’t think about Trump. I’ll think about the cowardly enablers who could have stopped this and chose not to, and far more, about the brave truth-tellers who kept showing up despite the threats. Nine weeks from now, we vote, and we tell this president and his enablers that their time destroying this country is up.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 8-30-2026.

Sources:

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

Trump’s Truth

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/2026/08/us-strikes-iranian-rocket-launchers-on-the-strait-of-hormuz

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/30/politics/us-iran-strikes-larak-island

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/30/us-iran-strikes-strait-hormuz.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/30/us-strikes-iran-missile-sites-larak-island/

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260830-middle-east-live-us-strikes-iran-for-first-time-in-a-month

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-fcc-revoke-tv-broadcast-licenses-over-bad-publicity-rcna232339

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/media/disney-abc-fcc-trump-lawsuit-the-view-retaliatory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/30/pentagon-secretly-installs-military-influencers-civilian-roles/

Trump will stop at nothing to silence the truth

Heather Delaney Reese — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 06:42:09 GMT

At 9:36 this morning, the President of the United States was briefly seen leaving the White House as his vehicle raced by, en route to an undisclosed location. Thirty-four minutes later, at 10:10 a.m., the mystery was solved as his motorcade pulled into Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. The next time he was seen by the press pool wasn’t until 3:20 that afternoon, as he made his way back to the White House.

Late that evening, after the press were released and most of the White House staff had gone home for the night, Donald Trump was still awake, posting on social media. Before finally calling it a night, he shared three final posts. None of them were something any leader of any country should be posting, let alone the President of the United States. In less than two minutes, he posted three times, two posts celebrating bombs dropping in the Middle East, and one post, seconds later, a video of himself golfing.

It started at exactly 10:18 p.m., when he made an announcement to the world that read: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT.”

One minute later, at 10:19 p.m., he shared a 9-second, violent and cartoonish video showing the Kharg Island oil refinery complex being bombed and engulfed in flames, black smoke rising into the sky as critical infrastructure burned. Seconds later, he posted another video. This one lasted just three seconds. It showed Donald Trump on a golf course, teeing off beneath an overcast sky on bright green grass.

Kharg Island is responsible for roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports. If this facility were actually “being blown to smithereens” tonight, it would represent the single largest escalation of the six-month war with Iran and would be breaking news.

Here is what actually happened today. Earlier on Sunday, U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz. Not Kharg Island. Larak Island. It was the first American military action against Iran in more than a month, breaking a lull that had held since August 1, when Trump said he would pause strikes at the urging of Gulf allies. According to CENTCOM spokesperson Tim Hawkins, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps forces had been observed preparing to launch rockets loaded with sea mines into the strait. The U.S. military had just finished clearing those mines from the international shipping lanes only last week. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard confirmed casualties on Larak Island, saying there had been “martyrdom and injury of several of our fighters and compatriots.”

Then Iran retaliated. The IRGC launched ballistic missiles and drone strikes targeting two American air bases in Jordan. Iranian state television broadcast footage of the missiles being launched. As of this writing, the missiles aimed at Jordan have reportedly been intercepted, with no confirmed impacts. But that does not mean American forces are out of danger. American service members are stationed at those bases tonight, and they remain in harm’s way.

While all of that was unfolding, and American troops were bracing for incoming missiles in Jordan, their commander in chief posted a fake video of the wrong island on fire and then posted a video of himself enjoying a relaxing day on the golf course.

As devastating as all of that is, it wasn’t the only dangerous thing Donald Trump did today. Earlier, he wasn’t focused on missiles and destruction overseas. He was focused on attacking something much closer, our press. It started with what he posted at 8:46 this morning.

“THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT. FCC TO THE RESCUE! President DJT.”

Fourteen minutes later, at 9:00 a.m., he followed that with a longer, more targeted attack on Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press. He called her the “Unpopular ‘Hostess’” of the show. He accused her of “purposeful inaccuracy.” Then he wrote something that we all need to take seriously, not just because of its historical parallels, but because we are at a very dangerous moment in our own history. We have a president who is teetering on losing the unchecked power he has grown to depend on: “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment. Unfortunately, she is not the only one.”

“She is not the only one.” is the President of the United States telling every reporter in this country that telling the truth now comes with the threat of federal consequences. That is a warning shot aimed at the entire press corps, newsrooms, independent journalists, local newspapers, writers, content creators, and every single person using their voice to tell the truth.

The “purposeful inaccuracy” that warranted federal punishment was that Welker described Trump’s endorsement record in the 2026 primaries as producing “mixed results.” That phrase is backed up by NBC’s own reporting, which noted that six Trump-backed candidates for the House and governor lost their primaries earlier this month. CNN described the results the same way. So did Newsweek. “Mixed results” is not inaccurate or controversial. It was basic reporting. It was a journalist doing their job. NBC responded: “Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her.”

If you have been reading my posts every night, you know this is not an isolated attack. This is a pattern, and it is accelerating. It is also one of my greatest concerns for this country. Without a free press, we are at far greater risk of an authoritarian takeover because truth is replaced by propaganda, accountability disappears, and the public loses its ability to distinguish one from the other. So much of our future depends on journalists being able to report the truth without fear, and every attack takes us one step closer to self-censorship. This is one of the main reasons so many of us lose sleep at night, and also something that not nearly enough people even know is happening.

In September 2025, after Disney pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air under pressure, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that the FCC could revoke broadcast licenses of networks with hosts “against me.” Two weeks ago, Disney and ABC filed a lawsuit against the FCC, arguing that the agency’s decision to review ABC’s broadcast licenses ahead of schedule amounted to a direct attack on the First Amendment. And the language in that lawsuit tells us exactly where we are in this moment. Disney’s attorneys wrote that the campaign is “calculated to operate in terrorem upon the rest of the industry.” In terrorem. Latin for “as a warning.” ABC is the visible target. But the message is addressed to every broadcaster in the country. The ultimate cost, they wrote, “is borne by the press as a whole.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat remaining on the commission, has tried to hold the line, saying, “Once again, this FCC pretends it has the power to control news coverage. In reality, the FCC has vanishingly little power over national news networks.” And she is right. The FCC licenses local broadcast stations, not networks. No licenses are even up for renewal until 2028. But the reality is that it does not matter whether the FCC actually has the legal authority to do what Trump is demanding. What matters is that the President of the United States is telling the country that it does. The threat itself is the weapon. You do not have to follow through on every threat to silence a free press. You just have to make enough of them that reporters start doing the math in their heads before they report the truth. Once that math starts, the truth does not disappear with a dramatic act of censorship. It disappears quietly, one story at a time, as journalists decide the safer path is silence.

This is how fascism spreads, by turning our own institutions against us. It doesn’t take soldiers in the streets or buildings on fire. It happens when regulatory agencies are turned into enforcement arms and federal commissions are weaponized against the truth. It happens when a man with the full power of the presidency tells a journalist she will be “reported for rebuke or punishment” because she stated a fact he did not like, and then warns every other journalist in the country that they could be next.

There is another part of this story that also needs to be told. Trump’s threat tells us something about him, but it also tells us something about the people who still believe they can stay in the regime’s good graces.

Five weeks ago, on July 24, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Kristen Welker was filmed laughing and chatting with Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, who is also compared to a less capable Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist. The clip spread across social media, and the backlash was immediate. Nicolle Wallace, without naming Welker directly, criticized journalists at the dinner who were “cozying up” to members of the administration and applauding the president. She called it a “jarring image.”

Leave a comment

Welker did what so many people in Washington still believe will protect them. She went to the dinner. She smiled at the right people. She laughed with the right people. She played the access game, the one where you stay close to power and hope that proximity buys you safety. Five weeks later, the President of the United States threatened to use a federal agency against her. It didn’t protect her. It never does with people like Trump.

That’s the lesson every journalist, CEO, Republican member of Congress, and really every powerful person who believes they can stay in the regime’s good graces needs to understand. It won’t protect them. The Vichy collaborators in France thought cooperation would spare them. It didn’t. German industrialists who funded Hitler believed they could control him. They couldn’t. Soviet officials praised Stalin in public, toasted him at state dinners, and still ended up in the gulags. The pattern is always the same. The people who choose to enable these evil strongmen are rarely spared. They are simply among the last to be devoured.

That wasn’t the only disturbing thing we learned today. The Washington Post also reported that the Pentagon has been secretly installing conservative military veterans with massive online followings into government roles. They have been given official government email addresses as though they are Pentagon employees. Their assignments have not been disclosed. And they are being deployed to amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s agenda while attacking anyone who scrutinizes the administration.

These are not anonymous social media trolls. Rob Maness is a retired Air Force colonel with more than 135,000 followers who called for the removal of “disloyal” Pentagon employees. Kurt Schlichter is a retired Army colonel with nearly 620,000 followers who praised Trump as a “hero” for confronting Iran. Thomas Anderson, who writes under the pen name Cynical Publius, has more than 323,000 followers and wrote in April that there was “a cancer in America’s military ranks” that “must be expunged.” Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez declined to say whether any of them are drawing taxpayer-funded salaries or what their exact roles are.

Every single story we learned about today reached us because a journalist reported it. Without a free press, we can’t have a free country. Without reporters willing to do their jobs in the face of federal threats, silence doesn’t just protect Trump from bad headlines. It protects him from accountability for everything. When this is all said and done, and I still believe it will be, I won’t think about Trump. He’ll be a distant memory. His name will be remembered alongside every other strongman who believed he could outlast history. He is not who I’ll think about.

I’ll think about our cowardly Congress. Our cowardly Supreme Court. The people who enabled him. The ones who had the power to stand up for their country and chose not to. They are the people I thought about when I saw everything he posted today.

But more importantly, I’ll think about the brave ones. The truth tellers. The people who kept showing up every single day, even when the threats came, when the comments were vicious, and when the hate was loud. The ones who refused to be intimidated into silence. I’ll think about the people who protested, went to rallies, knocked on doors, and never stopped talking about what was happening and what had to change. The ones who dedicated their lives to making sure this never happens again. That’s how this time will be remembered.

Like I do every single time Donald Trump attacks the free press, I am asking you to join me in what I call my economic protest. You have supported me so generously, and I need you to know how much that means to me. Your paid memberships have made it possible for me to write these posts every single day without ever putting them behind a paywall. I never want the truth to be available only to those who can afford it. You are the reason everyone else can read these posts for free. Thank you.

Tonight, like I have done countless times before, I’m asking you to think beyond me. Think about the other people doing this work day in and day out, often at great personal risk. Think about the other journalists, writers, and independent voices you trust, the ones who have never stopped and never will. The ones showing up every single day to tell the truth, even while the President of the United States threatens to use federal agencies to punish them for doing so. If they offer a paid membership, please consider joining. Let’s make sure they are financially prepared for whatever comes next.

Because in this moment, with a president actively trying to silence the free press and replace it with propaganda, one of the most powerful things we can do is make sure the truth remains available to every person who needs it.

The week ahead will be long and tumultuous. The House returns tomorrow. Nine weeks from now, we vote, and even more importantly, we send a message to the president and his enablers that their time is up, that this is our country, and that we are taking it back. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

Picture of the Day: I’m still getting photo communications from my older daughters, and I thought this one was really fun. I heard it tasted as good as it looked!

Sources used in the writing of this post:

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

https://trumpstruth.org/

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/2026/08/us-strikes-iranian-rocket-launchers-on-the-strait-of-hormuz

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/30/politics/us-iran-strikes-larak-island

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/30/us-iran-strikes-strait-hormuz.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/30/us-strikes-iran-missile-sites-larak-island/

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260830-middle-east-live-us-strikes-iran-for-first-time-in-a-month

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-fcc-revoke-tv-broadcast-licenses-over-bad-publicity-rcna232339

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/media/disney-abc-fcc-trump-lawsuit-the-view-retaliatory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/30/pentagon-secretly-installs-military-influencers-civilian-roles/

Trump’s allies are jumping off his sinking ship

Heather Delaney Reese — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 01:54:04 GMT

On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, the President of the United States is reportedly refusing to attend the ceremony at Ground Zero, for one reason: the organizers will not let him give a speech. Since 2012, the memorial has barred politicians from taking the microphone so the day stays focused on the families. Every president since has understood that. But Trump would rather not be there at all than spend a few hours in a place where the microphone is not his. If he cannot make the day about himself, he does not want to be there. That decision, all by itself, is a direct look at where we are as a country right now.

Trump spent his Saturday sharing a series of bizarre posts, including one that states he is six times more popular than Lincoln, and an AI video of armed geese patrolling “Lake America.” Trump also announced what he called “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” with Venezuela. Stripped of the propaganda, here is what it means: the United States invaded a sovereign nation, removed its president by force, and that new government is now handing over its most valuable resource through a 100-year concession. That is not a trade deal. It is a country that was conquered being stripped of its wealth by the country that conquered it, done in our name, under our flag, with our military.

But something is shifting. Even Tucker Carlson, who helped build the audience that elected Trump, is now publicly calling him dangerous and asking why he has not been removed from office, the words of a man who sees the ship taking on water and is building himself a lifeboat. And in conversations all week, that same quiet shift showed up in ordinary people, even some who voted for him. They were not switching sides. They just sounded tired, tired of defending him, tired of accounting for one more outrageous thing. The door is cracked open wider than it has been in a long time, and our job is not to win arguments but to keep it open. In two weeks, families will gather at Ground Zero and read the names without politics or performance, because that is what real love of country looks like. More and more people are quietly remembering that loyalty to one man is not the same as loyalty to this country.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 8-29-2026.

Sources:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-ll-visit-pentagon-rather-ground-zero-911-ceremony-rcna594974

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/28/politics/trump-9-11-anniversary-pentagon-ground-zero

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2026-08-28/trump-says-he-will-observe-the-25th-anniversary-of-9-11-at-the-pentagon

https://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/12/us/9-11-politicians-barred

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5948229/trump-says-u-s-has-entered-deal-with-venezuela-to-take-control-of-65-billion-barrels-of-oil-reserves

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-venezuela-oil-u-s-majority-control-65-billion-barrels/

https://abcnews.com/International/trump-announces-historic-us-venezuela-oil-deal-lower/story?id=136046002

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/tucker-carlson-says-will-tormented-long-time-support-trump-rcna341250

https://www.axios.com/2026/03/17/joe-kent-resigns-trump-iran-israel-threat

https://www.notus.org/us-news/tucker-carlson-starting-third-party

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

Donald Trump is losing control

Heather Delaney Reese — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 06:53:48 GMT

At 4:42 PM yesterday, Air Force One touched down at Joint Base Andrews after the president’s events in Houston earlier in the day. Exactly 13 minutes later, Donald Trump stepped off the plane as reporters shouted questions from behind the rope line. He ignored most of them, but one caught his attention: Why wasn’t he going to New York for 9/11?

“Because I’m going to the Pentagon,” Trump shot back.

When a reporter followed up and asked why he couldn’t do both, Trump gave the same answer. “Because I’m going to the Pentagon.”

But that wasn’t the real reason Donald Trump was refusing to attend an event that honors the memory of those we lost on one of the most solemn days in our nation’s history. On the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack ever carried out on American soil, the president was reportedly turning his back on Ground Zero because the ceremony’s organizers would not let him give a speech. Apparently, for Donald Trump, that was a dealbreaker.

He would rather not attend at all than stand quietly among the families of nearly 3,000 people who never came home that day. He would rather be somewhere else than listen as the names of the dead are read aloud, one by one, at the very place where so many of them took their final breaths. He would rather abandon a ceremony marking 25 years of grief, sacrifice, and courage than spend a few hours in a place where the microphone would not be his. If Donald Trump could not make that day about himself, he did not want to be there at all.

Since 2012, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum has prohibited politicians from delivering remarks during the annual commemoration, a rule designed to keep the ceremony nonpartisan and focused where it belongs. Presidents and politicians are welcome to attend. They can stand with the families, and they can listen as the names of the dead are read. They can bow their heads, pay their respects, and remember alongside the rest of us. What they cannot do is take the microphone and make the day about themselves.

Every president who has attended since that rule took effect has understood it. Every governor, senator, and mayor who has stood at Ground Zero has understood it. The ceremony exists for the families. For the firefighters who knew they might never come back down and climbed those stairs anyway. For the first responders who breathed in the ash and who are still paying for it with their health. For the people who jumped because that was the only choice left. For the children who grew up without a parent because of what happened that morning. That is who September 11 belongs to.

That decision, all by itself, is a direct look into exactly where we are as a country right now. The president of the United States looked at the 25th anniversary of the worst day in modern American history and decided it was not worth his time unless he could stand at a podium and hear his own voice. He did not want to attend unless he could make it about himself.

That is just who Donald Trump is and another reminder of what it is like living under his corrupt rule, where so many of us wake up every morning and hold our breath while we look to see what he has done overnight to damage and embarrass our country on the world stage.

Today was no different. This is how the President of the United States spent his Saturday: he posted that he is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln. He shared a truly bizarre AI-generated video of “Donald Duck” geese armed with automatic weapons patrolling the shore of Lake Ontario beneath American flags. He accepted the honorary chairmanship of a golf tournament. And he posted a video of a figure meant to represent himself kicking over a sign reading “Welcome to Lake Ontario,” replacing it with “Welcome to Lake America,” and breaking into his signature, awkward YMCA dance while the original sign lay in the grass. That is the Donald Trump presidency. Armed waterfowl, renamed lakes, and a man who believes he is six times greater than the president who held this country together through a civil war and died for it. It has been reduced to a deteriorating man with access to social media.

These were all ridiculous, but buried within them was a post he made late Friday night at 10:48 PM, where he announced that Venezuela had signed what he called “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” with the United States government. The agreement calls for the development of 17 strategic fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels of oil, more than $100 billion in investment, and more than $209 billion in taxes. It will be operated with the “participation of private operators” through a company that, by the scale of these reserves, would become the second-largest corporate holder of oil reserves, behind only Saudi Aramco.

What this announcement actually means, stripped of the propaganda, is that the United States invaded Venezuela and sent our military into a sovereign nation. We removed its president by force. We interfered in the installation of a new government. And now, that government is handing over control of its most valuable natural resource to American interests through a 100-year concession. One hundred years. This is not a trade agreement or foreign aid. It is certainly not nation-building. That is a country that was conquered being stripped of its wealth by the country that conquered it. And the man who ordered the invasion announced the deal on social media at 10:48 at night, sandwiched between dancing videos and videos of armed geese with the same haircut as he does.

This was done in our name, under our flag, with our military. The United States spent decades telling the world that sovereign nations had the right to determine their own futures and control their own resources. Then we used military force, got the oil, and Donald Trump called it a deal.

We are the country the world used to look to for stability, for democracy, and for the defense of sovereignty and the rule of law. Now our own allies are trying to figure out what to do about us, how far Donald Trump is willing to go, and how they can protect themselves from a United States they no longer believe they can trust.

Even some of the people who helped put Donald Trump back in power are becoming increasingly vocal about what they are seeing. Yesterday, Tucker Carlson devoted part of his podcast to something considerably more frightening than the chaos we have already been living through: the possibility that Donald Trump could use nuclear weapons in the war with Iran. Carlson was speaking with Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in protest of that war, when their conversation turned to the possibility of nuclear escalation and reports of nuclear options being discussed inside the Pentagon.

That was when Carlson became remarkably direct about what he believed should happen next: “The second any president actively considers first use of nuclear weapons, that person should be removed from office immediately.” He then asked, “Why isn’t there an attempt to remove him from office, like, immediately?” Carlson went even further, saying that anyone who suggests using nuclear weapons offensively “is dangerous, is a crazy person, is in fact a criminal” who “should not only be removed from any decision-making authority, but probably should go to jail.”

This is Tucker Carlson. The person who spent years defending Trump to one of the largest audiences in conservative media and who helped build the audience that elected him. The man who opposed both impeachment attempts and called them absurd. That man is now publicly arguing that the President of the United States is dangerous enough to be removed from power and potentially sent to prison. In April, Carlson publicly apologized on his podcast, saying he was sorry for ‘misleading people’ and that he and millions like him were ‘the reason this is happening right now.’ In July, he announced he was working to build a new political party, called the United States government “a one-party state posing as a democracy,” described Trump as appearing “uniquely weak,” and said he was functioning “more like a hostage to foreign interests than a leader.”

That is what makes this worth paying attention to. Tucker Carlson doesn’t suddenly deserve our trust, and we certainly should not mistake self-preservation for courage. It matters because Carlson has spent years making a living understanding exactly what Trump’s supporters will tolerate, what they will defend, and what they are ready to hear. He knew when defending Trump was good for his audience and good for his own power. Now he has apparently decided that telling that same audience the president is dangerous, criminal, and should be removed from office is the better bet. That tells us something.

These are not the words of a man who suddenly found his conscience. They are the words of a man who can see the ship taking on water and has decided it is finally time to build himself a lifeboat. But his reasons for leaving do not change what his departure tells us. He knows what’s coming.

I’ve been going out of my way to talk to as many people as I can this week because I wanted to get a feel for where people actually are right now, away from social media, cable news, and polls. Something happened in every single one of those conversations that I did not expect. Every person brought up what is happening in this country on their own. I did not have to steer the conversation there or even have to mention Trump. But what struck me even more than the fact that they brought it up was the way they talked about it.

A couple of them had voted for Trump, but would not have considered themselves loyalists. They knew some of what he was doing was wrong. They knew things were happening that should not be happening. But they kept falling back on the same phrases. “It’s not that big of a deal.” “We survived his first term.” What struck me was that none of it sounded like a defense anymore. These were not people pounding the table or trying to convince me that Trump was right. They sounded tired. Tired of defending him. Tired of explaining him. Tired of having another outrageous thing to account for practically every day. They had not suddenly changed their politics or joined the other side. Something much quieter seemed to be happening. They simply did not want to carry all of it for him anymore.

That is what I keep coming back to. None of the people I talked to this week could name the exact moment something changed. There was no single story or moment that they could point to and say, “That was it.” But I could feel the exhaustion in the way they talked about all of it. Something had crossed a line they might not have even known they had. Instead of getting louder in Trump’s defense, they were getting quieter. They were not joining the resistance. They were not switching sides. They were not suddenly agreeing with us. They were just stepping back. Just refusing to defend one more thing.

What I’ve taken from this week is that our work right now is not about winning arguments, or about converting anyone on the first conversation, or the fifth. It’s about keeping the door open. Because the door is cracked right now, wider than I’ve seen it in a long time, and our job is to make sure it doesn’t close again.

We have to keep having these conversations. Not to prove a point or be right. But because the people who are quietly stepping back from all of this still need somewhere to land. They’re hearing the false narratives every day, and they’re hearing that the economy has never been better while they’re cutting back on groceries. And most of them know, somewhere underneath it all, that just about nothing they are being told is true. They just haven’t said it out loud yet.

Leave a comment

We don’t have to change their minds. We have to help them use their own. We ask the real questions. Not “is your life better?” because that is a slogan designed to end the conversation. We ask: how is your life better? What specifically has changed? What are the things that matter to you, your rent, your gas, your groceries, your kids’ schools, your health care, and how are those things right now? Because when people have to answer with specifics instead of slogans, the truth shows up on its own.

And in two weeks, when those families gather at Ground Zero to read the names of the people they lost, they will do it the same way they have done it every year. Without politics or performance. Because that is what real love of country looks like. And maybe that is what I have been seeing in all of those conversations this week. People remembering, in small and imperfect ways, that loyalty to one man is not the same thing as loyalty to this country. They do not have to agree with us about everything. They do not have to admit they were wrong. They do not even have to join our side. They just have to reach the point where they are no longer willing to defend what they know is wrong. And more and more of them are getting there. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

Picture of the Day: We are down to one pompom each and sitting in strange positions.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-ll-visit-pentagon-rather-ground-zero-911-ceremony-rcna594974

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/28/politics/trump-9-11-anniversary-pentagon-ground-zero

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2026-08-28/trump-says-he-will-observe-the-25th-anniversary-of-9-11-at-the-pentagon

https://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/12/us/9-11-politicians-barred

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5948229/trump-says-u-s-has-entered-deal-with-venezuela-to-take-control-of-65-billion-barrels-of-oil-reserves

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-venezuela-oil-u-s-majority-control-65-billion-barrels/

https://abcnews.com/International/trump-announces-historic-us-venezuela-oil-deal-lower/story?id=136046002

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/tucker-carlson-says-will-tormented-long-time-support-trump-rcna341250

https://www.axios.com/2026/03/17/joe-kent-resigns-trump-iran-israel-threat

https://www.notus.org/us-news/tucker-carlson-starting-third-party

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

Trump’s astronaut speech hit a NEW LOW even for him

Heather Delaney Reese — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 01:37:46 GMT

At 5:10 in the evening, the President of the United States posted a graphic ranking many of the presidents in American history and placed himself at the very top, alone, as “THE GREATEST,” with Washington and Lincoln a level below him. It was the first of more than 60 posts over the next 24 hours, culminating in a fake image of an 80 year old president as an action hero in dark sunglasses, assault rifle in hand, walking away from burning buildings under the words “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” It would be easy to laugh, but something more serious is happening. Trump is rewriting American history with himself at the center, counting on people seeing his face next to Washington and Lincoln enough times that it stops seeming strange, and counting on enough of us to stop checking whether any of it is even true.

While he flooded his feed with fantasy, four astronauts who had traveled farther from Earth than anyone in history stood on a stage in Houston, waiting nearly half an hour for him to arrive. At a ceremony meant to honor the Artemis 2 crew, he made it about himself. The hardest moment came when he spoke about Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer at 46, and the lunar crater the crew had tearfully named after her from the far side of the moon. Standing beside the man whose wife that crater honors, Trump said, “I wish they’d named something like that after me.” The room did not laugh. He had taken a moment about them and made it about himself, because it is all he knows how to do.

The deeper worry is that this works on a country worn down by 25 years of crisis. Authoritarianism does not need everyone to be ignorant. It just needs enough of us too exhausted to pay attention. That is why we need the people who carry the truth, especially the grandparents whose own parents stormed Normandy and survived occupation, the last living bridge to the generation that stopped fascism the first time. When they are gone, that memory goes with them, unless we preserve it, and this time we can, because the record no longer has to die with the witnesses. The courts are still holding, for now. A federal judge denied Trump’s attempt to escape his New York conviction for the third time, and his 34 felony counts stand. He can post all the graphics he wants and declare himself the greatest, but he does not get to decide how history remembers him. History remembers what we actually did. Our job now is to make sure the truth survives long enough for the next generation to know the difference.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 8-28-2026.

Sources:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/28/politics/trump-presidential-ranking-maga
https://www.mediaite.com/online/insane-bs-conservatives-and-liberals-alike-baffled-by-trumps-ranking-of-presidents/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-20-articles-of-impeachment-filed-against-texas-attorney-general-paxton-explained
https://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-ripped-by-critics-for-nasa-ceremony-speech-what-the-fck-is-he-talking-about/
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/07/nx-s1-5776440/artemis-moon-crater-carroll-wiseman
https://www.space.com/astronomy/deja-vu-trump-proposes-cutting-nasa-science-funding-by-47-percent-again
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/28/trump-hush-money-federal-court.html
https://us.cnn.com/2026/08/28/politics/trump-hush-money-federal-court-rejected
President Trump Participates in the Congressional Space Medal of Honor Presentation: YouTube Video
President Trump Calls the International Space Station: YouTube Video
https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://www.trumpstruth.org/

Donald is the “GREATEST” presidential failure

Heather Delaney Reese — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 06:45:29 GMT

At 5:10 p.m. last night, while aboard Air Force One on his way to Texas to campaign for a man who had been impeached by the Texas House on charges that included bribery, corruption, and abuse of office, the President of the United States opened his personal social media platform, Truth Social, and posted a graphic ranking the presidents of the United States. He put himself at the top, declaring himself in a league of his own as, “THE GREATEST.” One level below himself sat George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, classified as merely “GREAT.”

Barack Obama was labeled a “FAILURE.” So were Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter, Ulysses S. Grant, and Warren Harding. There was no historical argument, just Donald Trump placing Donald Trump above the men who founded the republic, preserved the Union, and led the country through two world wars.

If that had been the only thing he posted, it might have been easy to dismiss it as just another bizarre post from the President of the United States. But it wasn’t. It was just the beginning. Over the next 24 hours, Donald Trump would post and repost more than 60 times, attacking the press, attacking governors, celebrating the gold plating he has been adding across Washington, along with complaints about all sorts of things and made-up wins for himself.

By this morning, he had progressed to reposting a fake image of himself wearing a black suit and dark sunglasses, carrying an assault-style rifle as he walked toward the camera while buildings burned and explosions erupted behind him. Across the top, in giant black letters, it read, “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” The eighty-year-old President of the United States was portraying himself as an action hero, weapon in hand, telling the country that whatever restraint he believes he has shown is apparently over, while also claiming to be the greatest president of all time.

Then he posted another graphic, this time putting himself alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Ronald Reagan as the “FIVE WHO BUILT AMERICA.” According to Trump, Washington gave us our foundation, Lincoln preserved the Union, Jefferson gave us liberty, Reagan gave us strength, and Donald Trump gave us “AMERICA FIRST.” Below them were the “FIVE WHO BROKE IT”: James Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

There was just one problem: in that earlier post, Trump had ranked Woodrow Wilson as one of America’s “GREAT” presidents. Now he was telling us Wilson was one of the five presidents who broke the country. Apparently, sometime overnight, Woodrow Wilson went from being great to helping destroy America.

It would be easy to laugh at the contradiction, but something much more important is happening here. Donald Trump is rewriting American history, putting himself above George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson and telling us that he belongs there. He is counting on people seeing his face next to Washington and Lincoln enough times that eventually it doesn’t seem so strange anymore. Most importantly, he is counting on people believing him simply because he said it.

Donald Trump has spent his entire political life trying to convince people that the truth is whatever he says it is. He needs enough of us to stop checking, questioning, and eventually stop caring whether what we are being told is even true. Yesterday, Woodrow Wilson was “GREAT.” Today, he was one of the five presidents who “BROKE” America. Tomorrow, Trump could tell us something completely different. It doesn’t have to make sense. He just needs enough people to believe whatever version he is telling them at that particular moment.

That might have been the most ridiculous part of his day, if we had only been watching Truth Social. Because while Trump was flooding his feed with fabricated history and fantasies of himself armed and walking through fire, four human beings who had actually traveled farther from Earth than anyone in history were standing on a stage in Houston, waiting for him for nearly a half hour.

The Congressional Space Medal of Honor ceremony at the Johnson Space Center was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Yet Trump continued posting on social media and didn’t walk onto the stage until 11:27 as “God Bless the USA” played. Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, the crew of Artemis 2, had been standing there waiting for the man who had spent the morning telling the world that he built America.

He opened the event by talking about himself. He described watching the Artemis launch during what he called “a very important meeting with the biggest people in the country, maybe some of the biggest people in the world.” He said the meeting was “a disaster” and “a total waste of time” because everyone stopped to watch Artemis. He claimed his uncle, Dr. John Trump, an MIT physicist who died in 1985, gave him a genetic connection to space: “So I guess we have, genetically, we sort of, I believe in that stuff.” Then he told the people at NASA that the agency had been “absolutely closed” when he took office, with “grass growing out of the cracks in the runway” at Kennedy Space Center. He said this to people who knew otherwise. Serious scientists who have been doing this work for a very long time.

This was supposed to be a ceremony honoring one of the greatest achievements in American science and exploration. But Trump stole the moment and started talking about war and other unrelated special interests of his.

But what had to be the hardest and most heartbreaking moment was when Trump was talking about Commander Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, and how during the Artemis 2 mission, the crew proposed naming a previously unnamed lunar crater “Carroll” after her. Carroll Wiseman was a pediatric nurse practitioner who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 46. When the crew proposed the name from the far side of the moon, 252,760 miles from Earth, all four astronauts wept. Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen’s voice broke as he said into the radio, “We lost a loved one. Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. It’s a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it Carroll.” It was one of the most profoundly human moments we have all collectively shared.

Today, standing next to the man whose wife that crater honors, Donald Trump said, “I wish they’d named something like that after me, Reid. But I don’t know. I’ll have to get the governor’s approval.”

The room did not laugh, and the astronauts did not react. It was almost as if they had practiced keeping the most stoic, emotionless expressions possible. Trump moved on, because he had already taken what should have been a moment about them and made it about himself. That is what he does because it is all he knows how to do. Even standing in front of four people who had traveled farther from Earth than any human beings in history, he still needed to bring the story back to Donald Trump. He later called the crew currently aboard the International Space Station and told them, “I would not want to do it,” before admitting that going back to his plane was “not very exciting by comparison.”

But here is what stayed with me after the cameras turned off. It was their faces. The scientists. The engineers. The astronauts standing behind him, professional to the last second, showing almost nothing. These are people whose careers his administration has disrupted, whose agencies he has hollowed out, and whose colleagues have been fired or reassigned for political reasons. Yet they stood there and listened as the President of the United States talked about himself, lied about the agency they had devoted their lives to, and even stumbled over words, while telling them that he had helped usher in a new golden age of America.

That took a kind of strength Donald Trump will never understand. Because real strength does not need an AI-generated image of itself holding a rifle while the world burns behind it. Real strength does not need a graphic declaring itself “THE GREATEST.” Real strength does not have to tell us every few hours how strong it is. Sometimes real strength looks like standing quietly on a stage, knowing the truth, and not giving the president the reaction he is hoping for.

I have been thinking a lot lately about a trip I took to Normandy when I was a teenager. I remember standing there looking at row after row of white crosses and Stars of David stretching across perfectly kept green grass and knowing, even at that age, that I was standing somewhere that mattered. I did not understand then what I understand now. I knew what had happened there. I knew Americans had crossed an ocean, stormed those beaches, and that thousands of them never came home. But like most American kids, I had learned the story of World War II mostly from the perspective of how it ended. Hitler was evil. Fascism was defeated. America helped save Europe. The good guys won.

It wasn’t until I was older, when I went back to Europe, that I started asking more questions through the lens of an adult and a travel writer, about everything that came before those crosses at Normandy. I walked through towns in France where atrocities had happened. I traveled through Germany and stood in places where fascism had taken root, operated, and eventually dismantled. Each time, I learned more about a part of the story that I had never really been taught growing up in the United States. How did an entire country get there and let it spread? How did people accept things that seem so obviously horrific to us now? What did ordinary people believe while it was happening? What did they ignore? What did they excuse? What did they convince themselves was normal because accepting the truth would have required them to do something about it? The more I learned, the more I realized that we had been taught the hero version of the story. We were taught what America did to help end fascism. We spent far less time learning how fascism began.

That is the part of history I keep coming back to now. Not because America in 2026 is Germany in 1933. It isn’t. History does not repeat itself that neatly. But because the lesson was never supposed to be that one particular country, at one particular moment, became capable of fascism. The lesson was supposed to be that people can be manipulated, that truth can slowly be replaced by loyalty, that institutions can be weakened while millions of people convince themselves everything is still normal, and that none of us are somehow magically immune simply because we are Americans.

Maybe that has played a much bigger role in how we got here than we want to admit. Americans didn’t suddenly stop caring over the past few decades. Our education failed us, we grew further and further removed from the generations who actually lived through the rise of fascism, and people became exhausted. For the last 25 years, nearly every generation in this country has been living through one crisis after another. People are working two jobs to afford groceries. Parents are trying to raise children inside an attention economy designed to keep all of us scrolling instead of reading. We have lived through wars, a financial collapse, a pandemic, political violence, mass shootings, rising costs, and a technology revolution that has completely changed the way we consume information. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, we stopped having the time, energy, and sometimes even the ability to figure out what was true.

September 11th shattered the sense of safety that many Americans had carried as far as outside threats since the end of the Cold War. I know I’m not alone in that I have never felt the same level of safety I felt before that day. Then came two wars whose consequences never truly ended. Then the Great Recession gutted the economy and destroyed the belief that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could build a life. People were just beginning to recover when a global pandemic killed more than a million Americans, isolated us from each other, and broke something in the way we connect. Before we had even processed the grief from that, Trump tried to overturn an election, came back four years later, and began dismantling the government from the inside. Through all of it, the cost of food went up, housing became unaffordable for millions of people, wages did not keep pace, and an entire generation of children grew up inside screens designed to keep them addicted to them rather than teach them anything.

It does not matter if we are Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, or Gen Z. If we have been adults at any point in the last 25 years, we have lived through crisis after crisis with barely enough time to recover from one before the next one began. That does something to people. It makes us tired, weary, and untrusting. It makes it harder to pay attention to everything happening around us when we are already trying to keep our families safe, pay our bills, and make it through another day. Authoritarianism does not need everyone to be ignorant. It just needs enough of us to be too exhausted to pay attention.

That is why we need historians, teachers, librarians, journalists and others to carry the truth. It’s why we need grandparents who sit their grandchildren down and say, “Let me tell you what my mother told me.” We need the stories passed from generation to generation because there are things we understand differently when we hear them from someone who was there, or from someone who loved someone who was. Every generation that passes takes some of that living memory with it, which makes it even more important that we learn these stories, preserve them, and pass them on.

And here is where the warning becomes urgent. Because the people who carried those stories, the last ones with a direct line to the generation that stopped fascism, are running out of time. Many of their parents stormed Normandy. Survived occupation. Came home with nightmares they never fully explained but that shaped every decision they made as mothers and fathers. Those children, now in their 70s and 80s, did not learn about fascism from a book. They learned it from the people who raised them. It was in the air they breathed growing up and in the way an entire household organized itself around the memory of what happens when ordinary people let a strongman take power.

And now they are watching people their own age, people they grew up with and worked alongside for decades, fall for the very thing their parents fought and bled to stop. They are the counter-witnesses. When someone in their generation says “this is fine” or “it cannot happen here,” they are the ones who can look them in the eye and say, “My father told me exactly what this looks like. And this is it.” Their authority does not come from a book. It comes from a parent’s voice. When they are gone, that direct transmission, parent to child, the last living bridge to the generation that stopped fascism the first time, dies with them.

World War II ended almost 81 years ago. And maybe 80 years is the expiration date on warnings carried by human memory. Maybe that is because by then, the people who lived through it are gone, and the people they raised are now entering the later years of their own lives.

But there is a difference this time. For the first time in human history, the record does not have to die with the witnesses. What is written tonight, documented and shared, becomes the living memory for the people who will need it 50 years from now. We have something no previous generation had: the ability to use the internet and social media as a bridge between lived experience and collective memory. The same tools that are being used to spread propaganda can be used to preserve truth. We can use these platforms to amplify the testimonies of people who remember. We have the ability to make sure the warning outlasts the witnesses this time around. But only if we choose to use it that way, to treat the preservation of truth as an act of resistance.

Leave a comment

It’s not just for us in the United States either. This is a warning that the entire world needs to hear. To everyone watching from outside the United States, learn from what is happening here. Do not assume your democracy is stronger than ours was. Do not tell yourself it could never happen in your country. Do not believe that once you remove them from power, they will not come back. Look at what is unfolding and understand that timeline.

Not all is lost, though. The courts continue to hold, at least the lower ones are. Today, Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein, for the third time, denied Trump’s attempt to move his New York hush money conviction to federal court. In a 35-page ruling, he wrote, “There is no way that discussions regarding hush money payments to cover up the President’s relations with Stormy Daniels could be an official act. An affair, or a cover-up of an affair, is not within the ‘outer perimeter’ of the President’s official responsibilities.” His conviction on 34 felony counts stands. Donald Trump remains the first president in American history convicted of a felony.

That is part of his legacy too. He can post all the graphics he wants declaring himself “THE GREATEST.” He can put his face next to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. He can cover Washington in gold and tell us he built America. But he does not get to decide how history remembers him. None of us do. History remembers what we actually did.

I have reminded myself more times than I can count just this past week that consequences eventually catch up to people who do terrible things. Never as quickly as we want them to, and not always in the ways we hoped they would, but nobody gets to rewrite the truth forever. Donald Trump will be remembered for who he really was, not the man in the fake images he wants us to believe he is. What matters now is making sure the truth survives long enough for future generations to know the difference.

That is our job. We need to save the screenshots. Save the articles. Buy the books they are trying to remove. Support the truth tellers while it is happening. Talk to our children and grandchildren about what we saw, what we knew, what we got wrong, and what we did when we finally understood. Tell them the stories our parents and grandparents told us. Write our own stories down. Because someday we will be the grandparents saying, “Let me tell you what happened.” We will be the living memory that eventually becomes history.

Maybe we cannot stop this cycle from ever happening again. Human beings have been repeating versions of it for thousands of years. But we can make sure that with the next generation, more people recognize it and act on it sooner than we did. We can leave them better prepared to question the lies, recognize the warning signs, protect the truth, and stand up before things get this far. That may be one of the most important things we can do right now, and every day, more of us are doing exactly that. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

Picture of the day: My two oldest are on the other side of the country, and I’ve been getting picture updates from their adventures. Today’s included these amazing-looking drinks.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

Another international EMBARRASSMENT from the sitting U.S. president

Heather Delaney Reese — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 01:50:29 GMT

At 1:20 in the afternoon, the President of the United States assembled the press in the Oval Office, brought in the cameras, and held an official presidential event so he could announce that he was renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” effective immediately. More than half the lake sits on the Canadian side of the border, and the name he tried to erase was never his to erase. “Ontario” comes from a Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,” spoken on those shores for more than four centuries. Then he went further, musing that maybe he would rename the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans too, while Stephen Miller stood off to the side, arms folded, grinning. None of this happens with Trump alone. Miller was not wondering how far this president might go. He was smiling because he wants to go there with him.

This is petty, but it is not only petty. Trump has spent nearly his entire term using American economic power to punish Canada, one of our closest allies, for refusing to bow to him. Asked what message the renaming sent, he said “no message,” then called Canadian officials “nasty people” and said of their representatives, “Maybe they’ll change.” Given how often he has floated making Canada the 51st state, that line is worth sitting with. He opened the same event boasting about record stock markets while saying nothing about the families who do not own retirement accounts and are just trying to afford groceries and rent. And asked whether his trade war could hurt affordability heading into the midterms, he said it would “ultimately” be good for us.

What stays with me is how different this is from a time when people in a president’s own party would tell him no. Margaret Chase Smith stood up to McCarthy. Goldwater, Scott, and Rhodes walked into the White House and told Nixon it was over. Every one of them chose country over party, while the people behind Trump today just smiled. But even so, this does not feel like the end of our country. It feels like her comeback. When Trump signed that order, millions of people did something he did not expect: they went looking for the name he tried to erase, and read about a 400-year-old Wendat word more people heard in one day than in years. That is what happens when you try to silence something true. It gets louder. He can change what the government calls a lake, but he cannot change where that name came from or the people who have carried it for generations. That word will outlast every executive order he ever signs. And so will we.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 8-27-2026.

Sources:

YouTube Video

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/honoring-the-american-history-of-the-great-lakes-and-renaming-lake-ontario-as-lake-america-3a36/

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/27/politics/trump-canada-lake-ontario-america

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/trump-canada-lake-america-ontario.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-orders-lake-ontario-renamed-lake-america-canada-trade-war-rcna594750

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/27/trump-signs-order-changing-name-lake-ontario/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lake-ontario

https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/a-declaration-of-conscience.htm

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2014/0807/Richard-Nixon-s-resignation-the-day-before-a-moment-of-truth

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

Donald Trump is petty, childish, and unfit to lead

Heather Delaney Reese — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 06:24:12 GMT

At 1:20 p.m. this afternoon, the White House press pool entered the Oval Office, where the President of the United States was already seated behind the Resolute Desk. As the cameras zoomed in, he fiddled with his fingers and stared past the people standing in front of him with a blank look on his face. Seconds later, he looked toward someone off camera and asked, “You all set?” Almost instantly, he went into performance mode, launching into prepared remarks about how amazing the economy is before abruptly changing course. “Uh, I guess the purpose of this more than anything else is we’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately, to Lake America.”

The President of the United States of America assembled the press, brought cameras into the Oval Office, and held an official presidential event so he could announce that he was changing the name of a lake.

Beside him stood Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Stephen Miller, and Deputy White House Staff Secretary Ben Moss, whose role is to help oversee America’s trade policy and negotiations with other countries. Behind Trump were two large display maps with “Lake America” stamped across Lake Ontario in bold red letters. When it came time to explain the order he was signing, Trump did not explain it himself. Instead, he turned to Ben and let them do the talking. Ben claimed that because the deepest parts of Lake Ontario are supposedly located in United States territory, it should be called an American lake. Except more than half of Lake Ontario is on the Canadian side of the border. The majority of the lake is not ours. And the name Trump decided to erase is not ours to erase either. “Ontario” comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.” It is a name that has been used for hundreds of years. Grand Chief Pierre Picard of the Wendat Nation in Quebec responded to Trump’s announcement by saying, “President Trump is trying to erase our history.” He said he was outraged, appalled, and shocked, and it is not difficult to understand why. Donald Trump decided that a name used by an Indigenous people for more than four centuries should be replaced with one he chose to cause chaos and cruelty. And everyone standing around him simply went along with it.

A few moments later, Trump took it even further. After signing the order, he looked up and said, “We have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.” As he said this, Stephen Miller stood off to the side of him, with his arms folded across his chest and grinned. He looked delighted. He stood there smiling as the President of the United States casually talked about renaming the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as though they belonged to him. For all the attention we give Trump, none of this happens with Trump alone. It requires people standing behind him who encourage it, people who turn his impulses into policy, and people who have decided that their job is to tell him that whatever he wants to do can and should be done. Stephen Miller was not standing beside Trump today wondering how far this president might go. He was smiling because he wants to go there with him.

This is not just about pettiness, although it is staggeringly petty. Trump has spent nearly his entire time back in office attacking Canada and its leaders, using the economic power of the United States to punish one of our closest allies for refusing to bow down to him. With the deepening trade war between the United States and Canada hanging over all of this, Trump was asked today what message he was sending to Canada by renaming Lake Ontario. He said, “No message,” before immediately making it clear that there was one. “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade,” he said. He called Canadian officials “nasty people.” He said they “feel entitled.” And then he said something that should not be overlooked: “I don’t think their representatives do an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change.” Maybe they’ll change. What exactly does that mean? Does he mean he expects Canada’s elected representatives to change what they are doing, or does he mean he would like Canadians to change who represents them? We do not know, and I am not going to pretend we do. But we do know that Trump has repeatedly talked about Canada becoming our 51st state, claiming Canada wants the benefits of being a state without actually being one.

So at some point, we have to ask what the larger objective is here. Canada is not our enemy. It is a sovereign country, our neighbor, our ally, and one of our closest trading partners. There is no reason for an American president to spend this much time threatening them, insulting their leaders, economically squeezing their industries, questioning their representatives, and now erasing the name of a lake we share with them simply because their government will not give him what he wants. Is he trying to make Canada economically weaker and politically more vulnerable because he still believes he can somehow force them into becoming part of the United States? I am certainly not suggesting the Canadian people would ever allow that to happen. But after everything Trump himself has said about making Canada our 51st state, we would be foolish not to at least ask the question. Because picking an unnecessary fight with one of our closest friends, damaging a relationship generations of Americans and Canadians spent building, and using the enormous economic power of the United States to attack them is not normal diplomacy.

We cannot look at what Trump is doing to Canada in isolation either. He has made it clear over and over again that he believes the United States is entitled to take what he wants from other countries simply because he thinks we are more powerful than they are. He has repeatedly talked about making Canada our 51st state. He has spent more than a year trying to gain control of Greenland. He has threatened and bullied Mexico. And now he is deliberately picking a fight with one of our closest allies. There is no mechanism inside Trump that tells him when he has gone too far.

Before Trump made his big name chance announcement, he spent the first several minutes of the event talking about what he says is a booming American economy. He said the stock market had reached an all-time high for the 81st time in what he called “a brief one and a half years.” He boasted about 401(k)s being at record levels. He claimed factories were moving to the United States from Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Germany. Listening to him speak, we were supposed to believe that Americans everywhere are thriving. But what about the millions of Americans who do not have a 401(k)? What about the families who do not have money invested in the stock market, who do not own retirement accounts, and who could not care less what the Dow closed at because they are trying to figure out how to pay for groceries, rent, electricity, childcare, and prescriptions? He did not talk about what life actually costs for the Americans who are struggling to make it from one paycheck to the next. So when a reporter asked him directly whether his escalating trade war with Canada could hurt affordability for American families heading into the midterms, his answer was exactly as expected. “Ultimately, it’s going to be very good for us,” he said.

Senator Bernie Sanders was quick to respond. “No, President Trump. The American people don’t want to rename Lake Ontario Lake America. They want affordable healthcare, childcare, housing, education, nutrition assistance, all of which you have massively cut in order to pay for your $1 trillion tax break to the top 1%.” Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group, added, “We’d really prefer affordable healthcare.”

What made the event even more revealing was listening to who Trump chose to attack and who he chose to praise. During the short event, he found time to call Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee for Senate in South Carolina, “a radical left lunatic.” Annie Andrews is a pediatrician who has spent more than fifteen years caring for children in South Carolina and works at a children’s hospital. That is the woman the President of the United States chose to disparage.

A few minutes later, he turned his attention to Texas, repeatedly calling Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico “Telefreako” before describing him as “a little freaky” and saying he is “not a man that represents the value of Texas.” Except the man Trump flew to Texas tonight to campaign for is Ken Paxton, who was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House on charges that included bribery, corruption and abuse of office, and was later acquitted by the Republican-controlled state Senate. Paxton’s former chief of staff testified under oath that Paxton admitted to an extramarital affair, and Paxton was accused of using his office to help a campaign donor who later hired the woman with whom Paxton was having that affair. His own wife, a Texas state senator, filed for divorce last year citing “biblical grounds.” Yet this is the man Trump has decided represents the values of Texas, while the pediatrician who spent fifteen years caring for sick children is a “radical left lunatic” and James Talarico is somehow too “freaky” to represent his state. That tells us everything about what Trump means when he talks about values.

We got another glimpse of it when he praised newly seated South Carolina Senator Darline Graham by saying she had “good genetics.” Trump has returned to that language before. In 2020, speaking to a nearly all-white crowd in Minnesota, he told them they had “good genes” and invoked what he called the “racehorse theory.” Just last week, he again used the language of “good genetics” while talking about a blonde teenager at a White House event. At some point, we have to stop treating these words as random things that fall out of his mouth. When the President of the United States repeatedly talks about some people having “good genes,” while attacking others as lunatics, freaks, and people who do not represent American values, it is worth paying very close attention to what he is telling us about the way he sees people and what he plans to do next. Language about good genes and superior bloodlines has been used before to divide human beings into those considered desirable and those considered inferior, and history has already shown us where that kind of thinking can lead when it is embraced by people with political power. It helped provide the justification for eugenics programs, forced sterilizations, racial laws, and eventually some of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. We do not have to claim that history is repeating itself exactly to recognize language that history has already taught us to take seriously.

The most dangerous moment of the entire 12 minutes had nothing to do with the lake. It came when a reporter asked whether Trump would punish Russia for continuing to do business with Iran. He said, “It depends.” He said he thought Russia had “behaved quite well.” And then he said something that no sitting president should ever say on camera: “Somebody was saying about China. What about China? We hear they’re spying. We spy on them too. It’s the way it goes.”

The President of the United States, sitting in the Oval Office, casually admitted that America conducts espionage against other nations as though he were talking about something completely ordinary. But he did not bring it up because he suddenly wanted to have an honest conversation about American intelligence operations. He brought it up to create a false equivalence between what the United States does and what China is doing, to normalize it, excuse it, and convince us that none of it really matters because everybody does it. We have watched Trump do this over and over again. If everyone is corrupt, then his corruption does not matter. If every country spies, then Chinese espionage does not matter. If everyone lies, then his lies do not matter. If everyone is guilty, then no one can be held accountable. It is one of the ways he takes something that should alarm us and makes it seem so normal that eventually we stop paying attention.

One reporter asked the question that had been hanging over the entire event: “Why are you so focused on doing things like this towards America’s allies instead of doing things that target adversaries?” He deflected and didn’t actually answer. It was a simple question, but it went straight to the heart of it all. Why is the President of the United States spending his time picking fights with Canada and changing the name of a lake we share with them while some of the countries that actually threaten American interests are treated with far more restraint? And why is nobody with the power to stop him doing so?

This is not how a president leads what many would call the most powerful nation on Earth. This is not how someone who understands the gravity of the office conducts himself in the Oval Office. Trump’s bad decisions do not mean a hotel room goes unbooked or a golf course loses money. His bad decisions get people killed. They destroy relationships between countries that took generations to build. They weaken alliances that have helped keep us safe for decades. Yet he seems to have no understanding of the enormous consequences that come with the power we have given him.

The entire event finished quickly, and when it was over, Trump thanked the press, sat back in his chair, and that same blank look we saw at the beginning came over his face once again. The performance was over, and the energy disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. Within seconds, the press was being rushed from the Oval Office. None of what we watched today should surprise us anymore. Donald Trump has spent years showing us exactly who he is. What should concern us now are the people still standing behind him, smiling, defending it when it is over, and using the power of their own positions to make sure there is no one left in the room willing to tell him no.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded to the renaming with a dignity that only deepened the contrast: “The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.’ The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario, then, now and always.”

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston’s reply was just as impactful: “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy.”

And across the United States, governors also responded. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, whose state actually borders the lake, said flatly, “New York won’t be calling it that.” Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers posted a video of himself inside a McDonald’s, signing a napkin that read “Lake Wisconsin,” and wrote, “And I just renamed Lake Michigan Lake Wisconsin. See, I can sign napkins that say things, too.” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker posted a photo of Trump’s Chicago tower with the name crossed out and replaced with “Natalie,” referencing the ongoing Natalie Harp controversy, and wrote, “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: Trump Tower is renamed to NATALIE TOWER!” And Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott called the order “petty and disappointing,” adding, “We should be at the negotiating table, finding a path forward that strengthens both the U.S. and Canadian economies. Further escalating tensions does nothing to help American or Canadian families and businesses.”

Yet the men in the Oval Office said nothing. Miller grinned. Burgum adjusted his jacket. Nobody stopped this from happening. These men, the enablers who surround him, are not patriots. They do not love this country. If they did, they would be preserving the things that make it ours, not erasing a 400-year-old Indigenous name so a declining president can feel powerful for 12 minutes. They are pillagers. They take, and they destroy for their own personal gain.

I have been thinking about this all day. What keeps coming back to me is not Trump. It is them. The people standing behind him. Politics in this country has never been perfect. It has been dirty, unfair, unequal, and often cruel. I have never had any illusions about that. But before all of this, before the second Trump presidency, I believed something that I think most Americans believed, even if we never said it out loud. We believed that no matter how bitter the disagreements became, or how ugly the campaigns got, there was still something underneath all of it. Some baseline. Some floor. Some fundamental commitment to the country itself. A belief that the people in the room, even the ones we disagreed with, might fight us on policy, might infuriate us with their positions, and might put party over principle far more often than they should, but if the country were truly in danger, if a president lost his grip on reality or began dismantling our democracy in front of the world to see, someone in his own party would eventually stand up and say enough.

We now know this is no longer true. When I try to understand how we lost that, I keep thinking about the people who once proved it was possible.

Leave a comment

In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine stood on the Senate floor and delivered what she called a “Declaration of Conscience.” She was a Republican. Joseph McCarthy was at the height of his power, and members of her own party were benefiting from the fear and accusations he was spreading across the country. Smith stood up anyway and called it what it was. She said the Senate had been “debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination.” She was among the first in her party to say it publicly, knowing there could be a political price for doing it. But she did it anyway because there was still something more important to her than protecting herself or protecting her party. There was the country.

In January of 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower used his farewell address, his final moments speaking to the country as president, to issue a warning. He was a Republican. He was a five-star general. He could have used that speech to celebrate himself and everything he had accomplished. Instead, he warned the American people about the growing power of what he called the “military-industrial complex,” and the danger that concentrated economic and political power could have on our democracy if Americans stopped paying attention. More than 65 years later, that warning is just as, if not more, relevant today than it was when he said it. Power is not something we are supposed to worship simply because our side controls it. Power is something we are supposed to watch, question, and restrain before it becomes something none of us can control.

In August of 1974, three Republicans, Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott, and John Rhodes, walked into the White House and told Richard Nixon it was over. They did not leak it to the press or issue a carefully worded statement expressing concern. They went to the White House, looked the president of their own party in the face, and told him the political support he needed to survive was gone. Nixon announced his resignation the next day. Three Republican leaders were willing to tell a Republican president something nobody standing behind Donald Trump today seems willing to tell him: no.

Three moments when someone was willing to choose truth over loyalty, country over party, conscience over comfort. Every one of those people is gone now, and I find myself wishing they were still here. Wishing there were still people like them anywhere near that building. Wishing there were people inside the Republican Party who understood that loyalty to a president is not the same thing as loyalty to the country, and that sometimes loving this country requires standing in front of the most powerful person in your own party and telling him he cannot go any farther. Because the people standing behind Trump in the Oval Office today were not doing that. They just stood there and smiled. They have every opportunity to be Margaret Chase Smith. They have every opportunity to walk into that office the way Goldwater, Scott, and Rhodes did. Instead, they have chosen to stand behind him and, worse, enable him. History will remember that choice too.

Even through all of this, I still do not feel like I am documenting the end of our country. I feel like I am documenting her greatest comeback. James Talarico is leading in several polls against Ken Paxton in Texas, the state Trump is visiting in a panic. A Republican governor called the president petty and disappointing. Democratic governors are using some of his own medicine to humiliate his authoritarianism with satire and jokes.

But here is the thing that stays with me most from today. When Trump signed that order, millions of people did something he did not expect. They went looking for the name he tried to erase. They searched for it, and they read about it. They learned that Ontari’io is a Wendat word that has been spoken on the shores of that lake for longer than either of our countries has existed. Because of what he did, more people heard that word today than have heard it in years.

He tried to erase it, and instead, he amplified it and helped people on both sides of the border honor a past they might not have known about. That is what happens when you try to silence something true. It gets louder. The truth always comes out. Trump may have the power to change what the United States government calls a lake, but he does not have the power to change where that name came from, what it means, or the people who have carried it for generations. That 400-year-old word will outlast every executive order this president will ever sign. And so will we. This is why I still have hope for America. And you should too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

Picture of the day: It was grooming day, and she came home with pompoms. It was the most adorable and ridiculous thing I’ve seen in a long time. I needed that laugh!

Sources used in the writing of this post:

President Trump Participates in Signing Time, Aug. 27, 2026: YouTube Video

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/honoring-the-american-history-of-the-great-lakes-and-renaming-lake-ontario-as-lake-america-3a36/

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/27/politics/trump-canada-lake-ontario-america

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/trump-canada-lake-america-ontario.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-orders-lake-ontario-renamed-lake-america-canada-trade-war-rcna594750

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/27/trump-signs-order-changing-name-lake-ontario/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lake-ontario

https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/a-declaration-of-conscience.htm

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2014/0807/Richard-Nixon-s-resignation-the-day-before-a-moment-of-truth

https://bnonews.com/whpool

https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/

A government agency ACTUALLY posted this about Trump

Heather Delaney Reese — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 01:08:54 GMT

At 10:00 in the morning, the official account of the U.S. Department of Education posted a video no other administration would have imagined publishing. Meaning to glorify Trump as a strong and feared leader, they shared a scene from Darkest Hour, with Churchill shouting, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!”, captioned “No one does it like us.” The problem is the tiger in that scene was Adolf Hitler, and Churchill was not calling him strong. He was warning that you cannot negotiate with a fascist. The next line is the one that matters most: “When will the lesson be learned?” That is the question the Department of Education accidentally asked the entire country.

The answer is playing out right now in the story of Major Jason Watson of the U.S. Air Force. In July, he put on his uniform, walked to the steps of the Capitol, and called for the impeachment and removal of Trump and Vance over the unauthorized war in Iran. He knew it could cost him his career and his freedom, and he spoke anyway. He has not stopped since. His attorney believes he is the first major in the history of the American military to face them. Watson knew the rules better than anyone, but he also took an oath to the Constitution, and he decided the greater danger was staying silent. Hours later, Trump posted a photo of himself as a teenager in military academy dress, misleading anyone who did not know he never served a single day, received five draft deferments, and reportedly called the war dead “suckers.”

Watson is not alone. This week, veterans’ groups launched nearly 1,000 billboards near military bases, telling the families who actually pay for this war exactly what it is costing them. This is a new level of resistance rising from inside the military community itself, from people who understand the weight of that oath in a way most of us never will. They know there is something above every general and even the president: the Constitution, written that way on purpose, so loyalty to the law would always be stronger than loyalty to any one man. After the camps were liberated, the world said “never again,” and taught it so we would recognize the signs before it happened again. Churchill was right about the tiger. You cannot keep feeding it and hope it leaves the rest of us alone. But Watson refused, the veterans are refusing, and people across the country are refusing to accept that any one man should be more powerful than the Constitution that belongs to all of us. When will the lesson be learned?

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 8-26-2026.

Sources:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/24/politics/us-airman-charged-trump-criticism-article-88

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/08/25/active-duty-air-force-officer-who-called-for-trump-impeachment-faces-three-charges/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jason-watson-charged-trump-criticism-air-force-article-88/

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/19/politics/us-airman-arrested-at-capitol-trump-impeachment-detained

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/02/27/trumps-lawyer-no-basis-for-presidents-medical-deferment-from-vietnam/

https://www.the74million.org/article/no-longer-the-schools-of-trumps-youth-military-academies-focus-on-college-prep-character/

Donald Trump was exposed today

Heather Delaney Reese — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 06:46:21 GMT

At 10:00 am this morning, the official social media account of the United States Department of Education posted a video no other living or dead presidential administration would have ever even imagined publishing. While they were attempting to glorify Donald Trump and show the world just how powerful and feared he was, the clip they chose to make that point ended up saying something far darker than they seemed to realize, or more honest than they meant to be. Either way, no one at the agency responsible for educating America’s children appears to have stopped long enough to understand what they were actually posting or the ramifications for doing so.

In the post, they included a scene from a movie and a caption that read, “No one does it like us. 🐅.” They included that tiger emoji. It was a very dramatic scene, showing Gary Oldman, playing Winston Churchill in the 2017 film Darkest Hour, as he pounded on the table before his war cabinet and shouted, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!” At first glance, the message they were trying to send seemed obvious. Trump was the tiger. A strong, powerful, and unstoppable leader. A man the rest of the world should fear and respect. Except there was one horrifying problem with that message. The tiger Churchill was talking about, who they were aligning with the President of the United States, was Adolf Hitler.

Churchill was not calling Hitler strong. He was calling him dangerous. He was warning his government that negotiating with a fascist is not possible and it certainly is not good-faith diplomacy. It is surrendering to them. The line that follows in the film is even more important than the one they shared because it captures exactly what we are living through: “When will the lesson be learned?” That is the question the United States Department of Education accidentally asked the entire country this morning. When will the lesson be learned?

The answer is not buried in a history book. It is playing out right now, today, in the story of a man not enough Americans know about. A man who learned the lesson, recognized the warning signs, sounded the alarm for the rest of us, and is now being punished for refusing to stay silent.

His name is Jason Watson, and he is a Major in the United States Air Force. On July 1st, he put on the uniform of the country he swore an oath to defend, walked to the steps of the United States Capitol, and did something he knew could cost him everything. He called for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. He cited the war in Iran, launched without congressional authorization, and said he could no longer remain silent while the Constitution he had sworn to defend was being violated. He knew there would be consequences and what speaking publicly in uniform could mean for his career, freedom, and the life he had built in service to this country. He spoke anyway, and he still hasn’t stopped speaking, even after he was arrested that same day.

Last week, Watson spoke publicly again, this time in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, and said, “What is happening with President Trump is not normal. He has failed us. And not only is he a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of us.”

The morning after that interview aired, Watson told his chain of command he would no longer wear his uniform. He was arrested again. On August 18th, the Air Force ordered him into pretrial confinement, where he was taken into military custody and locked up while the case against him moves forward, before he has been tried or convicted of the charges he now faces. It is hard not to wonder whether the decision to confine him was made, at least in part, to ensure he could not speak publicly again. On Monday, he was formally charged with ten specifications under three articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: three counts under Article 88 for using contemptuous words against the president, five counts under Article 92 for disobeying orders, and two counts under Article 133 for conduct unbecoming an officer. Article 88 is a provision so rarely invoked that only two convictions under it have been recorded since 1951. His attorney believes Watson is the first major in the history of the American military to be charged under it.

Watson is now sitting in confinement awaiting what comes next. His attorney, Christopher Mutimer, says the conditions amount to solitary confinement. He could face significant jail time and dismissal from the military, potentially losing the career he built serving the same country he says he was trying to defend by speaking out. Mutimer said of him, “It is my hope that other Americans who feel powerless in this moment will take some measure of courage from his willingness to speak and to stand by his convictions.”

There is a reason the military has rules against officers publicly attacking the president, and we should not pretend those rules do not matter simply because we agree with what Watson said. The chain of command exists for a reason. The military cannot function if service members decide for themselves which commander they will obey based on politics or personal belief. Civilian control of the military, discipline within the ranks, and continuity of command are fundamental to a functioning democracy. Those protections were built for moments of disagreement and instability, and they matter. But those same service members also take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and military law requires them to obey lawful orders, not unlawful ones. That is not optional. It is a requirement. And that creates an impossible position for anyone in uniform right now, because the rules demand obedience to the chain of command and faithfulness to the Constitution, and Watson believed those two obligations were no longer pointing in the same direction.

That is also what makes Watson’s decision so profound. He knew those rules. He understood the consequences better than most of us ever could. He had spent his career inside the institution he was challenging, and he knew exactly what could happen if he crossed that line. Yet he still reached the conclusion that the greater danger was staying silent. That whatever punishment might come to him personally was less important than warning the country he had sworn to defend.

Watson was not asking for power. He was putting his own at risk. He was not protecting his career. He was jeopardizing it. He was not demanding that the country pledge loyalty to him. He was trying to warn his country about the man to whom the military chain of command ultimately leads. There is something deeply unsettling about an officer deciding that the only way left to honor the deeper meaning of his oath was to risk being punished by the institution he had spent his career serving.

Watson is now sitting in confinement after putting his career and freedom on the line to warn the country he served. Hours ago, Donald Trump posted something that made the contradiction of this moment impossible to ignore. At 12:31 this afternoon, he shared a black-and-white photograph of himself as a young man in a military academy uniform, standing beside his parents. There was no caption or explanation, just the photograph. To anyone who did not know his history, the implication was obvious: it looked like a photograph of a young Donald Trump who had served in the military. That is what made the image so misleading. The truth is that Trump was sent to New York Military Academy as a teenager, reportedly because of disciplinary problems, not because he had enlisted in the United States military or answered any call to serve his country.

Years later, when his country actually called young men of his generation to serve during the Vietnam War, Trump received five draft deferments, including a medical deferment for bone spurs. This is a man who has reportedly referred to Americans who died in war as “suckers” and who has disparaged prisoners of war. He has never worn the uniform of the United States military in service to this country. Not once, not even for a single day.

Major Watson is not the only one refusing to stay silent. This week, VoteVets, one of the largest veterans’ advocacy organizations in the country, launched nearly one thousand digital billboards near military installations across the United States. The billboards feature Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against a backdrop of fire, with a single message: the Iran war means higher prices with no end in sight. The campaign spans ten cities, from Fayetteville to San Antonio to Colorado Springs to Virginia Beach. These billboards are not appearing in liberal enclaves or on cable news panels. They are appearing where military families live. Where they drive to the commissary. Where they fill up their gas tanks and stretch their paychecks. Because these families are the ones paying for a war they did not ask for, not just in service and sacrifice, but also financially.

Alongside VoteVets, Win Without War has been running its own billboards near Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, asking service members directly whether domestic deployments and ICE-related duty are what they signed up for.

This is a whole new level of resistance coming from inside the military community itself, from people who understand what that oath means and what it requires of those who take it. They are speaking publicly, at scale, on the roads outside the very bases where service members live, work, and train. These are people close enough to the institution to understand what is at stake, and they are willing to stand outside its gates and say out loud what too many people with power in Washington still will not.

There is something about seeing that resistance come from people who have worn the uniform that makes this even harder to live through. Maybe it is because they understand the weight of that oath in a way most of us never will. They know why the chain of command matters and why discipline matters. They know what could happen if our military loses both. Yet they also know there is something above every commander, general, and even the president. The oath that they took. And they know it was written that way for a reason. It was designed to make loyalty to our Constitution stronger than loyalty to any one man. The authors had learned that lesson through some of the darkest chapters in human history and had made the conscious decision to include that safeguard.

Leave a comment

After World War II, after the camps were liberated and the world saw where fascism ultimately leads, we said, “Never again.” We taught generation after generation what happened for a reason. Not just so they would know Hitler’s name or remember the horrors of the Holocaust, but so they would understand how a country gets there. People obey. Institutions fall in line. Those who speak are punished. Everyone else sees what happens to them and learns to stay quiet. Eventually, loyalty to one man matters more than loyalty to the law. “Never again” was supposed to mean we would recognize those signs before it all happened again.

That is why the oath matters so much. Watson understood that. The veterans behind those billboards understand it. Churchill understood the danger, too, in the very scene this administration posted as propaganda without seeming to understand the warning inside it.

Churchill was right about the tiger. You cannot reason with it while your head is already in its mouth. You cannot keep giving it what it wants, hoping that eventually it will be satisfied and leave the rest of us alone. At some point, we have to recognize the danger and refuse to keep feeding it. That is what Americans are beginning to do. Watson refused. The veterans speaking out are refusing. People across this country are refusing to stay quiet, fall in line, or accept that any one man should be more powerful than the Constitution that belongs to all of us. The Department of Education accidentally gave us the question we should all be asking right now: “When will the lesson be learned?” Maybe the answer is right now, while there is still time to do something about it. And if history has taught us that ordinary people have the power to stop extraordinary evil, then the courage and resistance rising across this country is proof that we still have the power to change where this ends. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

Subscribe now

Picture of the day: I was feeling a bit down today, just thinking about how the “bad” guys seem to get away with so much while those who hold strong to the truth suffer. I had to reground my thoughts and remind myself that even when that feels true in the moment, ultimately, good does conquer in the end. When I start to feel overwhelmed by all of it, I try to find beauty in the mundane and ordinary things around us. Doing so normally distracts me long enough that I find my footing again. I’ve walked past this tree and these blooms for days, and every single time I’m in awe of how vibrant the colors are.

Sources used in the writing of this post:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/24/politics/us-airman-charged-trump-criticism-article-88

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/08/25/active-duty-air-force-officer-who-called-for-trump-impeachment-faces-three-charges/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jason-watson-charged-trump-criticism-air-force-article-88/

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/19/politics/us-airman-arrested-at-capitol-trump-impeachment-detained

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/02/27/trumps-lawyer-no-basis-for-presidents-medical-deferment-from-vietnam/

https://www.the74million.org/article/no-longer-the-schools-of-trumps-youth-military-academies-focus-on-college-prep-character/

Trump just started a fight he can’t easily win

Heather Delaney Reese — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 01:04:49 GMT

At 6:58 in the morning, the President of the United States was already posting, floating the idea of renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” to harass one of our closest allies. It was the first of dozens of posts he fired off while the White House kept him from the press. For hours he was fixated on Canada, reducing American foreign policy to threats, insults, and clumsy propaganda. And in between, he praised his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong Un and bragged about scaling back military exercises with South Korea to please him. Within the same hour, he threatened a democratic ally and did a favor for a dictator. He sees cooperation from our friends as weakness and cruelty from strongmen as strength. It is completely backward, and every time he does it, the world gets a little more dangerous.

Yesterday, the consequences of his policies turned real. Pennsylvania confirmed that two unvaccinated people died of measles in Lancaster County, the first such deaths in the state in 35 years, in a community where vaccination rates have fallen dangerously low. This did not have to happen. But this administration put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of public health, undermined confidence in vaccines, and signed an order splitting up the MMR shot despite no evidence it is safer. This is where the disinformation leads.

Dolly Parton died at 80, at the same Nashville hospital where her million-dollar donation helped fund the early research behind a COVID vaccine that saved millions of lives. Two people who lived exactly 80 years, and two opposite answers to what a person does with the time they are given. Trump was born into wealth and has spent his life trying to turn the world into a monument to himself, from the ballroom to his name stamped across the Kennedy Center. Dolly was born in a one-room cabin, the fourth of twelve children, and spent her life giving it away, mailing over 300 million books to children and rebuilding lives after fires and floods. That contrast is the whole thing. Legacy is not a name chiseled onto a building or a lake renamed in a fit of rage. It is what keeps going after we are gone, measured in the lives we made better while we were here. We do not have to know the whole path out of this tonight. We just have to take the next step together, and the midterms are that step. One life filled with enough goodness can keep changing the world long after it is gone.

See the full story in the video.

Subscribe now

Thank you for your continued support. Your paid subscriptions have enabled me to add a video editor and reach more people.

Independent journalism is under attack. You can make a difference with a $5/month paid subscription. Your support allows me to keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in our country, defend myself from constant pressure from MAGA extremists, and ultimately spread the message to more people.

Subscribe now

I’m fighting to save our country (before it’s too late).

I’ll see you tomorrow,

Heather

This video is based on my written post, available HERE, and based on the events of 8-25-2026.

Sources:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/measles-pennsylvania-deaths-two-outbreak-rfk-jr-rcna594296

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/health/measles-deaths-pennsylvania

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-administration-says-might-demolish-kennedy-center-court-blocks-r-rcna594350

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/politics/trump-canada-lake-ontario-name

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dolly-parton-county-music-icon-dies-80-rcna236277

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/25/nx-s1-3650175/dolly-parton-obituary

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-orders-military-substantially-reduce-joint-exercises-south-korea-rcna592832