An American folk hero was born under the fluorescent lights of a nondescript grocery store in Michigan.

In a viral rant reminiscent of Rick Santelli’s famous “Chicago Tea Party” moment during the Obama years, a Red Baron employee, identified as “Walt,” stood down a group of internet-addled goons and let it fly. It began when the kid filming the video took out his iPhone, pretended to scan an item that Walt was placing into a grocery store fridge, and then claimed that he stole $10 using Apple Pay and that he really needed the money. Unsurprisingly, his voice had a slow, drawn-out cadence, leading one to suspect he was high as a kite. As Walt quickly grew frustrated, the kid kept insisting it was a “joke.”

“I don’t have time for this crap right now, okay? My life is hard enough as it is. I’ve got kids at home who went to bed without me right now,” Walt said. His voice grew louder. “I was supposed to be home an hour ago. I’m still out here working. And I got to get up at 5 in the morning and do ten more stores! So this is not a joke to me!” The livestreamer makes a half-hearted attempt at an apology, but it is already way too late. Walt continued: “I’ve got a mortgage. And I’ve got four kids at home! So not funny!”

If you’re like me, the video makes you sick to your stomach. Only sadists would find this even remotely amusing, as no one with any sense of decency wants to watch a stressed-out family man get harassed in the late hours of the night as he finishes up a grueling shift. Thankfully, though, this story has a wonderful twist. Like all good stories, it shows the very worst in humans, but it also shows the very best. It also shows how the internet and social media have ruined society, but can still, in rare instances, provide an antidote to the emotional destruction it has caused.

What Rubs Me The Wrong Way: Public ‘Pranksters’

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The rise and fall of great fast-food brands has become a story all too familiar to American consumers. Once upon a time, an intrepid entrepreneur and artisan perfected a recipe, opened a restaurant, figured out how to scale the business, opened more locations, and quickened service without sacrificing the quality recipes and ingredients that made the restaurant popular to begin with. But just as families are always rising and falling in America, so are its fast food chains.

Long after the founder has passed away, the chains are eventually sold off to big corporations or private equity groups. Although new locations crop up in every corner of America and even the globe, the quality plummets dramatically. The meal you ate as a kid becomes something else entirely. The service, too.

More and more Americans have taken notice of this dispiriting trend in the restaurant and fast-food industries, a process commonly referred to as “crapification.” As the list of private equity-backed and corporate chains continues to grow, consumers are seeing (and tasting) the negative effects of what happens when a company engages in short-term thinking and tries to squeeze out every last cent of profit for its Wall Street investors.

One Wendy’s fan recently remarked on Reddit, “Worst fries in fast food. Worst customer satisfaction in fast food. Even the chicken nuggets are hollow. I used to get a big thick juicy burger here, now its paper thin sad looking sandwiches. What in the hell happened?!” The popular burger joint Whataburger, originally based in Texas, has experienced a decline — at least to some disgruntled consumers on Reddit. Some are beginning to question whether the chain’s 2019 sale to the private equity firm BDT Capital Partners, based in Chicago, had anything to do with it.

But thankfully, not all American fast-food chains have allowed themselves to be devoured by private equity. As it happens, these chains continue to steadily grow while still churning out delicious and affordable meals. It might actually be their stubborn, admirable refusals to get sucked into the crapification trend that sets them apart from their competitors.

Continue reading to learn about:

• In-N-Out: Why its owner refuses to sell out to private equity and is determined to preserve what makes the chain special.

• Chick-Fil-A: How the family-owned chain continues to grow conservatively without compromising its commitment to customer service.

• Raising Cane’s: Why its founder believes private equity is destroying the quality of American fast food.

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Very quietly, the United States is building up its troop presence in Latin America. As Western media focuses on the Russia-Ukraine war, the Iran War, and the Strait of Hormuz, Washington is moving new chess pieces into the Southern Hemisphere.

Pentagon officials told The New York Times earlier in October that the military was deploying a 600-soldier battalion into a jungle facility in Panama. Eventually, the officials said, the troops will train with forces in Colombia and Honduras. They might also help the U.S. Special Operations forces currently advising Latin American militaries, themselves conducting raids against alleged drug traffickers.

But the real reason Washington is building up its military footprint in Latin America has little to do with stemming the flow of illegal drugs from south to north. Another major regional development made a Bloomberg headline a few days ago. It confirms that Uncle Sam’s ambitions are far, far greater than simply kicking in the teeth of some low-level narco thugs.

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In the eyes of Republicans, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is, at best, a democratic socialist who wants to pay for city-run grocery stores and “free” buses by drastically increasing taxes on the wealthy; at worst, he is, in the words of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a “full-on communist” and “Marxist-Islamist” who wants to destroy America and “Western civilization,” mandate Sharia Law and force every woman into a burka.

But what do actual leftists think of Mamdani? Do they think he is a bona fide radical who is overthrowing an oppressive system? Or do they think he has already become an empty “centrist” suit?

The answer might lie in a recent left-wing intellectual confab between Cornel West, Marxist economist Richard Wolff, and Norman Finkelstein, a fierce critic of Israel. Throughout the discussion, Finkelstein slammed Mamdani for failing to live up to his campaign promises of revolutionary change, and said that many young left-wingers he has spoken with already feel betrayed.

Finkelstein cited early in the podcast Mamdani’s decision to back House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker of the House and, despite the aggressive rhetoric, his refusal to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrived in the city for a United Nations assembly. Finkelstein also needled the mayor for visiting an LGBTQ museum with a Dutch official instead of joining anti-Netanyahu protests on the streets — a move he said was reminiscent of former President Barack Obama. (RELATED: The Most Beloved Modern Democrat Is Also To Blame For Their Current Civil War)

Later in the show, Finkelstein ramped up the attack.

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The engine of representative democracy hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders. In fact, it has been sputtering along in recent times, spewing out smoke and showing signs of complete and utter failure. The people who are supposed to be served, American citizens, are dissatisfied with both chambers of Congress and believe, for the most part, that it is irredeemably corrupt – lazy, too. In October, Pew Research found that the 119th Congress of 2025-2026 passed 102 “substantive” laws and 12 “ceremonial” laws, making it one of the least productive Congresses in the past 40 years. The 118th Congress was even worse. But compare that to the 100th Congress, from 1987 to 1989; during this time, 388 substantive laws were enacted, according to Pew. Congress doesn’t even bother to fulfill basic constitutional duties anymore, like voting to authorize war.

What isn’t failing, however, is the Swamp. More specifically, the way in which both private and public interests – a tech corporation, a Venezuelan oil company, a shipping port run by a local municipality in California – can secure favorable changes to the regulatory landscape using lobbyists. Of course, these entities can use lobbyists to get to lawmakers, who can then rewrite bills and change laws. But how many laws are actually getting passed these days? Precious few. So, instead, lobbyists go straight to the Executive Branch and its myriad cabinet departments to secure what their clients paid for. This is the way government really works now, and until today, no one elected to Congress had any truly bold ideas to fix it and make it more responsive to the needs of the American people rather than the needs of those who can afford jaw-dropping lobbying fees.

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A decorated ESPN producer describes what it was like working for a network that had fully embraced the sports gambling industry — despite a glaring ethical dilemma:

I had pitched numerous stories that would take a harder look at some of the gambling companies and addiction, and none of those stories were greenlit. They ended up doing a show on it around that time, but it became very neutered. Some of the people involved intended to make it much more hard-hitting and hold the gambling companies accountable. Let’s just say the final product didn’t end up doing that.”

During her two decades at ESPN, Nicole Noren won Emmy, Murrow, and Peabody awards for her work on “Outside the Lines,” an investigative sports series. Noren resigned in 2023, after the network launched its own branded sports gambling app, ESPN Bet. For someone who had grown up with family members “destroyed” by gambling addiction, and having lost a brother who died alone and homeless on a Las Vegas sidewalk, Noren believed that she would have “blood on her hands” if she kept working there, so she quit.

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In his speech last week in front of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, Marco Rubio called for a revitalization of the West, which he described as standing at a historic “inflection point.”

As the sun set behind him, the secretary of state argued that Ancient Greek traits — “fierce individuality and relentless ambition,” passion, courage, and pride, or what is known as thumos, risk-taking and the pursuit of excellence, among others — are quintessentially Western values that underpin all great civilizations, including America’s. He criticized Western self-doubt and passivity, urged Europe to “awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire” lit in Athens, and said the United States is now dedicated to the “unapologetic pursuit of national power” as it seeks to shore up critical supply chains, “rebuild the military,” and “fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.” (RELATED: The Great Game: Trump Admin Quietly Shifts Focus On Mineral-Rich Region To Counter Chinese Influence)

Rubio also acknowledged, in a single sentence, a truth about America that many modern leaders simply cannot stomach or dance around using political euphemisms.

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Born in Shanghai in 1955, he and his family lived through the violent and catastrophic upheaval of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. By the time he graduated from university in 1977, the revolution had ended following Mao’s death. In 1984, he joined the Chinese Communist Party. Five years later, he became China’s youngest associate professor. Former colleagues describe him as an introverted obsessive who rarely sleeps. He cut them off in the 1990s when he entered politics. He climbed the party ranks and eventually began working with Xi Jinping, who was elected general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 and later president of China in 2013. Over the next decade, he helped Xi consolidate power, and while others were purged, he retained his party position when Xi became president for life in 2022.

Characterized by Western observers as Xi’s éminince gris, Wang Hunding is one of the most powerful figures within the CCP and the ideological architect of China’s totalitarian regime.

Hunding has drawn comparisons to Karl Rove and Henry Kissinger, having served as a top policy adviser and speechwriter across three successive Chinese leaders: Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and now Xi. Currently, Hunding is the chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. In this position, he is central to the CCP’s foreign influence and intelligence arm, the United Front Work Department.

But before he became the chief ideologue behind Xi’s throne, Hunding visited the United States in 1988 as part of a six-month academic research project in coordination with the American Political Science Project. He compiled his observations of American society in a book later published in 1991. Hunding traveled far and wide, spoke with a range of people, including fellow academics, Chinese-American students, Southerners, and families. He watched American TV shows and movies. He tuned in to a presidential debate between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. It is a stunning work, insofar as it offers a rare glimpse into America’s adversary and the mind of its dictatorial leader, Xi Jinping. It is also disturbingly prescient – more than Americans, perhaps, would care to admit.

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The cameras in the White House briefing room clicked off.

A beat later, the room erupted.

“Well, shit,” one reporter said. People shot up from their chairs. Others just looked at each other, bewildered.

That wasn’t great, I thought, as my phone started buzzing with texts from other reporters, administration officials, and D.C. politicos who wanted to know what I made of what had just happened.

One shot me the awkward face emoji. “Shit show,” one source texted. Another called it “crazy.” I typed back as fast as they typed to me.

Moments before, Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, had taken the podium for her first briefing.

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“He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount,” goes an ancient Chinese proverb, meaning that sometimes when you are doing something dangerous, it is better to finish it without hesitation. In politics, when candidates tap into an extremist movement for electoral support, they better be prepared to hold on for dear life; otherwise, the moment they try to “dismount,” they will suffer the wrath of a beast they cannot fully control.

Such was the case Wednesday when the far-left tiger took a swipe at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

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The National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) kicked off its latest event Tuesday, bringing together American and Israeli conservative intellectuals, academics, and influencers dedicated “to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence [and] to the revival of the unique national traditions.” The conference also invited fanatical members of the Israeli government, as well as an Israeli rabbi who once called for the mass slaughter of innocent civilians.

Founded in 2019 by academic Yoram Hazony, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, NatCon has since hosted five conferences in the United States and smaller events in Brussels, London and Rome. NatCon’s 2022 manifesto outlined its “Nationalist Conservative” principles, one of which states that “a world of independent nations each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own” is “the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.”

NatCon’s decision to host the conference in Jerusalem this year comes at a time when conservatives are fiercely debating America’s relationship with Israel and whether it serves U.S. interests, and when more and more American citizens are expressing disapproval of the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They even decided to welcome a notorious member of the Israeli government, the pro-genocide finance minister and leader of the Religious Zionism Party, Bezalel Smotrich.

In a speech Tuesday, Smotrich said that Israel “can and must bear a growing responsibility for its own security” but that he “can and must show why the alliance with Israel is in America’s interests, too.” He claimed that while the U.S. and Israel are shifting “from a relationship of dependence to a partnership between two independent nations,” it is also time to “deepen the alliance” and that the two countries share common enemies, such as the Iranian Regime. (RELATED: Top Israeli Official Openly Calls For Genocide As US Seeks Peace: ‘All Of Lebanon Must Burn’)

“Israel recognizes the American friendship and support it received over the years, but it’s precisely because of that the time has come to deepen the alliance, to move from dependence to partnership between two independent nations,” Smotrich said.

Smotrich’s history of extremist and incendiary rhetoric directed at civilians is well-documented. In 2023, he said a West Bank village “need[ed] to be wiped out.” In 2024, he called for the “total annihilation” of Rafah, Deir al-Balah, and Nuseirat, three urban and refugee areas in the Gaza Strip. And in August of that year, Smotrich said that causing two million Gaza civilians to die of hunger “might be justified and moral,” but that the world would not allow it.

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, an Israeli rabbi and extremist whose visa was revoked by the Biden administration in 2022, was also among those scheduled to speak Tuesday, as was Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

In May 2007, Eliyahu called on Israel to “carpet bomb the general area from which the Kassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life” in a letter to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000,” he said of Palestinians. “If they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop, we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

In 2008, Eliyahu urged the Israeli government to carry out “state-sanctioned revenge” against Arabs after a terrorist attack killed eight students, Israeli media outlet Haaretz reported at the time.

“I’m not talking about individual people in particular, I’m talking about the state,” Eliyahu wrote in a newsletter, according to Haaretz. “[The state] has to pain them to the point where they scream ‘Enough,’ to the point where they fall flat on their face and scream ‘help.’ Not for the sake of satisfying the need for revenge but for the purposes of deterrence.” (RELATED: ROOKE: Anti-Vance Crew Turn To The Worst Possible Allies To Influence The MAGA Base)

Sharing the same stage with Smotrich, Orthodox Christian Rod Dreher gave a speech Tuesday, as did Jeremy Boreing, a Christian and host of “The Jeremy Boreing Show.” Dreher argued that “Western civilizational renewal requires a radical change of life for all of us. To use an old-fashioned word, it requires repentance.” Boreing called on Americans “to become a moral and religious people once again” to prevent illiberal factions of the right or left from taking over the government and turning it into an instrument of tyranny.

Other speakers Tuesday included Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, and Rusty Reno, editor of the conservative Christian magazine First Things. During his speech, Roberts described Jerusalem as the “perfect place for conservatives across the West to gather this week so that we can unite.” Reno argued that if an “American or English or French patriot can achieve just one-tenth of what has been achieved, built, celebrated, and defended in this place [Israel], I would submit that the future of Western civilization will be the brighter for it.”

Several of Wednesday’s speakers, however, struck a noticeably different tone. Whereas Tuesday’s speeches seemed to dismiss the foreign policy divide on the American Right — which has only grown wider since the start of the Iran War — and the fact that a vast majority of Americans now view Israel and Netanyahu unfavorably, several younger speakers openly discussed it. They also called into question whether labeling critics of the Iran War or America’s relationship with Israel “antisemites” is a smart and effective strategy.

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It is safe to say that America is weathering a storm of political upheaval.

The Democratic Socialists of America and their aligned candidates have the Democratic establishment by the scruff of their necks. On the right, the first shots of a civil war between a Republican old guard and a new populist right have been fired, with the conflict primed to explode in the 2028 presidential primary.

Outside the world of D.C. politics and bitter infighting, Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, rent, mortgages, and even resources as basic and vital as water. Locked out of a system they feel no longer addresses their basic needs, increasingly, many are heeding the siren call of socialists. For those who believe socialism only offers false promises, they nevertheless remain disillusioned with the current political system. Politicians, in their eyes, do not serve the needs of their constituents; rather, they serve the highest bidder while making sure to line their own pockets. They want change, but change without a socialist revolution. (RELATED: GOP Snake Rears Its Ugly Head Offering 2028 Preview Of Battle Against MAGA)

Two recent charts help explain why so many Americans, regardless of whether they identify as Republicans or Democrats, Libertarians or Independents, are demanding new ideas and policies that break with the stale consensus of the past several decades.

The first is from America’s financial kingdom: Wall Street. While everyday Americans struggle to pay their bills, Wall Street is, so far, having an incredibly profitable year. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office released a report Tuesday that showed the pre-tax profits of Wall Street firms were $45.9 billion in the first half of 2026, up 51.3 percent from $30.4 billion in the same period last year. The figure is also well above New York City’s full-year forecast of $45.3 billion.

If the pace holds, 2026 profits would exceed $90 billion, far surpassing the 2025 record of $65.1 billion, according to the comptroller’s office. It would also smash the inflation-adjusted record set in 2009 during the Financial Crisis and taxpayer-funded Bank Bailouts.

The report found that the gains came from underwriting revenue, up 68 percent year over year; charging fees, up 16.4 percent; and trading revenue of $40.3 billion, up 1.8 percent, which was driven in part by the AI boom. DiNapoli also expects the 2026 bonus pool to rise (the 2025 pool was already a record $49.2 billion). (RELATED: ‘Repeating Mistakes Of The Past’: Outgoing SEC Commissioner Warns Trump Letting Wall Street Off Hook)

The second chart is the picture from Main Street, provided by Heather Long, the chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union. The graph shows that U.S. wage growth has fallen to the lowest level in five years.

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During the first season of the HBO series True Detective, Matthew McConaughey’s dark, brooding, philosophical character, Rust Cohle, discusses his theory of time in a famous scene that has since become an internet meme. “Time,” he says, “is a flat circle. Everything we’ve ever done or will do, we’re gonna do over and over and over again.” Cohle is a Louisiana state detective investigating a string of gruesome murders connected to some kind of cult, but the case has gone cold, with the real killer still on the loose. Scarred by the trauma of losing his own child years ago, and worn down by heavy drinking, Cohle says that “nothing ever gets solved” and that life is an absurd, inescapable loop. His character is monstrously pessimistic, if you couldn’t tell.

But if there was any sentiment that could best capture how normal Americans today feel about politics — particularly how they feel about it one month out from a midterm or presidential election that determines the balance of power in Washington, D.C. — it is fair to say that Rust Cohle’s pessimism captures it to a tee. Over and over and over again, Americans elect politicians because they say one thing and that one thing sounds good (maybe too good). But the moment candidates assume office, they, for whatever reason, either quietly renege on this promise or flagrantly betray it. Usually, donors or special interest groups are involved, pulling invisible strings behind the scenes. Sometimes, as is well known, candidates just lie straight through their teeth.

Software developer, media executive, and co-founder of Black Rifle Coffee, Richard Ryan, has an explanation for why politicians can get Americans “so angry, upset, and motivated to get out and vote” every single time, but then three months later, break virtually every campaign promise they made on the trail. Sure, maybe time is a flat circle. Or maybe it’s that “talk is cheap,” Ryan says.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller, Ryan breaks down how political campaigns exploit social media algorithms, whipping Americans into a polarized “frenzy,” and how this endless dynamic plays into the hands of special interest groups while allowing politicians to keep winning re-election despite glaring failures. He is also bringing a unique solution to the table. He wants to make politicians pay. Literally.

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The stale smell of cheap beer and cigarette smoke. Classic rock music blaring on a jukebox. A neon sign hanging in the window. When you sit in the corner booth of an American dive bar, nursing a drink — alone and surrounded by strangers, or joined by loved ones— the quiet sense of camaraderie is unlike any other you can find in a public space. It radiates over everything, and you feel it whether you’re a regular or a tourist stopping in for a few minutes. The world could be ending outside as a nuclear warhead turns the ground into butter, but tucked away in the dive bar, you’re blissfully distracted by the latest piece of gossip and the happy hour specials.

Neighborhood dive bars were once a daily escape from the world when the middle class could afford to live and raise families in American cities. Workers would stop by their neighborhood bar for a drink or two before heading home to their wife and kids. On the weekends, locals gathered to watch the game. The classic 80s sitcom Cheers captured this romanticized idea of the dive bar being a quiet respite from the stormy chaos of one’s personal life. “Sometimes you wanna go / Where everybody knows your name / And they’re always glad you came / You wanna be where you can see / Our troubles are all the same / You wanna be where everybody knows your name,” the theme song goes.

Like so many 20th-century relics, an unpretentious corner bar with cheap beers, regulars who share your troubles and know your name, and no overpriced cocktail menu is getting harder and harder to find, especially in expensive, growing cities.

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I played four years of college softball. I’ve played in state and conference championships, in big stadiums and packed ballparks. But the biggest game of my life came on Wednes…

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For an entire year, I walked into the White House briefing room, sat in the Daily Caller seat in the very back corner of the room, and raised my hand.

I was call…

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On the heels of Lindsay Clancy’s mistrial, Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, feeling pressured to do something to address concerns over postpartum mental health issues, announced an expanded state program that critics say amounts to home surveillance of new moms. The program already serves around 3,000 births annually, but Mealy wants all Massachusetts families to have access to a voluntary and “free” home visit, conducted by a registered nurse, to monitor moms and find signs of mood and anxiety disorders sooner rather than later — signs that point to postpartum depression.

The case of Clancy, a Massachusetts mom charged with first-degree murder for strangling her three children, ages five, three, and eight months old, to death in the basement of her home, captivated the country for weeks and unleashed a torrent of social media content defending the 36-year-old. Clancy’s fans believed she committed the murders in a state of “psychosis,” suffered from postpartum depression, and could not access proper mental health care to remedy that which drove her to madness. As with any politician, when the public latches on to a particular issue that drives headlines and generates online buzz, Healey figured she might as well capitalize and reward her constituents by giving the Department of Public Health more taxpayer funds to waste.

Leaving aside that the program does not appear to be some earth-shattering, unconstitutional intrusion of civil liberties — criticism stemmed from Healey’s woeful choice of words during a podcast appearance, in which she suggested the visitations are mandatory if you have a child — there is something to be said of politicians who use a crisis, or in the case of Clancy, a viral, emotional event, as cover for ill-conceived policies and laws.

In fact, so much of American history is driven by crises and shocks — unforeseen events that burst out and jolt the country in an entirely new, sometimes dangerous, direction. Some of the worst pieces of federal and state legislation and presidential mandates were born during these moments, when emotions ran high and the public, crippled by fear or enthralled by a moral panic, demanded immediate action without considering its long-term consequences for civil liberties. The phrase “Never let a crisis go to waste” was popularized in our modern imaginations by the slick Obama World operator, Rahm Emanuel, in the late 2000s. But it has always been the MO of the political and ruling classes for as long as the United States has existed, and our civil liberties have suffered for it.

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The last week has seen some of the most important people in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry declare to the world that the technology has become so far adva…

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A rumor reached the press corps as Washington’s workday wound down: the White House had an unusual briefing in the works. Confirmation came quickly. Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to the Tuesday schedule, would take questions from the Rose Garden.

The Rose Garden — rebranded the “Rose Garden Club” under President Donald Trump — mostly hosts receptions and dinners now, though the president does make the occasional policy announcement there, like his “Liberation Day” tariffs, and Biden held some bilateral pressers in the space. But the daily-style briefing rarely leaves the West Wing. Moving it outside, with a stand-in at the mic, felt a little like a substitute-teacher move.

As the briefing inched closer, the press swarmed the “Palm Room Doors” — the entrance just steps from the Rose Garden and the president’s new helipad.

All the jockeying to bust through those doors first turned out to be pointless. The garden had been set up like the briefing room, seats assigned, and attending required a request submitted in advance.

The guest list looked scrambled. Some outlets that hold a regular briefing-room seat seemed to have skipped it or not been approved, while a few publications without a usual seat landed spots in the back of the garden.

I was one row up from where I normally sit, which is the very back of the room. Even so, there weren’t enough seats for everyone, and the usual crowd of reporters lined the sides, angling for a question.

Tuesday had started out crisp, another rarity for Washington in September, and I’d hoped the weather would hold for an outdoor briefing. I was wrong.

My seat sat directly under the sun. The ten-odd minutes we waited past 2 for Blanche to start felt like an eternity, sweat dripping down my back.

Others were just as uncomfortable. As the briefing began, I texted a reporter near me: “I’d be okay if he didn’t take any questions and we wrapped this up. Way too hot!”

It only got more unbearable as Blanche laughed at us baking in the sun. Three times the attorney general asked whether the press was sweating. He was not, he told us, because the podium happened to be in the shade, unlike the rest of the setup.

The heat wasn’t the only struggle. Reporters will often let the White House know in advance if they plan to attend a presser. For guests, and even for the regular press secretary, officials keep a seating chart of who’s there and where.

Blanche said at the top that he had a list and would use it. I’d texted a DOJ official that morning to say I’d be there in light pink, and I knew the message had reached the attorney general, so I felt good heading in.

But after calling on two reporters from the list, Blanche went rogue.

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The Never-Trump wing of the Republican Party is sharpening its knives ahead of the 2028 presidential primary.

After losing the 2016 battle to President Donald Trump, members of the establishment wing of the GOP wailed and gnashed their teeth. They labeled Trump and MAGA as racists, started organizations to undermine the movement’s success, and framed every political and cultural argument as a fight for common decency against radicals. A decade later, nothing has changed.

Infamous Never-Trumper Erick Erickson’s Substack essay, “The Midwestern Führerbunker Driving the Right Off the Cliff,” arrived Wednesday, marketed as a pastoral warning about churches and young minds. Unsurprisingly, it was promoted by the same people who feverishly pushed the Trump administration into the Iran War and have spent the last three presidential election cycles claiming that Trump and MAGA were the enemy.

Everyone from David French to Mark Levin urged Americans to read Erickson’s piece, arguing that it was an important warning for what ails the right. But hidden behind the supposed preaching on why the Republican Party is dying of white racial grievance lies the old GOP’s 2028 opening bid in the fight to take the party back from the coalition that beat it in 2016 and again in 2024.

A group of white guys have subtly inserted themselves into conservative institutions and church organizations. They all embrace racial grievances. To varying degrees, they embrace white nationalism, antisemitism, and even Nazi sympathies. They are getting added to conservative…

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) September 16, 2026

Commentators like Erickson only seem to support Trump and his administration when their policies align with the Bush-era GOP. These people are the ones who belong to the supposed conservatives who managed the American decline and drove voters into the populist movement.

There is a point to be made that some on the right court ugliness on purpose. Still, none of that justifies packing an anti-globalist, anti-forever-war voter-driven revolt into one bottle marked “racial grievance.” The old GOP has always focused on the worst comments in the new coalition, declaring it a manifesto. That trick started their careers against the Tea Party and against MAGA. However, they are still not able to successfully explain why their supposed respectable alternative sent American soldiers to die in the Middle East, why immigrants should replace citizens, and why a professional class is allowed to talk about Americans as if they are only a number on a workforce spreadsheet. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)

If you oppose the core tenets of their political faith, all of a sudden, you become lumped in with Nazism and Franco. In their view, the only conservatism that should be left standing is the kind that can survive a D.C. donor dinner.

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