Transcription
[Music] Hello and good morning everyone. Welcome to your daily sit rep for Thursday, the 11th of September, 2025. I'm your host, Mike Shelby. Before we start, I'm going to address what happened yesterday. There's a lot of, it's a complex scenario, and there's a lot of complex emotions, and we are going to work our way through this. I will do that at the end of the sit rep, for now. Robert, good morning. Let's go ahead and jump inside the beltway. Uh, starting with this latest update on this potential government shutdown, the days of our lives, this never-ending threat. What's the latest?
So yesterday, House Minority Leader Hakee Jeff and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that they are aligned on for potentially forcing a shutdown because they oppose a clean stop-gap spending bill, uh, ahead of this 30 September deadline at the end of the month. It's because it does not extend those Obamacare subsidies. I also saw a comment from one, uh, Democratic senator who did cross the aisle in March to pass that continuing resolution, uh, that said he is also not, you know, he's also opposed to passing a, a stop-gap funding bill. So, I, I think that I think we're seeing an increasing risk of a shutdown by the end of the month.
Yeah, I agree. And this goes back to many in the Democrat rank and file have demanded Hakee Jeff and Chuck Schumer to do more. And they said, "You basically rolled over for Trump the last time. Do not do this again." And here we are.
All right. Uh, let's listen, Robert. I'll just let you continue on, please.
All right. So, the, the Labor Department Inspector General announced yesterday that it's investigating data collection practices at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, uh, specifically collection practices used to calculate inflation and employment numbers. Moving over to the domestic side, NASA yesterday, uh, blocked Chinese nationals with U.S. work visas from working on NASA programs. And this is according to people familiar with what's going on at NASA. And these people said that Chinese nationals working as NASA contractors, university researchers, and graduate students were denied access to both NASA systems and work meetings on the 5th of September. Uh, according to sources familiar with the matter, President Trump is refusing to endorse Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winom Earl Sears in her bid for the Virginia governorship next, next year against former Representative Abigail Spanberger. And according to a person who worked as her as the leader of her transition team in 2021, the Republican Governor's Association is also refusing to fund Earl Sears' campaign. And I, I think this is a major flashing red light that Democrats are likely to retake the Virginia state house next year. Spanberger is significantly ahead of Earl Sears in polling. And I, I think the Trump administr, or Trump refusing to endorse Earl Sears is a bad sign for her campaign.
Yeah, to say the least. Robert, I've also seen that Scott Presler, who is a, I think probably pivotal in delivering the win in Pennsylvania for Trump in the 2024 election cycle. You know, he goes across the country. He does these election get-out-the-vote style organizing campaigns, and he was on a video in the past week or two, and he said he basically said the same thing, is that Republicans could be wiped out in, in not only this year's elections, but in future elections as well, if some things don't change. I look at this, I, I don't follow Virginia politics, but it just seems to me like she is not a, a strong candidate. I know a lot of people were, were pretty unhappy that she is the GOP candidate for Virginia governor here. Uh, any, any other observations there?
No.
All right.
Uh, and so yesterday, thousands of protesters joined in at a major protest at the Missouri Capital Building, and they were opposing state Republicans' plans to pass that new congressional map ahead of next year's election. I also saw that Missouri Democrats were preparing to filibuster this new map in the Missouri State Senate, where it's now headed. I, I did see some of the messaging they're using that seems to be consistent across some of the protests, both from elected Democrats and protesters, demonstrators. Uh, that Republican normally in our system, people pick politicians, and there, and now politicians are attempting, uh, to, you know, politicians are attempting to pick their voters. This seems to be one of the, one of the messaging tactics that they have latched on across all of these, uh, opposition movements on this redistricting. And then I also saw an interview yesterday between Vice President JD Vance and former Rep. Matt Gates, uh, where J. Vance said he supports expanding the Trump administration's federal surges to every major city in the U.S., which I, I think is hinting at where the Trump administration is going in, in a major expansion of these federal surges.
All right, thanks for that roll-up, Robert. And let's go ahead and move on. Jared, good morning. Let's turn our focus now to global sitrep.
Absolutely. We're going to start off in the Department of War. They awarded $1 shy of $500 million to to several research agencies in Dayton to to research high-performance electromagnetic spectrum survivable materials and the program that will advance this. Now, what this is for, this, this contract is for hardening systems in the air and space domains per the Department of War. This is about building a more survivable GPS. That's really what this comes down to. All space systems are going, are the largest threat here. And with them explicitly saying it's space domains, that's what we're looking at here. This is also being awarded in Dayton, the home of the National Air and Space, uh, it's NASIC, National Air and Space, uh, Intelligence Center. Um, so, I, I do expect this is explicitly for GPS.
Over, over in the Asian Pacific, Taiwan's reporting that China's building new coastal military infrastructure to facilitate an invasion. Now, we do expect this. That's not surprising, but the scale of it is rather, it's, it's what you'd expect for the Chinese. They are building a lot, building quick. The facilities include two new airports, a helicopter and drone base, kind of a dual-use thing there, additional naval piers on existing Navy bases, and an, an entirely new naval base, as well as hardened fuel tanks. China's also reported, reportedly integrating all of these new bases with a high-speed rail network that they already have in order to achieve faster troop deployment. And you can see some of the progress that they've made here. There's a 2018 and 2025 photo here in the, in the slide.
Moving much closer to home, but staying on the topic of China, China's embassy in D.C. is decrying a, a Trump administration visa proposal that would limit Chinese journalist visas to just 90-day stints. Now, this is actually a discontinuation of the current practice, which allows Chinese journalists to stay for the entire duration of their assignment with no particular limit. No, the Chinese use people-to-people exchanges in order to get plenty of Chinese over here for espionage, you know, all the stuff that we've covered in the past. And the U.S. has pointed out that the Chinese, that this is a radical imbalance. The Chinese permit far fewer than what the U.S. does, and they need to fix that.
And then lastly, some news out of the Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister is again signaling additional commitment to the U.S.'s mission in the Caribbean, and she's declaring that, first off, for the drug boat, we got a little bit more information on where this could possibly have happened. It seems like it was actually near Trinidad and Tobago. She said, "We will not waste our resources looking for those bodies. Basically, they, they are detritus. We don't want them." And she's also calling for additional deportation of Venezuelans. They have about 30,000 and only a population of 1.5 million there. So that's about 2%, but it's significant for them. Uh, now this is exceptionally important because she previously said, "You can use the entirety of our territory here for whatever operations you want." And they don't have a land border with Venezuela, but at the closest mainland to mainland point, they are less than 10 miles away. You can see their land masses.
All right. Very interesting. I did see Chris Murphy, come out, senator, Democrat senator from Connecticut, come out and say something to the effect, "There were no drugs on that boat, but we just learned there's no drugs on the boat." And that would not preclude drug runners from taking human beings from Venezuela to Trinidad or any other country in the Caribbean for whatever reason in the drug trade. Right. Thanks for that, Jared. Let's go ahead and move on. We got 67 protests today, well within the baseline.
All right. There's a few things I want to say about what happened at Charlie Kirk yesterday. And I, we do have some questions in the chat, and also I'll try to address those. So Jared, if you could please tee those up. First of all, this is a complex situation because we know very, relatively very little about the shooter. I thought yesterday was a clown show. I was embarrassed for the FBI and for Cash Patel yesterday, who came out on X with a social media post. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, "We got him," kind of post. We, this subject has been apprehended. And then, what, an hour or two later, said, "Oh yeah, actually, we interrogated this guy. We released him because he's not the shooter." Also, we've seen our fair share of conspiracizing about who is involved and people trying to put puzzle pieces that probably do not fit there or trying to connect data points that are probably not connected. So, it is a, a complex situation, and obviously, uh, it takes some time to grieve. I know it affected a lot of people. Charlie Kirk was a hugely influential person in conservative politics. You know, I was talking to my sister yesterday and about this, and she asked, I got so many text messages and and messages about, "Is this it? Like, is this, is there any coming back from this? Is this the Civil War, the beginning of the Civil War?" And, uh, at any rate, I will, I will get to that. But one of the things she, I asked her if, if any of her kids knew who Charlie Kirk was, and she said yes. And it just made me think how many young people from the ages of 10 to, you know, 30, where Charlie Kirk was at some level influential in their lives, because they saw him on social media, they watched his YouTube videos, he had some kind of impact on their lives. How many millions and millions of of young white men or or white adolescents have been impacted by Charlie Kirk. And the overwhelming sentiment that I've seen on social media is how radicalizing this has been for so many people. And I think obviously it is going to be radicalizing for young people. Our, my group chats yesterday, which are, they're all right-wing, obviously, there were veterans, and there were also normies, like people who are not incredibly political, and they were extremely angry, and there were calls for blood and and reprisal. And obviously, I, I would hate to be a, well, I would just hate to be a left-wing influencer at all, but that's obviously the next risk. People ask, "Well, where do we go from here?" And the next big risk is that maybe, maybe this could spiral, or maybe we do see tit-for-tat style reactions. So, um, at any rate, to get back on track, take some time to grieve if you need to and process a lot of complex feelings. There was sadness, and it turned to anger, and a lot of people are feeling different things. You know, I remember when my son was born, it, like, it unlocked a new part of my heart, and I began to love a lot more. I also began to hate a lot more. Hate for the, for some of the people, for hate for some people who want a, a negative future, not just for, for my son, but for his entire generation. And so, process those feelings. The first thing I want to say, and obviously keep, uh, the Charlie Kirk family in your thoughts and prayers. Obviously, it's horrendous for, for the family. I can't imagine the pain they're going through. The second thing I want to say is consider the alternative. The, I'm not saying there was a rush to judgment, but you know, a lot of people automatically assumed, and they may be right, but automatically assumed that there was a, a leftist shooter, which, to be fair, uh, is not an inappropriate or irrational conclusion, even if, if maybe we, some people jump to it. Obviously, that was my first thought. But I, I would also say consider the alternative and don't, do not get locked in or make decisions based on a faulty assumption. I've heard from a handful of, you would call them professionals, and they're not. They said that this looked like to them like it was a professional, and, uh, and they said the guy probably got away, and he's not going to be caught. Obviously, I hope that's not the case, but that is something you would expect from, from a, a professional as opposed to, you know, maybe someone who took a, a target of opportunity or hastily planned this or, you know, even over the, a matter of days. Also, I've been astounded at the number of people on social media and even on, you know, I was watching Fox News, Fox News last night, just watching some of the coverage, and all these people said, "Oh, this was a, this was a deliberate planned attack." Like, really? So, it obviously was. I will also address this. Harrison Smith is a host over at Infowars. He's a friend of mine. I've known him for 10 years. And one of the things that he said, and this is secondhand, I have no reason to doubt him on this, but he said a friend told him who was having a conversation with Charlie Kirk, and Charlie, Charlie Kirk said expressed his fear. Is it fears? Again, this is allegedly, but I have no reason to doubt that Harrison heard this, but he said if Charlie Kirk was was afraid that he, if he publicly opposed what Israel was doing in Gaza, that he would be killed. So, I think there are multiple angles here, multiple possibilities that have to be considered. So, just, I would say don't get locked into being married to one assumption or one conclusion at this point. The third thought that went through my head is, what was the intended effect? This happened. The, the individual or the, the organization involved in the planning of this, what do they want to have happen there? I've seen a lot of people on social media say that they, they just went and killed like the most moderate conservative guy that that exists. And that was my first thought is, of all, I mean, of all people, Charlie Kirk, of all people. So, the next thing I asked is, you know, in the military, we have this things called this, this thing called effects-based targeting, and it's where you go and you target mostly an individual, but you target an individual, say, like, you know, as an insurgent leader or terrorist or something like that, terrorist leader or a financier or facilitator, whoever, and you do it because of the effects that taking that person out or taking that person off the battlefield will have. And so, if this, if the assumption, and I, I think it's probably accurate, the assumption is that this was prof, this was not some single lone leftist shooter, and maybe it was, but if this was professional, what was their intended effect? And I don't know, you know, we can sit down and and brainstorm that, but I would just encourage you to think about what is the desired effect. What did they want to happen? Do they want to plunge the country into civil war? Do they want to? And we, I mean, we can just go through the, the large pool of of possibilities here. Also, this is something that you should do in your personal lives whenever you're making a decision, but it's obviously something we do in intelligence is you consider the alternative. You survey the, the widest feasible list of of possibilities, and then you can start working your way through and determining which are more likely to be true and which are less likely to be true, and then you can kind of dwindle your way down to what you think is most likely and and order them in terms of likelihood. So, I don't know what the effect would be, but obviously a lot of people are asking, "What's next?" I think there's a very good chance that we look back on not just the attempted assassination of President Trump, obviously, but also what happened yesterday and say, "Yeah, this was a domino. This was a, a data point in the road to domestic conflict." And a lot of people talk about civil war. Some have promoted civil war. I just want to encourage everyone, if you haven't already, consider that if we do get into a domestic, like a domestic conflict with organized political violence, organized armed political violence, this is going to be like an everyday occurrence. It's not always going to be, it's obviously someone high-profile, but it will be, I don't want to get kicked off of any platforms, but it's going to be politicians, and it's going to be influencers, and it's going to be people who have grievances against them. Remember, armed conflicts are often used as a way to settle scores that are not politically related. So, if you were shocked by yesterday, or if you're still in shock today by what happened, consider for a moment that this is going to be every day in America, or nearly every day in America. It's going to become a common occurrence. So, yes, I actually do think this is, I think we are on the road to domestic conflict, and it's not just from what happened yesterday. You know, I started Ford Observer back in 2016 tracking far-left groups like Antifa and John Brown Gun Club and Redneck Revolt and all the rest. And then obviously 2020 blew up, and we've, we've been through this kind of lull period over the past few years, several years. That's obviously over. We can go in and define the term civil war, like what do you actually mean by civil war? Because it's a pretty vague term. Let me just, uh, before we get to civil war, let me just address this country's been in a locked in a period of low-intensity conflict for since at least 20, I would say 2015. And you get this tribal war between white nationalist groups like Identity Europa and all the others that were active back then, and Antifa who showed up to demonstrate, and they got into fistfights, and, you know, they fought with police and other things, but that's low-intensity conflict. The violent social movements is a low-intensity conflict, and that's on the low end of the spectrum. And then you also include things like terrorism and guerrilla wars, popular revolutions, color revolutions, all the way up to and including insurgency, and by the virtue of insurgency, counterinsurgency. That's low-intensity conflict. So, it exists beneath the threshold of conventional war. We're not talking about tanks and bombers here, but it is, exists above routine peaceful competition. And since 2016, I've said, I don't think anyone can say that the United States is at war with itself. Not, not outright, not yet. But we're certainly not at peace. And this is the United States has been for going on 10 years now in a greater or lesser period of being in between outright war and outright peace. This is the low-intensity conflict space. The question is, will it stay low-intensity? So, will we continue to see what is effectively terrorism or violent social movements or even armed political violence? Yeah, of course. We, there, I don't, a lot, I've seen a lot of people on social media say we're not coming back from this. There's, we've reached a turning point. We've passed, we crossed this line. And I fully agree 100%. I think that is true. So, where do we go from here? We are going to remain at least locked in this period of low-intensity conflict where we will continue to see armed violence. I just, in the interim, I just want to propose two possibilities and tell you which I think is more likely. You know, after that was over a year ago, that attempted assassination on President Trump, that was a come-to-Jesus moment for a lot of people. And in some cases, the media was, I think, basically reluctantly forced into saying, "Yeah, maybe we inflamed tensions a little bit too much. May, maybe we're going a little bit too far." And things seemed to calm down a little bit, uh, for a short while. We have, I have seen Democrats come out in the past, what, eight, you know, 18, whatever hours, and condemn violence. And obviously, it has to be horrific for them because if it could be Charlie Kirk yesterday, it could be them tomorrow. So, actually, I do think these politicians have a vested interest in at least saying that they oppose political violence. I cannot help but imagine that at a lower level, they, they want political violence, just not against them. And I think in some cases, that is true for them. So, one scenario is that we, another come-to-Jesus moment where the nation kind of calms down. I don't think that's the case. I think, I think this is, it is obviously an escalation, and I agree with people. There's no, we're not coming back from this. The only thing that I would say, the, the one thing that I would say may alter our course drastically is if this was some foreign, foreign-backed plot. If, if an, a foreign country was responsible for this or be determined to be responsible for this, would change our direction dra, uh, it will not change the overall trajectory, but at least in the interim, it will change how we respond to this. The last thing that I want to say is everything from here on out, if you believe that we are going to get into an outright domestic conflict where stuff like this becomes a far more common occurrence, not just at a national level, but at a local level, local town, city, county, state level, it is going to affect parts of the entire country. The one thing people can stock up food and water and guns and ammo and all these proper things. You can get your bug-out bag and all this stuff. What is the, the determinant of your success in the future is the depth of your network. I would highly encourage everyone to focus on local intelligence, to survey your local political landscape. All that stuff should be in your area study. Identify the groups. Identify the, the political and social groups that could be involved in conflict in your area. Both, like protests and demonstrations and potential armed conflict. Identify the agitators. Who are the people who are incendiary in their rhetoric? As closest to you as possible. You might want to identify those people and check out what they're saying. And then the third thing is you have to start monitoring, if you don't already, start monitoring some local news, and there's a lot of news aggregators out there that you can use, and you can do keyword searches, and, you know, I, I talk about all that stuff in the open-source intelligence, um, training, but I would say do those three things as a, a good start to get prepared for what I think at this point is probably inevitable. I think we will, we will have a domestic conflict in this country. The first thing you should focus on is local intelligence. After that, or maybe coinciding with that, is organization. I think everyone has to understand from here on out, you know, a lot of people say there's no political solution, and I don't, I don't think that's entirely accurate. Um, there's no single electoral political solution, but there, but you cannot ignore politics, especially at the local level. So, what everyone needs to do is organize, or in some cases, counter-organize, and you got to, you got to organize because solutions are collective. We can bring people together to solve local problems. And it doesn't matter, we're responding to a tornado, or doing disaster response or relief, or a hurricane, or an earthquake, or a wildfire, or whatever. You're going to need that same community-style effort if we do go through a period of domestic conflict. People are going to continue to go to work. Your kids probably going to continue to go to school, although I imagine homeschool will be a lot more popular than it is today. You're going to continue to go to the grocery store, and things are going to be a little bit different. But society's not going to shut down wholly when we go through this. There are obviously going to be some economic and financial and monetary effects from this as well, which greatly concerns me. Just looking ahead, the next, say, three years, I would just assume that you've got about three and a half years to get this figured out. You may not have three and a half years, but I look ahead to the 2028 election, and I say, if, if there is going to be a, a D-Day or a zero day, that I, that's obviously got to be the next big date on your calendar. I've been saying for a few months now, I think things escalate after the 2026 midterms, which is not to say that we will not have more of what happened yesterday. So, get prepared. You need local intelligence. You need local organization. You have to bring people together. In the army, we said, "Every soldier is a sensor." That means every soldier in a unit has an obligation to pass up information of intelligence value. To see something, say something. And your neighbors and your members in your community are no different. Your job should be identifying and recruiting and connecting those sensors to you to make sure that you have a flow of information required to respond to whatever happens to you locally, because again, not all this stuff will happen at the national level.
All right, with that, uh, Jared, do we have any questions about this thing yesterday?
What can we do to signal long-term solidarity in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination? Well, you know, obviously, I think people can speak out and show not only their support but also their opposition to what's happening. I think there's just a focus on, you know, people are trying to find national solutions, and you just have to realize all solutions are, number one, they start locally, and number two, they're collective. So, I would say get with your, get with your local, the people in your area, and and figure this out. I think that's the first thing. The, you know, the second thing, leftists always talk about solidarity, and they say, "An injustice against one is an injustice against all." And I think that has been extremely beneficial for them. Actually, I think that's an incredible strategic advantage they have, because I don't see that kind of rhetoric, at least not yet, or that kind of solidarity on the right until yesterday. I did see a lot of people yesterday start talking about that. So, I think that's one thing that, that you should also think about and do.
Is this a spark that sets off the powder keg? Um, no. I don't think this is the, I don't think this is the trigger. Remember, in any periods of conflict, especially low-intensity conflict, you have fault lines, and that may be racial, religious, political, ideological, class, econom, socioeconomic. You have, um, accelerators of conflict. So, I think I view yesterday definitely as an accelerator of conflict. It turns the temperature up. You have a pot of water on a stove, and accelerators bring that water to a low boil, and then you have a trigger. That pot is not going to boil over if it's not hot enough. If there's not, not already boiling water in there. So, I don't think Charlie Kirk was a trigger event. I look at it as an accelerator. I think a tri, a real trigger event is still to come. I could be wrong. That's my initial take. Uh, if we do see things start to spiral, which is obviously a possibility, and we do see reprisals, then yeah, maybe we look back and say, "Well, okay, Charlie Kirk was the, was the trigger for, for this worsening period."
Any other questions?
Jared, what's your opinion on the left for the most part celebrating Kirk's death? Yeah. Uh, for example, in Congress, GOP called for a moment of silence, and they were booed.
All right. I saw either yesterday or this morning, some, a reporter, I think, asked Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, uh, if something about toning down the political rhetoric, and she didn't exactly reject that, but she basically said, "Oh, well, you need to start with the president." So, I look at, actually, let me bring this up here. I'll tell you exactly what she said. She said, uh, Elizabeth Warren on Dems's toning down the rhetoric. She says, quote, "Oh, please, why don't you start with the president of the United States?" A little bit different tone than what we heard after the attempted assassination of President Trump. I think it's, uh, obviously horrific and infuriating seeing people gloat over this. I tend to agree with the sentiment that I've seen on social media, which is the left probably does not want to go down this road. Um, I, you know, back in 2019, I did this five-part series on, like, breaking down Civil War 2.0, you know, or sort of Civil War II. And I, I arrived at some conclusions, which, in hindsight, were very accurate. But one of the points I made in that video series is, if every conservative, we just woke up tomorrow morning, every conservative man in America, if we woke up tomorrow morning and we just said, "Well, we know what the problem is," we would run out of targets by lunch. And I think the left maybe doesn't, I don't think they realize that. So, I don't think anyone, I certainly they should not want to go down this road. But also, I'll also say this. You know, yesterday, one of the things I thought about was how angry Trump was. And I see some people in the chats, and I saw this on social media. This video that he did, they say it's, oh, it's AI, he shouldn't have done that. I don't know. I haven't even looked at it. I just, I read the transcript. But obviously, there is going to be a federal response to this. And one of the things that I've seen think tanks call for is designate, making a, a federal law enforcement designating or making a category of left-wing extremism or left-wing domestic violence. Maybe that happens, and maybe this is the, maybe this is the justification for going after armed left-wing groupers. Remember, it was back in July, was the July 4th, the weekend of July 4th in Alvarado, Texas. You have this, um, the ICE ambush where you have at least two shooters, and I believe at least one of them was a member of John Brown Gun Club, which is an armed leftist group, of attempting to murder some police officers there. So, if this does turn out to be a leftist shooter, I fully, I would say I'm, I'm starting to fully expect that the federal government will take a much closer look at these people, and it's, it's long overdue.
Also, any other questions, Jared?
Oh, yeah. And also, get medical training. You know, just looking at that video yesterday, there was not a lot that really appeared to me that could be done, uh, just in terms of preventing his death. There's a handful of things you obviously have to do, but everyone needs medical training. If you expect we are going to have a domestic conflict in this country, you need to be carrying a tourniquet and, you know, need to know how to use one, and you should probably take some Stop the Bleed classes or TC, or whatever they're calling it now, tactical combat casualty care. You must be able to stop bleeding. You got to keep the blood in the body. If you can keep the blood in the body and keep people breathing, they got a chance. If you can't, they don't.
Kirk was a moderate. What's up, Jake? Kirk was a moderate focused on peaceful debate, not the most hateful or hated guy on the right. It seems killing him is an attack on civility. Could this be supported by say, any, a foreign country like China or Russia to escalate tensions at home and keep us occupied at home? Well, you know, that's got to be part of the, consider the alternative phase of this analysis. Is the, the initial assumption is that this was a leftist shooter. Consider the alternative. What if it was a form-backed actor, or what if it was a, was a foreign actor? And that, it's a possibility. I can't say. Everything's conjecture and speculation right now. But obviously, is there any reason to believe this was more than a lone wolf?
Many moderates are canceling their future public events because of this risk. Will left-wing speakers do the same? You know, something, uh, that's something that, um, Laura Ingram talked about last night, basically, that now these college campuses have a reason to cancel conservative events because they say, "Oh, it's too much of a liability. We can't secure this place. We can't guarantee student safety." So, we're just not going to have this event at all, which is a realistic, if not likely, outcome of this. I don't know if left-wing speakers will, will curb their public appearances. If they were smart, they probably would, because this is a moment that is indelible. No one's going to forget this. This is not going to pass over in a matter of weeks or months. Uh, the, the feeling, I think, so I would say if they're smart, they would.
Last night on Twitter, you said you were, uh, you were warming to the thought, well, I think this may be becoming more likely, the thought that Trump may be the last president. You still feel that way this morning? So why? Yeah, Isaac, thanks for your question. And it's always good to sleep on things. All right. So, a lot of this comes, uh, from a couple things. Number one, from studying this, it's basically a three-phase campaign that the establishment left has has adopted. The establishment left has adopted. And it goes from protest, which is where we are now, to resistance, organized resistance, which will probably coincide and occur after the midterms, may, maybe some before. We have seen some glimpses of what I would say is selective resistance that has not been real popular, and I think that's one reason why they have not made a harder push into that second phase. There's just not enough support for it right now. Uh, and then the third phase would be a color revolution or popular revolution, or whatever you want to call it. They're two different things, but I think either one is, is possible. Uh, so, uh, that would coincide with the 2028 election. And if the election doesn't go their way, if it's failed, contested, if there's some, some credible, maybe some incredible doubt about the election outcome, obviously, I think if a Democrat doesn't win, they're, they're already doing this. I just read an article in the New York Times yesterday saying Trump is going to go steal the midterm elections. So, there's obviously going to be that sentiment, and I don't think dem, if a Democrat does not win in 2028, there's obviously going to be, you're going to have, you're going to have another, a third, one-third or more of your country doubt the outcome of an election. And that's something that we went through in 2016, and we went through it again in 2020, and to a lesser degree in 2024. But you had a certain portion of the country believe that the president was illegitimate or illegitimately elected in 2016 and 2020. And the question that I've been asking back then is, how many more election cycles is this country going to go having an illegitimate president being elected, or a president, presidential candidate being illegitimately elected, or unlawfully elected, at least the perception of that, before this maybe, this kind of electoral system collapses at a national level? So, I put that in the back of my mind that protest, resistance, revolution coinciding with the 2028 election. If a Democrat wins, obviously, they probably won't need a color revolution. But I will just be honest with you. There is a, a part of me in the back of my mind that says if there is a left-wing populist candidate who is unavoidably going to take this country towards democratic socialism, and this is again just speculation, but just consider the possibility. Are certain members of the Trump administration going to allow that team to take over knowing that it's going to lead to authoritarian government or autocratic government or abject socialism? And it's kind of unbelievable to think that that's a possibility right now, but maybe that is a possibility in 2028. And so, I do question, well, that's a, that's an intelligence gap. That's an unsatisfied requirement for me. Uh, I don't know. And I think you have to consider that possibility. The other thing is, I don't know this guy, Martin Armstrong, but some of our members do, and so they, they talk about it from time to time. Apparently, he has some kind of model that has some degree of accuracy. He's an economist, and he said 2020, by his model, the 2028 election is going to be the last election in the United States. Okay. So, we'll say that's a data point. I don't know if that's, I don't know how credible that is. So, I would say it's a possibility, and that's probably something everyone needs to take a long hard look at and determine as soon as possible where you're going to stand on that. Uh, if that is the case, how that affects your life at the local level. It's just another big reason why everyone should be focusing on intelligence and organizing at the local level, because if that does happen, if there is some national or federal level state breakdown, your local and county and state level politics probably becomes a lot more important in the wake of that.
Jud, any other questions? Let's do one or two more and we'll jump off.
Any thoughts on Steven Crowder's alleged email from an ATF officer? Possibly. I don't know. I haven't seen it. So, I don't know as far as possible.
Uh, everything else is about low-intensity conflict as a whole. If you want to take one of those, we can do one of those.
Give me, give me the best one of those, and then we'll jump over and finish, finish the brief.
All right. What would you consider a trigger event? A real mass casualty event, or I mean, they've already killed senators, shot at them, attempted to assassinate the president. What's left as a trigger event? Well, remember, you do not have a trigger event unless you have enough acceleration, right? If you think about this like a balloon, the trigger event pops the balloon, but a balloon that's not filled with hot air is not going to, not going to pop. You may, you may poke a hole in it, but it's not going to pop. So, uh, or, you know, if you think about a, a pressure cooker, right, if there's not a lot of pressure built up in, in that pot, the, the lid's not going to blow off. So, we're not going to get to a trigger event until there's enough accelerators of violence, until the social temperature is hot enough. Starting last year, one reason why I said we're not going to have riots if Trump wins, and we're not going to have, coinciding with the election, we're not going to have riots on inauguration day, not nationwide riots. People were talking about Summer of Love 2.0. I said it's not going to happen. And the reason was because there's not enough accelerators of conflict. Guys, this takes time to build, uh, these accelerators. But once, once the social temperature is hot enough, there's no telling. A trigger event is unpredictable. Could be, I mean, it could be literally anything. But in this country, I probably, you're looking at some, some armed violence. Probably. I look at that, the Charlotte bus murder, it's an accelerator of conflict. I think probably what happened to Charlie Kirk yesterday, probably an accelerator of conflict. And we're definitely not to the trigger yet. The social temperature is not hot enough. Even 2020, we went through from 2015 to 2020. Every single day, there was agitation in the media. There's agitation in the streets. That took years to build. It took years to build up. And we just do not, we got, we do have years of agitation, but it was not like what we saw in 2015 going into 2016, 17, 9 into 2020. So, so I think until we, until this country gets back to that point, we're probably unlikely to see a trigger event. In the meantime, that said, these things are unpredictable, and you know, and you just never know. I don't think we're close to the trigger yet. I, I will just say that.
All right, thanks for the question. All right, guys. With that, we're going to jump over to the high side, finish up our early warning briefing. Thanks for standing by, y'all. Finish up our early warning briefing for members. Head over to fordobserver.com/trial. Um, what do, Jared, what do we have coming up today? We got our homeland operations brief. So, we'll hear about the latest on federal operations going on in Chicago. Apparently, some more, some additional cities are about to be added to that list for this federal law enforcement surge. Um, all right. We'll talk about a few other things. All right. Uh, that's the really the biggest thing every day is this homeland operations brief. So, with that, everyone, thanks so much for your support. It's going to do it for our sit rep. We're going to jump over to the high side for early warning subscribers. Stand by, please.
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