Rick Santorum calls in for in-depth interview

In the wake of the latest debate and with the New Hampshire primary a day away, Glenn interviewed Rick Santorum on radio this morning. What does the candidate think of the latest attacks coming his way?

Read the transcript below:

PAT: Rick, everywhere I go people are asking me is Rick Santorum going to want condoms. Everywhere I go, that's the main question on their mind.

GLENN: And the answer you'll have us believe is no.

PAT: Is that the answer? Is that the answer?

GLENN: Is that the answer you have us believe?

SANTORUM: The answer I have you believe is no.

PAT: Really?

GLENN: Now ‑‑

SANTORUM: But ask Chris Matthews. There's a secret plan.

PAT: Uh‑huh.

GLENN: No, that's not a con ‑‑

SANTORUM: That I really do deeply ‑‑ I mean, this is crazy.

PAT: Yeah.

SANTORUM: I mean, we were talking about the Griswold decision which you know very well which was the precursor to the Roe versus Wade decision and judicial activism and, you know, the creation of new rights because the Court says so. And that's what I've opposed and will continue to oppose.

GLENN: Okay. Well ‑‑

SANTORUM: In this country.

GLENN: We hear your BS answer on the contraception. Now let me ask you this, because it's all about the right question: Is it a state's right to limit all private body parts to bowel and urination evacuation only?

STU: Jeez.

GLENN: Is that what you're going for?

SANTORUM: (Laughing). All I ‑‑

GLENN: Are you going to rename Kansas City Vatican City?

SANTORUM: Oh, my goodness.

GLENN: Do you believe when it comes to language that America should be Latin only?

PAT: Now you're asking the right questions.

SANTORUM: Oh, now you're ‑‑

PAT: Now you're pinning him down.

SANTORUM: You've pulled back the veil.

GLENN: Yeah, I told you it would be tough. We see you squirm in there.

Let me get to some real ‑‑

SANTORUM: I do support English‑only but it's really a ploy to get to Latin, just so you know.

PAT: Uh‑huh.

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: Uh‑huh.

GLENN: Yeah.

SANTORUM: Uh‑huh, there you go. Once you start one, there you go.

PAT: Slippery slope.

GLENN: You notice he didn't talk about the bowel and urination evacuation‑only.

PAT: Yeah, yeah. He conveniently ignored that question.

GLENN: He skipped over that.

SANTORUM: I skipped that. I skipped that, yeah.

GLENN: Let me get to a real question here. You have ‑‑ you have spent some money in your past, Rick, and you have also been for, you know, earmarks. You told us last time you were on, you explained the earmarks, you said that it was your duty. Well, you go ahead and explain it. Real quick, just try to do it real quick because I want to get to a bigger question.

SANTORUM: All I've said is that, you know, under the Constitution congress has the ability to appropriate funds and, you know, one of the ‑‑ one of the things that was generally done and frankly was done for decades is that members of congress, you know, in working with their states would identify things that they would want to spend money on and money that came from my state, taxes that were spent that were going to be reallocated back to the states and the senators in congress in that state would make sure that they were spent in a proper fashion and not just given to the executive branch and let them decide where that money was spent. There was abuse, that abuse led to higher spending, and Jim DeMint who also did those earmarks, too, and I and many others said we should end that abuse.

GLENN: Okay. Some people are saying that you're an economic liberal. And I mean, honestly just about everybody is an economic liberal compared to me now. I want to shut the whole, whole darn thing down enough to the point to where it doesn't ‑‑ we don't become the Articles of Confederation but we still have enough government to be able to manage the country and stop all this spending because we're completely out of money. Tell me about your economic liberalism.

SANTORUM: Well, I propose ‑‑ this economic liberal has proposed $5 trillion in spending cuts over five years, a balanced budget in five years, specific ‑‑ as the Wall Street Journal says, nobody was out there working on entitlement reform. Well, you know, Glenn, that's where the problem is in this country. It's the whole idea that Washington has entitled you to certain things simply because you are here in this country and/or you may be in a situation that requires some help at some point this time. That is the problem. We need to get Washington out of that business, get those ‑‑ get those responsibilities back to the states and give them the flexibility to design programs, if they want to design programs, to deal with ‑‑ to deal with these issues. So if you're looking for the person, the only person in this race and one of the few people who actually stood up when it ‑‑ when we weren't running deficits, when we weren't in fiscal crisis as we are today and said, in the second oldest state in the country, Pennsylvania, as the youngest member of the Senate and talked about the need for Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, these big programs that affect disproportionately seniors and I was leading the charge in all those issues. In fact I'm getting questions here in New Hampshire: I can't believe you're out there talking about specific reforms to Social Security, and the answer is yes, I am. Why? Because we need leadership. And so if anyone actually questions my bona fides, don't look at, you know, a few earmarks here and there during my, what I believe my constitutional duty to represent the interests of my state, look at the fundamental reforms that I have been advocating for 20 years in Washington D.C. before anyone was talking about them.

GLENN: By the way, I just want to point out, I don't think it's ‑‑ I think it's bona fides and not bona fatties unless that was a comment about me, Rick. I'm just ‑‑

SANTORUM: Did I say that?

PAT: No.

GLENN: No. All right. It sounded like it.

PAT: Rick, we learned last week from the New York Times ‑‑

GLENN: Maybe I'm sexy.

SANTORUM: It's that Latin again.

GLENN: No, I know. It might be sensitive every time somebody says fatty. Go ahead.

PAT: And we learned last week from the New York Times, and you just said the word: Entitlement. Now, we know that's code speak for your hideous racism. Do you want to explain why you hate all people of color?

SANTORUM: Oh, my goodness. You know ‑‑

GLENN: You know what, can you play this ‑‑ I would like to hear this answer. Can you play this? I hate to bring this up on you, Rick. You know you're a friend but this really was ‑‑ this really doesn't make sense to me. Do you have that audio by any chance?

PAT: No. It was actually printed. It was the op‑ed, remember, from last week?

GLENN: No, no, the audio of where you said, you know, look, we want to make sure that we take care of all people but we shouldn't be giving, you know, black people a handout or ‑‑

SANTORUM: No, no, no, no, no. First off, I didn't ‑‑ I listened to that, I looked at it. I think it was one of those things where I sort of got my tongue tied there for a second and because I just, first off I don't think that, I don't believe that. But I do believe in the concept of what I said that we shouldn't create dependency, that we should create opportunity and, you know, I'm ‑‑ the more I look at it, the more I ‑‑ and by the way, no one in the room ‑‑ and there were 100 reporters in that room ‑‑ came up to me with that question. I think it was ‑‑ I feel to this day that it was simply just, you know, I started to say one thing and then sort of stopped and said something else. But the point is a valid point. The point is that we need to create a society of opportunity instead of dependency and I would absolutely encourage everyone to look at the work that I've done when I was in the United States Senate in working with the African‑American community in the State of Pennsylvania and across this country, no Republican had more interaction and worked closer with the urban areas of my state, with the African‑American community. I got the endorsement of the Black Pastors of Philadelphia which is not, let me assure you, a conservative group because of the work that I did in the inner city in trying to ‑‑ tried to help improve the quality of life there. And the idea that, you know, you make a little bobble with your language and all of a sudden you're ‑‑ you know, you're someone who's insensitive or feels ‑‑ or tries to stereotype blacks is an absolute absurdity and it simply is not what I said and certainly from my actions nothing close to the record that I have.

GLENN: I will tell you that I'm sick of even the pandering now of saying, "Well, I've worked with this group or this group." It's not that you were pandering but people that are pointing this thing out and, you know, "I work with this group or that group." What difference does it make? We all need to work together. The policies are for white, black, brown, yellow.

SANTORUM: I agree.

GLENN: Purple, orange. It doesn't matter. It should be for humans. We are all helping humans and American humans first. I mean, that's just the way it should be. And I don't ‑‑ you know, now I'd be ‑‑ now I'll be a xenophobist for saying that, you know, it should be Americans first.

Let me go to the reduction in the military and its connection to the private hill tear that is being created. Can you tell me anything about the reductions and the private military, the use of ‑‑

SANTORUM: Well, when you say "private military," I'm not ‑‑

GLENN: State Department ‑‑

SANTORUM: It does ‑‑

GLENN: Reducing the number of troops ‑‑

SANTORUM: Private contractors?

GLENN: Yeah, private contractors, reduce ‑‑ the reduction of troops in Iran and using private contractors instead.

SANTORUM: Right.

GLENN: Taking the uniform off and doing it in a different way.

SANTORUM: Well, again, I mean, we've seen this over and over as we originally entered Iraq, it was because we simply didn't have the military capability, we didn't have the force structure to be able to support the mission that we had and so we brought in a bunch of former, you know, former military, on a private contract basis to do a lot of the personal security for people in the country and the like. And now we have the president further now proposing reductions in the military, which is going to lead, as you mentioned, to further growth in these ‑‑ in a variety of these companies that do private, sort of a private military. That is ‑‑ that's not the direction we should be going. You know, we need to be very up front about our costs, we need to be very up front about the accountability of the people that we are deploying around this, around the world to defend our interests, and the less we have of the private military and the more that we have of our men and women in uniform who are accountable to the behavior, the better off we are.

GLENN: Tell me about your ‑‑ because this is being touted ‑‑ your anti‑gun record.

SANTORUM: What?

GLENN: You haven't heard that one yet?

PAT: You haven't seen that yet.

GLENN: Oh, that's everywhere. You're anti‑gun.

PAT: Every time we talk to you, Rick ‑‑

SANTORUM: I'm (inaudible) with the NRA. I'm an NRA member.

GLENN: Yeah, but you can buy that.

SANTORUM: Oh, yeah, sure.

GLENN: Yeah, that and the Better Business Bureau, you can buy into those. For 50 bucks, they will give you an A‑plus rating. Yeah, that's what they all say.

SANTORUM: Well, call Chris Cox. He's the head of the NRA.

GLENN: Yeah, I know.

SANTORUM: And goes out there and fights for the rights of gun owners on a daily basis.

GLENN: I know.

SANTORUM: We work with them very, very closely. I'm as a leader with them in pushing forward. Here's the amazing thing. The guy who attacks me on this is Ron Paul. Ron Paul, if it was Ron Paul had his way, he voted against the most important gun issue in, well, maybe ever because it was a gun manufacturer's liability bill. As you know, Glenn, there were all these trial lawyers were going out and suing gun manufacturers if their gun was used in the commission of a crime. Whether the gun functioned properly or not didn't matter. They were going to hold them liable for any damage that occurred from someone being shot with their gun. And literally manufacturers were going to pack up and leave the United States, which meant we wouldn't have any guns ‑‑ there wouldn't be any guns made in this country or be able to be available to be made in this country and so I'm one of the guys that led the effort to put a ban on these types of lawsuits that passed on a bipartisan basis. Ron Paul was one of I think three Republicans who voted no. This is the kind of ‑‑ for him ‑‑ which would have eliminated de facto, de facto eliminated, one of those Latin words again, de facto eliminated the ‑‑

GLENN: He's slowly working it in. He is a Papist ‑‑

SANTORUM: (Inaudible) the Second Amendment.

GLENN: He's a Papist progressive. He just throws those words in and before you know it, we're all speaking Latin. I know. How long before you make us wear the hat and the shoes that the pope wears?

PAT: (Laughing).

SANTORUM: Got to wear the red shoes, though. Got to wear those red shoes. Slippers, not shoes. Slippers.

GLENN: May I ask you ‑‑

SANTORUM: Slippers, you can't work and so we're going to keep you in the house and keep you under control. You didn't know about all this, huh?

GLENN: May I ask you, how much money have you raised since ‑‑

SANTORUM: Well, we've got a money bomb going right now at RickSantorum.com. We're trying to raise a million dollars here between now and the next few days to get us ready so we can aggressively go out and compete in South Carolina which is the next big primary after New Hampshire and so that's RickSantorum.com if you can help. I can tell you we raised more money in the three days after the Iowa caucuses than I did in the entire year before.

GLENN: Well, wait. Rick, I think you were, you were running your campaign off of candy wrappers.

STU: (Laughing).

SANTORUM: That's an insult to candy wrappers.

GLENN: (Laughing). I mean, that's not really a big statement there.

SANTORUM: Yeah.

GLENN: You're facing ‑‑

SANTORUM: It's true.

GLENN: You're facing Rick Perry alone who I think has, what, $65 million?

STU: No, I don't ‑‑

SANTORUM: Well, reports are that I guess his ‑‑ the reports says his following is like, he has like $3 million left in the bank or something like that. He, I tell you he burned through millions and millions in Iowa. We spent $30,000 on television in Iowa.

GLENN: How are you doing in the polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina? Can you win South Carolina?

SANTORUM: Yeah, absolutely. I think the last poll I saw, we were within three points of Romney in South Carolina.

PAT: Wow.

SANTORUM: And we were just down there yesterday, just made a little quick visit down there for the day and had huge enthusiastic crowds up in the upstate which is, you know, the conservative upstate of South Carolina, the Greenville/Spartanburg area and we'll be heading down there first thing Wednesday morning and do the sprint. We feel like that's a great place for us to really make this a two‑person race.

GLENN: I ‑‑

SANTORUM: We need to get it down to a two‑person race and if we can finish very strongly in either first or second, a strong second in South Carolina, we'll turn it into a two‑person race.

GLENN: I only have just about two minutes left here. Can you help me ‑‑ not even that. Ninety seconds. How are you going to appeal to ‑‑ because while you're not Mitt Romney and certainly not Newt Gingrich, you're not a libertarian.

SANTORUM: I'm not.

GLENN: How are you appeal to the people that ‑‑ like I really lean ‑‑ I think I'm a libertarian that leans more ‑‑ you know, I believe in a little more government than some of the Ron Paul people do. How do you appeal to those people while not compromising your values? So what are the things that you can say to a Ron Paul supporters that they will understand that is true about you, that's not some campaign promise? Where is the libertarian streak in you?

SANTORUM: Well, you know, if you look at, look at the ‑‑ I go with entitlement reform. I mean, you know, welfare reform was a bill that I helped author and I was representing a state with, you know, with big cities and lots of folks who were dependent upon these programs and the second highest per capita population of seniors in the country and I'm out talking about limited government and I'm talking about removing entitlement. I'm talking about, back in the 1990s talking about removing personal retirement accounts which is something that the Cato Institute was pushing back then. So I mean, I think you'll find that I very much believe in free people, free enterprise and free markets but, you know, I do believe in a referee private sector and I do believe government has some roles for helping, for being involved in not just national security but providing some sort of, you know, basic safety net, particularly for those who are on the margins of society, it should be done at the state level, not at the federal level, but I do believe that government has a role to play in that regard to make sure that, you know, we have some basic transitional safety net or help for those, particularly those with disabilities, and it's a little personal to me because of my own situation but it's something that I think is an important safety net that has to be out there.

GLENN: Gotta go. Laus deos. Yeah! You know what it means!

PAT: Starting already.

GLENN: All right. Thank you very much, Rick. I appreciate it. RickSantorum.com.

Fort Knox exposed: Is America's gold MISSING?

Christopher Furlong / Staff | Getty Images

President Trump promised that we would get a peek inside Fort Knox, but are we ready for what we might find?

In this new era of radical transparency, the possibility that the Deep State's darkest secrets could be exposed has many desperate for answers to old questions. Recently, Glenn has zeroed in on gold, specifically America's gold reserves, which are supposed to be locked away inside the vaults of Fort Knox. According to the government, there are 147.3 million ounces of gold stored within several small secured rooms that are themselves locked behind a massive 22 ton vault door, but the truth is that no one has officially seen this gold since 1953. An audit is long overdue, and President Trump has already shown interest in the idea.

America's gold reserve has been surrounded by suspicion for the better part of a hundred years. It all started in 1933, when FDR effectivelynationalized the United States's private gold stores, forcing Americans to sell their gold to the government. This gold was melted down, forged into bars, and stored in the newly constructed U.S. Bullion Depository building at Fort Knox. By 1941, Fort Knox had held 649.6 million ounces of gold—which, you may have noticed, was 502.3 million ounces more than today. We'll come back to that.

By 1944, World War II was ending, and the Allies began planning how to rebuild Europe. The U.N. held a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the USD was established as the world's reserve currency. This meant that any country (though not U.S. citizens) could exchange the USD for gold at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. Already, you can see where our gold might have gone.

Jump to the 1960s, where Lyndon B. Johnson was busy digging America into a massive debt hole. Between the Vietnam War and Johnson's "Great Society" project, the U.S. was bleeding cash and printing money to keep up. But now Fort Knox no longer held enough physical gold to cover the $35 an ounce rate promised by the Bretton Woods agreement. France took notice of this weakness and began to redeem hundreds of millions of dollars. In the 70s Nixon staunched this gushing wound by halting foreign nations from redeeming dollars for gold, but this had the adverse effect of ending the gold standard.

This brings us to the present, where inflation is through the roof, no one knows how much gold is actually inside Fort Knox, and someone in America has been buying a LOT of gold. Who is buying this gold? Where is it going and for what purpose? Glenn has a few ideas, and one of them is MUCH better than the other:

The path back to gold

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

One possibility is that all of this gold that has been flooding into America is in preparation for a shift back to a gold-backed, or partial-gold-backed system. The influx of gold corresponds with a comment recently made by Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who said he was going to:

“Monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.”

Glenn pointed out that per a 1972 law, the gold in Fort Knox is currently set at a fixed value of $42 an ounce. At the time of this writing, gold was valued at $2,912.09 an ounce, which is more than a 6,800 percent increase. If the U.S. stockpile was revalued to reflect current market prices, it could be used to stabilize the dollar. This could even mean a full, or partial return to the gold standard, depending on the amount of gold currently being imported.

Empty coffers—you will own nothing

Raymond Boyd / Contributor | Getty Images

Unfortunately, Glenn suspects there is another, darker purpose behind the recent gold hubbub.

As mentioned before, the last realaudit of Fort Knox was done under President Eisenhower, in 1953. While the audit passed, a report from the Secretary of the Treasury revealed that a mere 13.6 percent was checked. For the better part of a century, we've had no idea how much gold is present under Fort Knox. After the gold hemorrhage in the 60s, many were suspicious of the status of our gold supply. In the 80s, a wealthy businessman named Edward Durell released over a decade's worth of research that led him to conclude that Fort Knox was all but empty. In short, he claimed that the Federal Reserve had siphoned off all the gold and sold it to Europe.

What would it mean if America's coffers are empty? According to a post by X user Matt Smith that Glenn shared, empty coffers combined with an influx of foreign gold could represent the beginning of a new, controlled economy. We couldstill be headed towards a future where you'll ownnothing.

Glenn: The most important warning of your lifetime—AI is coming for you

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Artificial intelligence isn’t coming. It’s here. The future we once speculated about is no longer science fiction—it’s reality. Every aspect of our lives, from how we work to how we think, is about to change forever. And if you’re not ready for it, you’re already behind. This isn’t just another technological leap. This is the biggest shift humanity has ever faced.

The last call before the singularity

I've been ringing this bell for 30 years. Thirty years warning you about what’s coming. And now, here we are. This isn’t a drill. This isn’t some distant future. It’s happening now. If you don’t understand what’s at stake, you need to wake up—because we have officially crossed the event horizon of artificial intelligence.

What’s an event horizon? It’s the edge of a black hole—the point where you can’t escape, no matter how hard you try. AI is that black hole. The current is too strong. The waterfall is too close. If you haven’t been paying attention, you need to start right now. Because once we reach Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), there is no turning back.

You’ve heard me talk about this for decades. AI isn’t just a fancy Siri. It isn’t just ChatGPT. We are on the verge of machines that will outthink every human who has ever lived—combined. ASI won’t just process information—it will anticipate, decide, and act faster than any of us can comprehend. It will change everything about our world, about our lives.

And yet, the conversation around AI has been wrong. People think the real dangers are coming later—some distant dystopian nightmare. But we are already in it. We’ve passed the point where AI is just a tool. It’s becoming the master. And the people who don’t learn to use it now—who don’t understand it, who don’t prepare for it—are going to be swallowed whole.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Glenn, you’ve spent years warning us about AI, about how dangerous it is. And now you’re telling us to embrace it?" Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Because if you don’t use this tool—if you don’t learn to master it—then you will be at its mercy.

This is not an option anymore. This is survival.

How you must prepare—today

I need you to take AI seriously—right now. Not next year, not five years from now. This weekend.

Here’s what I want you to do: Open up one of these AI tools—Grok 3, ChatGPT, anything advanced—and start using it. If you’re a CEO, have it analyze your competitors. If you’re an artist, let it critique your work. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, have it optimize your budget. Ask it questions. Push it to its limits. Learn what it can do—because if you don’t, you will be left behind.

Let me be crystal clear: AI is not your friend. It’s not your partner. It’s not something to trust. AI is a shovel—an extremely powerful shovel, but still just a tool. And if you don’t understand that, you’re in trouble.

We’ve already seen what happens when we surrender to technology without thinking. Social media rewired our brains. Smartphones reshaped our culture. AI will do all that—and more. If you don’t take control now, AI will control you.

Ask yourself: When AI makes decisions for you—when it anticipates your needs before you even know them—at what point do you stop being the one in charge? At what point does AI stop being a tool and start being your master?

And that’s not even the worst of it. The next step—transhumanism—is coming. It will start with good intentions. Elon Musk is already developing implants to help people walk again. And that’s great. But where does it stop? What happens when people start “upgrading” themselves? What happens when people choose to merge with AI?

I know my answer. I won’t cross that line. But you’re going to have to decide for yourself. And if you don’t start preparing now, that decision will be made for you.


The final warning—act now or be left behind

I need you to hear me. This is not optional. This is not something you can ignore. AI is here. And if you don’t act now, you will be lost.

The next 18 months will change everything. People who don’t prepare—who don’t learn to use AI—will be scrambling to catch up. And they won’t catch up. The gap will be too wide. You’ll either be leading, or you’ll be swallowed whole.

So start this weekend. Learn it. Test it. Push it. Master it. Because the people who don’t? They will be the tools.

The decision is yours. But time is running out.

The coming AI economy and the collapse of traditional jobs

Think back to past technological revolutions. The industrial revolution put countless blacksmiths, carriage makers, and farmhands out of business. The internet wiped out entire industries, from travel agencies to brick-and-mortar retail. AI is bigger than all of those combined. This isn’t just about job automation—it’s about job obliteration.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers—people who thought their jobs were untouchable—will find themselves replaced by AI. A machine that can diagnose disease with greater accuracy, draft legal documents in seconds, or design infrastructure faster than an entire team of engineers will be cheaper, faster, and better than human labor. If you’re not preparing for that reality, you’re already falling behind.

What does this mean for you? It means constant adaptation. Every three to five years, you will need to redefine your role, retrain, and retool. The only people who survive this AI revolution will be the ones who understand its capabilities and learn to work with it, not against it.

The moral dilemma: When do you stop being human?

The real danger of AI isn’t just economic—it’s existential. When AI merges with humans, we will face an unprecedented question: At what point do we stop being human?

Think about it. If you implant a neural chip that gives you access to the entire internet in your mind, are you still the same person? If your thoughts are intertwined with AI-generated responses, where do you end and AI begins? This is the future we are hurtling toward, and few people are even asking the right questions.

I’m asking them now. And you should be too. Because that line—between human and machine—is coming fast. You need to decide now where you stand. Because once we cross it, there is no going back.

Final thoughts: Be a leader, not a follower

AI isn’t a passing trend. It’s not a gadget or a convenience. It is the most powerful force humanity has ever created. And if you don’t take the time to understand it now, you will be at its mercy.

This is the defining moment of our time. Will you be a master of AI? Or will you be mastered by it? The choice is yours. But if you wait too long, you won’t have a choice at all.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Trump's Zelenskyy deal falls apart: What happened and what's next?

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Trump offered Zelenskyy a deal he couldn’t refuse—but Zelenskyy rejected it outright.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington to sign a historic agreement aimed at ending the brutal war ravaging Ukraine. Joined by Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump met with Zelenskyy and the press before the leaders were set to retreat behind closed doors to finalize the deal. Acting as a gracious host, Trump opened the meeting by praising Zelenskyy and the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers. He expressed enthusiasm for the proposed agreement, emphasizing its benefits—such as access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals for the U.S.—and publicly pledged continued American aid in exchange.

Zelenskyy, however, didn’t share Trump’s optimism. Throughout the meeting, he interrupted repeatedly and openly criticized both Trump and Vance in front of reporters. Tensions escalated until Vance, visibly frustrated, fired back. The exchange turned the meeting hostile, and by its conclusion, Trump withdrew his offer. Rather than staying in Washington to resolve the conflict, Zelenskyy promptly left for Europe to seek support from the European Union.

As Glenn pointed out, Trump had carefully crafted this deal to benefit all parties, including Russia. Zelenskyy’s rejection was a major misstep.

Trump's generous offer to Zelenskyy

Glenn took to his whiteboard—swapping out his usual chalkboard—to break down Trump’s remarkable deal for Zelenskyy. He explained how it aligned with several of Trump’s goals: cutting spending, advancing technology and AI, and restoring America’s position as the dominant world power without military action. The deal would have also benefited the EU by preventing another war, revitalizing their economy, and restoring Europe’s global relevance. Ukraine and Russia would have gained as well, with the war—already claiming over 250,000 lives—finally coming to an end.

The media has portrayed last week’s fiasco as an ambush orchestrated by Trump to humiliate Zelenskyy, but that’s far from the truth. Zelenskyy was only in Washington because he had already rejected the deal twice—first refusing Vice President Vance and then Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was Zelenskyy who insisted on traveling to America to sign the deal at the White House. If anyone set an ambush, it was him.

The EU can't help Ukraine

JUSTIN TALLIS / Contributor | Getty Images

After clashing with Trump and Vance, Zelenskyy wasted no time leaving D.C. The Ukrainian president should have stayed, apologized to Trump, and signed the deal. Given Trump’s enthusiasm and a later comment on Truth Social—where he wrote, “Zelenskyy can come back when he is ready for peace”—the deal could likely have been revived.

Meanwhile, in London, over a dozen European leaders, joined by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, convened an emergency meeting dubbed the “coalition of the willing” to ensure peace in Ukraine. This coalition emerged as Europe’s response to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal. By the meeting’s end, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a four-point plan to secure Ukrainian independence.

Zelenskyy, however, appears less than confident in the coalition’s plan. Recently, he has shifted his stance toward the U.S., apologizing to Trump and Vance and expressing gratitude for the generous military support America has already provided. Zelenskyy now says he wants to sign Trump’s deal and work under his leadership.

This is shaping up to be another Trump victory.

Glenn: No more money for the war machine, Senator McConnell

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Senator McConnell, your call for more Pentagon spending is as tone-deaf as it is reckless. The United States already spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined — over $877 billion in 2023 alone, dwarfing China ($292 billion), Russia ($86 billion), and the entire EU’s collective defense budgets. And yet here you are, clamoring for more, as if throwing cash at an outdated war machine will somehow secure our future.

The world is changing, Senator, and your priorities are stuck in a bygone era.

Aircraft carriers — those floating behemoths you and the Pentagon so dearly love — are relics of the past. In the next real conflict, they’ll be as useless as horses were in World War I. Speaking of which, Europe entered that war with roughly 25 million horses; by 1918, fewer than 10 million remained, slaughtered by machine guns and artillery they couldn’t outrun.

That’s the fate awaiting your precious carriers against modern threats — sunk by hypersonic missiles or swarms of AI-driven drones before they can even launch a jet. The 1950s called, Senator — they want their war plans back.

The future isn’t in steel and jet fuel; it’s in artificial intelligence and artificial superintelligence. Every dollar spent on yesterday’s hardware is a dollar wasted in three years when AI upends everything we know about warfare. Worse, with the Pentagon’s track record, every dollar spent today could balloon into two or three dollars of inflation tomorrow, thanks to the House and Senate’s obscene spending spree.

We’re drowning in $34 trillion of national debt — 128% of GDP, a level unseen since World War II. Annual deficits hit $1.7 trillion in 2023, and interest payments alone are projected to top $1 trillion by 2026.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s a fiscal time bomb.

And yet you want to shovel more taxpayer money into a Pentagon that hasn’t passed a single audit in its history? Six attempts since 2018, six failures — trillions unaccounted for, waste so rampant that it defies comprehension. It’s irresponsible — bordering on criminal — to suggest more spending when the DOD can’t even count the cash it’s got.

The real threat isn’t just from abroad, though those dangers are profound. It’s from within. The call is coming from inside the house, Senator — and not just the House, but the Senate too. Your refusal to adapt is jeopardizing our security more than any foreign adversary.

Look at China’s drone shows — thousands of synchronized lights painting the sky. Now imagine those aren’t fireworks but weaponized drones, each one cheap, precise, and networked by AI. A single swarm could cripple our planes, ships, tanks, and troops before we fire a shot. Ukraine’s drone wars have already shown this reality: $500 drones taking out $10 million tanks. That’s the future staring us down, and we’re still polishing Cold War relics.

Freeze every bloated project.

Redirect everything — every dime, every mind — toward winning the AI/ASI race. That’s the only battlefield that matters. We’ve got enough stockpiles to handle any foreseeable war in the next three years and a president fighting to end conflicts, not start them. Your plea for more spending isn’t just misguided — it’s a betrayal of the American people sinking under debt and inflation while you chase ghosts of wars past.

Or is it even that senator? Perhaps I have buried the lede, but I am not sure if the following stats will help people understand why this op-ed might have been written by someone in your office.

Your state, Kentucky is:

  • 45th in GDP Per Capita
  • 44th in Employment
  • 42nd in High School Diplomas

And 11th in Defense-related defense contract spending

Who are you actually concerned about, Senator? The safety of the American people or your war machine buddies?

Thanks, but no thanks.