We Won't Get Fooled Again

Something about the "America First" movement doesn't feel right.

Several people have asked me for “evidence” for my opinions. I’ll give you what I know, as honestly as I can, but I would never ask anyone to rely solely on my word. I’m human. I make mistakes. I have biases. I try to ground what I say in observable facts, but in the end, I’m offering my conclusions—nothing more, nothing less. You should make your own decisions on the issues shaping our political moment.

That said, let me lay out what concerns me. I genuinely do not care what Fuentes thinks, or what the anti-Boomer crowd rants about online, or which direction Tucker, Candace, or Shapiro take their latest feud. What I care about is the way this constant fratricide on the right is becoming dangerous—and entirely unnecessary. We are eating our own at the exact moment when conservatism is positioned for one of the largest political victories in modern history.

In an interview this weekend, I warned that just as the right is poised to capitalize on years of left-wing overreach, there are forces determined to tear us apart. Young men, especially, are drifting toward a radicalized “America First” aesthetic not because the right failed them, but because the left did. The emasculation of young men, the collapse of public order, illegal immigration on a historic scale, economic disorder, and cultural rot—these are products of the modern left and the go-along-to-get-along Republicans who enable it.

Consider foreign policy. The same administration that helped instigate a color-revolution dynamic in Ukraine, then funneled billions—arguably trillions when you count the total Western outlays—into that conflict after practically daring Russia to invade, suddenly plays purity police when the U.S. assists Israel, a longstanding ally in a brutal region. Overnight, helping Israel becomes evidence that “Israel is running the U.S. government.” The inconsistency is stunning.

Or take the economy. We’re told Trump caused today’s high prices—even though the inflation rate under Biden ran so hot for so long that even today’s “lower” rate sits atop four years of accumulated cost increases. Meanwhile, Republicans are blamed for the healthcare mess created by a law Democrats passed alone, against every conservative prediction, and which is now collapsing exactly as critics said it would.

Once again, the conservative movement is expected to pay for the sins of the radical left.

This is why the sudden rise of the new “America First” movement feels, frankly, a little too convenient. It mirrors every caricature the media has tried to paste onto conservatives for decades. The timing is perfect, the rhetoric suspiciously on-the-nose, and the effect—splintering the right—exactly what the left would want. That’s why I keep asking: Why this, and why now?

History, I believe, will mark the assassination of Charlie Kirk as an inflection point. Conservatism must choose either to stay the course—disciplined, moral, and focused—or veer into something darker. Charlie was, in many ways, the movement’s conscience. His absence has created a vacuum.

Some of you have said you trust me. Honestly, that scares the absolute crap out of me. I take that trust very seriously, but ask you to recognize that I’m just a normal guy doing his best with the tools he has. My superpower is being ordinary and normal.

My only advice is Reagan’s maxim: trust, but verify.

I hope my suspicions are wrong. But I know how the left operates. They are experts at starting fires and letting others clean up the wreckage—experts at infiltrating their opposition while enforcing iron discipline within their own ranks.

Remember Robert Conquest’s Three Laws:

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

All I ask is simple: let’s not get fooled again.