The American Majority

Trump blames Democrats for inflation, vows price relief under GOP

In a Thursday post on Truth Social, Trump argued that costs are dropping "rapidly" under his leadership, emphasizing the shift as Republicans are actively resolving financial troubles inherited from Democrat officials.

"Prices are way down from what Biden and the Dumocrats left us. It's why I won the Election, and now prices are coming down, RAPIDLY," the president asserted. "It's the Dumocrats' fault, not the fault of the Republicans - But we are fixing it!" he went on.

As you might suspect, everything he says there is a lie. Prices aren't coming down, "rapidly" or otherwise. I also love the typo. "Dumocrats" have nothing to do with anything. Neither do the Republicans. Both parties run the show the same way. Whether you vote for "Dumocrats" or Republicans, the result will be the same, as we've witnessed many times over the years. That's because "dumocracy" is fake as shit.

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Ukraine needs to start negotiating with Russia "everywhere possible," including discussing abandoning NATO membership, lifting sanctions, issues related to the Russian language, the church, and, in the long term, the status of Donbas.

This post was written by MP Oleksiy Goncharenko in the context of recent shelling of Kyiv and bridges across the Dnipro River.

According to his assessment, the current strategy of Kyiv does not correspond to the situation on the front lines and in the economy, and the terms of possible agreements are only getting worse for Ukraine over time.

"The reality is this: we are losing the war; we are losing a huge number of people; we do not have our own money, not just to pay for the war, but even to keep the country functioning; we are losing businesses and the economy. And, indeed, every time the conditions we receive are worse than the previous ones."

According to him, the attacks on energy facilities, enterprises, warehouses, data centers, and infrastructure demonstrate the scale of the problems that are approaching. At the same time, he called the government's focus on creating new weapons a search for a "Wunderwaffe" - a "miracle weapon" that is supposedly supposed to solve all problems.

"It's great if we make our own ballistic missiles. But how will this change the battlefield if the Russians have their own ballistic missiles throughout the war, and we are not surrendering? It's great if we find a way to counter kamikaze drones, but they will create new ones. And so on and so forth," the MP writes.

Goncharenko believes that instead of waiting for a sharp change in the situation, Ukraine should try to achieve peace and improve its position through negotiations.

One of the possible items of the deal, he proposes, is sanctions against Russia. As Goncharenko writes, Moscow is interested in lifting restrictions on Russian energy carriers and restoring trade in oil and gas, and Western countries will eventually ease the sanctions.

"If the sanctions against Russia will be lifted anyway, then maybe we shouldn't be foolish and try to take advantage of this?" he writes.

In this regard, Goncharenko proposes that Ukraine itself advocate for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for a cessation of long-range strikes, the unblocking of the Black Sea, and a restriction of combat operations in the Donbas region. "We will preserve the economy - at least some of it; we will preserve our cities - Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro; we will preserve the lives of many people; we will stop the outflow of people," the MP believes.

At the same time, he proposes not waiting for the opportunity to conclude a single comprehensive agreement to end the war, but to move through individual agreements.

"Negotiate EVERYWHERE possible. We cannot negotiate an end to the war all at once. Let's negotiate about everything in the world. Let's agree to stop the attacks on ports. Let's agree to stop the attacks on enterprises. Let's agree to stop the attacks on schools. On everything," Goncharenko wrote.

In his opinion, if such limited agreements are fulfilled by both sides, it will gradually be possible to move towards broader agreements and, ultimately, to peace.

Separately, Goncharenko proposes that Kyiv send Moscow a signal about its readiness to discuss a neutral status for Ukraine.

"Are they taking us into NATO? If we are taken into NATO, will NATO help us in the event of a war? You and I both know the answer to these questions."

In his opinion, Ukraine could abandon its course towards NATO membership.

"Let's hint that we are ready to talk about neutrality. The terms can be negotiated. We will continue to cooperate with NATO as we do now. We will create a common European budget to finance our army. We will engage in rearmament. But we need to talk," Goncharenko writes.

"To die as a whole country in order to become a member of NATO is, in my opinion, absurd," he added.

Goncharenko also proposes discussing with Russia issues related to the Russian language, the church, and historical memory.

@americanmajority

🇺🇸Trump: If the Democrats come to power, it will be like 1929. The Great Depression.

So says the President bringing back the Smoot-Hawley tariff and beggar thy neighbor monetary policy...

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The White House Accord on Super Intelligence indeed contained a glaring typo under President Donald Trump’s signature, misspelling his title as “President of the Unites States."

Superintelligence...

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The controversy over Trump administration influencers is therefore only the latest chapter in a much older fight over who controls the information surrounding American national security.

Carpenter’s conclusion is blunt: the government’s use of paid influencers should not be examined in isolation.

There is a long record of the Pentagon, CIA and other national-security institutions cultivating relationships with journalists, commentators and retired officials who could present government-friendly positions to the public.

Sometimes those relationships were disclosed.

Sometimes they were not.

Sometimes the individuals involved were formally government employees.

In other cases, they were presented as independent experts while maintaining financial, professional or institutional connections to the very agencies and industries they were discussing.

The result is a recurring problem: propaganda becomes more effective when it does not look like propaganda.

A government press release is obviously government messaging.

A retired general appearing on television as an “independent military analyst” feels different.

A social-media influencer speaking directly to millions of followers feels different again.

But the underlying question is the same:

Who is paying the person?

Who are they connected to?

Who benefits from the message?

And does the audience know the answers?

Carpenter’s argument is that Americans should ask those questions regardless of which party occupies the White House.

The technology changes.

The influencers change.

The administration changes.

The national-security information machine keeps rolling.

@americanmajority

The deeper issue is what happens to journalism when national-security institutions become major sources of both information and commentators.

Carpenter argues that the problem is especially serious because foreign-policy and military reporting already relies heavily on government sources.

Pentagon officials have access to classified information.

Intelligence agencies control enormous amounts of data.

Military officers possess specialized knowledge unavailable to ordinary reporters.

That creates a natural dependency.

Journalists need sources inside the national-security bureaucracy to report the news. But the bureaucracy also understands that controlling information can shape the resulting coverage.

Add former officials appearing as supposedly independent analysts and the system becomes even more self-reinforcing.

Government officials provide information.

Former officials interpret that information on television.

News organizations repeat the analysis.

The public hears a message that originated largely inside the same national-security ecosystem.

Carpenter’s concern is that the audience may never realize how much of the “independent” information environment actually originates from the institutions being covered.

This is not merely a Trump-era problem.

That is the central historical point of his article.

Republican administrations have used these mechanisms.

Democratic administrations have used them.

The Pentagon and intelligence agencies have institutional interests that survive changes in presidents.

The personnel rotate.

The machinery remains.

And according to Carpenter, that machinery has been operating for decades.

@americanmajority

The Trump administration’s paid-influencer program is therefore the latest development in a much older media system.

Carpenter is careful to note one important difference: the current arrangement is, in some respects, more transparent than earlier operations.

The new influencers are reportedly government employees, and their official status can be established through government records.

That is considerably different from secretly coordinating with a supposedly independent commentator while concealing the relationship from the audience.

The older examples were far more elaborate.

During the Cold War, the CIA cultivated journalists and media organizations overseas.

During the post-9/11 period, the Pentagon cultivated retired military officers who appeared as independent television analysts while some maintained relationships with defense contractors and Pentagon officials.

In those cases, the appearance of independence was part of the value.

The audience trusted the message because it did not look like an official government message.

That is why Carpenter calls the current Trump-era version a “diluted” form of the same practice.

The government connection is more visible.

But Carpenter argues that even transparent government influence can still damage journalism when official spokespeople are placed into the media ecosystem under the broader label of “analysis.”

The distinction between a government spokesperson and an independent analyst exists for a reason.

If someone is paid by the government to promote its policies, the audience should know exactly that.

Otherwise, the line between public information and propaganda becomes increasingly difficult to see.

@americanmajority

There is another problem with the revolving door: once former national-security officials become media personalities, their institutional relationships can become a permanent source of influence.

Carpenter cites Jack Shafer’s observation that the modern intelligence retiree can move directly from government service into a lucrative public career.

The formula is straightforward.

Spend decades inside the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS or another security agency.

Retire.

Appear on television as an expert.

Use the credibility acquired inside government to comment on current affairs.

The audience sees experience.

The network sees ratings and authority.

The former official gets a second career.

But the institutions from which that person came also benefit from having sympathetic voices embedded throughout the media environment.

That is the concern Carpenter raises.

The problem does not require an explicit conspiracy or direct orders from former colleagues.

Institutional culture can survive personnel changes.

A person who spent decades defending an agency may continue to instinctively interpret events through that agency’s worldview.

That is especially relevant when the subject is controversial: wars, intelligence failures, military budgets, surveillance, terrorism or foreign intervention.

A commentator does not have to be deliberately lying to produce biased coverage.

They only have to carry the assumptions of the institution that shaped their career.

And if the audience is not told about those assumptions, it may mistake institutional perspective for independent analysis.

@americanmajority

The financial conflicts may be even more revealing than the ideological ones.

Carpenter emphasizes that many of the supposedly independent military analysts had relationships with defense contractors.

Some were lobbyists.

Some were executives.

Some sat on corporate boards.

Others worked as consultants.

Yet these same individuals could appear on television as military experts discussing wars, weapons systems and national-security policy.

That creates an obvious problem.

A commentator who receives money from a defense contractor has a financial interest in the expansion of defense spending and the procurement of military systems.

That does not automatically mean every statement the person makes is false.

It does mean the audience has a right to know about the relationship.

Without that disclosure, viewers can mistake a paid advocate for an independent expert.

Carpenter argues that the same basic problem exists with the new social-media influencer system.

The medium has changed.

The underlying incentive structure has not.

Television once provided the distribution network. Newspapers and cable news provided the audience. Today, social media provides the platform.

But the fundamental strategy remains remarkably familiar: place a persuasive individual in front of the public and allow the audience to assume that person is speaking independently.

The most effective propaganda does not necessarily look like propaganda.

It looks like expertise.

It looks like analysis.

It looks like someone simply telling you what the “experts” know.

That is precisely why transparency matters.

@americanmajority

The Pentagon’s relationship with supposedly independent military analysts became even more explicit during the post-9/11 era.

Carpenter points to a major New York Times investigation from 2008 that examined retired military officers appearing on television as “military experts.”

To ordinary viewers, these men appeared to be independent commentators whose military careers gave them special insight into America’s wars.

But the Times investigation found that some were connected to a Pentagon information operation designed to generate favorable coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.

The distinction was enormous.

A retired general appearing on television as an outside expert carries credibility precisely because viewers believe he is speaking independently.

If that same analyst is simultaneously receiving information, guidance or access from the Pentagon, the relationship becomes something very different.

The Times found that some of these analysts were advocating weapons systems favored by military leaders and promoting policy initiatives supported by the Pentagon.

There was also a major financial issue.

According to the investigation, the commentators represented more than 150 military contractors as lobbyists, executives, board members or consultants.

So the audience was not merely hearing from “experts.”

It was potentially hearing from people with deep institutional and financial connections to the policies and weapons programs they were discussing.

Carpenter argues that this history makes today’s influencer controversy look less like a new scandal and more like the latest version of an old system.

@americanmajority

One of Carpenter’s strongest examples is Michael Morell, the former deputy director and acting director of the CIA.

CBS News hired Morell as an on-air commentator and presented him as an analyst with extensive intelligence expertise.

On paper, that description was completely accurate.

Morell really did have extensive intelligence experience.

The problem, according to Carpenter, was the assumption that leaving the CIA automatically transformed him into a detached observer.

Carpenter argues that Morell repeatedly advanced the agency’s perspective on major issues even after leaving the CIA payroll.

That raises a broader question about how television news uses former officials.

Networks understandably want commentators with experience. A former intelligence director knows more about intelligence agencies than the average television journalist.

But expertise and independence are not the same thing.

Someone can possess extraordinary knowledge of an institution while simultaneously remaining deeply attached to its worldview.

The audience therefore needs more than a job title.

It needs to know the commentator’s institutional history, financial relationships and potential conflicts of interest.

That becomes particularly important when the commentator is defending policies favored by the same institutions in which he spent his career.

Carpenter’s complaint is that news networks have often treated former intelligence officials as neutral experts without adequately explaining their continuing institutional connections.

The result can be a very polished form of establishment messaging—delivered by someone who looks like an independent analyst.

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The Cold War ended.

The revolving door between the national-security establishment and the media did not.

Carpenter points to former Obama-era intelligence officials such as James Clapper, John Brennan and Michael Hayden.

After leaving government, all three became regular television commentators, with Brennan and Clapper becoming especially prominent fixtures on MSNBC and Hayden also appearing frequently in the media.

Carpenter’s objection is not simply that former officials went into television.

It is that audiences were often presented with people who had spent their careers inside the national-security apparatus as if they were detached analysts capable of independently judging the institutions they had previously led.

Jack Shafer of POLITICO described this as a new career path for former intelligence officials: leave government, become a television commentator, and turn years inside the national-security establishment into a lucrative second career.

The problem, as Carpenter presents it, is institutional loyalty.

A former intelligence official may leave the payroll without leaving behind the worldview, relationships or institutional loyalties developed during decades inside the security bureaucracy.

Yet viewers may simply see a familiar face introduced as a “former CIA director” or “former intelligence official” and assume that the person is providing neutral expertise.

That distinction matters enormously when the subject is war, intelligence, terrorism or national security.

The messenger may have changed jobs.

The institution’s perspective may not have changed with him.

@americanmajority

The real story, according to Carpenter, is not that the Pentagon has suddenly discovered influencers.

It is that the national-security establishment has been cultivating supposedly independent voices for generations.

During the Cold War, the CIA built an enormous network involving journalists, news organizations and other information outlets around the world.

A 1977 New York Times investigation reported that the CIA had used hundreds of news and public-information organizations and individuals. The network was so extensive that one CIA official described even a “third-string guy in Quito” who could get material into a local newspaper.

The agency funded these foreign media assets.

And there was an obvious problem.

Information does not stay neatly inside national borders. Propaganda placed into a foreign publication can eventually be picked up by American journalists and presented to U.S. audiences as ordinary reporting.

The Times investigation reported that even some CIA officials worried about this “blow-back”—the possibility that misleading or false material planted overseas could eventually return to the United States through legitimate news channels.

That is the crucial distinction.

The government does not necessarily have to publish propaganda under its own name.

It can cultivate intermediaries who appear independent.

Once the original government connection disappears from view, the message acquires the appearance of outside confirmation.

Carpenter argues that this is the tradition into which today’s paid influencers fit.

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The Trump administration’s use of paid social-media influencers has triggered outrage in some quarters. But according to Ted Galen Carpenter, there is nothing particularly new about the basic tactic.

The Pentagon and other parts of the national-security bureaucracy have been using supposedly independent analysts to sell government policy to the public for decades.

The new wrinkle is social media.

In late August, The Washington Post reported that the Department of Defense was employing paid social-media “influencers” to build public support for the Trump administration’s foreign-policy positions and military reforms. The Bulwark had reported similar allegations shortly beforehand.

But Carpenter argues that today’s arrangement is actually less deceptive than some of its predecessors.

Why? At least some of the new influencers are officially identified as government employees. Two prominent hires reportedly had active government email addresses and were assigned to the office of Anthony Tata at the Pentagon. Their addresses carried the “.civ” designation, identifying them as civilian employees rather than contractors.

That is hardly the picture of an independent commentator.

But at least the government connection is visible.

The darker history begins when the government’s relationship with supposedly independent analysts is hidden from the audience entirely.

And that history goes back decades.

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Ukraine may run out of F-16 fighter jets by the end of the year, as more than half of the aircraft are currently waiting for maintenance, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The publication notes that after approximately 300 hours of flight time, the fighter jets must undergo a check of their main systems. In the United States, this procedure typically takes between two and six weeks, while in Belgium, where the aircraft of the Kiev regime are serviced, it can take up to 40 weeks.

At the current rate of operation and maintenance, Kiev may exhaust its remaining F-16s by the end of the year, a source reported.

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The level of trust in the media among Americans stands at only 33%, remaining near its lowest point in 50 years, according to the results of a new Gallup poll.

Both of these figures are among the lowest in the past half-century. The record high was set in 1976, when 72% of Americans trusted the media.

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The United States is completing its full military withdrawal from Iraq today, September 30, 2026.

The total pullout of the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops was scheduled for completion by September 30, 2026, concluding a 23-year military presence that originally began with the 2003 invasion.

The State Department stated that Iraqi security forces, "including Kurdish Peshmerga," have demonstrated "increased capabilities," and that the withdrawal of US troops "is a sign that Iraq and the United States have turned an important page in our bilateral relationship."

However, the Kurds have criticized this decision. Masrour Barzani, the leader of the Kurds in northern Iraq, stated that Washington is abandoning its allies without protection in the face of Iranian attacks.

"The threat is real – we are vulnerable, we are being attacked. To be left alone now without any, shall we say, proper defense system is shameful," Barzani said.

The government of the Kurdistan Region has no air defense systems of its own, and they are not being sold such weapons.

He noted that further instability, especially at a time when influential Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militias are refusing to lay down their arms, could undermine the country's federal system and ultimately threaten the hard-won autonomy of the Kurds from Baghdad.

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