Reporter: "Did you personally approve the livestream execution of the Fort Hood shooter?" Trump: "Did I approve? Absolutely I did." https://t.co/5Q1GmJ4uxI

- TheBlaze (@theblaze) October 9, 2026

Q: Do you want the execution of the Fort Hood shooter to be livestreamed, and are you worried the video would be used as propaganda? Trump: We're making a determination about that, but he will be killed by firing squad. https://t.co/4vq5SCgRBg

- Clash Report (@clashreport) October 9, 2026

00:00 - Opening: Fiery Debates Last Night Walworth, Cannon, and Bevan discuss Senate debates last night in Michigan, Maine, and Georgia that got increasingly personal and heated. Watch: El-Sayed: Israel and Iran Both "Have Proven Dangerous In Their Own Way" "It's not a no-brainer for him," Cannon said. "This is a disturbing answer, or non-answer. And it hasn't hurt him." Watch: Jon Ossoff: If John Lewis Were Marching In Selma Today, "Mike Collins Would Be Grabbing A Billy Club" "I mean that is just... reprehensible," Bevan said. "But Ossoff is gonna win by 8-10 points. What he's doing is auditioning to run for president," Cannon said. "He's a guy who's done nothing in the Senate ... Trying to show Democrats who hate Trump that he's willing to fight." Watch: Susan Collins and Troy Jackson Clash In Second Maine Senate Debate "Collins should sue him for defamation, honestly," Bevan suggested, *** 18:15 - The Primary Problem Nick Troiano, author of "The Primary Solution" and director of "Unite America," explains potential reforms for low-turnout partisan primaries that he says are responsible for much of the country's political dysfunction. He advocates open primaries and ranked-choice voting as possible solutions. New Poll: Voters Say Primaries Reward Partisan Bases, Sideline Ordinary Voters "We call it the primary problem for a reason, because it's not the only problem, but it's the biggest one and the biggest solvable one that actually exacerbates the other challenges," he said. "Our Congress is not representative and responsive to a true majority of voters. And that's what we've got to fix." "Sixteen states are the worst offenders. Those are states that only Democrats and Republicans can participate in their respective primaries. And if you're an independent voter, you're essentially locked out," he said. "On the other end of the spectrum, you have states with open all-candidate primaries for federal and state office. There are three of those: Alaska, California, and Washington." *** 35:43 - Remembering Mike Ditka The panel remembers legendary Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka following news of his death at 86, reflecting on his career, larger-than-life personality, and his place in Chicago sports history. *** 38:42 - ICE Shooting in New York The group examines reports that ICE agents shot a man in the Bronx last night and Mayor Zohran Mamdani's response. Should we blame sanctuary city policies or slapdash ICE enforcement? "It's like both sides are right, but they won't see the other side's point of view," Cannon said. "But you can't have officers shooting into a vehicle with a five-year-old in it." *** 42:23 - You Cannot Be Serious In this week's "You Cannot Be Serious," Tom Bevan calls out Scott Galloway's criticism of Elon Musk, Carl Cannon highlights an exchange between Spencer Pratt and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and Andrew Walworth examines an unusual consequence of Alaska's ranked-choice voting system.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Peter, let me ask you, let me ask you this, because, again, this is this is why the reason I'm asking this is because this is these questions are being asked of Abdul El-Sayed because he is Muslim. And Bernie Sanders wants to cut off aid and military weapons to Israel as well. Right. There are maybe 45 Democrats in the Senate at this point who would vote for that at this point. A lot of a lot of mainstream Democrats have that view. Just to play devil's advocate, you know, as Van is making this point. If you're Abdul El-Sayed, you're wondering, why is it that he is being asked constantly to address terrorism when he's talking about the economy? The only retort on the other side is addressing terrorism, addressing terror attacks, addressing Iran, addressing all of these other things. That's the I think that's the question, I think, that if you're Abdul El-Sayed, you're wondering. FORMER REP. PETER MEIJER (R-MI), CNN CONTRIBUTOR: If he kept trying to answer the same question and he answered it clearly, I would totally agree with that. And this is where I get back to if you believe that, you know, Iran and Israel are either equal parts or Israel's more threat to the U.S. than Iran. What the hell? Right. If your first reaction to, again, a terrorist attack in the state that you choose to represent that happened in March against the synagogue. If your first reaction is hurt people, hurt people. The reaction with the Khamenei killing was I don't really know what to say because a lot of people that I know feel very hurt right now because they were his supporters. Right. Again, we're not talking about some nebulous entity. We're talking about foreign terrorist organizations that are declared so and have been recognized as such by Republican and Democratic administrations who have the blood of thousands of Americans.

BRET BAIER: In Texas, the president is calling for a Paxton-Talarico debate. He did that on Truth Social. Talarico has agreed to a debate. Paxton declined, proclaiming the host would be biased, not responding to invitations. So Talarico offered to host a debate on Fox News. He even mentioned this show. Thank you. But there is no response yet. Now there is this missing in action for James Talarico. Supposedly he has had the flu, but we have not seen him on the campaign trail in 10, 11 days? 12 days? TOM BEVAN: I have had the flu. I don't know if it's ever lasted 12 days in the middle of a campaign. You can't do a Zoom? It must be a bad case. This race is obviously one of the marquee races. Millions of dollars spent. President Trump has been there three times already. Republicans think they are going to pull this out because Paxton, as flawed as he is, has already won three times statewide. But overall, Democrats are ahead in the polls. In six Senate races, if the polls are on target, they would net six Senate seats. But if the polls are overstating Democratic support by two points, or Republicans outperform by two points, they will keep the Senate. BRET BAIER: Texas is like Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football for Democrats. It gets yanked away at the last second, it seems.

BRET BAIER, HOST: I mean, it's hard to believe, but we're going to get to the midterms, and then we are going to figure and obsess on who's running for president. And it'll become evident in the days after the midterms, I think, Tom. TOM BEVAN: For sure. And the shadow campaign's already happening, particularly on the Democratic side, because the race is so wide open, you see everybody jockeying for position. But with this speech, I mean, this is Rubio's wheelhouse. There is no better person to tell the story, the way he tells the story about the promise of America and his story, his roots, as a defender of Western civilization. And this has been something the Trump administration has done, particularly in its second term. Vance has done it. The president has done it himself, in Europe, to the Europeans. It's really, it's a wake-up call, not only to folks here in the United States, but also to the rest of the world, this defense of Western civilization and not to be ashamed of what makes us exceptional.

There are a very small number of countries that still carry out public executions. Those are the countries we are constantly told are uniquely primitive, barbaric, sick and evil. It's revealing that Pete Hegseth wants the US to join that group but also entirely unsurprising.

- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 9, 2026

REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-MI): What my friend here just wants to do is-he's kind of like a glitchy AI chatbot. It's the same thing over and over and over again. But let me tell you this. He has taken money from groups associated with and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. He has taken money from individuals on his campaign who openly support Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda. He's taken money from the George Soros family. What we found out is this thing goes way back. Apparently, they paid for his education in Columbia. Now they're paying for his campaign. By the way, that's a billionaire, last I checked. ABDUL EL-SAYED: What degree did I get at Columbia? MODERATOR: I'm going to give you a 30-second rebuttal. ABDUL EL-SAYED: What degree did I get at Columbia? MIKE ROGERS: [Unclear.] ABDUL EL-SAYED: As a doctor. I understand exactly what's happening. He likes to say the same thing. He's done the same thing over and over and over again. You know what that is? Vote to keep your prescription drug prices high 19 times. A million dollars alone from Big Pharma, another million dollars from the health insurance corporations. Of course he's touting their talking points. This is a guy who has not been serious about providing people health care his entire career. What he has been serious about is making sure that he can monetize his time in public office. Fourteen million dollars, two yachts, a McMansion in Florida. So at the end of the day, I'm a doctor. I want people to have health care. MODERATOR: All right, so how does the- [UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER]: How do you move on after this? MODERATOR: Thirty seconds. MIKE ROGERS: Let me-how does a guy who's had less than four years of work experience, who, by the way, on the campaign trail said he had ten -- own a luxury property in the United Arab Emirates-he's worth a million bucks. Somebody has to tell me how this math works. His facts are wrong. Those are lies. But he has consistently not told the truth. Well, let me just say it. He's lying. So he lied about being a physician. He lied now about being an Egyptian citizen, or not Egyptian citizen. I can't figure out what he is today. He's trying to tell you where he wants you to be. That's a con man. MODERATOR: Congressman, we've got to stay on time. ABDUL EL-SAYED: I just want to respond to this. MODERATOR: You can respond directly. ABDUL EL-SAYED: He wanted to make this about him or me, but the question is about you. Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries under this guy who's going to rubber-stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber-stamp? You're going to continue to pay way more out the nose because he works for corporations and Donald Trump.

MODERATOR: Georgia has been at the center of fights over voting rules and election administration. What voting rules should be left to Georgia to decide, and when, if ever, should the federal government step in? Senator, 60 seconds. SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA): Well, look, Georgia has voter ID, and that's good. Mike Collins and Donald Trump, they're still obsessed with overturning the 2020 election. Mike Collins still believes the 2020 election was stolen. Mike Collins has supported Donald Trump's effort to overturn the election, and he wants to give your tax dollars to the violent thugs and criminals who sacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Mike Collins is attacking your voting rights, but that's not a surprise when you consider who Mike Collins is. This is a man who cheered on a group of young men who were mocking a Black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds. If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists in the country. He himself has amplified neo-Nazi propaganda. He's never apologized for it, and he should tonight. MODERATOR: Congressman Collins, you have 60 seconds. REP. MIKE COLLINS (R-GA): Yeah, you know, I'll say this: Voters need confidence. They need to know, y'all, we live in the best country in the world, and there's no reason that we shouldn't have the most secure elections in the world. Jon Ossoff has voted against the SAVE Act numerous times. Georgia, you're right, has a voter ID law, and we've seen historic amounts of people that have voted since that has been in place. But we need that across the country. There's no reason that you shouldn't have to show an ID to go in and vote. My goodness, Jon Ossoff requires you to show an ID to show up at his rally, but he doesn't think you need to do that to go vote. People will go vote when they have confidence in our elections. Until then, it is hard, and they just want to make sure that it is a fair, equitable election out there.

MODERATOR: We've got 10 seconds. Is there anything Israel could do that would lose your support? MIKE ROGERS: Listen, if they're talking about using nuclear weapons, I would-they would definitely lose my support. ABDUL EL-SAYED: I've never heard him say that, though. MODERATOR: Dr. El-Sayed, you have opposed direct U.S. military funding to Israel, but if Israel were attacked tomorrow by Iran or another state actor, would you vote to provide defensive weapons necessary to protect the Israeli people? Yes or no, and you have 60 seconds to explain. ABDUL EL-SAYED: I've been absolutely clear. I want our tax dollars spent here to provide schools here, and by here I mean Michigan, not Florida. I want to make sure we've got good schools here and health care here. I want to make sure that we are taking care of people here. That is my priority. You asked a hypothetical question about being attacked by Iran, but let's be honest about what happened here. Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran, and of course my colleague, who thinks there's a war for everything, went right along with it. And here we are. Israel had clear war aims. They wanted us to go to war with them, and their war aims were what? The annexation of southern Lebanon? Ask yourself, are we safer because of that war? He wants unconditional support for a foreign government. I want unconditional support for kids in our schools, unconditional support for our health care, child care, things that he would vote to defund. So it's just inconsistent to me to be running for Senate from Michigan when you're more focused on what's happening to a foreign government than you are focused on what's happening to folks right here in Michigan. It's just not serious. MODERATOR: If there was an attack, would you provide defensive weapons for Israel? ABDUL EL-SAYED: I don't want our tax dollars buying weapons for other countries. I don't know what's so hard about that. MIKE ROGERS: That's a no. I'll answer the question. Absolutely. He won't. He will not. Matter of fact, he would not even support Iron Dome. He wouldn't even support Iron Dome. MODERATOR: We cannot do this for every question, Dr. El-Sayed. Our next question addresses concerns from some in the Jewish community about your position on Israel. A supporter told NewsNation's Leland Vittert at a rally that Israel is a bigger problem-or a bigger threat, I should say-to the United States than Iran. Leland then asked you which country you consider the greater threat to the United States, and here's part of your response. LELAND VITTERT: If you're going to be a senator, what do you view as the biggest threat? ABDUL EL-SAYED: I've been more than extremely clear about this. I don't want our tax dollars being used to subsidize war abroad. I don't want our tax dollars being used to fund unconditionally foreign militaries. I think it's important that we be the first among equals to enforce international law against any and every country that breaks it. ABDUL EL-SAYED: So this sort of hypothetical, who's a bigger threat, is a dumb question. I'm sorry. MODERATOR: Dr. El-Sayed, we didn't quite-we got the part that you thought it was dumb, but we didn't understand or kind of get to that answer. So I'm going to ask you again tonight: Who do you think is a bigger threat to the United States, Israel or Iran? You have 60 seconds. ABDUL EL-SAYED: And again, Rick, I'm just going to say that that's a ridiculous hypothetical, because here's what's happening right now. Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran. We have watched as Iran has responded by bombing all kinds of countries in the Middle East and then choking off the world's energy supply. So this is a situation in which I don't think we should be a part. I don't want to be pushed into war by Israel, and I don't want to be in a war with Iran. I want our money spent here to buy schools and health care and child care here. I don't understand why that is so inconceivable. Now, I've got a guy to my left over here who thinks that the best use of our money is to go fight wars abroad. What has that given us? It's part of the reason why, when he was in Congress, $12 trillion-the national debt blew up because he's never seen a war he didn't want us fighting. So I don't consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don't need to fight, and I don't want to be fighting wars we don't need to fight. I just think that makes both of them kind of dangerous. MODERATOR: I'll ask one last time. Israel or Iran? ABDUL EL-SAYED: That's again a ridiculous question. I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way. One at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting. MODERATOR: Congressman Rogers, Axios reported that your allies asked AIPAC not to advertise on your behalf. Axios also reported that you talked with the chair of AIPAC, and the next day they discontinued an ad on your behalf. Do you welcome AIPAC's public support, given that you do support many pro-Israeli positions? You have 60 seconds. MIKE ROGERS: Anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can't condemn terrorism in our own country because he's so close to the people who are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, I'll take all of that help. And matter of fact, I think he's a little concerned about the two properties he owns. United Arab Emirates, I think the other one is Egypt, if I'm not mistaken. Can you correct me? Where's the other one? ABDUL EL-SAYED: Yeah, no, uh-huh, yeah, that's exactly right. He owns $2.7 million in Florida, my guy. MIKE ROGERS: Yeah, I'll talk yachts. You know what? Did you sell your yachts? ABDUL EL-SAYED: I've never owned a yacht in Florida, brother. MIKE ROGERS: Oh, really? What was your yacht? You had two of them. Let me tell you this one thing. Today-or yesterday-was October 7th. This is why you should get absolutely angry. He could not bring himself to even acknowledge the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders, cutting off of women's breasts, putting children in ovens and killing them in front of their families. Could not even muster-and he could not even muster- ABDUL EL-SAYED: Condemn that? But I didn't turn it into political theater like you just did. MIKE ROGERS: He did not. So let me tell you this- ABDUL EL-SAYED: I just need to- MIKE ROGERS: No, no- ABDUL EL-SAYED: You interrupted me for about half of my time, so I'm so sorry, but I just-I'm not somebody who tries to make political theater out of other people's pain. MIKE ROGERS: [Unclear] pain is political theater, and you're-and you turned it into political theater. ABDUL EL-SAYED: I'm sorry, including by putting on a white jacket. MODERATOR: Gentlemen, shameful. Gentlemen, we're going to take a break from this pleasant conversation.

00:00 - Opening: Rubio Stands Up For The West Walworth, Cannon, and Bevan start with a review of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's soaring speech yesterday in Greece, where he proudly proclaimed the value of Western civilization from the Parthenon in Athens. Watch: Rubio Urges Defense Of Western Civilization At Acropolis: "We Choose The Unapologetic Pursuit Of National Power" "I love hearing Marco Rubio talk about Western civilization, how great it is, why it needs to be defended and celebrated, and we should be proud of it," Bevan said. "This is Marco Rubio's wheelhouse. This is what he does best: to be sort of a cheerleader for America and Western civilization. Given his background, his parents, Cuban, coming here with nothing, and now their son became a senator and secretary of state and maybe the president of the United States." "This is not only mainstream Republicanism, whether you're part of the MAGA movement or the old George Bush party. Mitt Romney wouldn't disagree with that -- and if you go back 10 or 15 years, it's what half the Democrats would have said," Carl Cannon said. "It's a proudly pro-American speech. And that's what you'd expect an American secretary of state to deliver." *** 09:26 - Mamdani's October 7th Statement They look at how NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani handled the third anniversary of the October 7 attack on Israel after his pointed criticism of the state of Israel. "We're literally watching him ride the tiger right now," Tom Bevan said. "He goes to this pro-Israel vigil where apparently the protesters were about twice the size of the vigil itself, and he's standing there with a candle looking like he's about to throw up. He just looks miserable there as he's being called a traitor by all of the pro-Hamas folks." "He tried to thread the needle here ... he tried to have it both ways, and he ends up getting criticized from both sides." "Who are these people under these masks? A lot of them are immigrants. We hear from their accents," Carl Cannon observed. "So, no matter how critical you are of Trump-and I'm often critical of Trump-this is what he was talking about. No country has an obligation to import people into its country who hate that country." *** 18:25 - Eli Steele: "America Made Me Possible" Filmmaker Eli Steele joins the program to talk about his new documentary, "White Guilt," which profiles his father, Shelby Steele, and his message to Americans: "Reject the fear of being labeled racist, embrace individual freedom, and have the courage to defend the country's founding principles." More on his film: "White Guilt": A Documentary Essay Steele wrote: The Terror of Being Called Racist Is Crushing Free Speech in America Steele recounts his grandparents' interracial marriage in the 1940s and their fight against school segregation, describing their commitment to American ideals in the face of discrimination, and the personal and professional costs of his father's outspoken criticism of racial identity politics. "My grandparents were the very first ones to shut down a segregated school north of the Mason-Dixon Line," he said. He also comments on growing up as the son of a prominent black conservative, and how Shelby Steele rejected restrictive racial expectations and insisted on being judged as an individual. *** 33:03 - Iowa Senate Debate: Hinson vs. Turek The panel turns to the debate last night in Iowa between GOP Representative Ashley Hinson and Democratic State Representative Josh Turek in this surprisingly close race for the open red-state Senate seat. Hinson's lead has fallen to less than one point in the RCP average: Watch: 2026 Iowa Senate - Hinson vs Turek | Hinson +0.7 RCP Average: Iowa Senate Debate: Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek Clash over Trump, Healthcare, Taxes, Iran "According to the polls, it's like a coin flip," Tom Bevan said. *** 37:57 - Trump's Advisers in Bosnia The group considers whether Trump is concerned about reports that political advisers Chris LaCivita and James Blair were paid to work for a pro-Russian political party in Bosnia. "I think Trump himself was shocked, Andy, that these guys are over in Eastern Europe while the Republican Party is, in his mind, in this death struggle to avoid losing the Senate," Cannon said. "He seemed to be saying: Why aren't they here helping us?" *** 41:37 - Kimberly Guilfoyle Needs $100,000 The episode ends with a Wall Street Journal investigation alleging that U.S. Ambassador to Greece and former Donald Trump Jr. girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle asked for money from a Kentucky attorney in exchange for access to Trump administration officials. Guilfoyle denies the allegations. Also notable, they published this story during Marco Rubio's trip to Greece. "It's all pretty juicy stuff, actually. And it does not paint her in the best light, even if she was desperate for money," said Bevan. Cannon added: "Federal prosecutors have a hell of a time proving quid pro quo."

SCOTT JENNINGS: Because yesterday in Athens, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech about the qualities that make a civilization worth preserving and the character that is required to preserve it. He spoke at the ancient meeting place of the Athenian Assembly with the Acropolis behind him, quite a setting. But the important part wasn't the scenery, as dramatic as it was, it was Marco's argument. Western civilization has given us an extraordinary inheritance, constitutional government, scientific discovery, individual liberty, the freedom to question the people who govern us. We inherited institutions that let us argue and worship and invent, compete and replace our leaders without a civil war. And we have a responsibility to keep that inheritance alive. Rubio's speech was a challenge to a habit that has infected too much of our public life, treating achievement as suspicious, national pride as embarrassing, and the defense of our own civilization as something requiring an apology. I think he's right. I think this speech was nothing short of remarkable and necessary. And I want to start with what he said about excellence. Cut three. SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: Too often, these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure that no one will lose. We preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre. JENNINGS: That's a direct hit on the culture of lowering expectations. You know, we've all seen the temptation. A standard becomes difficult to meet. So somebody proposes changing the standard. A competition produces winners and losers. So somebody questions whether we should be competing at all. A student excels. And instead of asking how to help more students reach that level, we start worrying about whether excellence makes somebody else feel bad. Here's my view. Give every child the opportunity to climb. Give them good teachers, encouragement, and help them when they struggle. But keep the mountain, because removing the challenge also removes the achievement. Nobody benefits from being told that mediocrity is all that we should expect of them. As a father myself, I want my own children to learn that effort matters. Preparation matters. Sometimes, rather, somebody else is better than you. But you can learn something from that. You can lose a game without losing your dignity. You can fail at a test and learn to study harder. You can hear an argument you dislike and develop a better answer for yourself. These are essential skills for adulthood. The world beyond the classroom will judge whether you can do the job. When you board an airplane, you want a pilot who met the standard. When you need surgery, you want a surgeon who mastered the work. And when somebody's shooting at American soldiers, well, you want Alvin York out there on the battlefield. You want excellence. You want competence. You want somebody who can deliver when the consequences are real. Rubio's second point gets to what we teach Americans about the country itself. Listen to this, cut four. RUBIO: The word nationalism became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments. We condemned our own history. And in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay. JENNINGS: We should teach our history honestly, of course. We can teach slavery and segregation and the broken promises and the injustices. And we can also teach about the Americans who confronted all of it. Teach the founding promise of equality. Teach the abolitionists. Teach the soldiers who preserved the union. Teach the civil rights movement and the extraordinary courage it required. We don't have to pretend our worst moments are current because they aren't. Look how far we've come. It's remarkable. You can give children the whole story, including our capacity to change and improve. The Declaration's promise mattered because generations of Americans insisted their country live up to it. That's a reason for pride. An education that leaves children knowing every American failure but unable to explain why American freedom matters, well, that's a failure in and of itself. And it leaves a question hanging over everything else. Why defend a country you've been taught to despise? Why serve it? Why sacrifice for it? Why preserve its institutions for your own children? We need to give the next generation an answer. America gives you the freedom to criticize America, of course. You can challenge the president, organize against the government, practice your religion, and argue that the law ought to change. Those freedoms are precious. They require courts, laws, public trust, and people willing to defend them. Loving this country means taking responsibility for its future. Secure its borders, educate its children, maintain its defenses, make its government answer to its citizens, and build things here. Factories and power plants and ships, the technologies that will shape the next generation. National confidence ought to produce national effort, which brings us to Rubio's warning. Cut five. RUBIO: Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all. JENNINGS: That last point from Secretary Rubio deserves our full attention. The ability to act depends on the decisions that you make before a crisis. You need industrial capacity before you need to replace the weapons. You need reliable energy sources before the demand arrives. You need citizens who understand freedom before somebody tries to take it away. You need allies who can help defend the peace. Our adversaries, our enemies, they're making their own plans. They pursue power and technology and resources and influence around the world. We Americans should pursue ours with confidence. There's a practical agenda here. Reward achievement, demand competence, build strength, and teach the next generation why this country deserves their loyalty. Think again about Alvin York, a man with little schooling, deep faith, and an extraordinary skill who answered an obligation larger than himself. Then he came home and spent some time helping to educate children. Courage in war, service and peace. America should still produce people like Alvin York, and we should raise our children to admire them. Rubio, he gave us all in the West a challenge yesterday, and I hope that we accept it.

Vice President JD Vance announces the suspension of the PERM Program for Microsoft: "Thanks to an ongoing investigation, we have decided to suspend the PERM program for Microsoft, which means they will no longer be able to take those H-1Bs and apply for permanent resident status within the United States of America. Now our message to Microsoft and to any other foreign or domestic corporation is quite simple. We obviously want you to thrive in the United States of America. We want people to invest in the United States of America, particularly the American technology sector. We're the biggest boosters of your industry. We want you to continue to grow and to employ a lot of people, but we want you to employ American workers. And so our message to Microsoft is, you're great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants."

- Vice President JD Vance (@VP) October 8, 2026

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I saw RealClear over here! CAROLINA LUMETTA: Can you clarify what exactly the fraud element of this is? What is the scale of it? You mentioned Microsoft with the 6,300 [visas]? Were they lying on those applications? Was there some kind of law they were breaking? Or was this a legal pathway to the system and you are taking an objection to that? VANCE: I don't think it was a legal pathway through the system. The nature of the fraud is fundamentally, when you apply for these visa programs, you make a couple of certifications. One of the certifications is that the person you're bringing in has a hyper-specialized, hyper-capable skill set. That is clearly not the case if you're just replacing one American worker with a foreign indentured servant and undercutting their wages in the process. The fraud is that they are making representations while applying for this program that are fundamentally illegitimate and therefore ultimately illegal.

Arguing YES: Romina Boccia, Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy at Cato Institute Arguing NO: Teresa Ghilarducci, Professor of Economics and Policy Analysis and Director of the Wealth Equity Lab at The New School

00:00 - Opening: Three Years After oct. 7, 2023 Walworth, Porter, and Bevan discuss the Democratic Party's turn against Israel in the three years since the October 7 terror attack, and how candidates running for Senate are now openly advocating an end to military aid. Watch: Maine Senate Debate: Sen. Susan Colllins vs. Troy Jackson "This was Israel's 9/11," Bevan said. "It tells you that the Democratic Party has not just done sort of a wink and a nod to some of these folks on the left, but they're actually now ingesting this policy position." "I think the Democrats have become an unreliable ally of Israel and American Jews," Porter said. *** 16:52 - Trump Wants a New Camp David RCP White House correspondent Carolina Lumetta joins the show to explain reports that President Trump wants to make his Palm Beach golf club a new "Winter White House" and the history and practical challenges. "I think it is indicative of how he's thinking: What's he going to do after the presidency?" Lumetta sad. *** 23:53 - Trump Won't Pay for the DHS Ads After All The panel argues Trump should stop using federal money for personality-driven advertising, or at least stop making it a story by changing his mind about it. I mean, the first thing you do is to put the shovel down, right? Walworth quipped. "But he's not stopping," Lumetta said. *** 37:15 - GOP Playing Defense in Red States The GOP's late-campaign strategy is becoming clear: protect vulnerable red states, energize Trump voters, and preserve control of the Senate. "If you want to know what's happening, you look at the two most valuable resources that candidates have: money and time, " Bevan said. "They're spending all of their money and all of their time defending red states." *** 39:39 - Ken Griffin's Lesson for Chicago Richard Porter uses Ken Griffin's move from Chicago to Miami as a case study in how taxes, crime, and political hostility can drive wealthy residents and investment away. Richard Porter for RCP: Chicago Chases Away the Rich. Miami Says 'Thank You' "How often is it in life you get to see a social policy experiment unfold right in front of you?" he said. "It is an experiment that's happening right before our eyes, where he is enriching Miami instead of Chicago, instead of New York. And why Miami? Because Miami is hospitable to people like Ken Griffin. It's so obvious." "It kind of goes to our earlier point about where there's sometimes a disconnect, a delusion on the left about what's real and what isn't real," Porter said. *** 44:44 - Who Still Trusts Our Elections? The episode ends with a discussion about collapsing confidence in U.S. elections across party lines, prompting a debate over why trust has eroded and how it might be restored. Gallup: "51% of Americans Lack Confidence In Elections" "Both parties have contributed to this," Bevan said. "But I do think we need to have some standards that help us inject some trust and faith back into the system."

The Legacy of Greece and the Acropolis SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: There are great ruins all across the world. In many cases, they are places where history seems to have exhausted itself, remnants of distant cultures that have long passed beyond living memory. But the Acropolis is different. For thousands of years, the civilization that built what stands behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world. Generations of our statesmen, artists, and philosophers have looked to it with wonder, and they look to it with awe. Now, time has a tendency to dull the senses. Great victories and catastrophic defeats, they seem to shrink to becoming like a footnote in a textbook, another fact for our schoolchildren to memorize and forget. But the Greeks of antiquity, they seem to have an almost mystical hold on our memory. They call us back to them again and again. ... For 25 centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow, and the progeny of the men who built it, the sons of Athens and Rome, have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the earth. Two and a half centuries after the founding of the American Republic, halfway across the world from where I stand now, I stand here today as the secretary of state of that republic and as the great-grandson of settlers who arrived in the New World from Spain. I stand here to testify to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space can ever extinguish. The history of America, the history of my country, is covered with the fingerprints of antiquity. Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government, in the towering columns, in the domes, and the monuments across our capital city. The city where our Constitution was born, Philadelphia, is itself a Greek name. The men who founded my country were fascinated by the heritage we inherited from yours. They were exceptionally well-read in history. They were vividly aware of their unique place in it. But no other age of the past held their attention or their imagination quite like that of antiquity. Many people are surprised to learn that the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was not an Enlightenment philosopher or political theorist. The most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was Plutarch, the Greek biographer of Greece and Rome's great men. Now, much has been written and said about the influence of ancient Greece on the ideas of the American founders and, for that matter, on all of the Western philosophers and statesmen that preceded them. Most of us are familiar with the basic history. Athens gave us democracy. Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy. Our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship and republic and government were shaped in the Greek city-states. Even much of our political vocabulary, words like democracy, tyranny, the word politics itself, found its origins here. Now, all of that is true, but the things we owe to this place as Americans and as Westerners are actually far, far deeper. ... To know them is to know ourselves. What blossomed here in this place was the Western desire to uncover all that ignorance, darkness, and distance had kept hidden from the mind of man. The Greeks did not just shape history. The Greeks gave us history itself. Much of what we know about many ancient civilizations comes almost entirely from the records of Greek explorers and historians, explorers and historians who didn't just chronicle the histories of their own people, but ventured outward to observe and record the sagas of foreign peoples and cultures all across the world. Where others looked inward, the Greeks were the first to direct their focus outward, to chase the thrill and glory of seeing all that was strange and new. It was this trait that would push the West to create and build things that others could not, marking us out from so many other cultures and civilizations where stability and subsistence were the highest ends of life. But it is not just the ambition to explore the unknown that we inherit from the Greeks. It is the conviction that the unknown can be known. The confidence that the world can be charted and measured and mapped and understood, and that there is a rational order to the cosmos governed by certain fundamental laws, laws that men can observe and the mind can come to understand. ... This was the foundation of the Western mind, our math, our science, our medicine, our philosophy, ethics, and religion. It paved the way for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish into the empire of Christendom. It was the foundation of the riches of Christian theology, of Augustine and Aquinas and the whole tradition of natural law. It gave birth to a civilization marked not just by a common culture, but marked by a common anthropology, a common view of man and of his place in the universe. Its descendants would share not just the idea of a natural order, but a distinctive understanding of virtue, of destiny, of fate, of truth, goodness, and beauty, of a code that dictates how men ought to live, of objective standards and ideals to strive toward. For the Greeks of antiquity, the pursuit of excellence was the very principle of man's existence. They organized all of civic life around contest and ambition and competition, in philosophy and poetry and sculpture and drama, in athletics and art, in war and statecraft. The classical Greek city was an arena for great men to test and prove themselves, to hone their potential through perpetual struggle, to be the best, the strongest, the most beautiful, straining to inch ever closer to perfection. What the West Has Forgotten Now, I know that to modern ears, what I just described, this way of life, may sound odd. It may even sound cruel. The ideal of many ideologies in our time has frankly become a world of perfect safety, a world devoid of risk or failure, where neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat. Too often these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure that no one will lose. We preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre. The men who made the Parthenon built upwards. They held that the highest and most noble aspiration in life was to surpass all others, to strive to be the best in all things. The ancient Greek city-states were filled with intense passion and rivalry and faction and conflict. But from that constant struggle for distinction came the great flowering of art and philosophy and political and intellectual energy that would transform a collective of Mediterranean cities into the birthplace of the greatest civilization in the world. The thumos, as the ancient Greeks called it, the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride, is the heart of great civilization. And without it, without it, nations lose their will to fight, the will to strive, the will to survive. Today, too much of the West has forgotten this quality. Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness. The word nationalism became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments. We condemned our own history. And in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay. And with every passing year, we seemed to outsource more of our sovereignty, transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control. But others were all too happy to fill the vacuum that we left, the vacuum left behind by our weakness. And as the West's confidence faltered, its adversaries and its rivals only grew more assertive, building up their own wealth and their own power in our stead. And now today, we find ourselves at a crossroads because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all. Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice. We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power, to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future. We choose to reach for new frontiers in advanced manufacturing and superintelligence, in drones, weapons and warfare, in chips, minerals, cyber, and every other domain of human possibility; to unleash our energy, to rebuild our factories, to return our astronauts to the moon and launch a new age of exploration in space. Now, for all their lofty ideals, the ancient Greeks were not naive. They understood that nations have interests. They understood that statecraft requires prudence and diplomacy. But they also understood that it requires the ability to wield force when prudence and diplomacy fail. They understood that power requires not only having the means to defend yourself. It requires the credibility that you are willing to use it. This is the classical understanding of politics and of statecraft that the Trump administration hopes to reclaim. Reclaim not just for our country, but for the whole of our civilization. We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago. There are already signs across this continent. We are witnessing what we hope will be the beginning of a generational shift: skyrocketing defense spending, a flurry of new partnerships and programs, expanded manufacturing and production following on the historic defense commitments made last year in The Hague. Greece has been at the center of this shift. The people of this nation have proved themselves once again to be an indispensable friend to Europe and to the United States alike, on everything from energy to migration to defense, where Greece has been a model ally. It is our sincerest hope that all of Europe will follow your example. Though passions may at times have strained the bonds of affection between the United States and Europe, it must not be allowed to break them. Together, we must strengthen an alliance capable of confronting the threats of our age. And we can because we do not believe the transatlantic friendship should be zero-sum. Quite the opposite. Our vision is an alliance whose strength is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a vision we saw in action just last month in an unprecedented new agreement between the United States, Denmark, and Greenland. An agreement that will reshape the Arctic and bolster the security of all of NATO. All three partners in that deal emerged victorious. All of Europe and NATO and the United States emerge safer, stronger, and more secure because of it. We want to win together. We must win together. Heroism and Duty Now, it's become fashionable today to believe that enlightened foreign policy means prioritizing the global community over one's own people. And I think here too we have much to learn from the men of ancient Greece because they knew that there was nothing selfish or wrong about loyalty to your nation, nor anything selfish or wrong about fighting to defend its interests above all else. They believed fiercely in the ideal of the great man, the exceptional individual who obtains immortality through his own deeds. But they believed that glory and fame, those things were won through striving, sacrificing, and achieving greatly for something larger than yourself. The recurring hero of the ancient Greek world was the man who was willing to pay any cost for a cause worthy of his loyalty. We see this in Socrates, who refused to abandon the inquiry into truth even at the cost of his own life. We see it in the legendary stand of 300 Spartans, surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by the vast armies of Persia, who refused a chance to save themselves, choosing to fight to the last man rather than abandon their post or abandon their duty. And we see it in the epic myth of Achilles, who's offered the choice to return home and live a long and peaceful life, but chooses instead to remain at Troy and perish in pursuit of eternal glory. These are the qualities that would shape the Western moral imagination. From the Christian martyr who refused to betray his faith to the patriot who gave his life for his country. From St. Thomas More to the Battle of the Alamo. Running through the immortal closing words of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, which says, "We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." It is from the Greeks that the West inherited its sense of duty and unbreakable loyalty to one's code, one's cause, one's country. Our heroes, the heroes of the West, are those who choose to remain faithful to their duty precisely when it is most difficult and painful to do so. The man who is bound by his word. The soldier who will not abandon his post. The captain, the proverbial captain who goes down with the ship. This is wholly different from what we see even now, for example, from fanatics like the radical mullahs of Iran, whose cult of death hails child suicide bombers as national heroes and portrays martyrdom as an end to itself. Our heroes may be willing to die for their cause, but our heroes do not worship death. It is precisely because we value life that we come to recognize the heroism in those who would sooner sacrifice it than betray their principles. Now, we take the Western conception of these things, heroism, honor, duty, we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it, the civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did. A Shared Future The men who built the Parthenon were succeeded by the architects of European Christendom, who raised the cathedrals of Milan, Cologne, and Florence. The quest to perfect the human form that moved the ancient Greek sculptors found a new expression in Michelangelo. The Greek philosophers' search for the structure of the universe was inherited by Copernicus, then Galileo and Kepler and Newton. The hunger for new knowledge, that's what gave birth to Magellan's first expedition around the world, to Columbus' discovery of the Americas, and ultimately to Apollo 11's journey to the moon. And the qualities that led Alexander to conquer the entire known world reappeared in Caesar and Charlemagne and Cortes. And in America, that same tradition rediscovered itself anew. An open and wild land became the site of a great revival of Western imagination and ambition. The Greek aspiration for new horizons became the American frontier spirit. The civilization of Athens and Rome transformed an infant seaboard republic into a continental empire. The greatest Americans of every generation have carried the unmistakable features of their forefathers. Born in Athens, formed by Rome, baptized in Christendom, hardened in the furnace of medieval Europe, endowed with the English genius for liberty, and then carried across the Atlantic to be reborn on the shores of a new world. Together, we must now rediscover that spirit. We are at an inflection point. An inflection point not only in the history of my nation, but an inflection point in the whole of our civilization. The threats we face today are every bit as real as they were on the dramatic stage of antiquity. National interest did not vanish in the face of international institutions. War did not disappear simply because we preferred peace. Other states continued to arm, to seek influence, to compete for territory and technology and resources and markets and energy and power. And now there is war again. There is new competition between great powers again. There is vulnerability, aggression, terrorism, a whole universe of new threats and attacks again. And so we must rebuild our institutions and our alliances to face these threats together, understanding that the purpose of these things is not to abolish the sovereignty of the nations that constitute them. It is to defend them, and that nations need not abandon their distinct identities in order to recognize their common interests. We have built a model of that with our partners here in Greece, in our defense partnerships, in energy and technology, in our shared ambition to secure Europe's borders from the threats of mass migration. You know, our friendship dates back to the earliest years of my nation. When Greece rose in 1821 to recover its independence after centuries of Ottoman rule, Americans recognized something familiar in that struggle. Three years later, the great American statesman Daniel Webster delivered a famous address to Congress, helping bring the cause of the Greek Revolution before the representatives of the young American republic. And he began by calling their attention to everything around them. This is what he said in his speech. He said, "This free form of government, this popular assembly, this practice of free debate and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind, even the edifice in which we assemble, these proportioned columns, this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed and that we, like the rest of mankind, are greatly her debtors." Those words are as true today as they were when he said them. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/10/07/rubio_urges_defense_of_western_civilization_at_acropolis_we_choose_the_unapologetic_pursuit_of_national_power.html700572940 World News Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:14:50 -0500 10/07/2026/00/00/00 ]]> 728358 HEATHER MAC DONALD: Well, what's happening now is absolute hysteria and the embrace of a totally absurd fiction, which is that there was a horrible gang rape that occurred in 2024; that the law enforcement system was indifferent to the local district attorney. This is all the narrative that is shooting around the internet for the last week. That narrative says that the district attorney was indifferent to the survivor, that Cornell was indifferent to the survivor, and now she's finally coming forward and suing, as a civil lawsuit, everything in sight, especially the deep pockets of Cornell. And the even broader narrative is that what happened at Cornell is emblematic of the rape culture that females are subjected to in the United States and on college campuses. None of that is correct. The one good thing that's come out of this is that, at some point, the alleged survivor, who was actually a voluntary participant in an absolutely disgusting orgy, was worried when word of this orgy got out. People were calling her a [unclear], and this upset her, so she decided to change the narrative. I never would have known that the concept of [unclear], which is extremely useful for enforcing what should be norms of sexual propriety and modesty, was still active on college campuses. You know, it suggests that there's some people, at least, who are not completely on board a bacchanal of inebriated sex, where females deliberately drink themselves blotto, as happened here, precisely in order to lower their sexual inhibitions, in order to keep up with the liberated male libido that has been liberated from any kind of restraint by the 1960s culture of maximal sexual liberation and premarital sex whenever you want it. So that's a good sign. Other than that, though, the underlying incident, which we can discuss, is completely squalid and depressing. And, you know, parents are paying God knows what the Cornell tuition is-it's probably like $80,000, $90,000-to have their children go and simply engage in these orgy-fests of drugs, ketamine, and drinking blotto, instead of using their time there productively to actually fill some knowledge into their empty noggin, is status quo in the university scene today. Very discouraging. ... WILL CHAMBERLAIN: It seems like the actual correct answer to this is there should be no drug-fueled orgies on college campuses, whether or not the participants consent to that or not. HEATHER MAC DONALD: Absolutely. And, you know, we had norms of female modesty. And I'm going to use an extremely dangerous word: chastity, God forbid, for good reason. Because the male libido is voracious, and it is immoral, amoral-you know, mows down whatever is in its way. And marriage, the norm of marriage, of no sex until you're married, and females being gatekeepers, literally, to their own physical body, was a way of putting that libido in check and taming it, redirecting it towards noble ends of aspiration and accomplishment, so that you could actually woo a female to be willing to have intercourse with you, as opposed to having her drink herself blotto, as happened here with the so-called Jane Doe. And I hope that her name is soon released, given that the males are being crucified with their names being released. Anyway, Jane Doe drinks 10 drinks before even showing up at the fraternity, and then proceeds to have a beer there and proceeds to take ketamine. This is all voluntary, and she is walking in deliberately to a sex scene. The males don't have to do anything. You know, it's completely agreeable to everybody. And when you have that, you're going to see males behaving boorishly. To be perfectly honest, there is sort of a meme around here in conservative circles that these males are evil. You know, they certainly should not be criminally prosecuted. That would be outrageous. They should not be held liable monetarily. But they committed some horrible sin here. Frankly, I'm sorry. To me, this looks like it was instigated throughout by the female. And again, given male nature, if it's not forced to restrain itself, I'm frankly not surprised and I'm not all that horrified by what happened here from the male perspective. But that, I know, puts me way out into the outer reaches of a strange blend of morality and amorality.