It was a cold, drizzly morning at LaGuardia Airport. My plane had just been pushed back in preparation for our short ride to Washington, D.C. Just then, beside us on the Taxi Way, appeared a white, shiny plane emblazoned in big red letters with the name Trump. It’s my first memory of a man who has become central to the history of our country. Just days before Donald J. Trump managed to carve out one of the few profitable parts of a failing Eastern Airlines: the New York to Washington Shuttle. It was quite a coup for the young businessman, who proved he was much more than a real estate developer. There was a New York Financier who could ink one of the most significant transactions of the day, and The Art of the Deal was born. To many, President-Elect Donald J. Trump personifies the brash New Yorker. He is often outrageous, and controversy surrounds him like a cloud. And yet, Trump is a collection of seeming contradictions. While it’s true that Trump is brash, he is certainly not loud. His soft-spoken style belies a thoughtful person behind all the bravado. Having spent much of my career on Wall Street, I’ve known my share of brash New Yorkers, yet I’ve rarely met anyone with Trump’s talent. While the Eastern Airlines deal was a business coup, the bold Trump branding stood out. It wasn’t ego that made Trump paint those planes so distinctively; it was the recognition that his new airline needed to be distinctive from all the rest if he wanted to gain market share. Trump’s ability to point us in one direction, only to introduce us to an entirely new “Trump-centric” reality. In building the Trump Shuttle, he created a new brand to compete with the existing airlines. I remember the buzz in the office when people I worked with took their first flight on Trump’s Airline. As Trump’s new airline delivered, what appeared to be Trump’s pure ego became an all-new Shuttle experience. The Trump Shuttle was more comfortable and dramatically cleaner than the competition. Trump is using the same playbook that he used 35 years ago in building the Trump Shuttle: He points people in seemingly one direction, only to have them reach a new destination when all is said and done. Trump is not afraid to appear to be one thing while he’s actually playing from a very different script. Today, Washington denizens and political commentators are up in arms about Trump’s Cabinet nominations. They assume that Trump is using a conventional strategy of appointing conventional bureaucrats to head the Federal Government’s vast Administrative State. But, if you’ve followed Trump, you recognize that’s not what’s occurring. Trump is setting the stage to reveal just what the Administrative State and our political leaders really are. Remember, above all, Trump is a showman. His “reality television” program was one of the most popular of its time because Trump understands how to put on a show. The “show” he is putting on now will be the US Senate Confirmation Hearings and the debate leading up to them. The Trump Cabinet appointments take on an entirely different perspective when viewed in this light. If Trump is to be taken at his word, he believes that the US Military is troubled and that recently imposed “woke” policies have jeopardized our nation’s defense. So, Trump appointed Pete Hegseth, the Fox News commentator and the country’s most vociferous wake critic, Secretary of Defense. Trump is now in the driver’s seat. Should Hegseth be confirmed, he will undoubtedly implement the anti-woke policies that Trump seeks. On the other hand, should Hegseth be rejected by the Senate, it will only be after Senators have revealed themselves to be just the sort of “pro-woke” politicians that Trump has railed against. Moreover, Hegseth is an extremely capable public speaker who will provide a juicy “sound bite” that will play well on the nightly news. Trump will win again by exposing the policies that he opposes. We’ve already seen Trump’s strategy at work in the nomination of Tom Homan as the new “border czar.” Homan has been the past head of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). Videos of Mr. Homan’s past testimony before Congress are going viral on the internet, as he promoted Trump’s vision of border control. Before the Confirmation Hearings began, Homan was already playing his role. Trump wins. We can expect the same sort of high drama and thus highly visible reactions to the appointments of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services and Max Gaetz for Attorney General. RFK Jr. will battle against the politically entrenched Pharmaceutical and Ag Industries, while Gaetz, himself the victim of what Trump likely sees as “law-fare,” will be tasked with making the case against an overreaching administrative state. Perhaps the most vivid example of Trump’s advocacy appointments is Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his 2022 Campaign for Governor of New York, Zeldin proposed allowing fracking in upstate, which would turn the EPA upside down. For 50 years, the EPA has prioritized protecting the environment. Trump proposes a new Secretary who would prioritize energy production, albeit within existing environmental constraints, as the agency’s top priority. This is in line with Trump’s promotion of economic growth. We can expect major fireworks surrounding this nomination. In each of Trump’s nominations, we see the dual role of the conventional Cabinet appointment and the advocate for critical Trump Policies. Gone are the all-star bureaucrats who will go their own way. Instead, Trump introduced a new group of Cabinet Secretaries assigned to promote a specific Trump plan. They will undoubtedly be carefully coached and prepared for their Confirmation Hearing. Whether their role will continue beyond using the Senate Forum to make Trump’s case remains to be seen. The Senate may reject some of Trump’s nominees, and their roles will end in just weeks. However, most will, no doubt, be confirmed. It doesn’t matter what each nominee’s fate will be. Trump will have carefully prepared each nominee to perform their designated role precisely, one that will promote the new President’s policy positions. Whether confirmed or not, Trump will have changed the nation’s debate, a true win to begin his second term. **
Profanity: extra
We have a fully automatic coffee machine at work. It works wonderfully, but has the problem that it requires the drip tray to be cleaned after a predefined number of dispenses to prevent it from overflowing. Previously, we had the rule that the person drawing the coffee would clean it if the message appeared on the display afterwards. This regulation has some obvious disadvantages. Probably the most important is that it relies on the honesty of the user. It has happened, for example, that you wanted to have a coffee but had to clean the machine first. This led to a certain amount of resentment, at least for me. I was then annoyed at the person who obviously didn't follow the rule and let their colleagues do the work for them. I found the fact that my anger had no concrete counterpart to whom I could direct my complaint particularly frustrating. Now it may be that someone deliberately fails to do their duty in order to leave the tedious task to someone else, or they simply don't think about it, get distracted or have to get back to the office quickly because the phone is ringing. When I was new to the company, I didn't know the internal rule, which is why I couldn't follow it. When a colleague once caught me not doing my duty, there were nasty words. The latter frustrated me, as I hadn't done anything wrong on purpose. Let's summarize the disadvantages: As our coffee machine is not monitored (thank goodness!), someone can deliberately break the rule without fear of being caught. This means that a “black sheep” can blame the community for their work without having to fear sanctions. Regardless of whether the violation was committed consciously or unconsciously, it always causes trouble for the person who has to take on extra work. Furthermore, the rule must be announced. It therefore leads to more regulation - new colleagues not only have to be introduced to the activities that are important for their actual work, but also have to familiarize themselves with these kinds of rules. We have abolished this rule for some time now. Now the machine is cleaned by the colleague who wants to make a coffee and comes across the corresponding display. You can immediately see that the disadvantages described above are not present. As the machine blocks the coffee dispenser until it is cleaned, a new colleague who knows neither the rule nor the machine will automatically inquire about the procedure in this case. This seemingly trivial everyday example illustrates a general problem. Even if a large majority of society has set itself certain standards and wants to derive concrete rules from them, compliance with them must be strictly controlled, as otherwise the deviants - i.e. the black sheep - will profit excessively from their behavior and thus not only burden the rest with more work, but also cause resentment and mistrust. The belief in the “good person” therefore not only has an ethical problem (who decides what is good and what is bad?), but also a very practical one. The system is highly unstable and can therefore, realistically speaking, only be maintained through coercion and violence. In addition, the increase in regulation associated with it reduces the productivity of labor and thus leads to a reduction in the quantity of goods and services that a society produces. The counter-design to the system that believes in the good person is one that functions largely without friction, even under the assumption of exclusively "bad" people. We have to realize that bad here only means that people are out to maximize their own profit. In this specific example, profit would be less (cleaning) work. In everyday life, you maximize your profit i. e. in the supermarket by not voluntarily paying more than you have to. So we should be careful with moral claims that see maximizing one's profit as fundamentally bad. I would argue that this situation is the norm - especially when dealing with strangers. Abolishing the old cleaning rule would lead to a desirable result, as the number of cleanings a colleague has to perform is on average proportional to the number of coffees they take from the machine. As shown above, the old rule would lead to a deviation from this result and thus to unfair conditions and an unstable system. Conclusion: The free system, in which everyone can act as selfishly as they want, leads to a fairer result and a much more stable situation than a system in which certain well-intentioned “fairness rules” are prescribed, which only work under the assumption of “good” people. When everyone thinks of themselves, everyone is taken care of. This sentence is wrongly attributed to Adam Smith. But it sums up well the knowledge gained about maximizing fairness in a free system. Moreover, the actions associated with this approach do not prohibit thinking of others. For example, I can voluntarily clean the coffee machine after drinking my coffee as a favor to the colleague standing behind me. But unlike the original regulation, I won't be punished by the community if I don't do it. So we are moving from forced help to voluntary help. I decide whether and to whom I want to do a favor. Left-wingers would like to decide for others who they should help and how. If you belong to the currently supported group, you will like it. But the tide can quickly turn and you go from being a profiteer to a victim of their system of coercion. According to Marx, after a revolutionary (and therefore necessarily brutal) transitional phase, communism should lead to a more or less natural form of society without money and without constraints, in which all people live together in harmony. And even in the preliminary stage, socialism, the concept of personal property is largely abolished and replaced by common property. As expected, the idealists' hope that all people, out of sheer conviction for the good cause, would then respect public property in the same way as their personal property has proven to be unjustified. As a mathematician and as a human being, I don't know whether I am more surprised by Marx's naivety or that of his many followers.
Look at the legacy media lying with their fact checks again, hypocritically calling attention to the context of Democrat leaders’ Nazi salute-looking hand positions while ignoring the context of Musk’s own hand gesture. Their refusal to grant Musk the same degree of context demonstrates just why the legacy media deserves to have lost the public’s trust. Newsweek claims to have done a fact check of the right-wing claim that still-frame images of Democratic Party leaders (Obama, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton & Elizabeth Warren) with hands in positions similar to that of a supposed Nazi-salute prove that what Musk did was normal. Newsweek claims that the Democratic Party leaders’ “images have been stripped of context”. Newsweek, for example, quotes what Elizabeth Warren was saying at the time of her hand gesture, thanking “Massachusetts for the great honor of serving you as your Senator”. But does Newsweek ever quote what Elon Musk was saying at the time of his hand gesture? Yup. You guessed. No, Newsweek does not. These legacy media fact checkers refuse to grant Elon Musk the same context they give to Democratic Party leaders. Here is what Elon Musk said: “This election really mattered. And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you! [First gesture, hand to heart, then hand goes out to the crowd. Turns around, hand to heart, then hands goes out to the people behind him.] My heart goes out to you!" So, Newsweek says that Elizabeth Warren’s gesture to thank people for voting for her is not a Nazi salute, but Elon Musk’s gesture also thanking people for voting for his preferred candidate is different. Wow. What a hypocritical double standard. Reeks much? just a nice image for this article Newsweek claims to further differentiate Elon Musk from those Democratic Party leaders by pointing out that, for example, Hillary Clinton has explicitly condemned “white supremacy”. Newsflash to Newsweek: Elon Musk has repeatedly, perhaps thousands of times, condemned all racism. All. Meaning, Elon Musk has explicitly condemned white supremacy as well.Differentiating on the Basis of Race is…..Racist. Duh Newsflash to Newsweek: Those Democratic Party leaders have said many things and supported many policies that can fairly be described as racist in the sense of favoring some races over others. It is reasonable to call them racist as well. (Race is a fake social construct. The entire reason we have to continue talking about it is because progressive leftwing Democrats are obsessed with it.) Newsweek calls attention to Elon Musk saying positive things about Germany’s AfD political party calling the political party “far right” or the like. If these legacy media hypocrites want to be taken seriously, they need to admit that their identity politics favoring some races over others in explicit policies are racist. If these legacy media hypocrites want to be taken seriously, they need to measure how awful people truly are by how much real, physical violence they have committed or expressed approval for committing. Really, no other issue matters as much as real, physical violence. Furthermore, the definition of government is an organization with a monopoly on legitimate violence. Every time progressive, leftwing Democrats advocate government action that differentiates on the basis of race, they are advocating systems of mass racial coercion that uses threats of legitimate police/military action to force dissenters to obey them. In the end, the only concrete basis that progressive, leftwing Democrats have to accuse the AfD of “racism” is that the AfD advocates for reduced immigration. But reduced immigration is not a racist policy. Why is it so-called “Nazi-ish” for the AfD to advocate for immigration policies that are still less restrictive than the immigration policies of Bhutan and Mexico, to take just two random examples? Answer: It is not racist to advocate less immigration, and so no one has actually proven that the AfD is racist or Nazi-ish. On the other hand, using the government’s systems of mass coercion to treat some races more favorably than others, as progressive, leftwing Democrats advocate, is the definition of racism and very reminiscent of the racial stratification that Nazis advocated.Everything is a Goodwill Salute Overall, the Newsweek so-called “fact check” and a similar one from the French 24 station, claim that what Elon Musk did as a “salute”, but what those Democratic Party leaders did was not a “salute”. So, let’s look at the definition of “salute”. Dictionary.com provides these definitions: - “to address with expressions of goodwill, respect, etc.; greet”- “to make a bow or other gesture to, as in greeting, farewell, or respect”- “to express respect or praise for” Now let us see how France 24 tried to differentiate the Democratic Party leaders’ hand motions: “It was not a salute [that Obama did]. It was part of his speech. Now if you look at Elizabeth Warren…that moment when she raises her hand is when she is saying ‘Goodbye’ to the crowd. …It is being shared out of context and misused [to suggest that Musk did something similar]. It’s very similar there in the case of Kamala Harris as well…This moment when she raises her arm like that, this is the part of the speech when she was criticizing Donald Trump for his slogan ‘Make America Great Again’… And then she raises her arm. [Kamala Harris] ‘See what can be, unburdened by what has been. And see the vision of the future respecting our past.’ So you can see that her arm gestures were to punctuate her speech. It wasn’t a salute. In terms of that photo of Hillary Clinton…Now this is the only one I was unable to find [film] footage from the event…She has previously condemned white supremacy on the record.” France 24 goes into detail about what these Democratic Party leaders said around their hand gestures, but did France 24 give Musk the same opportunity? Whom am I kidding! Of course not! Here is how Newsweek tried to say that their gestures were not salutes: “Neither Harris nor Obama made a gesture that could be reasonably considered a salute; both can be seen holding their arms out at their side". Somehow these fact-checkers seem to have missed the dictionary definition of “salute”, which encompasses any gesture that expresses goodwill. Those dictionary definitions say nothing about where exactly a hand has to originate, or end up. Those definitions do not even mention the hand at all! The dictionary just says “gesture”. Any gesture counts! another nice image for this article Of course these Democratic Party leaders were expressing goodwill, and so their gestures were salutes. Their gestures express less goodwill, in fact, than Elon Musk saying “My heart goes out to you!” While debating this issue, someone criticizing Elon Musk specified the following challenge: “Stand on the corner of the busiest pedestrian intersection in your city/town/village and make and hold Elon’s awkward gesture. I think that will give you closure”. It does give closure. Watch France 24’s video of the Democratic Party leaders’ gestures. Now, imagine doing those gestures either repeatedly, or stopping at the end to hold the final point of the gesture frozen, and standing at an intersection. No less awkward than Elon Musk’s gesture. Somehow, according to the very left-wing legacy media, the gestures made by people who advocate for less immigration are Nazi racist, while the very similar gestures made in the context of very similar words by people who advocate for systems of mass coercion that treat people differently based on race are somehow...not...Nazi racist. These legacy media so-called fact-checkers are hypocritical, double-standard clowns. Most Americans realize that now, which is why Donald Trump is now President of the United States of America. _______________ Support Non-Violence writing by tipping me at Ko-Fi.com or by donating some Ethereum digital currency to this public address! 0x5ffe3e60a7f85a70147e800c37116b3ad97afd5e
Nancy Churchill
April 19 2025
What happens when a sheriff upholds federal law and tells the truth
about the chaos caused by illegal immigration? In Washington state,
he gets sued. That’s
the unmistakable message Attorney General Nick Brown sent when he
launched a politically charged lawsuit against Adams County Sheriff
Dale Wagner for cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement. Sheriff Wagner’s “crime?” Cooperating with ICE and
sharing information with federal authorities in an effort to protect
his community. For doing his job, he got dragged into court by the
same state that ought to be backing him. Sheriff
Wagner didn’t back down. He traveled to Washington, D.C., and told
Congress exactly what was happening on the ground during a U.S. House
Judiciary hearing titled “Sanctuary
Jurisdictions: Magnet for Migrants, Cover for Criminals." Wagner
wasn’t alone. Ferry County Sheriff Ray Maycumber, along with seven
other sheriffs from Washington state, made the trip to stand beside
him. Their presence sent a clear message: Local law enforcement is
tired of being muzzled while illegal immigration wreaks havoc in
their communities. When even sheriffs are under attack for defending
the law, it’s clear that our leaders have chosen ideology over
public safety.
When
sheriffs are punished for doing their jobs, it’s not just
politics—it’s a direct assault on public safety. Sanctuary
Cities: A Cover for Criminals Washington
State isn’t just tying the hands of law enforcement—it’s
wrapping them in chains. Under the so-called “Keep
Washington Working Act,” sheriffs are
forbidden from cooperating with ICE. They can’t ask about
immigration status. They can’t detain illegal aliens—even violent
ones. They can’t even respond to ICE detainers. In effect, state
law protects illegal immigrants—even those with criminal
records—while punishing law enforcement officers who try to follow
federal law. That’s
not just reckless. That’s intentional sabotage of public safety.
These laws are designed to shield illegal immigrants, even those with
rap sheets as long as your arm, while gutting the power of sheriffs
who dare to do what’s right. Sheriff
Wagner sounded the alarm in his testimony, exposing how these laws
enable repeat offenders to walk free. AG Brown’s lawsuit makes it
clear: Washington state is more interested in protecting political
ideology than protecting people. In Washington, protecting your
people makes you a criminal and shielding illegal aliens makes you a
progressive hero. Jobs
Lost and the Economic Cost Illegal
immigration is bleeding out the American working class. It’s
not theory—it’s happening in every small
business, every orchard, every construction site where legal wages
are undercut by illegal labor. Working-class
Americans, including minorities and recent legal immigrants, are
watching jobs dry up and wages stagnate while global corporations
benefit and politicians virtue-signal. Ordinary citizens pay the
price in reduced opportunity, rising housing costs, and increased
competition for basic services. This
isn’t an accident. It’s a system designed to benefit the elite
while gutting the working man. And when someone dares to expose
it—like Sheriff Wagner—they’re not just ignored. They’re
targeted and are silenced by lawsuits and political threats. Drugs
and Death: Fentanyl at the Border This
isn’t just about jobs anymore—it’s also a public
health catastrophe. Fentanyl—manufactured by
China, trafficked by cartels—is now the number one killer of
Americans aged 18 to 45. And where’s it coming from? Across a
border that until recently was wide open and barely watched. Cartels
know exactly what they’re doing. They used migrant waves as cover
while slipping in deadly drugs that are poisoning our children. Under
the last administration, Border Patrol agents were pulled from
enforcement duties to babysit and process asylum claims—leaving
smugglers to flood this country with narcotics. Sheriffs
in places like Adams and Ferry Counties are watching their towns
collapse. Overdoses. Crime. Death. And instead of getting the backup
they need, they get lawsuits for daring to work with ICE. And
instead of empowering sheriffs to help stop the flow of drugs,
Washington State law strips them of authority and drags them into
court for cooperating with ICE. Human
Trafficking: Real Victims, Fake Compassion Every
politician in Olympia who hides behind “compassion” is complicit
in the trafficking of women and children. The same open-border
policies that let fentanyl pour in also enable
human slavery to flourish. Children
are “recycled”—used over and over again to help adults make
fraudulent asylum claims. Women are dragged into the sex trade. Some
never make it to America at all. Abuse,
slavery, and death. That’s the price of so-called sanctuary. That’s
the consequence of feel-good slogans that ignore the blood on the
border. That’s the opposite of compassion.
Sheriffs
like Wagner and Maycumber are trying to stop this. They are not the
villains—they’re the only ones fighting for the real victims. But
in this twisted reality, it’s the traffickers who walk free, while
the lawmen trying to stop them get sued by their state government. Courage
in the Face of Tyranny This
isn’t just policy failure—it’s state-level tyranny. Communities
are crumbling. Drugs are rampant. Jobs are vanishing. And the people
we trust to protect us are being stripped of their authority and
dragged into court. Sheriffs
Wagner and Maycumber represent the kind of local leadership we
need—men who are willing to speak the truth, follow the law, and
protect their people. But in Washington State, that kind of courage
comes at a cost: lawsuits, slander, and threats from the very people
who should be standing with them. What
we’re witnessing is moral cowardice dressed up as compassion.
Sanctuary policies don’t protect immigrants—they protect
criminals. And when the state uses its power to silence and punish
sheriffs who follow federal law, the line between governance and
tyranny disappears. We
must stop defending the indefensible. And we must start defending the
brave men and women who still believe in duty, law, and country. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nancy Churchill is a writer and educator in rural eastern Washington State, and the chair of the Ferry County Republican Party. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on thinkspot, Rumble and Substack. Support Dangerous Rhetoric
SOURCES: (1)
Adams County Sheriff Wagner Critiques Sanctuary Policies in
Congressional Hearing, Your Source One,
https://bit.ly/3EkRnNI (2)
Keep Washington Working Act Overview, Washington State
Legislature,
https://bit.ly/3RLo89N (3) The Fiscal and Economic Impact of
Immigration on the United States, Center for Immigration
Studies, https://bit.ly/3Re6H1F (4)
National Drug
Threat Assessment 2024,
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,
https://bit.ly/4j8MIxB (5)
Human
Trafficking,
U.S. Customs and Border Protection,
https://bit.ly/3Enal6r