I'm on the road today and I neglected to copy on daily data to my laptop. So I'll bypass that today.
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Over at Townhall, Kurt Schlichter hits the target in Schlichter style:
Oh no, gas is a little more expensive per gallon, and a bunch of Democrats haven’t been thrown into jail yet. I guess the only thing to do is vote for a bunch of communists.
That’s the entire blackpill in two sentences, and Schlichter skewers it. A chunk of the right has spent the fall staring at the price sign over the corner Sunoco, while the whole strategic map of the planet shifted under its feet. So let me put the thesis right up front: the sticker shock is real, but the payoff is bigger, and anybody telling you to sit out November — or to “send Trump a message” by handing Congress to the Democrats — has the math exactly backward.
Let’s deal with the gas first, because I won’t pretend it doesn’t sting. I drove commercial trucks for years. I know what a 20-cent jump does to a fleet budget, and I know what it does to the guy in the cab watching the pump numbers spin. According to AAA, the national average for regular sat at $4.41 on October 1, against $3.16 a year earlier. September set a record for the month, averaging $4.33 — 50 cents above the old 2023 mark.
That’s the bill. Now look at what it bought.
He goes on:
Now, less than two years after Donald Trump took office, we are on the verge of an entirely different world. Cuba has been a thorn in our side for almost 70 years. Those communists are going away. The mullahs have been killing Americans and subverting our friends for nearly 50 years. That clock is ticking. And the Europeans have been free-riding forever, but no more. At the same time, we’re securing our hemisphere and therefore our own security. Not only do we not have enemies on our own landmass, but we now have a claim on resources like oil and rare earths. And our key opponent, China, will have to come to us when it wants to fill its tank.
What does that add up to? The potential for peace. Strength doesn’t cause war. Weakness does. When nations feel they can win a conflict, they start one. If you want peace, you prepare for war, you get rid of as many enemies as you can, and you make your biggest enemy so vulnerable it doesn’t dare start a fight.
That’s what Trump has done for us. Oh, it isn’t in front of our eyes every day, like four-dollar gas. But you know what else isn’t in front of our eyes? A mushroom cloud and a world dominated by China.
Every one of those claims holds up. Take them one at a time.
Cuba. Within days of U.S. forces grabbing Nicolás Maduro on January 3, the administration turned its sights on Havana: an executive order at the end of January, a squeeze on fuel shipments to the island, and a senior official telling Axios flatly that “the regime has to go.” Marco Rubio spent his entire political career waiting for this moment, and now he holds the leash. Is it done? No. Even Rubio has warned against expecting change overnight, and the Castro gang has outlasted every American president since Eisenhower. But for the first time since the Soviets pulled the plug, Havana has no sugar daddy. The Venezuelan oil is gone, and so is the cover.
Iran. On February 28, U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who ran the world’s leading state sponsor of terror since 1989. Within weeks, even IAEA chief Rafael Grossi — nobody’s idea of a Trump booster — conceded that the strikes had knocked down the “most advanced parts” of Iran’s nuclear program. Now the honest part: the war has dragged on longer than anybody wanted, and the Strait of Hormuz remains contested. Brent crude peaked at $126 a barrel. That’s your $4.41, right there. But run the alternative. An Iran with a bomb turns Hormuz into a permanent hostage situation, and every barrel through it carries a nuclear surcharge forever. These are the people who held 52 Americans for 444 days and whose proxies killed 241 American servicemen in Beirut. Forty-seven years of that ends now, or it never ends.
Europe. For two decades, American presidents begged NATO allies to spend 2% of GDP on their own defense, and for two decades, the Europeans nodded politely and went back to subsidizing early retirement. Trump got them to sign on to 5% by 2035 at The Hague last year, and the money has started moving. NATO estimates core defense spending by Europe and Canada hits $634 billion this year, up from $571 billion in 2025, and five countries, with Poland and the Baltic states in the lead, already hit the new target. Spain still drags its feet, because of course it does, and Slovenia can’t even clear the old 2% floor. But the free ride has a meter running on it now.
The hemisphere. Remember when the smart set laughed at Trump about Venezuela and Greenland? Here’s the punchline. According to a White House fact sheet released August 31, Venezuela’s interim authorities granted 100-year concessions on 17 oil fields holding roughly 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, with Washington holding governance rights — including a veto over board appointments — and an off-take arrangement that can feed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Then on September 22, at the UN, Trump, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, and Greenland’s Jens-Frederik Nielsen signed a security pact expanding the U.S. military presence on the island, and adding another defense area. It survives even if Greenland goes independent. It still needs approval from the Danish and Greenlandic parliaments, but the missile approach over the top of the world now belongs to us, and Beijing doesn’t get a seat at the table.
China. Here’s where it all ties together. China’s independent “teapot” refiners lived on discounted, sanctioned crude from exactly two places Trump just shut off. China took in 389,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan oil in 2025; those loadings stopped cold in January. With a U.S. naval blockade on Iran’s ports on top of that, China’s overseas oil shipments in June fell to their lowest level since 2016. When Schlichter says China will have to come to us to fill its tank, he’s describing the oil market as it stands, not a wish list.
Put it together, and you get the strongest American strategic position since the Berlin Wall fell — bought, yes, with a few months of ugly gas prices. Seems a good deal to me.
All this would be a lot easier without our domestic enemies, such as the DSA, the Islamic invasion of America, and the Establishment GOP. Each is an impediment to what Trump has accomplished.
Start with the Democratic Socialists of America. Brookings counted 282 DSA-endorsed candidates this cycle, and the group’s biggest catch, Abdul El-Sayed, now carries the Democrat banner in the Michigan Senate race, where former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) took him apart in debate this week. DSA-backed insurgents have knocked off sitting House Democrats in deep-blue districts, and in Maine, Graham Platner, who once aligned himself with the DSA, won the Democrat Senate nomination. Up here in New York, we already get to watch the experiment run in real time; Mayor Zohran Mamdani governs from the other end of the Thruway. Hand that crowd the gavel, and the first thing it does is yank the leash off Tehran and Havana.
Then there’s the Establishment GOP, which never forgave Trump for winning without its permission. Buffalo’s WKBW reports on a growing “YOLO conference” of Republican senators with nothing left to lose. At least nine won’t return next year. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), fresh off his own primary loss, voted with Democrats to advance a bill limiting Trump’s war powers — in the middle of a war. The same bloc stalled a $70-plus billion package to fund ICE and Border Patrol. These folks spent 30 years managing America’s decline politely, and they would love nothing more than to get back to it.
So here’s the choice on November 3. $4 gas goes away when the shooting in the Gulf stops. A nuclear Iran, a Chinese foothold in Greenland, and a Castro regime with fresh oil money don’t go away. Ever.
Oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, prices for crude are already falling, which means we'll see the price at the pump fall a few weeks from now.
Gas is a bill, and a short-term one at that. A Chinese century is a mortgage. Radical Islam with the bomb? Better not to even consider that one. Pay the bill. And work to keep our government out of the hands of the left. As I said yesterday, get your buns to the voting booth.
More tomorrow.
Thought of the day: Our situation is never as bad as the left would have you believe, unless it's actually in power.
VIP members: Your turn. Let's hear your voice, because you matter.
Take care, gang. I'll see you tomorrow.