Email from American Values Plus, micromanaging the military.   Fighting For Faith, Family & Freedom Thursday, December 4, 2025 To: Friends & Supporters From: Gary Bauer Day 319  It’s Day 319 of President Trump’s second term. No one has lost their Social Security, Medicare, or veterans’ benefits in spite of constant media and leftist lies. Stand With Me! This is a critical time in our country, as you will read below. So much is at stake. Please support American Values now! Your donation will be DOUBLED! Arrest Made The FBI finally made an arrested in the January 6, 2021, pipe bomb case. Brian Cole of Woodbridge, Virginia, was taken into custody this morning. Details are sparse, but law enforcement sources say he appeared to have “anarchist ideologies” and started making pipe bombs in 2019. We will keep you posted. The Affordability President The average price of a new car recently surged to a record high of $50,000. That price tag translates to a new record high car payment of $766 a month. For many Americans, that’s simply unaffordable. Yesterday, President Trump took action. The president issued orders “terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome and horrible” auto fuel standards. The Biden administration mandated that all new cars and passenger trucks must get 50.4 miles per gallon within the next six years. It was a ridiculous standard. It was performative art. Everyone knew it would add thousands of dollars to the price of cars and trucks. President Trump predicted that car prices will start falling now that this absurd mandate has been terminated. Ford CEO Jim Farley praised President Trump for “aligning fuel economy standards with market realities,” calling his action “a win for customers and common sense.” Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa echoed Farley’s remarks, saying this move “to realign the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards with real-world market conditions” will “allow us to offer our customers the freedom to choose the vehicles they want at prices they can afford.” But Democrats don’t care about consumer choice and affordability. Their policies, as the auto CEOs noted, aren’t based on reality or common sense. They are based on virtue signaling. All they do is raise taxes and impose regulations that bust the budgets of average Americans. The idea that Democrats will be better on “affordability” is ludicrous! How did the “Affordable” Care Act (Obamacare) turn out? It was a huge scam. You couldn’t keep healthcare plans you liked, it was never affordable, and it’s also full of fraud! The Green Energy Scam Energy is another example of how out-of-touch Democrats are with reality and affordability. Just look at New York, where Democrats think they can suspend the law of supply and demand. Zohran Mamdani says he is focused on “affordability.” But he is also opposed to “any new fossil fuel construction” in the city. The vast majority of the Big Apple’s electricity comes from fossil fuels. If you restrict the energy supply, costs for energy will go up. The rest of the state is learning that lesson the hard way. Several years ago, New York passed “groundbreaking” laws to combat climate change. The state mandated that 70% of its energy must come from “renewable,” non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. So, how’s it going? The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) just released a report that is a warning to the entire nation. PPI found that “New York set bold climate targets, but ignored the economic and technical realities required to achieve them. The result is an energy system that is less reliable, more expensive, and now politically unsustainable.” Electricity prices in New York are 44% higher than the national average. Residential rates have risen nearly three times faster than the rest of the country. The Left’s radical energy policies are not affordable. Barack Obama admitted that when he said under his climate change plan, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” The Left’s New Hoax The “war crimes” charge against the Trump administration, and specifically Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, appears to be developing into the latest Russia collusion hoax. It gets down to this simple concept: The media, the Left, and even some Republican senators are promoting the idea that it is okay to strike an enemy target of the United States once. But if that first strike doesn’t take out the target, it is a war crime to hit it again. It is shocking to me that anyone in America actually believes that. It insults insanity to call that insanity. When we took out Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the whole operation was built on multiple strikes on the same targets. Each target was hit five times. Were strikes two, three, four, and five war crimes? “Civilian” Iranian scientists were probably working there. Are their deaths war crimes? If this is what the political, foreign policy, and military establishment believes, we will never win another war. But that seems to be the mindset of more and more Democrats. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, “There is no such thing as a narco-terrorist.” He’s not very intelligent, so he shouldn’t be on the Intelligence Committee. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said, “People on a boat carrying cocaine are not a direct threat to the lives of Americans.” Yes, they are! They are bringing deadly drugs into our country to poison our children! Micromanaging The Military Admiral Frank Bradley, who was in charge of the “double tap” operation Democrats are calling a “war crime,” gave a closed-door briefing to top members of Congress today. He told them there was no “kill them all” order from Secretary Hegseth, as the Washington Post claimed. Another lie! There have been multiple actions against drug cartel boats where survivors were rescued. The difference here is that Admiral Bradley concluded these “survivors” were still attempting to complete their mission and, thus, legitimate targets. Additional reports indicate they were also in communication with another boat. Think about the level of micromanagement this represents. We’re told that the United States is a “superpower” and “the most powerful nation in the world.” We’re told that our security commitments around the globe are endless. We must save every other nation. Without any vote by Congress for war, step-by-step during the Biden years we got deeper and deeper into Ukraine, which could become a conflict between NATO and a nuclear-armed Russia. No matter how much that danger is talked about, all you hear from these same left-wing Democrats is “We must do more!” But when it comes to stopping drug traffickers from killing our children, they drag an admiral away from his job to second-guess his expertise and decision-making. There was not this much outrage and chest-thumping when a communist Chinese balloon spied on our military bases. Biden tried to prevent us from knowing about that. We only learned about it because a civilian captured it on video. If I were sitting in Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, or Tehran and trying to damage the United States, I would say, “Just keep pouring it on. More drugs, more illegal aliens, whatever we can get in there. America’s political establishment has no desire to protect their own country. They only want to fight foreign wars.” War Is Hell Over the years, there is a story I have told people that often leaves them mortified. “That’s got to be wrong, Gary. The U.S. would never do that. What are you talking about?” What I told them was that during World War II, the Japanese took American prisoners of war and put them on Japanese ships. We didn’t always know which ships had American POWs on board, but sometimes we did. Either way, we were at war, and we had to destroy the Japanese navy. So, when we attacked their ships and destroyed them, U.S. POWs necessarily died, too. The alternative would have been insane. If we refrained from attacking enemy ships because there might be POWs on board, the Japanese would have taken as many prisoners as possible and put them on every ship in order to paralyze us. I have also debated some “progressive” Christians who say, “Violence is never the answer.” I’ll ask them, “So, if someone tries to assault me, and I use a gun to defend myself and kill the attacker, you’re telling me Jesus would be angry with me?” Their response is often something like, “Yes, Gary, that’s right. Jesus loves everyone.” And I reply back, “So, if I see someone raping a woman, should I use force to stop him or just tell him, ‘Jesus loves you,’ and keep walking?” That usually ends the debate. A Coming Coup? Historian Victor Davis Hanson is advancing an idea, which we alluded to in yesterday’s report, that the Deep State is attempting to pull off a coup or a “color revolution” against President Trump. These “color revolutions” always follow the same pattern when we do it abroad, and we have done it a lot. We undermine confidence in the current government. We say everything that the government is doing is “dangerous” and “unprecedented.” We warn the people that their rights are being taken away and that the only solution is a “people’s revolution.” Then the CIA instigates the revolution. I think Professor Hanson is right. Let’s review events from the last few weeks. A group of Democrats produced a video addressing American troops. They tell our troops, “You don’t have to obey an illegal order.” When the roof caved in on them, they backtracked because they couldn’t or wouldn’t identify any illegal orders. Yet, in the months leading up to this video, many Democrats were saying that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and his enforcement of immigration laws were either “illegal” or “unconstitutional.” Many legal experts said that Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), one of the Democrats who appeared in the video and is in the military reserve, violated the Uniform Military Code of Justice by undermining the chain of command. The Pentagon announced it was investigating Kelly. Immediately after that announcement, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) announced that any military personnel who try to investigate Kelly will be held accountable when Democrats get control of the federal government. So, Democrats reminded soldiers that they don’t have to obey orders. Then they tell them, “If you obey this order, you may end up in jail when we’re back in power.” Yesterday morning, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, went on “Morning Joe” and said, “I think in many ways, the uniformed military may help save us from this president and his lame people.” Can it get any clearer? They are inviting a coup! Warner also claimed, “This is an administration that has treated the uniformed military with unprecedented disrespect when they were all brought to get a pep rally in front of Hegseth and Trump. This is an administration that’s fired, you know, uniformed generals.” It looks like Senator Warner is trying to stir up a revolt within the ranks. We are in dangerous waters. MAKE YOUR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION NOW SHARE VIA SOCIAL MEDIA Share This Email Share This Email Share This Email Share This Email As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, donations to American Values are tax deductible for federal income tax purposes. Contributions may be mailed to the following address: American Values 2800 S. Shirlington Road Suite 950 Arlington, VA 22206 Phone: 703-671-9700 Email Gary End Of Day Sign Up End Of Day Archives Truth Social Bauer & Rose Podcast Listen to Gary's Defending Faith, Family, & Freedom podcasts   American Values | ouramericanvalues.org American Values | 2800 S. Shirlington Road Suite 950 | Arlington, VA 22206 US Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice