I want to wish all those who contributed money, all those who helped with in kind contributions, and those who help by spreading the word about this project, a laurel and hearty thank you.
[PJMedia] I’ve written about Jack Glasure, my PR mentor, before. In addition to PR, he taught me about an industry that I didn’t even know existed: relationship brokering.
It works like this: Jack networked with everyone and their brother. His rolodex was, quite literally, tens of thousands of names deep. Very often, he’d learn that contact A could financially benefit from meeting contact B.
And so, for a finder’s fee, he’d put the two contacts together.
Full disclosure: Jack and I have split finder’s fees for deals between our contacts, including a very nice six-figure payout when a sports league changed hands. (I knew the owner; he knew the financier — and when a deal was struck, we both profited.)
Keep this in mind when reading about the Epstein document dump, because the emails and communications between professional networkers — which Jeffrey Want Some Candy, Little Girl? Epstein ...A high class pimp financier who was alleged to maintain a stable of underage whoressex slaves who were paid big bucks to entertain the rich and/or famous. He was really surprised when he commited suiciede in jail... certainly was (among many other things, of course) — are explicitly designed to perpetuate the illusion of close, intimate friendships.
When I worked for Jack in the 2000s, my emails/texts were replete with back-and-forth communications between sports icons like Troy Aikman and Yao Ming. Never met either gentleman, but their reps allowed them to join our PR agency’s speakers’ bureau. It took tons of friendly, enthusiastic, over-the-top emails to seal the deal. (I forget who repped Ming, but Troy’s contact was actually his mom, who was involved in his charitable foundation.) Whatever "in" I had, I played it up to the nth degree.
And if any of those texts/emails were ever leaked, you’d probably think we were best buddies. Which was precisely the illusion I was paid to perpetuate!
Much of the media is marveling over the depth and scope of Jeffrey Epstein’s celebrity relationships: Somehow, he knew everyone. From NFL owners to tech giants to global leaders to European royalty, Epstein corresponded with every big-name he possibly could.
Well, yeah. If you’re a professional networker, that’s exactly what you do!
But problem #1 is that millions of Epstein emails were just dumped. Nobody has the bandwidth to pore through all the communications.
So, instead, we rely on media outlets to do all the grunt work for us. (As the Fox News Channel might’ve put it, "They report, we decide.")
The second problem is even worse: Too many news outlets are run by lazy, left-wing ideologues whose biases lead to embarrassing mistakes — and/or the deliberate dissemination of fake news.
Take, for example, the slew of reports about Elon Musk’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. A shockingly large number of outlets claimed that Musk begged to visit "Epstein Island" — but was such a dork, he wasn’t allowed to visit.
#1
The biggest lie is that there is no evidence against the pedos. Epstein had an entire high end operation including trafficking hundreds of young American women, but all he got was embarrassing pictures of Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and a British Royal nobody likes, but everything was PG13. Nobody is buying that the Jayzee cuddle shots are all that the US government has.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/05/2026 6:00 Comments ||
Top||
#2
/\ The biggest lie is that there is no evidence against the pedos.
Unlike other societal dysfunctions and abominations, it's simply not yet been able to gain acceptability in polite conversation. The struggle continues however. The Oxford elite are no doubt working toward a solution, but it could be years off.
[Field Ethos] I was raised in a conservative home and developed the belief at a relatively early age that it was wrong to drink alcohol. I’m not sure whether somebody sat me down and taught me that lesson or if I just picked up the idea on my own, but my formative years were governed by the motto, "Don’t drink, smoke or chew. Or date girls that do." Consequently, I’ve been designated driving pretty much since the day I got my driver’s license. There was plenty of teenage rebellion in my life, but underage drinking wasn’t part of it.
Upon my graduation from high school, I entered the ministry and I’ve been working for one church or another ever since. No matter what you believe about religion, I think we can all probably agree that it’s not a good look to show up to teach a Sunday school Bible class with a hangover.
A DECLARATION OF ABSTINENCE
And then, about the time I decided there would be absolutely nothing wrong with me having a mimosa with my omelet or a beer with the boys, I took a second, side job counseling drug addicts and alcoholics at an inpatient, substance abuse rehabilitation facility. Here, I listen all day long to horror stories that begin and end with alcohol abuse.
For those reasons, and with the lone exception that I will one day drink a sundowner to celebrate a successful safari, I have made the personal decision to abstain from alcohol.
I realize that stance doesn’t exactly jive with the Field Ethos brand, but it does set the stage for the story I want to tell here. Plus, there might be a reader among Field Ethos’ audience that needs some help with addiction. If so, feel free to reach out. The guys at Field Ethos have my contact information and can put you in touch. Anyway, on to my story.
Editor’s note: Today’s article is drawn from a speech John Kass delivered earlier this week to students and faculty at Center for Conservative Alternatives seminar held at Hillsdale College.
It is an honor to be here with you today. As you all realize, Hillsdale is beautiful and a very special, necessary place.
How necessary?
I’m thinking of that wonderful book by Thomas Cahill, "How the Irish Saved Civilization," and his description of Ireland as an "island of saints and scholars" preserving the Western tradition.
That’s the role I see Hillsdale College playing in today’s America.
But we’re not on some rocky island in the corner of Europe. We’re in the center of a Western civilization that is in trouble.
Today, I stand before you as something of an oddity worthy of exhibition by PT Barnum, perhaps in a cage:
An old newspaperman, and even worse, a conservative newspaperman.
My good friend Prof. Charles Lipson, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and a frequent guest on my podcast, the Chicago Way, offered some advice on this talk.
"You’re not a professor, so don’t act like one at Hillsdale. You’re a reporter. Talk like a reporter on the ground. Not from 30,000 feet."
So here I am on the sidewalk. A gumshoe reporter without a Camel filter.
As some of you may know, I was a reporter and nationally syndicated lead columnist at the Chicago Tribune for some 40 years, that is until leftist billionaire George Soros showed the Tribune and me that Soros was boss.
The Jacobin, pro-Soros newsroom union at the Tribune defamed me and I had to get out. The Jacobins demanded that I apologize and submit to a struggle session.
I refused.
So, I left, took a buyout, and started in new media, johnkassnews.com where I write twice a week and run guest columns featuring other excellent writers, too.
And I continue doing my weekly podcast, The Chicago Way. johnkassnews.com is successful, and it pays the bills, but it’s not all candy and nuts.
For example, The Illinois Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to play the Chicago Way by deciding who can write for me and who has to shut up—and they’ve decided to silence a well-respected retired judge.
So now I’m reaching out to legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who is also familiar with Chicago’s corrupt political culture. If any of you know Professor Turley, or any good First Amendment lawyers, please let me know.
Meanwhile, the Tribune is dying as are many other legacy papers. I was able to climb out from the wreckage and start something new. And so can you.
Today’s talk is about THE DECLINE OF TRUST IN LEGACY MEDIA, and I was there when it went bad and newsrooms began looking down their noses at the middle-class people who supported and paid for the newspaper.
But before then, I was able to interview one of my heroes, Victor Davis Hanson, for a column and so, since we’re at Hillsdale and before we begin in earnest, I’d like to have a moment to pray for his recovery from serious and difficult surgery. (Pause)
America needs VDH for his clarity, especially now, when what we know as the establishment news media refuses to provide needed context in this time of chaos.
And as the Democrat nullificationists of Minnesota are refusing to follow federal immigration law as if we’re in South Carolina of 1861.. In this, the Democrats are reverting to form by refusing to follow immigration law in most blue states.
So, how did the Legacy media lose the public trust?
Simple: By mocking the people who bought the newspapers and supported the advertising, by opening the newsroom wide to the snobs of the American left, by adopting the language of the left.
And by manufacturing demigods like Barack Obama to lead the country where it did not want to go.
Journalism lost something irreplaceable as corporate legacy media created Obama as something of a plaster saint. What they lost, or abandoned, was the one thing a journalist needs to do the job:
Curiosity. Ethics
Morality
Integrity
Godfulness
Boundaries
And he, Obama, led American journalism into a special hell, having his shadowy Deep State operatives like the CIA’s John Brennan and the FBI’s James Comey manufacturing phony evidence to cast Donald Trump as the tool of Putin’s Russia—even though they knew that was totally untrue.
But that didn’t stop Deep State, establishement newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post to push these notions into Pulitzer Prizes, and American journalism sealed itself into the vault of horror.
I suppose I’d like to begin with a biddable orchestra playing something like Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, along with clacking typewriters of an old-time newsroom in the background, some blend of hard-boiled knowingness with optimism in the big cities, the skyscrapers, the pedestrians hurrying to and fro...
Those rising notes of the clarinet make me think of Chicago and big cities and much younger versions of me in a suit and smoking a cigarette on Michigan Avenue in the shadow of the great gothic skyscraper we still know as The Tribune Tower, though the paper has abandoned it.
And the clear-eyed optimism my grandfather had, Papou Yianni, when he came to Chicago in the 1890s. To make a living he became a fruit and vegetable peddler, first carrying his wares on his back. And later, he could afford to buy a horse drawn wagon, and still later 10 wagons.
Our extended family—Roosevelt Democrats and Reagan Republicans—were newspaper readers, learning the mysterious ways of the strange native people we called the Americani.
In the pages of the Chicago Tribune, we learned how to become American. My aunts loved the paper and learned from it how to make that most American dessert, Jell-O, with the horrid chunks of fruit suspended in it.
In those days and beyond you had to be a fool not to lose money running a big city newspaper like the Tribune. You could make a 25 percent profit year after year after year. These were not newspapers that despised capitalism. They were the bibles of capitalism.
And if you were in private business, you depended on the newspaper to reach customers. Business had to play ball with the publishers of the Tribune, or the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer the Detroit Free Press and so on.
And then Al Gore ruined it all by inventing the Internet...and newspaper advertising revenues went to hell.
Many of you know the story. The collapse of ad revenues meant the newspapers relied heavily on subscriptions.
And everything became about feelings and emotion, and unfortunately so did the news itself.
There’s a Ray Bradberry story from 1963 that I’m fond of, "To The Chicago Abyss," a dystopian tale of an old man about my age now.
He travels through a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape where cultural memory has been forbidden or lost, subversively reminiscing about the wonderful foods, items, and sensory experiences of the past—such as hot coffee, real butter, chocolate, and crisp autumn air—to remind people of what they have lost; vacuum-packed coffee, fresh milk, chesterfield cigarettes and candy bars.
He’s a threat to the establishment, and his reminiscing is seen as dangerous, and it tries to suppress him.
Please keep your eye on the door in case the authorities try bursting in, but I’m not going to tell you of canned cream corn or chunky candy bars or big macs and fries in beef tallow.
I do remember a name that helps illustrate the point: Melissa Click...
November 2015 at the University of Missouri (Mizzou).
Melissa Click, one of the first AWFLs, an assistant professor of mass media at Mizzou, was filmed shrieking for "muscle" to remove student photojournalist Tim Tai from a public, on-campus protest "safe space."
Leftists demanded a safe space at Mizzou and later even journalists were demanding safe spaces from the dangerous, triggering ideas found in the Federalist Papers.
When did America journalism break faith with the people?
Conservative writer Jude Russo wrote recently that it wasn’t only one thing that caused the loss of trust. There were many things.
Yes, the unions came in to the newsrooms, and that pushed newspapers farther to the left.
And yes, online advertising took print advertising and shook it to death like a Manchester Terrier pouncing on a rat in the alley.
What ties the demand for safe space and the collapse of advertising was the advancement of Barack Obama.
And I was there in Chicago when he was hatched from an egg laid by America’s foremost domestic terrorists of the day, William Ayres and Bernadine Dorn.
They had powerful friends. Ayers’s daddy was close friends with Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, a name that college deans take notice of. And so, the University of Illinois hired Ayres and Northwestern hired his wife, Bernardine Dorn. Obama was introduced to the leftist Chicago intelligencia at the home of socialist Alice Palmer and the communist Buzz Palmer. I knew them.
Who wasn’t interested in the hatching of the Obama egg?
The New Yorker, the New York Times, Time Magazine and the others of legacy media. They weren’t interested in the real Obama history, but they were most interested in Obama hagiography.
Consider just one image from that period; Obama walking barefoot on the beach in Hawaii, as if Pegasus rising from the sea foam.
But legacy media wasn’t interested in the fact that the federally convicted Chicago bagman Tony Rezko helped buy Obama’s first home in Hyde Park, or what that means. They didn’t want to know he was a creature of the political machine. Manipulating narratives replaced reporting and analysis.
The Tribune broke the story about bagman Rezko and Obama’s first dreamhouse in 2006, but it didn’t even make the Tribune’s own front page.
What does that tell you?
As the beat reporter or political reporter in Chicago at the time, I got a lot of calls from the New Yorker and the New York Times. But they didn’t want to hear anything about Tony Rezko.
All these people said they wanted to know the real story about Barack Obama, but they really didn’t want to hear that real story.
I’d tell them he’s a silky. He’s a socialist. I tried to tell them the fact that his beautiful mansion in Hyde Park Chicago was secured by the corrupt Rezko, and they didn’t want to hear that. And so I saw first hand that what we now call the legacy media—of which I was a part back then—had a certain way of dealing with the truth and the narrative. Which was to ignore it.
They would select the narrative and shape it and they didn’t want some yokel from Chicago, some peasant gumshoe telling them what they already knew but didn’t want you to know it.
They didn’t want to you to know about that Barack Obama.
The servant of the crooked Chicago Daley Machine, the friend of the federally jailed bagman Rezko who was without an arrow pointing to the true north. In Springfield where the Illinois legislature meets, Obama was nothing, a back bencher, the kind of guy the big guys would send out for coffee.
I’ll tell you a story they didn’t want to know about years ago. That was when I first started writing the column. It came out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, four times a week.
It was a terrible,terrible schedule because I missed Sunday, the day for church and our family.
In February 2003 the E2 nightclub disaster happened. 21 young people were trampled to death in a locked stairwell.
A fight broke out on a Saturday night and one of the security guards tried to use pepper spray to break it up. People smelled that pepper spray and panicked and ran for the doors, but they couldn’t get out because the doors were locked.
So, the next morning on Sunday I was driving out there and pulled up.
Cops knew me so they let me pull up.
And there was Barack, hands in his pockets, posing like a sad, lonely man. He said the owners were friends of his. He was sad the kids had died.
Across the street were weekend news crews, the legacy media’s Obama hagiography machine was taking shape.
They hadn’t recognized him, but the weekend crews knew me and they complained that I was on the other side of the police line.
"They know me," I said. "When they get here, they’ll ask you questions. Get out of here if you don’t want to answer."
He loped away fast.
In the years after, the media’s obsequiousness continued, intensifying.
I was at his first inauguration, and the legacy media treated him as if he was Mr. Tumnus, the forest faun from Chronicles of Narnia, and they would have cakes and tea with him and take a nap in his lap.
But that coziness led to disaster for the American republic and the media itself.
Obama, the silky of the Chicago Machine became the silky of the Deep State.
And we found that the gentle Mr. Tumnus is extraordinarily vicious, according to documents declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
What I said about Obama as the silky of the Deep State is underscored by recent reporting by Real Clear Investigations and Paul Sperry, that I have reposted with permission from Real Clear Politics.
Obama had his intelligence chiefs manufacture evidence that Donald Trump was a creature of Putin. And legacy papers got their Pulitzer Prizes and kept them. Will that end in indictments? One can hope.
Credibility of the legacy corporate media began to fall apart.
But don’t be sad.
All that means is there are many more opportunities now that the old statist guardians are gone.
And that means optimism for a free press and free inquiry.
When I learned journalism, it wasn’t an excuse for creative writing.
I learned it as a trade, a blue-collar trade from grizzled old timers at the Tribune’s City Desk, beginning when I was a copy boy.
The legendary city editor Bernard Judge would scream "COPY’ and we’d run to grab the copy books—sheets of typing paper and carbon copies—and separating them as we literally ran from desk to desk, spiking that copy (no OSHA in newsrooms) on the foreign desk, city desk, national desk and to the ladies of the feature department
We learned to build stories the way we’d learn to frame a house, from the foundation up.
The basics were who was there, what happened to whom, where was it and how was it done.
Who what when where how.
There’s nothing mysterious about it. AND IF YOUR MOTHER TELLS YOU SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT.
Newspapering was a blue-collar enterprise.
The Tribune’s managing editor was a tank commander in Vietnam. Our editorial page editor was a soldier in Vietnam. He went to Yale Law school, received the Pulitzer Prize when it meant something. They had common sense.
They did not look down their noses at subscribers. And they did not engage in the creation of saints, that came later.
Our managing editor, Dick Ciccone, gave me some good advice.
"Don’t reach for your notepad at first. Listen to what they’re talking about. Let them know you’re interested in what they have to say."
They were of a common-sense generation that went to war. They were not overtly sentimental. They were not hagiographers.
When it came to politics, they were iconoclasts.
One word of caution as we look to the past. It wasn’t all that great. Not really.
The publishers were gate keepers, as were the network anchors from ABC, CBS and NBC who would decide what the news would be.
They were the establishment. They would dictate the narrative and the narrative leaned to the left.
It wasn’t the so-called Golden Age. Not really.
They would ram the news down America’s throats.
In recent years it became obvious that as they raised Obama to the status of demigod, establishment journalists had lost their curiosity.
In the journalism culture the left controlled, curiosity threatened to veer off into dangerous territory.
The processing of Barack Obama began strangling the republic years ago, just about the time the media began treating him as a mythological creature. They lost all credibility about him. And he took that journalistic adoration, turned it and killed legacy media, too.
And I witnessed firsthand all the reporters wiggling like puppies, all but soiling the carpets at Obama’s approach. The media treated Barack Obama as something of a winged sea creature, a Pegasus up from the beaches of Hawaii as they smoked their Hopium in every newsroom in America. Their eyes were slits. And he was their wizard of a thousand kings.
They wanted to ride him as if he were a unicorn. They wanted to love him too. He was their fantasy black politico.
There was no way they could have been objective about him, any more than a child could be objective about their first pony.
So, to get some distance, I called a wise colleague Steve Huntley, the retired editorial writer for the Chicago Sun Times. He spent 30 years there. And I worked across the street at the Trib.
He explained that there are many reasons the American people have lost trust in legacy media. If you had a sharp enough scalpel, you might consider the shift to exclusive subscription models, increased where partisanship has greater leverage.
Things change. Twitter now X has changed it. They hate that Elon Musk, owner of X, has broken the iron grip of the gatekeepers.
The Tribune and the rest of the legacy media may be closed to us, and is calcified, but all you have to do is look at your phone to find the open gates.
John Kass News is succeeding, so is the Federalist, edited by the great Mollie Hemingway. As are many others.
The old leftist gatekeepers have lost the plot. They are panicking and desperate.
This is the time of the curious intellect. This is your time and this is Hillsdale’s time. The path is well lit, but it’s not easy. But all you have to do is take that first step.
Thank you for your time.
-30-
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/05/2026 00:00 ||
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[1797 views]
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#1
Kass, like VDH, Mollie, Kurt, are all must-reads
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/05/2026 5:19 Comments ||
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#2
In the 19th Century most papers started as party propaganda broadsheets. When it was discovered they could sell advertising and make money, the newspaper concept, as our fathers knew it, came into being. With alternate revenue streams now taking that function, its just returning back to it origins.
#3
First time I read Kass was yesterday as I waited for a haircut (with what little hair I have). This is a long piece but well written with a rare insider's view of MSM, particulary in the days when Baraq Obama was being annointed
I'd like to believe in objective journalism but I'm afraid it's very hard to find. Most of the time we just have to extrapolate the truth from all the bull crap. I guess it helps to become old and cynical but I fear for all the young and naive who are so easily led down the garden path.
I remember arguing with a co-worker at the advent of the World Wide Web about how readers would now have an alternative to the liberal bias of the MSM. He trusted the establishment and expressed the establishment fear of free, independent journalist writing all kinds of wild stories unchecked by their publishers or editors. But I still think those free, independent journalists are our only hope.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/05/2026 11:56 Comments ||
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#4
Journalistic integrity and objectivity, or at least a sometimes ragged representation of that ideal, are one of the institutional dinosaurs of the former United States culture.
Overwhelmingly Euro-centric, Christian and with a shared cultural national character (the days before the need for hyphenated descriptors and dual citizenship), we were a high-trust culture, with overall expectations of honesty, law-abiding behavior, oath-keeping and loyalty as reasonable behavior by our fellow citizens. America had a majority middle-class, government was reasonably limited, crime was the exceptional occurrence, our food and machine products were world-wide hallmarks of excellence and quality, and we felt great pride in our national character. We trusted the MSM and Hollywood as being honest and integral to our culture.
We saw those who immigrated here as future Americans who wished only to assimilate and become like us, sharing our national character and values, with fond memories perhaps of aspects of their past, but embracing our culture as their own.
Now, as we are rapidly evolving into a fragmented, low-trust culture, objective journalism has been replaced by advocacy with even the skimpy veneer of "journalist integrity" in tatters. Our nation in places has become merely a location on a map, many of the residents there as foreign as their names, the mixing bowl ideal has become the salad bowl, diversity is hailed as a "strength" despite all the evident to the contrary. Language and culture in large swaths of our urban cores are the hallmarks of pseudo-colonization more than assimilation.
The MSM has become more their voice than ours, the political goals of the left becoming the editorial filter of what Rachel Maddow, CNN, MSNOW and the NYT and WaPo say. The bias and partial truth are matched by the editorial omissions that are presented as reportage.
The rural, Red areas are vast and still have the remnant hallmarks of Americana, but the atrophy of trust is growing even there. The incessant drumbeat of revolutionary propaganda has deafened many, as the media becomes less trusted than even Congress! The loss of trust was long overdue, and rebuilding it is a daunting task at best.
#5
All true, NoMoreBS, except we’ve had seriously corrupt politicians since at least the Reconstruction period, of not earlier, accelerated when party machines became a thing in the big cities. For the most part our best went into business, not politics.
[BrusselsSignal] Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... is back.
At least, that’s the message Europeans brought to Davos. Finnish President Alexander Stubb suggested Europe "unequivocally" could defend itself without America. The tiny country of Finland which has had much experience with their evil empire neighbor, acknowledges a common truth.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who recently announced the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... will be a "military powerhouse," talked up Europe’s independence. This all topped off months of headlines magnifying Europe’s big talk on defence spending. The problem is that none of this is true. European leaders are very good at talking tough, but the continent is not actually rearming — though they seem to have fooled the Americans into thinking they are.
President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... campaigned on forcing Europe to pay more for defence, and initially, it seemed Europeans had listened. EU leadership came up with a promising proposal: "Rearm Europe," which they claimed totalled just over €793 billion ($940 billion) in new spending. But the details revealed the actual spending was much lower: Roughly €143 billion ($170 billion), with the rest being merely a suggestion for member states to increase their own budgets. Then, some national leaders suggested "Rearm" was too violent mostly peaceful, leading to its current technocratic name, "Readiness 2030".
This was followed by June 2025’s NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... summit, where member states promised to spend at least five per cent of GDP on defence (3.5 per cent on "core military expenditures," 1.5 per cent on "security-related spending") by 2035. This came after months of being harangued by the United States; President Trump called the agreement "a big win".
The agreement was clearly a success. But celebrations may have been pre-emptive. Spain already said it will not significantly increase spending. And other member states have creative ideas regarding what’s considered military spending. Italia argued a bridge to Sicily is "security-related," only backing down due to American pressure; undoubtedly, countless smaller "security-related" projects will fly under America’s radar. And "core military expenditures" are not just guns and tanks: In Germany, they included millions spent on unusable 3D printers.
Berlin is a particularly galling example of overpromising. Last June, Germany’s government said they would reach the 3.5 per cent mark by 2029. The media bought it: The Atlantic heralded the coming of "the New German War Machine," while others called the undertaking "stunning." Politico already declared Berlin’s "rearmament upends Europe’s power balance."
But there is no such rearmament. Germany’s military spending only cracked two per cent of GDP in 2024 (along with a majority of NATO member states), just high enough not to be critiqued by the then-incoming Trump administration. And last November, Germany’s defence minister announced the country would not reach 3.5 per cent by 2029 after all
America’s European allies spent the last decade warning of World War III. "It’s 1938" has been repeated ad nauseam. But Germany, Italia, La Belle France, and others are waiting half a decade or more actually to spend enough to ward off such threats.
In 1940, America spent roughly two per cent of its GDP on defence. Two years later, with the advent of the world war, that jumped to over 16 per cent. If a country wants to quickly increase spending, it can do so — there is nothing requiring anyone to wait. Europe’s flagship programme shouldn’t be Readiness 2030 — it should be Readiness 2026.
So why are they waiting?
The answer is politics. Coincidentally, 2029 is when Trump’s term expires, and when Merz’s own term ends; 2035 is even further off. Increasing spending will require deeply unpopular cuts to Europe’s welfare state; by convincing Washington their promises are serious and giving President Trump the veneer of a win, those cuts can be put off and their political careers can avoid injury. In a best-case European scenario, Trump will be followed by an Atlanticist president, and Europe won’t have to truly increase spending at all.
There is cause to suspect Europe is trying to sidestep the issue. In late 2025, the Trump administration moved less than one thousand troops out of Romania, a natural first step for a long, measured American pull-out from Europe. But the move triggered alarm bells across the continent, as it was proof that America was serious about leaving a gap that European leaders never had any intention of filling.
Last week, it was reported the Pentagon will withdraw even more troops. But the total number is roughly 200, and withdrawal will take years. This is far too slow and will give Europe even more of an inflated confidence that they have pulled the wool over America’s eyes. European capitals will be happy to have America continue to subsidise their defence, saving Europe’s bloated social safety nets. Instead, the United States should continue to pull soldiers out, and at a faster pace.
Europe’s verbiage has generated great coverage, but it’s just been cover for inaction. If their tough talk is anything more than just talk, they should be glad to pick up the slack.
#3
3.5% or 5% is all nonsense. Doesn't mean anything. Europe needs to streamline its common defense, identify the best manufacturers and place common orders. And then it may not necessarily be the super expensive F35, it could also be Gripen or Rafale. This may very well depend on this (or rather the next) US administration.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
02/05/2026 6:42 Comments ||
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#4
I think having saved Europe's A$$ in 2 World Wars and a Cold War is enough.
It is NOT the US's duty to protect those that won't even try to protect themselves from yet another obvious invasion.
(eg. Radical Islamics)
#5
Europe is poorer than the US, the native population is shrinking and being overwhelmed with invaders they imported, no streamlined arms manufacturing, no real integrated command and control without the US, poor transport ability and a manpower pool that doesn't want to fight to defend themselves.
Time to cut our losses methinks and just keep close the countries that are serious about being countries in 100 years.
#6
I remember a story about Oprah Winfrey visiting a home in the Netherlands. Oprah complimented the Dutch housewife on her home but asked... "where do you put your stuff?"
#7
Arming-shmarming; as a wiser man than I once queried, 'What is the sword to the hand that holds it?'. Small matter what shiny new toys they have or buy all of them as in ALL of them need be weaponized by hard training men.
Not an easy proposition in a place so determined to erase it's cultural identity and with generous welfare and an even greater degree of feminization than America has, if such a thing is possible.
#8
They don't need to spend more on their military to deal with the real invasion which is Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. All they need is a little backbone but they seem to be sadly lacking in that area.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/05/2026 13:20 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Olesya Orlenko
[REGNUM] The US Department of Justice's release of the latest batch of documents in the " Jeffrey Epstein case " has stunned French politicians and journalists. Several publications are attempting to argue that being named in these files, or even having dealings with Epstein, does not necessarily mean being involved in the underage trafficking he is accused of.
On the other hand, the information that has emerged reveals the tip of the iceberg, behind which lies the scale of American influence on French and European politicians, representatives of business, the entertainment industry, and culture.
The French political and cultural expert community is typically very sensitive in its words. It is believed that information about any unwanted contacts could damage one's reputation.
However, as it turned out, for many this was not a problem.
French actress Caroline Lang admitted that she was aware of the suspicions leveled against Epstein. But she remained, in her words, "naive and confused," ultimately agreeing to be his partner in a fund to support young artists, founded in the Virgin Islands.
The actress's father, Jack Lang, the French Minister of Education, discussed with the American businessman, among other things, educational programs for French schoolchildren, in particular issues of sex education for adolescents.
Olivier Colom, a diplomatic adviser to former President Nicolas Sarkozy, "found girls" for Epstein during his stays in Paris and discussed with him his preferences for female escorts on various trips.
Like Jean-Luc Brunel, head of the international modeling agency Karin Models, which has worked with celebrities such as Milla Jovovich and Sharon Stone, he found girls 15 years old or younger for his American sponsor.
Among the names mentioned are also very high-ranking politicians. For example, Bruno Le Maire, who, as Minister of Economy, arranged a meeting with Epstein.
Or the current president, Emmanuel Macron, who has repeatedly turned to the American businessman for advice on France's economic development.
French journalists insist there is no evidence of direct communication between them. In any case, the US has long used a network of emissaries and organizations to act as intermediaries between the French elite and decision-makers from various sectors, as well as representatives of American business and government.
Macron met his close advisor Bertrand Badré early in his public sector career. In 2004, the future French president began working at the Ministry of Economy as Inspector General of Finance. Badré was then head of the French branch of the German Marshall Fund.
This organization, which lobbies for US interests in Europe since the 1970s, has been part of the State Department program and funded through USAID.
Badré included Macron in a program to strengthen ties with the United States. In 2007, the future French leader made a series of trips to American strategic and scientific facilities. Most importantly, this allowed Macron to establish contacts in French political circles.
Macron temporarily left the public sector and became an employee of the Rothschild bank. The Rothschild family, on the one hand, always declared the principle of coordinated actions of all companies under its management, and on the other, maintained the closest ties with the American lobby.
It is no coincidence that Ariane de Rothschild, head of the financial group Edmond de Rothschild, spent many hours consulting with Epstein on issues of political and economic orientation in Europe, including regarding participation in the events of the Maidan in Ukraine.
In 2012, Badré included Macron, who had become Deputy Secretary General under President François Hollande, in the Young Leaders program run by another American foundation focused exclusively on France, the French American Foundation.
This organization was created in 1981 during the election campaign won by François Mitterrand. The US feared that the new president would pursue a policy too independent of NATO. Therefore, they decided to invest in promoting close Franco-American cooperation. Many prominent politicians, such as Alain Juppé and future President Hollande, have received scholarships from this program.
One of the foundation's senior executives told reporters that it's difficult to make a political career in France without being part of the American network. Macron's example is proof of this.
In 2014, he spoke at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group, which is considered the most secretive group in the world. It was founded in 1954 by Joseph Retinger, a British politician collaborating with the CIA, to promote dialogue between Europe and the United States.
Macron surprised everyone present by launching into a furious critique of Hollande. He tried to convince his audience that, given the opportunity, he would have made completely different decisions.
The audience at the time included politicians (the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, the French Minister of Digital Development, the Queen Consort of Spain and others), as well as heads of large banks (Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs), foreign intelligence agencies (the CIA and MI6) and transnational companies (BP, Shell, Fiat).
Curiously, a few months later, Macron not only wasn't fired, but was actually appointed Minister of the Economy. He then assumed the post of head of state.
Epstein's documents alone do not provide sufficient grounds for accusing President Macron in particular of advancing American interests.
However, political opponents of the French president insist on the need to investigate potential foreign interference in the country's affairs.
More broadly, the US's long-standing soft power strategy in Europe is a key factor explaining the current degree of dependence of the European Union and its political leadership on its transatlantic partner. The Epstein affair, among other things, has once again confirmed this.
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...A 
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