Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to, as the late great John Lewis put it, "Never give up"

I understand, you're exhausted, and it seems there's no end to the cruelty, but this is a fight in which good can and will triumph over evil; we just need to get it right.

Before I begin, here’s another of my series of Ads to meet this moment

On 25th May 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a black American named George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Michael Chauvin. This was the starting pistol fired on my active involvement in American politics. I had been one of the few in the UK who, in 2016, had said Trump would be elected. Call it a second sense, you could feel where America was going, and it was not with Hilary Clinton. I was the butt of jokes from people who told me ‘The Americans might be reckless, but they are not stupid”. How wrong they were. Sorry if I offend anyone, but this was avoidable. I am not a betting man, but I was so confident that I placed a £100 bet on Trump to win, and I walked away with £500, plus my £100 stake back. While I’m not sure how I would have explained it to the love of my life if I had lost, it contributed to a lovely weekend away in London. The only thing I will ever have Trump to thank for.

The reason I felt confident was that the Republicans had dominated the narrative, and I must say, it was very impressive the way they did it. While there is no question that James Comey dealt a fatal blow, there were many other flashing red lights. He later admitted in his book that a lawyer in his own office had said to him, “Should you consider that what you are about to do may help elect Donald Trump president?” His response was “No”. How ironic that the act of holding government emails on a server at home would lead to where we are in this moment, given the unbridled corruption of the man that beat her.

Of course, there were other factors, and even then, Democrat messaging was lamentable. The Republicans did what they do best: they used the ‘deplorables’ statement with political military precision to hole the Clinton campaign below the waterline while firing a laser-guided Benghazi missile through the deck, sending the campaign to the bottom of the ocean. It was a masterclass of misdirection, and it ignited a base who, up to the ‘deplorables’ moment, were supportive of Trump but not cult members. Republicans proved that if you focused on a single issue like Benghazi, you could create enough distrust to undermine trust in the opposition candidate completely.

For context, it is crucial to understand, as reported in the Atlantic in 2019:

For eight years, House Republicans searched for a “smoking gun” that could unravel the presidency of Barack Obama. They presided over hundreds of oversight hearings, issued more than 100 subpoenas, held the attorney general in contempt of Congress, and even formed a special select committee devoted exclusively to one investigation, on Benghazi.

They never found the smoking gun because there wasn’t one, but that was never the objective. Kevin McCarthy later openly admitted, during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, that the House GOP’s investigation into the Benghazi attack had made Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers plummet. Furthermore, he presented it as part of a “strategy to fight and win,” rather than a nonpartisan effort to find the truth. In reporting from A-Mark Foundation, updated in 2022, it stated:

The House Select Committee on Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi spent about $6.8 million on its investigation ($4.5 million by Republicans and $2.3 million by Democrats), and the State Department estimated that it spent $14 million responding to congressional investigations by turning over documents and making staff available for interviews and hearings. We did not find cost estimates for the other congressional investigations.

If you would like to read the full report, which is most informative, you can find it here. The key point is that the American people effectively paid for an eight-year campaign Ad for the Republican Party. Now, if that’s not messaging genius, I'd like to know what is.

The aim here is to attempt to wrap some historical context around not just how good Republicans are at this, but also the level of deeply rooted right-wing hatred that surrounded the Obama presidency. Trump’s march to power has taken no prisoners in his party, and there is no better example than Mitch McConnell. I have a deep-seated loathing of the man and his contribution to the acid attack on American society. This is a man whose life's work was to put in place the foundations for this moment of unparalleled peril. He is the architect who built the messaging juggernaut that Trump has inherited and injected speed.

Time and time again, McConnell’s inherent racism has risen to the surface, not least of which when he said it out loud:

“If you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

This is a man who said:

“The nation paid for the ‘sin of slavery’ by electing Obama president”

Had it not been for McConnell, Trump would never have been able to appoint a tsunami of right-wing judges to key courts and certainly would not have been able to nominate Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. He even just made shit up when denying a vote on Obama’s nomination of DC Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia saying:

“All we are doing is following the long-standing tradition of not fulfilling a nomination in the middle of a presidential year.”

There was no longstanding tradition; it simply did not exist. McConnell spent decades while Democrats were asleep at the wheel, focusing on building red-state trifectas with the sole aim of creating a state-level infrastructure that would allow the Heritage Foundation to deploy its legislative shops, providing boilerplate legislation to be rubber-stamped by red states. These states became the delivery system to pass laws written by white Christian evangelical lawyers implementing voter suppression, while working towards the overturning of Roe v Wade. This infrastructure enabled Republicans to govern when in power and use the states to circumvent Congress when in opposition by bringing lawsuits intended to be taken to the Supreme Court, as they did on June 24, 2022, when Roe v. Wade was eventually overturned after decades of effort.

Be in no doubt, McConnell was America’s Dr Frankenstein, and Trump is the experiment that escaped the lab. Democrats have sleepwalked into the situation they find themselves in by neglecting state-level politics. McConnell’s work took decades to achieve, and his reward? Trump threw him under the bus, and nobody in the Republican Party called him an ambulance.

The salutary lesson for Democrats here is that short-term thinking has effectively tied their hands for decades to come unless there is some form of revolution. Trump doesn’t even understand the legacy he inherited from McConnell; his hubris prevents him from doing so, but rest assured, the Heritage Foundation will have discreetly handed McConnell a gold watch for his service to their joint crusade. We live in a world of instant gratification, magic bullets, and the attention span of a child.

I realise some come here purely to read, but the ability to supplement the argument visually will play a vital role as we approach not just the midterms, but moments of crisis on the road to 2026. When you're time-poor because you’re working two jobs just to put food on the table, the last thing you want to do is read my ramblings. I am committed to ensuring that these people can watch short, informative visual pieces that either pose a question or deliver a concise narrative, breaking down complex arguments into easily understood public service announcements (PSAs). I cannot tell you how important it will be to do this. While you might engage with my written work, it’s not always easy for some to do so.

Never has it been more evident than in the current LA unrest that corporate media is failing the American people. To be very clear, it's not the journalists who are failing; it’s the corporations that employ them. I am deeply disappointed that ‘influencers’ and the wider left-leaning community constantly feel the need to attack the messenger. They are shooting the wrong target. These people are soft targets who are simply working within the rules their employers set? Many have kids to feed and mortgages to pay, so let’s not throw stones in glass houses, shall we?. We can get all holier than thou, challenging their moral integrity, but the truth is, they are a product of the society we have become.

I'm never slow to criticise corporate media organisations. Still, when the foundations of society are built on profit before people, I’m not surprised that they often fail in their central task of informing the public of the truth. You will note I didn’t mention ‘balance’, because I think the desperate search for balance is what has led us to where we are today. There is no societal benefit in the need to search for bad when reporting good. I don’t need to hear how to be cruel to someone when I’m listening to the description of a good deed. No more than I need to be subjected to people’s feelings of what’s wrong when being told the truth about what’s right. The obsession with seeking alternative views has compromised the pursuit of objective reality. ‘Alternative facts’ have become the scourge of truthful reporting. The truth is not what you feel it is; it is simply what it is, no need for embellishment.

The escalatory steps Trump is now taking to raise the stakes in LA are predictable. Despite the bravado, he’s a man under pressure. Unlike his predecessors, he views the military as his personal army, to be used as he sees fit. He’s the quintessential dictator, and like all dictators, he’s paranoid. He is seeing shadows around every corner and is being enabled by people who should know better.

He’s decided that Gavin Newsom is an ideal boogeyman to sell to his base, who are cheering him on, supported by right-wing media. He’s picked the wrong target, in my opinion, and I rather suspect that Governor Newsom is relishing the fight. He’s smarter and a seasoned political operator. The further deployment of active service Marines on the streets of LA is yet another milestone in the attempt to overwhelm dissent. The huge miscalculation Trump has now made in his fantasy game of 3D chess is that all democratic governments govern by consent.

He won the election with the support of just 32% of eligible voters. The truth is, even if you strip out the 77 million who voted for him, that leaves 170 million to hold back. Opinion polls currently show he’s not just underwater, he’s reaching the depths at which submersibles implode. The problem he now has is that the dissent is spreading to other cities, and he will reach a point where he can no longer plug the holes in the good ship corruption.

This coming weekend, he will be hosting a global TV event showcasing, as all great dictators do, the strength of his mighty army. He might want to consider the fact that the US military has never won a war on its own and has been handed their ass by insurgent adversaries time and time again(no disrespect to those who have served). He might also want to have a word with his buddy Vlad about how his mighty army has fared over the three years of war. This, despite Trump himself giving him a helping hand by hindering Ukrainian forces and diverting air defence missiles out of spite, as vengeance for Zelenskyy failing to dig up dirt on Biden in 2019. $200 drones are the new kid on the block. If you’re looking for evidence, take a look at the number of Abrams M1A1 battle tanks costing a baseline of $4 million each, which have been destroyed by cheap Russian drones.

Warfare has changed forever, and the US military is about to allocate another $300 billion to its defence budget. You may as well set fire to the money in the middle of a field. Aside from this, the military parade will be viewed as a bad dad joke by the rest of the world. To add insult to injury, it’s costing upwards of $45 million at a time when he’s stealing healthcare and food assistance to low-income families, seniors and ironically, veterans.

I’m sorry if this might sound disrespectful, but if I hear the f*cking phrase ‘We have breaking news” one more time, I swear I’ll scream. Sorry, I’ve just come to hate the term. If you are going to allegedly ‘replace’ corporate media, DO BETTER. In an ocean of nonsense already being pumped out daily by right-wing talking heads. What help is provided by simply pumping out our very own ocean of rage aimed at preaching to the choir? It’s time to be smarter and help people in a state of total confusion, focus on what matters. Believe it or not, sometimes more can be achieved by less. People are drowning in information, not because they need to, but because it’s profitable. Unfortunately, some liberal influencers can at times be no different to the corporate media they constantly criticise. Introspection can be a powerful thing.

My day starts at 5 am every morning. I scan news and media content to filter out key information that helps inform people about what's happening and suggests what they might consider focusing on. I have no desire to post information all day, every day, because it is neither helpful nor necessary. If it’s important, people can rest assured that I’ll have an observation to make or include them in my regular Substack pieces.

I can hand on heart say I’m not here to profit from the preservation of democracy. I accept that when I’m not writing, paid subscriptions flatline. It’s the price of doing what’s right and not what generates cash. What I can tell you is that to do this job properly, the help of those who have become part of my family here has proved mission-critical to making what I’m trying to do a success. I view it simply as a way to help Americans preserve democracy, because if they fail, we are all in big trouble. I’m fortunate to be able to leverage a lifetime of experience, combining both my technical and production skills, to make a meaningful contribution. I see it as an opportunity to democratise participation. It’s about tapping into the resources available to help fund a fight none of us can afford to lose. I don’t see it as political fundraising, but instead helping to fund the truth and a vision for a better tomorrow.

People often comment on my authenticity, and that nourishes my soul because there's nothing I like better than fighting for what’s right. I want my ever-growing army of truth seekers to feel invested in the passion we share together for doing what’s right. It’s not about corporate sponsorship or pay for play, it’s about the trust people place in me to speak without fear or favour on matters critical to the survival of democracy. It’s about collective participation. It’s precisely the type of participation that helped elect Barack Obama in 2008. An effective grassroots effort to invest in a collective vision for a better tomorrow. A joint mission where we can be partners in helping to defeat tyranny.

My vision of a collective approach is about community. The Truth Matters community should be invested not just in funding content and a strategy, however important that may be. It’s also about providing free content to those in our family who would love nothing more than to invest, but can’t afford to do so. Participation is much more than money; it’s about being part of something with ambitions to right this cruel wrong.

My position is always that if I have nothing to say, then I’ll keep quiet and merely post notes. In many ways, I’m fortunate to be dedicating my time in retirement to this mission. It will likely be my last meaningful contribution to society before I check into the departure lounge. I’ve made a promise to myself that I’ll remain all in until the 2028 election, which will make me almost 70. It will also mark nearly a decade of involvement in this fight. If I make it that far, I think I’ll have earned the right to a rest and reevaluation. To be clear, if every paid subscriber were to walk away today, I would still be here doing what I do, because this is about doing what’s right, not what makes money. All I would say is give me your support, and I’ll truly show you what doing right can look like beyond just words, but that’s a discussion for another day, because I know there are people out there who want to help out in practical ways too and we need to have an in depth discussion on that.

There’s an old song that springs to mind in this surreal moment, and I’ll leave you with this timeless thought for the day, which perfectly defines where we are today.

Tomorrow I’ll return to the things that Trump’s current actions as designed to distract us from like the small matter of a collapsing economy the disregard of the rule of law and his daily acts of bribery and corruption. At least that’s my intent, but who clows what the idiot may do in the intervening period.

Martin