As Seen in the Omaha World-Herald & The Des Moines Register: Your Tax Dollars, Their Harvest / Four Hundred Tons Is Not a Political Opinion / The Movement Ate Its Own / One Less Bidder at the Gate / A Pause and an Apology

A WARNING FROM THE ROAD: IOWA AND NEBRASKA
Storm Clouds on the Horizon
And the Wind Is Already Up
A Carroll banker with sixty-six years behind a desk says he has read this sky before.
So have I. It looked like this in 1979, and the man in the White House was Jimmy Carter.
If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available around the clock, and Iowa State
University Extension operates the Iowa Concern Hotline for farm families.
Sources: U.S. Treasury; Learning Resources v. Trump (Feb. 20, 2026); USDA; American Farm Bureau Federation; Federal
Reserve Banks of Chicago and Kansas City; Congressional Research Service; NCBA; Iowa Farm Bureau; UPI and Iowa PBS
archives; Human Rights Watch; company filings.
CARTER, 1980 An embargo that cost us the market
THIS TIME $20 billion Treasury swap to Argentina
AUTHORIZED BY No vote in Congress required
TIMED FOR The longest U. S. shutdown, and Milei’s election
ARGENTINA Beef quota quadrupled in February
BRAZIL 40 tariff points off, record 2026 imports
WHAT CARTER NEVER DID
CARTER COST US THE MARKET.
TRUMP WIRED MONEY TO THE MEN WHO TOOK IT.
IN MY OPINION, THAT IS NOT A MISTAKE. IT IS A DIRECTION.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE
DEMAND REAL SOLUTIONS BEFORE THE SPRING NOTE!
THE MAN WHO READS THE SKY. In Carroll
I sat with a retired banker, a sixty-six-year veteran
of the business and a director of an Iowa
regional bank. He says another 1980s farm crisis
is coming and could be worse. His reasons:
a debt that crossed $40.05 trillion on August
18, trade policy that cost farmers their buyers,
and what happens when money gets expensive
again. At fifteen or eighteen percent, he said, it
will be twice as bad as 1981 because in 1981 we
had no trade war on top of it. He watched millionaire
farmers go broke in three years, men
he had banked for thirty.
WHAT THE LAST STORM TOOK. Researchers
counted 913 male farmer suicides across
five Upper Midwest states that decade. On December
9, 1985, Lone Tree farmer Dale Burr,
half a million in debt, killed his wife, Hills Bank
president John Hughes, and a neighbor, then
himself. Iowa banks hired guards.
IN MY OPINION, THIS IS CARTER’S PLAYBOOK.
Carter used food as a weapon. In January
1980 he embargoed grain to the Soviets,
trusting competitors not to take the sales. Argentina
refused, raising export earnings roughly
thirty percent selling to Moscow. Brazil, Canada
and Australia followed. The Soviets ate.
Iowa did not. America was branded an unreliable
supplier and never won that share back.
Then Carter bought the grain himself: $2.25
billion of it. Now watch it again. We taxed our
way out of the Chinese soybean market. Brazil
and Argentina took it. Our share of world soybean
trade is a record-low 23 percent. Then we
wrote a $12 billion check, drawn not on tariff
revenue but the Commodity Credit Corporation.
Borrowed money.
THE TARIFF THE COURT SAID HE NEVER
HAD. Read this twice. On February 20, the Supreme
Court ruled 6-3, with Roberts writing,
that the president has no power to impose
tariffs under the emergency-powers act. The
Court did not say they were unwise. It said they
were never lawful from day one. Roughly $175
billion may be owed back to importers. Iowa
farmers spent a year eating Chinese retaliation
for a policy the Court says was never authorized.
A day later the Trump administration
announced it would reimpose a fifteen percent
tariff globally under another statute. The share
is gone. The retaliation was real. Only the authority
was imaginary.
CARTER LOST US THE MARKET. THIS
ONE PAID THE MAN WHO TOOK IT. Here
is where my opinion hardens, and it is the
heart of this editorial. Carter was wrong, and
Iowa paid for it. But Carter never wrote Argentina
a check for taking our business. On October
9, 2025, during the longest government
shutdown in American history, the Treasury
Secretary announced a $20 billion swap line
with Argentina’s central bank and directly
purchased Argentine pesos. The money came
from the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which
needs no vote in Congress. No economic conditions
were attached. The timing served President
Milei’s October elections. And at that very
hour, Argentine farmers were selling China
the soybeans Iowa could not. Senator Grassley
said it plainly at the time: our farmers were
upset about Argentina selling soybeans to China
right after the bailout, with zero U.S. sales.
Then in February we quadrupled Argentina’s
beef quota. On August 21 we floated 300,000
metric tons more. Cattle broke that morning.
Carter shut a door and our competitors walked
through it. Trump opened the Treasury and
wired them the fare.
AND THE GATE FOR BRAZIL. In July 2025
the Trump administration put a 50 percent
tariff on Brazilian beef. By November it had removed
40 of those percentage points. Brazilian
packers shipped $795 million of beef into this
country in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Total
U.S. beef imports hit a record $13.75 billion in
2025 while our own beef exports fell about 11
percent to $9.3 billion. Imports are on pace for
nearly 6 billion pounds this year, which would
be a record. And on August 21 the Trump administration
announced a 90-day cut to beef
tariffs, in the middle of that record. The cattlemen’s
association called it flooding the market
with “government-subsidized, below-market
beef.” Not my words. Theirs.
AND NOW THE PACKINGHOUSES. I
watched plants go dark in Storm Lake, Fort
Dodge and Cedar Falls. Rath closed in Waterloo
in 1985. But those jobs went to American
firms cutting American wages: IBP’s boxed
beef, rural low-wage plants, packing pay below
the average U.S. manufacturing wage by
1983. Ugly, and ours. Now the ledger. Tyson
shut its Lexington, Nebraska, plant in January,
eliminating 2,000 jobs. On August 13, Tyson
announced the immediate closure of its Joslin,
Illinois, plant, affecting 2,500 workers, plus its
Eagle Mountain, Utah, facility. Perry, Iowa is
gone. Over 10,000 Tyson jobs since 2023. JBS
is closing a Pennsylvania plant, eliminating
2,000 more jobs. JBS is Brazilian, controlled by
the Batista family of São Paulo. The plants that
closed this month processed American cattle.
What is replacing them does not.
ONE THING REAGAN WOULD NEVER DO.
Reagan ended Carter’s embargo in ninety-four
days. He tore a barrier down. Whatever else he
was, and I have written plainly about what he
was, he never bought a competitor’s currency
with public money, and he never cut his own
ranchers’ tariff protection during a record import
year. That, in my opinion, is the whole distance
between a president who mishandled a
crisis and one who is financing the other side of
it. Carter was wrong. He was not misdirected.
This is misdirected.
WHY THIS ONE COULD BE WORSE. The
banker’s real warning was not about prices. It
was about where the debt is sitting. Farm debt
hits a record $624.7 billion this year, carrying a
record $33 billion in interest. The Kansas City
Fed reports farmers taking larger operating
loans and longer to repay. The Chicago Fed’s
May survey of 104 Midwest ag lenders found
falling cash rents, rising rollovers, tightening
credit and near-breakeven cash flow. An Iowa
bankruptcy attorney describes what I remember
from 1980: farmers moving operating debt
onto the land because the land is the only thing
still holding value. That is the trap. Land is up
three percent while cash flow is negative. The
ground is carrying the losses. It carried them in
1979 too, right until it did not. Then it fell sixty
percent with the notes still attached.
The ground is carrying the losses.
It carried them in 1979 too,
right until it did not.
THE WIND IS ALREADY UP. Corn breaks
even near $5.00; USDA forecasts $4.20. Soybeans,
$12.27 against $10.30. Iowa net farm income
is projected down 53 percent. Nineteen
percent of the state’s midsize and large farms
are financially vulnerable, double 2022. Chapter
12 filings rose 220 percent here.
THE HONEST PART. Tyson and JBS blame
the cattle herd: 86.2 million head, a 75-year low
from drought and disease, not imports. That is
the stated cause, and I will not pretend otherwise.
The Argentine swap was a credit line,
not a grant, and Treasury says the draw was repaid.
In terms of wreckage, 1980 through 1985
was still worse: land off sixty percent, Farm
Credit down $2.7 billion. My argument is not
that the checks have already destroyed us. It is
about direction and about what is being loaded
onto the ground right now.
GET THE MACHINERY IN. Remove the tariffs
and trade barriers. Rebuild the herd before
importing the beef. Stop financing the competition.
E20 now, E30 by 2029. Do it before the
spring note comes due. The note is where this
ends. It always was.
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi: The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
THE BOOK IS NOT A PROP
They Held Up the Book
They Simply Never Opened It.
The acts first, in plain language. Then the verse each one breaks.
The deeds are public record. Scripture is theirs too.
THE PHOTOGRAPH. On June 1, 2020, federal
officers cleared demonstrators from Lafayette
Square. Minutes later the president walked
across it and held a Bible up in front of St.
John’s Church for the cameras. He did not go
in. He did not read from it. He did not pray.
◆ “They love to pray standing in the synagogues
and in the corners of the streets, that
they may be seen of men… They have their
reward” (Matthew 6:5). The reward was the
photograph. That was the transaction.
THE $59.99 BIBLE. In 2024 he put his name
on the “God Bless the USA Bible”: scripture
bound with the Constitution and a song lyric,
sold at $59.99, with a licensing cut to him.
◆ Christ drove the sellers out of the temple:
“make not my Father’s house an house of
merchandise” (John 2:16). Merchandising
the book is not witness. It is inventory.
A Bible held up for a photograph is
not a testimony. It is a costume.
THE MONUMENT. A $600 million ballroom
rises on the people’s ground, about half of it
charged to taxpayers. A federal judge ruled
that only Congress may rename the Kennedy
Center; in August the board voted around him
and renamed the grounds the President Donald
J. Trump Plaza.
◆ “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built…
for the honour of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30).
Nebuchadnezzar lost his reason in the middle
of that sentence. “Whosoever shall exalt
himself shall be abased” (Matthew 23:12).
THE GIFT AND THE SETTLEMENT. A $400
million jet was accepted from Qatar. A $10 billion
claim against the IRS, filed in his personal
capacity, was settled in May by the attorney
who defended him in his own criminal case
and now runs the Justice Department; the
claim was traded for audit protection on every
earlier return.
◆ “Thy princes are rebellious, and companions
of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth
after rewards” (Isaiah 1:23). And the
ledger verse: “A false balance is abomination
to the LORD” (Proverbs 11:1).
THE PARDONS. Juan Orlando Hernández,
sentenced to 45 years for moving hundreds of
tons of cocaine, was pardoned and released.
Roughly a hundred drug clemencies followed.
Meanwhile, 70.6 percent of those held in ICE
detention had no conviction.
◆ “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that
condemneth the just, even they both are
abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15).
Both halves, in one line. Mercy for the trafficker.
A cell for the roofer.
THE SICK AND THE CHILDREN. Premium
credits lapsed on December 31, 2025, and
premiums rose about 26 percent. Measles returned
to its worst year since 1991 as kindergarten
vaccination rates fell to 92.5 percent.
A law passed 427–1 ordered the Epstein files
released; the survivors are still waiting.
◆ “I was sick, and ye visited me not” (Matthew
25:43). Of the children: “it were better for him
that a millstone were hanged about his neck”

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HONEST POLITICS
I WANTED TO BELIEVE IT. In 1980 I cast my
ballot for John Anderson, an independent, because
a government too large to audit is a government
too large to trust. So when a movement
arrived promising to shrink it, end the
wars, balance the books and enforce the law,
I gave it a hearing. Eleven years on, I will say
plainly what I have concluded: it is the biggest
lie I have ever witnessed.
LAW AND ORDER, EXCEPT AT THE TOP. In
2024, Chairman Comer and Senator Grassley
wrote to the FBI accusing it of quietly revising
crime figures and calling the numbers unreliable.
Today the same party quotes the same
system as proof of its own success. I will concede
the decline is real: homicides fell 18 percent
in the first half of this year, and independent
analysts say so, not just the government.
But a party that trusts the measuring stick only
when it flatters its case has not adopted a standard.
It has adopted a scoreboard.
AND THEN THE PARDONS. Juan Orlando
Hernández moved more than four hundred
tons of cocaine and drew forty-five years.
He served roughly eighteen months and
walked out on a signature. Ross Ulbricht.
Larry Hoover. Some 100 drug-related clemencies.
Roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants,
including men convicted of assaulting police
officers. Ninety-six percent of second-term
grants were issued outside Justice Department
review. That is not law and order. That
is a favor window.
The kingpin got a signature.
The trafficker got a transfer.
The girls got a sealed file.
NO FOREIGN WARS. We fought a war with
Iran that Congress never voted on. The Abraham
Lincoln’s crew has been at sea more than
260 days with no date home. Iran sells its oil
at a better price today than before we started.
A BALANCED BUDGET. $39.8 trillion. About
$286,000 per household. Interest now costs
more than defense. Every point of it lands on
your mortgage, your car note and your child’s
tuition, all parts of the finances you were
promised you would control.
AND THE CHILDREN. The Epstein Files
Transparency Act passed the House 427–1
and was signed in November 2025. Nine
months later the file is still shut. But Ghislaine
Maxwell, days after a private meeting
with the Deputy Attorney General, was
moved to a minimum-security camp that
Bureau of Prisons policy says a sex offender
cannot be assigned to at all. No survivor ever
got that consideration.
I DID NOT LEAVE A MOVEMENT.
THE MOVEMENT LEFT THE OATH.
Source note: Clemency, crime and appropriation figures
are drawn from public records and cited reporting.
The Biggest Lie I Have
Ever Witnessed
I voted for John Anderson in 1980 because I believed
big government was dangerous. I still believe it.
That is exactly why I cannot vote for this one.
WITHOUT READER SUPPORT
THIS COLUMN DISAPPEARS.
Brent Lambi
THE COMMANDER AND THE CREW
Let Them Flush
Porcelain Toilets
Thirty-three gold bathrooms in Palm Beach.
On the Abraham Lincoln, the toilets do not work.
THIRTY-THREE. That is the number of bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago finished with gold-plated
fixtures and marble. The Trump Tower triplex was remodeled in gold from floor to ceiling.
The Oval Office got gold molding from his own gilder. The Lincoln Bedroom bathroom, photographed
and posted while the government was shut down, is now finished in polished statuary
marble with gold fixtures.
AND ON THE LINCOLN, THEY DO NOT WORK. The USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego in November
and was due home in May. It has been at sea for more than 260 days, with no port call in
more than 200 days, a record. Families have given CNN photographs of overflowing toilets in sewage-
saturated washrooms. Sailors report moldy showers, rationed meals, no milk for three months,
and running out of soap. A sailor’s video tour of the heads circulated around the country last week.
Senator Blumenthal’s letter to the Pentagon cites plumbing failures and water contamination. Central
Command’s own tally for that crew: 10,000 flights and 1.5 million pounds of ordnance.
THE PORCELAIN LEDGER
AND HE SAYS THEY SHOULD STAY LONGER. Asked whether the Lincoln had been out too
long, the president said “not nearly long enough.” Asked whether families were worried, he said
they were not. Congressman Mike Levin responded that the least this country owes these sailors
is hot water, a working toilet, and a real meal. The defense secretary called the families’ warnings
fake news. Senator Mark Kelly, who flew 39 combat missions, wants an investigation.
HE NEVER SERVED A DAY. Five deferments kept him out of Vietnam: four for school, followed
by a 1968 diagnosis of bone spurs at age 22. The podiatrist’s daughters told The New York Times
that the diagnosis was a favor to Fred Trump, their father’s landlord. Trump later said he could
not recall the doctor’s name. A biographer asked to see the spurs and saw nothing. He has never
once had to use a military head.
Sources: TIME, CNN, NPR, Navy Times, GAO, The New York Times.
MAR-A-LAGO 33 gold-plated bathrooms
TRUMP TOWER Triplex remodeled in gold
LINCOLN BEDROOM Marble and gold fixtures
BEDMINSTER Rented restrooms, up to $333,801
USS A. LINCOLN Overflowing; 260+ days at sea
When You Own Both
Sides, You Never Lose
Two Examples Anybody Can Follow. Then Washington.
A prosecutor who works for you. An insurance company you own. Now count the odds.
EXAMPLE ONE: You are accused of business fraud. Your own attorney is also the prosecutor
who decides whether to charge you. What are the odds you get charged? Zero. Not low. Zero.
The evidence is irrelevant. The only man who can act on it works for you.
EXAMPLE TWO: You file an injury claim. Your attorney is an ambulance chaser, and you also
own the insurance company he is billing. Odds of a big payout? Certain. The facts are irrelevant
again. Your claim is reviewed by your own side.
Hold both pictures at once. They are two wings of one building: one wing charges people, the
other pays them.
THE MAN IN BOTH WINGS: Todd Blanche was Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney.
He is now Attorney General of the United States. On Sunday, when asked whether he would
act independently of the White House, he said he would not promise that. He also said that the
President should have a say in who gets prosecuted.
WING ONE: THE FILE: Congress ordered the Epstein files released. The House voted 427 to
1. The Senate agreed without a single objection. It was signed into law in November 2025 with
a thirty-day deadline. Nine months later, millions of pages are still withheld. Blanche ran that
release. He published personal details of some victims and redacted heavily elsewhere, and he
withheld material about the President.
Understand the sequence. In May 2025, Blanche and Bondi told Trump his name appears in
the Epstein files. That summer, FBI personnel were instructed to flag any mention of him in the
case records. This month, a federal judge had to rule that an act of Congress outranks Ghislaine
Maxwell’s claim to privacy. The law was never the obstacle. The department was.
AND THE ONE PERSON WHO GOT SERVICE: Blanche interviewed Maxwell himself in July
2025. Days later she was moved out of a low-security prison to a minimum-security camp with
no fence. The victims got redactions. The convicted trafficker got a transfer. In my opinion, that
is not law enforcement. That is coverage.
WING TWO: THE CLAIM: In January Trump sued the IRS for ten billion dollars over his leaked
returns. Ten billion. Not for money taken from him, but for embarrassment. Reputational harm.
The injury nobody can x-ray, the sore back of civil litigation. He filed as a private citizen, joined
by two of his sons and the family company.
Now ask the obvious question: what proof of ten billion dollars in damage was ever put on the record?
None. The figures that leaked were his own true numbers. No court ever weighed a dollar
of it, because the case never got that far.
AND WHO WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE? This is the part to sit with. In a real lawsuit, opposing
counsel makes you prove every dollar you claim. Who is the IRS’s lawyer? The Justice Department.
And who ran the Justice Department? The President’s own former defense attorney, who
negotiated the deal personally. The man demanding ten billion and the office defending against
it answered to the same desk. There was no adversary. There was only a signature.
WHAT CHANGED HANDS: Trump dropped the claim. In exchange, the government agreed
never to audit him, his two eldest sons, or the Trump Organization on any return filed before
May 19. Tax attorneys say the IRS has never granted anyone such protection. By the Times’ reading
of his returns, one earlier audit alone could have cost him more than a hundred million dollars.
That money was never his. It was yours.
JUL ‘25
NOV ‘25
JAN 29
APR 2
MAY 19
AUG 8
AUG 16
Blanche interviews Maxwell; days later she is moved to a minimumsecurity
camp
Epstein Files Transparency Act signed after a 427–1 House vote; 30
days to comply
Trump, two sons and the Trump Organization sue the IRS and
Treasury for $10 billion
Bondi removed; Blanche, the President’s former defense lawyer, takes
over as acting attorney general
Settlement: claim dropped, audits closed on every return filed before
that date
Blanche confirmed 50–49; the $1.8 billion allies’ fund killed, the audit
deal untouched
Declines on television to pledge independence from the White House
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
“Berkshire is not the author of this
defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.

WANTED TO BELIEVE IT. In 1980 I cast my
ballot for John Anderson, an independent, because
a government too large to audit is a government
too large to trust. So when a movement
arrived promising to shrink it, end the
wars, balance the books and enforce the law,
I gave it a hearing. Eleven years on, I will say
plainly what I have concluded: it is the biggest
lie I have ever witnessed.
LAW AND ORDER, EXCEPT AT THE TOP. In
2024, Chairman Comer and Senator Grassley
wrote to the FBI accusing it of quietly revising
crime figures and calling the numbers unreliable.
Today the same party quotes the same
system as proof of its own success. I will concede
the decline is real: homicides fell 18 percent
in the first half of this year, and independent
analysts say so, not just the government.
But a party that trusts the measuring stick only
when it flatters its case has not adopted a standard.
It has adopted a scoreboard.
AND THEN THE PARDONS. Juan Orlando
Hernández moved more than four hundred
tons of cocaine and drew forty-five years.
He served roughly eighteen months and
walked out on a signature. Ross Ulbricht.
Larry Hoover. Some 100 drug-related clemencies.
Roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants,
including men convicted of assaulting police
officers. Ninety-six percent of second-term
grants were issued outside Justice Department
review. That is not law and order. That
is a favor window.
The kingpin got a signature.
The trafficker got a transfer.
The girls got a sealed file.
The Biggest Lie I Have
Ever Witnessed
I voted for John Anderson in 1980 because I believed
big government was dangerous. I still believe it.
That is exactly why I cannot vote for this one.
NO FOREIGN WARS. We fought a war with
Iran that Congress never voted on. The Abraham
Lincoln’s crew has been at sea more than
260 days with no date home. Iran sells its oil
at a better price today than before we started.
A BALANCED BUDGET. $39.8 trillion. About
$286,000 per household. Interest now costs
more than defense. Every point of it lands on
your mortgage, your car note and your child’s
tuition, all parts of the finances you were
promised you would control.
AND THE CHILDREN. The Epstein Files
Transparency Act passed the House 427–1
and was signed in November 2025. Nine
months later the file is still shut. But Ghislaine
Maxwell, days after a private meeting
with the Deputy Attorney General, was
moved to a minimum-security camp that
Bureau of Prisons policy says a sex offender
cannot be assigned to at all. No survivor ever
got that consideration.
I DID NOT LEAVE A MOVEMENT.
THE MOVEMENT LEFT THE OATH.
Source note: Clemency, crime and appropriation figuresThe Right Move for
the Wrong Reason
Scaling back the Korea drills is the first real
de-escalation of this term. Now do it three more times.
ONE GOOD ORDER. On Sunday the president instructed Secretary Hegseth to “substantially
reduce” the joint exercises with South Korea, calling them costly and a signal that is “totally inappropriate
and hostile” toward a North Korea he says has not been threatening. Set the messenger
aside. Lowering the temperature on the most heavily armed border on earth is the correct call,
and the first of its kind this term.
NOW DO IT AGAIN. The same week, he told Fox News that if Oman gets in the way, we will
bomb it. That is not a policy. That is a mood. Iran remains under an American air campaign
Congress never voted on. Maduro was taken by force in January. Greenland belongs to a NATO
ally, and this White House will not rule out taking it. No foreign wars was the promise. It has been
broken in three theaters.
“Withdrawal is not weakness. Keeping a promise never is.”
AND USE THE RELATIONSHIP. If the friendship with Kim Jong Un is real, spend it. Pyongyang
has shipped Russia some 33,000 containers of arms and buried thousands of its own men in
Kursk. Ask him to stop. That is what a good relationship is for.
THE HONEST PART. The stated reason was not peace. It was irritation that Seoul would not join
the Iran war. And the order came Sunday, while the drills began Monday, reduced but not canceled.
A right move made for a wrong reason is still a right move. It is also still a shaky foundation.
FOUR THEATERS, ONE PROMISE
KOREA Ulchi Freedom Shield cut on the president’s order, Aug. 16.
IRAN American air campaign continues. Congress has never voted.
VENEZUELA Maduro seized by U.S. forces, Jan. 3, 2026.
GREENLAND A NATO ally’s territory. Force not ruled out.
PYONGYANG ~33,000 containers of arms to Russia; troops in Kursk.
THE PROMISE “No foreign wars.” Kept in one place out of four.
Source: Truth Social post of Aug. 16, 2026; AP/PBS, NPR, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy and CNN reporting
of Aug. 16–17, 2026; Defense News and Washington Times reporting on DPRK support to Russia.
DE-ESCALATION IS NOT SURRENDER.
IT IS THE PROMISE YOU RAN ON.
NOW KEEP IT IN TEHRAN, IN CARACAS, AND IN NUUK.
NO MORE FOREIGN WARS
KEEP THE PROMISE.
Sources: Truman diary (May 1945); Executive Order 11154 (1964); Church Committee reports (1975–76);
Senate and Justice Department records, August 2026; Washington Post, PBS/AP, NBC News, Time, The Hill.
If J. Edgar Hoover
Became President
J. Edgar Hoover held one desk for forty-eight years and made
eight presidents afraid of him. In my opinion, we are now
watching the same instinct with every desk in its hands.
THE MAN WITH THE FILES. J. Edgar Hoover ran the Bureau from 1924 to 1972, through eight
presidents, and none of them fired him. His authority was never statutory. It sat in the locked
“Official and Confidential” files in his own office: derogatory material on congressmen, senators
and presidents. Truman wrote in 1945 that the FBI was drifting toward a Gestapo and dabbling
in sex-life scandals and blackmail. Johnson exempted him from mandatory retirement. Even
Robert Kennedy, with a brother in the White House, could not control him. Within days of his
death, his secretary destroyed the files.
AND WHAT HE DID TO CRITICS. In 1964 the Bureau mailed Dr. King an anonymous letter and
a tape urging him to end his own life. Agents planted a false story about the actress Jean Seberg
with a gossip columnist. Melvin Purvis, the agent who got the credit for Dillinger, was pushed
out and frozen out afterward. The Church Committee documented the pattern. Cross J. Edgar
Hoover, and you were not argued with. You were ruined.
AND THE PART HE HID. He ran a “Sex Deviates” program that collected files on suspected homosexuals
and got them fired from government work by the thousands, while spending his life
beside Clyde Tolson, his deputy, constant companion, and heir. His own private life was never
established, and the lurid stories remain unproven. What is documented is the arrangement:
one standard enforced on strangers, another kept for himself.
J. Edgar Hoover never had to win an argument.
He only had to have a file.
THE SAME INSTINCT, ALL THE DESKS. The Attorney General is the President’s former defense
lawyer, confirmed 50–49, three weeks after a federal judge set aside his settlement with
that same client, finding it had been filed in bad faith. The FBI Director has polygraphed his
own detail hunting leakers, turned the Bureau toward reporters who wrote about him, and sued
a magazine for describing him. Homeland Security is run by a senator introduced as a MAGA
warrior. The Homeland Security Secretary kept her job after federal agents killed two American
citizens in Minneapolis; she lost it over a $220 million advertising campaign featuring her on
horseback. J. Edgar Hoover would have recognized every part of that.
AND STILL NOTHING WAS DELIVERED. Retribution rules, and the public was played the
fool. Nine months after a transparency law passed 427–1, the Epstein file still takes a judge to
pry loose. Gasoline is up 26.7 percent, compared with 3.2 percent wage growth. Premiums rose
about 26 percent, with no replacement plan. The debt is $39.8 trillion.
THE HONEST PART. Presidents appoint allies; that is the job, and the Senate signs off. J. Edgar
Hoover was never elected and could not be removed. These men can be. But appointees leave
and judges do not.
J. EDGAR HOOVER NEEDED FORTY-EIGHT YEARS AND A FILE CABINET.
THIS ONE NEEDED NINETEEN MONTHS AND A SIGNATURE.
RETRIBUTION RULES. THE PUBLIC WAS PLAYED THE FOOL.
REPAIR TAKES LONGER THAN RUIN When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
“Berkshire is not the author of this
defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
are drawn from public records and cited reporting