8-11-25

President Trump had a press conference today…..he is taking issue with the level

of crime in our nations capital…..Washington DC, with a population of just over

700,000, has previously been branded as the murder capital of the

world…..homelessness and vagrancy are all over the streets…..but the kicker has

been the violence perpetrated on people who work in Congress and the White

House….the story broke just the other day that a young man who worked for

DOGE was brutally assaulted because he tried to stop a young woman from being

carjacked…..this is what’s known as a flashpoint….it happens…..you can be

aggravated about something, aware of something that’s not right, even wish that

something would change, and then all of a sudden there’s a flashpoint! That

proverbial straw that broke the camels back…..and just like that a bad thing goes

from being something that people are aware of to something that people will no

longer stand for…..

I’ve got to tell you…..sometimes there is a logjam that just can’t seem to be

broken….and then that one voice….that one personality…..that one person with

the strength of will and courage of their convictions steps into the mix and the

logjam breaks up…..

I’ll never forget one such guy…..Baghdad, 2004…..my team was attached to an

Infantry Battalion in central Baghdad under the 1 st Cavalry Division…..we were

outside the wire virtually every day…..no matter what the cause of the

time…..cordon and search….raids….good will patrols….or visiting a local school

to establish rapport….we always had an interpreter…..my team had two terps in

Baghdad, one of whom was an Iraqi bodybuilder named Yousef…..he was in fact

one of the biggest dudes I ever met…..roughly 6’4-5 and well over 300

pounds…..his arms were as big as my thighs….I’m not small by any stretch but

Yousef could make a guy feel anemic just standing next to him….he had one of

those lantern jaws and a sharp gaze that could freeze a guy in his tracks….but he

would crack a smile and laugh just as quick….he was a also a Christian and I

remember learning that he taught himself much of his English by having two

Bibles, one in english and one in arabic and going back and forth between the two.

…..it made his day when I had Charlene help me to get a Gold’s Gym sweatshirt

for him…..in 4XL if I recall….

One particular day we were in a spot in which the Deputy Division CDR, a 1-star,

showed up….he was walking past us when he saw Yousef standing next to me

wearing this maxed out old flak jacket and looking huge….the General stopped in

his tracks and said “who are you?”….without blinking Yousef just pointed at me

and said “his bodyguard” to which the General said “I believe that” and walked on

shaking his head.

As good as it was to have Yousef working as an interpreter I’ve got to say that he

was legendary when it came time to get folks to do what was needed. It didn’t take

much…..more than once I saw him wade into an angry Arabic mob and just say

some emphatic words….and folks just did whatever he said. Traffic jams were

notorious….and being still on a Baghdad street was a tactical no-no…..truly

dangerous….one particular day near one of the worst sections of a Baghdad slum

the traffic was so snarled and congested my teams gun trucks were literally

jammed in and could not move….I was out on foot yelling and pointing my

weapon at certain drivers who did not seem to get my sense of urgency….until one

them got wide-eyed looking past me and I turned to see Yousef moving in between

the cars and whatever he said was certainly matched by the immediate clearing of

the intersection……things like that happened all the time….to include a major

operation we conducted with a reinforced Company in the Sadr City section of

Baghdad….with shots being fired and explosions going off Yousef took a bullhorn

and got over 150 civilians into a safe zone and under control…..

I tell you this story because it was an example of one man making a difference.

…..one man can in fact make a difference….and he (or she for that matter) doesn’t

have to be the size of my giant friend Yousef….

Turning my attention back to Trump and the crime and filth in DC…..leading up to

the press conference Trump put out a post on his Truth Social account, saying:

"The American Public is not going to put up with it any longer," the president

wrote. "Just like I took care of the Border, where you had ZERO Illegals coming

across last month, from millions the year before, I will take care of our cherished

Capital, and we will make it, truly, GREAT AGAIN! Before the tents, squalor, filth,

and Crime, it was the most beautiful Capital in the World. It will soon be that

again. Thank you for your attention to this matter — See you tomorrow at 10

A.M.!" 

Right now we need that kind of leadership …… the person that wades into that

logjam and brings some strength of will to the moment….and motivates others to

do that which they might not otherwise have done……But I will also throw out a

note of caution…..there’s an old saying that every good thing is not a God

thing…meaning that just because something can be done does not always mean

that it should….what we really need is for local and state leadership to get off of

their political keesters and do the work themselves…..it shouldn’t take the

President of the United States having to intervene in Los Angeles by calling up the

National Guard to stop riots…..it shouldn’t take the President reinforcing the

federal Courthouse in Portland to stop Antifa rioters…..and it shouldn’t take the

President having to hold a press conference in the White House to address crime in

the Capital City…..at a time when we have major issues of foreign policy,

economic policy, national security, border control, energy sector growth, foreign

investment, and more, are all rightfully on his plate, the President of the United

States should not have to be distracted about whether or not his staffers, or foreign

dignitaries, or tourists, or everyday citizens are going to be victims of violent crime

outside the gates of the White House…..shame on the local leadership for allowing

this to rise to the level of national attention…..

Local leaders need to do their jobs……local leaders, like the DC City Council

need to be shamed into doing their jobs responsibly…..Representative Byron

Donalds of Florida just introduced a new bill, one that passed the House last year,

designed to strip the DC City Council’s authority to continue passing soft on crime

local legislation…..DC currently has no mandatory minimum sentencing for

criminals under the age of 25!.....youth gangs are mollycoddled…..older gang

members send the young ones out to do the crimes because they know they won’t

face jail time…..a misdemeanor is just the cost of doing business for young

criminals……Speaking on his bill Donalds said,

“For far too long, our nation’s capital has been plagued by an epidemic of

violence due to the soft-on-crime policies of far-left, local leaders,” Donalds said

in a statement. “Weak leadership by anti-cop radicals gives rise to chaos and the

reign of terror unleashed on innocent residents and visitors of our nation’s capital

must end now. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to oversee the District

of Columbia, and it’s imperative that we act quickly to assert our control when

local government fails to do its job.”

Look I’ve been in those political meetings…..the kind where you get frustrated and

look around the room and wonder why you can’t get movement…..but then I’ve

also been there and seen what happens when one person gets the attention of

another…..and agrees to align their vote…..and the momentum picks up….and

more get on board….and pretty soon you see movement of a larger scale….and the

logjam breaks…..and that thing that they said couldn’t get done….gets done.

Sometimes that leadership is the person who is a leader by virtue of their

position…..a committee chairman….a majority leader…..the Pro Tem of the

Senate or the Speaker of the House…..those are the folks that have leadership by

virtue of their assignment and also hopefully by virtue of their merits…..but then

there is leadership that comes from earned attention….the kind that may not have a

title to their name….but they are among the rank and file and people want to

naturally know what they are going to say or do……

Someone needs to rise up in the ranks……someone at the local and state level to

give a voice to issues that are truly state and local….. band together and ask to be

dealt with in the strength of their numbers…..We need that kind of leadership right

this very day…..we need it for the way forward…..and right now it is not showing

itself…..We need to know that our elected officials at all levels will evidence the

strength of will and serve as statesmen…..the President of the United States should

not have to address the crime on city streets…..

Break the logjams……make a difference…..do it locally and you’ll be a hero…..

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way!