Programming alert🚨: Tonight, I will be hosting a 2-hour edition of On Balance. See you tonight starting at 8 p.m ET.
Welcome to an abbreviated edition of War Notes as we prepare for a longer show
Start your engines 🏁: 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi will join me tonight ahead of the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in D.C.
What the course through D.C looks like:
Abbey | BLUE EYES@Blue_EyesTime-Lapse Tour of Freedom 250 Grand Prix Track Ahead of First-Ever D.C. IndyCar Race. This is going to be EPIC!!!✨💫12:02 PM · Aug 21, 2026 · 2.49K Views3 Replies · 15 Reposts · 63 Likes
Look back🔙: Rossi actually coasted to victory back in 2016 … he was out of gas and won by skipping a pit stop
Economic D-Day‼️: A war of missiles and bombs has come to a war of dollars and rials.
Trump is threatening an “economic D-Day” against Iran — but will this economic strangulation work?
Goal🎯: Hit the mullahs where it actually hurts — their lifestyle.
The mullahs are like the progressives: Theocracy for thee, not for me
True color❗: The mullahs live very well, not to mention with women and booze — they don’t care if their people die or babies starve
Pain📍: The mullahs have real pain points — will Trump be willing to endure his own pain of high gas prices?
Tonight📺: Ambassador John Bolton on whether this can finally break the Iranians.
Get Flocked📸: So many of the people who claim to care about America and American values are the same people making millions of dollars telling everyone we need a surveillance system that rivals China
Follow the money💸: There’s a huge amount of money behind trying to protect these cameras and creating a surveillance state
Andreessen Horowitz — a major Flock investor — helped Flock secure $275 million last year.
Bedrock Capital continues to pour money into Flock
Tiger Global helped Flock raise $150 million in 2022
No surprise🤷: The tech center of the world, Palo Alto, California, is about to ban Flock cameras as they go up everywhere else.
Reality‼️: Our government continues to fail to deal with the problems that actually need to be dealt with
This is why Americans feel so betrayed by their government
Tonight📺: Tennessee Mayor Glenn Jacobs stood against Flock cameras and even threatened a fight with the sheriff.
Yes, the Other Guy is WORSE‼️
🤦We can confidently say what the midterms will be about — how bad the other party is.
The hope of either party coming with real solutions to our problems is gone
Watch👀: Trump is on the trail tonight in South Carolina, plus JD Vance is in Ohio.
They aren’t shying away from the fight
Democrats🔵: With only a few exceptions, most Democrats focus their campaign on Trump and the evils of Republicans.
Reality‼️: The political parties are mirror images of themselves — focused on themselves and their power rather than any meaningful change for America.
Thus, we spent a week fighting over whether or not a leading Democrat called Trump’s executive assistant a wh*re or really just called her a sycophantic yes-woman.
It’s very difficult to see how this gets better before it gets worse.
Tonight📺: Lauren Wright and former Pennsylvania Congressman Charlie Dent
The Boogeyman
‼️We’re all getting played on data centers — data centers are a proxy for the rich getting richer and everybody else getting left behind.
The revolt is real, but banning data centers won’t stop the problem.
🏭Politicians are making data centers the new boogeyman because they don’t want to do their jobs
We’re being misled into thinking that data centers are a big problem in America — really… we have bigger issues
No AI regulation
Affordability
Not confronting the surveillance state we’re heading toward
Both political parties serving the richest Americans
America’s debt
$40 trillion plus debt is going to cost us a lot more problems before data centers will
Politicians have figured out it’s something Americans are angry about so they are going to ban it — it’s not going to do anything; it’s just going to make it worse
C’mon🤦: More Americans support building coal power plants near their homes than AI data centers.
Brad Polumbo@brad_polumboAmericans literally support building COAL POWER PLANTS near their homes at SIGNIFICANTLY higher rates than building an AI data center. There's no explanation for this other than misinformation- and media-fueled moral panic.
1:24 PM · Aug 21, 2026 · 2.97K Views14 Replies · 33 Reposts · 140 Likes
This is just an easy way for politicians to pass the buck without actually solving our problems
👀But there’s a part of the data center story you aren’t hearing as much of … they bring a lot of good to cities.
A Virginia county is expecting to get $1.3 billion in tax money from its 250 data centers.
This will account for 40% of this county’s total tax revenue.
Good data✅: Our buddy Steve Cortes’ data center polling results.
“Data Centers, Polling, November Elections, and the Way Forward,” headlines Steve Cortes
Tonight📺: VA Rep Suhas Subramanyam and Students Against High-Voltage Expansion Co-Founders Mihir Nimkar and Josh Weber
Playing the Victim Card🃏
📺The media leaning into the Natalie Harp story for days is EXACTLY what Trump revels in.
🤦Democrats and the media have created this controversy that the White House loves because it gives them something to talk about.
For a week, we could be talking about the price of beef — instead, we are talking about Trump’s 35-year-old assistant.
Proof📰: Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic headlines, “The White House Freak-out Over Natalie Harp,” writing:
“Americans likely had no idea who this Natalie woman was, and might never have given it another thought. But then the West Wing lost its mind. And Trump did too. Their pushback was so overwhelming, so obviously coordinated, so ugly and personal that it became a story.”
Lemire later writes, “Suddenly, media outlets that had ignored her felt the need to write about her.”
Yeah… you guys all fell for it
Piece of advice☑️: For those who want to beat Trump, there are so many other things they can beat him on
The price of meat
Tariffs
The cost of living
NOT attacking his 35-year-old bone cancer survivor assistant
Watch tonight📺: Lauren Wright, Kurt Bardella and Nina Turner on why Democrats keep playing by Trump’s rules.