POLICY COUNSEL
MAY 2026 POLICY COUNSEL SPEECHES
John Tillman
CEO, American Culture Project
Chairman, Illinois Policy Institute
What an amazing week we have had. It’s been spectacular. It’s been so great to see so many old friends and make so many new friends and feel so energized and inspired to go out and think about what we each can do to advance America for the next 250 years.
Tonight, I’ll begin with a story, perhaps of the hardest day of my life. My wife and I stood outside a lawyer’s office mustering the courage to go in. We stood on a sidewalk staring, saying little, despair in our hearts. My retail sporting goods business was essentially insolvent. At the same time, my once-promising public internet access business was soon to close its doors when the dot-com bubble burst in April of 2000. When we sat down with the lawyer, we did not encounter a kind person helping us to navigate our financial and emotional crisis. We met a man immune to the frailties of the human soul, hardened and hard. After all, he was a lawyer.
He said, “You are done. The best thing for you to do is declare bankruptcy and get on with your life.” It went downhill from there. We walked out and stood once again on that sidewalk. All of my dreams, my hopes, my aspirations were on the knife’s edge of failure. And then a gust of wind took me out of my despair. I felt warm breath upon myself, on my face, because God pulled me close to him and said, “Go forward. Get on with your life.”
I looked around the city that I loved. I looked around the busy streets all around us, at the people walking hurriedly to some important engagement. I saw vibrancy. I saw builders. I saw resilience. And once again, I felt a sense of opportunity rather than despair. I took a deep breath. I turned to my wife and I said, “No way. I am not declaring bankruptcy. I will find a way out of this.”
It took years, great sacrifice, a little bit of luck, but eventually I rebuilt that business into a thriving enterprise. And six years after that day on the sidewalk, I sold it. It was a brutal experience, and that brutality, as you can tell, stays with me to this day.
When I am asked why I so deeply care about America’s entrepreneurs and why I want to build a Hall of Fame to celebrate them, I think of all the entrepreneurs today and in the past who stood on their own version of that sidewalk, wondering if they were going to make it. Somewhere not far from here, right now, there are men and women in their own version of that sidewalk, wondering if they’re going to make it, struggling to make the next payroll, and wondering if they can find the formula for success that has been so elusive so far.
Everyone respects the struggling entrepreneur. We love that story of the struggle. But for some in this country today, God forbid you make it to the penthouse, because now you are an enemy of the people.
When some who struggle do make it to the penthouse and become the next Ken Griffin, Michael Dell, Elon Musk, Sara Blakely, and Spanx—some of them become villains, with the exception of Sara Blakely. But those they villainize are shamed and attacked. They are not paying their fair share. They didn’t earn their success. They are rapacious capitalists exploiting the poor and working class. They are billionaires to be vilified and blamed for every calamity in America. This is the argument of all too many who want to destroy the American miracle, and they are winning too many hearts and too many minds every day.
We must fight. All of us must fight. All of America must fight for what the founders bequeathed us. This fight is to rebuild an American consensus that our nation’s founding was and is noble, that free enterprise and capitalism are noble, that American entrepreneurs, when struggling to make payroll or rising to the penthouse, are noble.
The Hall of Giants will make and win these arguments. But how did we get here to have to make them? There was once an American consensus on the nobility of our founding, on capitalism, on free enterprise, and on the entrepreneurs who drive those systems. How did we lose it? Well, too many of us quit teaching, showing, and sharing the story of American exceptionalism. Meanwhile, the forces that oppose us never stopped working to destroy that consensus.
When we think about the American dream, it is, at its heart, our American exceptionalism. But those dreams are only possible because of the American miracle. The American miracle means that no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter whether black, brown, or white, no matter rich or poor, no matter what makes you unique in this world, in America, if you are willing to work and go all in with our American way of life, your version of the American dream is within reach.
Even more importantly, while not every dream is achieved, the miracle is that the journey in pursuit of that dream is its own fulfilling reward. It is those millions of journeys that have created the prosperity of the human spirit we have enjoyed for 250 years. Think about it. 250 years, a long time to us, but a drop of time in history.
Earlier I spoke of the brutality of nearly going bankrupt, but that’s nothing compared to the brutality of life on Earth prior to 1776. For thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, physical and emotional brutality were the norm for most people. Strength and power ruled. The iron fist, the steel sword, the willingness to subjugate and kill. This is how the world worked throughout most of known history.
If you were in the ruling class, life was reasonably good by the standards of the time. But if you were powerless, your life depended on submitting to the powerful. People like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon. The list goes on. It is long. What is striking to me when I did a little reading is that when you research these great conquerors, these conquests are often described as having united the defeated. That is like saying Hitler united Europe in World War II.
In the time of Genghis Khan in the 1200s, Lifespans were brief and life was brutal. If you made it into your 30s, you were lucky. By the time of Napoleon, little had changed. Same life expectancy, same brutal world ruled by the mighty over the weak. But the seeds of longer and better lives had been sown.
In 1776, America was founded and The Wealth of Nations was published. Throughout the 18th century, John Locke’s writings grew in influence, including among the Founders. The concept of natural, or as I think we all prefer, God-given rights, emerged. This concept, which we take for granted at great peril today, was a direct assault on how the world had worked since the beginning of time. Under the old order, your rights were whatever the dictator or king decided to bestow upon you.
Not in America. In America, your rights were God-given. No government could take them away. This has changed matters profoundly. For it is the change that fueled the greatest improvement in material, social, cultural, and spiritual prosperity in human history. Once a person, once a people realized that they were sovereign, it unleashes hopes and dreams and imaginations in a way the world had never seen. You own the right to the fruits of your labor, not the king, not the dictator, not the petty lord in his castle.
Today, all of that is at risk. The Bernie Sanders, the AOCs, the Tom Steyers, the Gavin Newsoms, all of those people of the world today, petty lords all, want to strip us of our God-given rights and make the government sovereign rather than the American people.
Let’s return for a moment to the three-legged stool of our national greatness, our founding principles, capitalism, and free enterprise. These three systems do not work unless the people are sovereign with unalienable rights. But when the people are truly sovereign, these systems unleash human potential in ways that have lifted more people out of poverty than any program in history.
Entrepreneurs are the makers, the builders, the creators who drive the change that improve our lives every day. Think about the entrepreneurial giants you know and some you may not know. Of course, we’re all familiar with Sara Blakely, some of you more intimately tonight than others. You may have heard of Madam C.J. Walker, the first African American Black billionaire, an incredible story. More recently, some of you may know Cynthia Fisher. There’s Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan. The list goes on. Wilbur and Orville Wright, two of my favorites. Of course, the president’s favorite entrepreneur, as you should know, is Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s. Come on, people. And of course, his second favorite entrepreneur, Elon Musk.
Consider Elon Musk. If he’d been born in the 1200s, he would have been a contemporary of Genghis Khan. The two of them would have been rivals. Now Khan alone killed roughly 10% of the world’s population. Elon Musk in the 1200s? Khan, Musk, who are you going to bet on?
My point is this. The Founders didn’t only change the world in the way we commonly think about it, a free sovereign people with government subordinate to them. They did something even more remarkable and something rarely spoken of.
They created a system that channeled what some would say is so-called toxic masculinity: the strong, the ambitious, the willful, the dominating. They were channeled into productive rather than destructive ends. Think about that change for humanity. In other words, Elon Musk in 1200 would have exercised his gifts through conquest. But today, he builds the most advanced electric cars on Earth. He connects the world through internet systems based in space. He is literally rewiring damaged brain neurons through Neuralink and restoring people’s lives. And most fun of all, practically every day he catches rocket ships. From brutality to service, from destroying to building, from subjugating the people to serving them. That is what the founding of America changed 250 years ago.
And yet today, from AOC declaring that no one can earn a billion dollars, to a socialist mayor vilifying Ken Griffin, to socialism being more popular than capitalism among the young, the brutalists are on the march. Violence is in the air. This is happening in part because the dots have become disconnected. We need to reconnect them to restore in people’s minds an understanding of the nobility of our founding, of capitalism and free enterprise, and the role the entrepreneur plays in our system.
Consider for a moment the virtue of our system. An entrepreneur has an idea. He puts some money in the pot. He raises some more money from family and friends. Now, he may work alone at first, but as soon as he is able, he begins hiring people, offering well-paying and rewarding work. He begins to succeed little by little by doing one singular thing: serving other people well. This is the beauty of our system.
This is the beauty of our system. It’s built on permission and consent with service at its core. The AOCs of the world, the Bernie Sanders, the dictators still around the globe today, there are still too many, as we know, they believe in coercion and submission. Comply or be harassed, prosecuted, or worse.
We must fight back on every front to retell the American people of the nobility and utility of our founding of capitalism, and free enterprise. That is why we are building the Hall of Giants, to celebrate American entrepreneurs.
Remarkably, America has a Hall of Fame for practically everything from football players to burlesque dancers to my favorite, tow truck drivers. There is none dedicated to the entrepreneurs who built the prosperity we all enjoy. That is why we are building the Hall of Giants, to celebrate American entrepreneurs. Remarkably, America has a Hall of Fame for practically everything from football players to burlesque dancers to my favorite tow truck drivers. There is none dedicated to the entrepreneurs that built the prosperity we all enjoy. And we call it the Hall of Giants, but it will be unlike any other museum. I kind of always like to describe it as Hollywood meets the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame meets Disney World. We’re going to reconnect the dots.
Look around you right now in this room, the clothing you are wearing, the food we just ate, the chairs you are sitting in, the comfortable bed you will be sleeping in sooner than you know tonight. Every single tangible thing in your life exists because somewhere upstream, an entrepreneur decided to start a business and create something that makes our lives better. It really is a miracle, and it is a uniquely American miracle.
To bring that miracle to life and reconnect people to America’s virtue, we are building an innovative, dynamic campus offering cutting-edge combination of education and entertainment, complemented by amusement park-like rides, immersive virtual experiences, and an extensive development district designed to drive attendance, engagement, and yes, revenue.
I’ll share one ride concept with you that I think is kind of fun. Our time-traveling transportation experience. You board in 1776 on a buckboard wagon with all the bumps and smells and, uh, unpleasantries that were raw at that time. From there, you’ll travel decade by decade along America’s journey. To a steamship, then a locomotive, then an automobile, then an airplane, and then a rocket ship, and you’ll disembark on Mars. Along the way, you meet the entrepreneurs who shrunk time and space and made our lives go smoother and faster.
We plan to create additional experiences showing how home life, work life, or social lives have been transformed by the limitless imaginations and indomitable will of America’s great entrepreneurs, including the famous, the unknown, and the forgotten.
We live in an attention economy. Portraits and plaques won’t cut it anymore. That is why we are not building a boring old museum. Our permanent campus will be a vibrant community with housing, offices, retail, and an entertainment district surrounding the Hall of Giants. This entire campus will be a celebration of America and the entrepreneurs who have made our lives better. My goal is that when someone leaves the Hall of Giants, they will see everything in their lives with a fresh perspective. They will recognize that every physical object, service, and experience exists because an entrepreneur took a risk. They signed that lease. They made that payroll when it would’ve been easier to quit rather than keep going. I want them to see entrepreneurs the way they see Taylor Swift or Claude Monet or Chris Pratt as creators who enrich our lives every day.
As we move forward through the groundbreaking in 2030, we’re going to change how the world thinks about America’s founders, our very first entrepreneurs, and all who have followed since. We will rebuild an American consensus and respect and reverence for our country, our entrepreneurs, and most importantly, our nobility as a nation.
American greatness is not a birthright. Our 21st century destiny is not preordained. It must be earned by every generation. Not since the progressive era has our virtue as a nation and our founding been under such relentless assault. We cannot let the destroyers prevail.
I am no theologian, but Jesus taught that loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind was the core commandment. And right alongside it, as expressed by the Apostle Paul, was the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.
When you think about it, our founding, free enterprise, and capitalism are the necessary ingredients to live up to that commandment. America is noble because we created the first system in which success, and to a large degree happiness, was predicated on serving our neighbors well.
When you serve others, or as Paul said, when you love your neighbors, the world is a better place. Jesus taught that loving others is the right approach. Capitalism and free enterprise teach that serving others is the right approach. These are two sides of the same coin. But the world does not think of it that way. I do, and I hope you will from now on.
Twenty-six years ago, God spoke to me on that sidewalk. I will be forever grateful. He sent me on a journey of redemption, creating and building, and that journey continues with the Hall of Giants. But the question stands, will American greatness endure through the 21st century?
The founders were our first entrepreneurs. Today, we have a generation of entrepreneurs led by Elon Musk, Ken Griffin, Michael Dell, and many others in the private sector. And we have amazing policy and political entrepreneurs such as President Trump and his cabinet and many others, and many of you in this room also working to make our next 250 years amazing.
I believe all of you and all of our American entrepreneurs will rise to this moment to ensure that American greatness lasts for another 250 years. And with God’s help, let’s make it so. Thank you.
Tony Perkins
President
Family Research Council
When federal prosecutors finally brought down Al Capone, it wasn’t for murder, extortion, racketeering, or the violence that defined his criminal empire. It was for tax evasion. The charge was real. The conviction was legitimate. But no serious student of history believes tax evasion told the whole story of Capone’s criminal empire. It was simply the charges that prosecutors believed they could most readily prove.
Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center stands federally indicted on charges involving bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Those charges are obviously very serious. But for those familiar with the SPLC’s destructive path, the indictment is just the tip of the iceberg of what appears to have been a much broader system of coordinated influence and institutional coercion.
First, I want to commend the FBI and the Department of Justice for their investigation and ultimate indictment. I am sure there are some here today who spent time with the FBI during this investigation. I spent considerable time with them explaining SPLC’s work and how their influence in the financial world impacted us as a Christian non-profit.
With the indictment of the SPLC, which has been the Left’s vanguard in their attack on conservative organizations who stood in their way, cowardly, corporate figures who kowtowed to the SPLC are starting to talk. So, we are learning more information on how the SPLC worked.
There are several realities we need to understand as we look at this indictment going forward. First, recognizing that traditional hate organizations like the Ku Klux Klan were drying up, the SPLC adjusted its business model by appointing itself as the national arbiter of “hate.” Leveraging its storied reputation from the civil rights era, it expanded its targets beyond violent, legitimate extremist groups.
The first reality we need to understand is this: although the indictment focused on SPLC’s money-raising scheme, SPLC’s real focus was its institutional influence on government, media and corporate America. It really is not about the money. It is about something much more.
Over time, SPLC hate and extremist classifications evolved into far more than media narratives. Their labels increasingly became a form of reputational risk assessment used by banks, payment processors, technology companies, financial compliance systems, law enforcement, media organizations (even so-called conservative media organizations, like Fox), and even elements of the federal government.
The jewel of the SPLC operation was its Intelligence Project, which became deeply influential as the government, media, and finally financial institutions used their biased data in determining which organizations were viewed as acceptable participants in the financial and digital marketplace.
In November of 2010, the first wave of Christian organizations was placed on the SPLC hate map and hate list, with Family Research Council being among the most prominent.
In August of 2012, a gunman entered our headquarters in DC intending to carry out a mass shooting. He shot our building manager before he was disarmed. He was carrying 100 rounds of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. He was intending to stuff the sandwiches into the mouths of his victims. Why FRC? The gunman, Floyd Corkins, later confessed to federal agents that he selected FRC after using the SPLC website and hate map.
That, unfortunately, as we know, was not the last shooting related to individuals publicly targeted by SPLC. In 2017, then Republican-Whip Steve Scalise was shot during a baseball practice, and Charlie Kirk last year.
Following the shooting at FRC we appealed to SPLC to remove organizations like ours because it resulted in an act that was official deemed domestic terrorism. They did not respond. It is clear they did not want to remove the labels because of the institutional influence that had grown around them: the ability to silence the Left’s opponents.
Around 2016, the SPLC led an ad hoc coalition of Left-wing activist groups that began pressuring technology companies—not all were willing to conform—and financial institutions to deplatform and defund conservative organizations. PayPal was among the early targets, although its initial success was limited at first.
Then came Charlottesville. Charlottesville was a catalytic event that rapidly accelerated SPLC’s efforts. In fact, it was a gamechanger for them in terms of their efforts to corral and bully corporations.
With that in mind, let me insert information directly from the federal indictment, which identified one of the many extremist group members allegedly funded by the SPLC: the individual identified as F-37. According to the indictment:
“A member of the online leadership of the chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.”
Following Charlottesville, major corporations publicly aligned themselves with the SPLC. Apple donated $1 million. JPMorgan, over half a million dollars. Others followed.
Here is a question: Was Charlottesville designed to be a catalytic event to further SPLC’s efforts to move reluctant corporations? It is a question that needs to be asked and answered.
Post Charlottesville in August of 2017, the ad hoc coalition formally organized into what became known as Change the Terms, led by the SPLC and the Center for American Progress. The timeline of Change the Terms closely parallels the rapid acceleration of debanking and deplatforming directed at conservative and Christian organizations. BB&T, now Truist, notified FRC that it debanked us. They said in their letter to us it was in accordance with our services agreement. They can, “at any time, close an account at our discretion.” The banks were smart enough not to say that they were using SPLC’s data, but I feel certain, given the timeline, that they were.
It’s a bit ironic that SPLC’s bank let them operate known fraudulent accounts for over a decade, but yet conservative organizations, for no reason, were being debanked. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Change the Terms sought to establish standards for technology and financial companies that would deny digital access and funding mechanisms to organizations deemed extremist by the SPLC’s definition. SPLC officials were explicit about this strategy.
In congressional testimony delivered on January 15, 2020, SPLC official Lecia Brooks stated:
“For decades, the SPLC has been fighting hate and exposing how hate groups use the internet. We have lobbied internet companies, one by one, to comply with their own rules to prohibit their services from being used to foster hate or discrimination. A key part of this strategy has been to target these organizations’ funding.”
Brooks continues in her testimony:
“On October 25, 2018, the Change the Terms coalition, including the SPLC and other civil rights groups, released a suite of recommended policies for technology companies that would take away the online microphone that hate groups use to recruit members, raise funds and organize violence. In response to Change the Terms’ advocacy, several Silicon Valley leaders have made promising changes that align with the coalition’s vision for a safer online world.”
But Brooks went further, openly describing to Congress the pressure campaign:
“The public exposure was half the battle. We conducted the other part of the campaign privately. SPLC officials held dozens of meetings with top Silicon Valley executives. Some companies acted. Some took half steps. Others did little or nothing. But eventually, the far-right extremists who depended on Silicon Valley were beginning to feel the pain.”
What SPLC appears to have done, according to reports and those who are now beginning to talk, is bully the cowardly corporations by leveraging their political connections, including access to regulators that could hurt these corporations. If they didn’t respond, they went public on other social media platforms to shame those corporations into complying with the standards that Change the Terms had set.
This is how Brooks concluded her statement:
“Hate groups have clearly been damaged by the efforts of the SPLC and its allied organizations, including the Change the Terms coalition, to fight them and their funding sources online. But the fight is far from over.”
“The fight is far from over.” That brings me to the second reality. The indictment paints a picture that SPLC was propping up some of the very extremist entities it publicly claimed to be dismantling. And the indictment makes clear these were not undercover informants or “snitches,” as we used to call them when I was a police officer. In some cases, these were individuals allegedly running or helping to run operations of these extremist organizations.
The evidence appears to suggest, and I say suggest, that these extremist organizations served a larger purpose. What was that purpose? Providing potent imagery that immediately marginalized legitimate conservative and Christian organizations that were listed alongside these groups.
We need to be clear: this was not about SPLC’s financial survival. They weren’t propping up their monetary supply. For anyone tempted to feel sorry for the SPLC and start a GoFundMe account for their legal defense, SPLC’s 2024 audited financial statement shows an endowment fund of approximately $734 million.
Nor should anyone assume this indictment marks the end of the SPLC. They have more lives and tentacles than the Iranian regime. While many financial institutions partnered with or relied upon SPLC classifications beginning around 2017, some of them have begun distancing themselves from the organization. But hear me on this, the SPLC still maintains enormous institutional reach.
Its school-based program, Learning for Justice, formerly Teaching Tolerance, still reportedly reaches roughly 500,000 educators across America. Every public school system in America should be asked whether SPLC curriculum is in their schools, and parents should be demanding that anything related to SPLC should be taken out of the school.
SPLC’s public labeling system became far more than a public list. Whether by design or evolution, it functioned as a strategic weapon against conservatives who stood in the way of the Left’s agenda. Behind it, SPLC designations were increasingly used by the media to marginalize or exclude targeted individuals and groups, while also influencing banking access, digital platforms, fundraising capability, and overall public legitimacy.
The indictment may focus on bank fraud and wire fraud, but like Al Capone’s tax evasion case, there is much beneath this surface: a sophisticated system of influence designed not merely to oppose ideas, but to marginalize and economically punish those who hold those views. We must not allow this to pass with a simple indictment. Congress is going to be holding hearings next week. The Judiciary Committee is going to dig into this even deeper. These entities that collaborated with SPLC and did real harm to individuals and organizations should be held accountable as well.
If America is to remain a nation where freedom of speech, religious liberty, and political dissent truly survive, then the broader conspiracy facilitated and directed by the SPLC must be confronted, exposed, and, where illegal conduct occurred, those responsible should held accountable criminally and civilly for the actions that they took.
Just as importantly, safeguards must be established to ensure such a system is never allowed to operate again. We must defend constitutional rights and freedom of speech whether it’s on the Right or the Left but I would again suggest to you that beneath the surface of this is a much broader conspiracy that must be addressed, lest when the Left gains power again, they use the same mechanisms with a vengeance to come after many of you in this room. Let’s prayerfully encourage our leaders and speak out on this until the underlying issues are resolved.
Fred Fleitz
Vice Chair, Center for American Security
America First Policy Institute
It’s great to be back at CNP. I’d like to thank my good friend Ken Blackwell for inviting me to speak here today.
There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to Trump’s unprecedented and extremely successful national security policies. Trump brought about a ceasefire that released all living Israeli hostages in the Gaza war and provided a framework for lasting peace. He started a peace process to end the war in Ukraine, which did not exist before he was president. Although we don’t have peace in Ukraine yet, the president is not going to give up—there is movement right now with Putin. Trump has secured our southern border and addressed the roots of the seven million illegal aliens, criminals, and drug dealers that came into our country during the Biden administration by reasserting American leadership in the Western Hemisphere, reducing the threat from Venezuela, and capturing and putting on trial the narco-terrorist President Nicolas Maduro.
There are many other things I could talk about, but I want to focus my presentation on one issue—the 800-pound gorilla in the room—the war in Iran. The U.S. has won this war, and the president has to get out of it as soon as possible. I supported this war as a short-term engagement because I know how far Iran’s nuclear program advanced due to Joe Biden’s incompetence. Iran had never enriched uranium to the 60% before the Biden administration. When Trump came into office, Iran had an estimated eight to eleven weapons worth of near-weapons-grade uranium and a rapidly growing missile program. This had to be addressed. The president tried to address it through diplomacy twice in 2025 and in 2026. The Iranians didn’t want to negotiate. They tried to drag things out. After the 12-day war last year, Trump imposed a ceasefire over Israel’s objections.
Iran proceeded to resume work on its nuclear missile programs, which led to the 2026 war. The objective of this war was to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and Trump has succeeded in that goal. Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been set back at least 10 years due to the destruction of its nuclear infrastructure. This is a huge win.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that another goal of this operation was to stop Iran from building what would essentially have been a missile shield to protect its nuclear weapons program. Iran’s ability to make missiles, its missile factories—factories to make missile chemicals and propellants—have also been destroyed. Iran still has arsenals of missiles, mostly short-range missiles and drones, but it will be a long time before it will be making long-range missiles. This also is a huge win.
There are other ways we know that the U.S. has won. Iran’s navy has been sunk. Its air force has been destroyed. Iran’s power projection capabilities have been devastated. Its ability to support its proxies has been severely undercut. Its leadership is shattered. Iran’s propaganda operation is still around, and we know Iranian officials have big mouths and they’re claiming they won. They’re hoping that their rhetoric will convince the American people of something that’s not true—that they didn’t lose. This country is a shadow of what it was. There’s no question the world is safer today because of what President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to do.
Now that we’ve accomplished our goal, it’s time to get out. I believe one mark of a good leader is to recognize that when you’ve achieved your goals, you take the win and you get out before you’re overextended or you start having diminishing returns. That time has come. It’s time to end this conflict.
You might ask how should the president do that? One way we should not do it is through negotiations. There’s no way to negotiate with the fanatics in Tehran. This is a badly divided government. They’re fighting with themselves. We can’t trust them to abide by anything that we press them to agree to. They’ve broken all their nuclear agreements over the years. And to get an agreement that this government won’t comply with, we will have to make painful concessions. This is unacceptable.
You might ask, well, what should we do? We won and President Trump should dictate terms. We need an ultimatum. I put this in an American Greatness article that ran on Friday, and several people sent it to the president. The president needs to dictate this to what’s left of the Iranian regime. We won this war, you lost. We will end hostilities if you stop hostilities, to your neighbors and to the Strait of Hormuz. You can’t have the Strait of Hormuz. If you do that, we will stop hostilities. We’ll stop the blockade.
In addition, part of this ultimatum must include a very clear statement that we will not tolerate Iran having a nuclear weapons program. We’re not going to quibble with the Iranians by saying, “Well, maybe you can have a right to enrich uranium in a few years, or maybe you can have a peaceful nuclear program.” They can’t have a nuclear program. If they try to rebuild it, we’ll blow it to kingdom come. We’re not going to discuss this. We’re not going to negotiate it. These fanatics are not going to compromise on this.
I think this approach to the war is something the regime will accept. I do think they want to get out of this conflict. If we make it simple, if we make it a matter of force, we can get them to end the conflict.
There are many in the U.S., you see them on Fox all the time, they don’t agree. They want the war to last longer. They want us to attack more, saying things like, “Let’s seize Kharg Island. Let’s dig out this highly enriched uranium at a nuclear site. Let’s not leave until the Iranian government is overthrown.” These are bad ideas, and they’re not consistent with what President Trump said, that this was going to be a short excursion and not a quagmire.
Many people on Fox say every night that we must dig up this enriched uranium. There’s no need to do that. I’ve studied this as a CIA analyst. This enriched uranium is in the form of uranium hexafluoride. It has to be substantially processed to make it into uranium metal and then put into unfinished and unfueled nuclear devices. Iran does not have the capacity to do that because we destroyed their nuclear facilities.
The president has hinted what his approach to this will be. This material has been deeply buried. It’s been bombed. We’ll monitor it with satellites. American troops sent there would have recover cylinders of uranium hexafluoride that are probably leaking. This stuff is really poisonous. It’ll kill you if you breathe it in. It’ll burn your skin if you touch it. I don’t want American soldiers in hazmat suits doing excavation in Iran. I don’t want American soldiers on one square inch of Iranian territory.
In terms of taking Kharg Island, I don’t see the point of that. This would mean a long war with no end in sight. A lot of the guests on Fox don’t seem to care about that. The American people don’t want a long-term operation.
In terms of waiting for the regime to fall, you can’t overthrow a regime from the air. The Iranian people have to do that. We’ve created circumstances where I think they’ll be able to take back their country, but we can’t wait for that to happen. The president has to get out, and I think he will get out. I think he will take this approach.
It isn’t simply because it’s the right thing to do. It isn’t simply because this is what President Trump promised. Let’s be frank—if this war does not end in the next 30 days, the Republican Party will be killed in the midterms. I can’t tell you how angry younger conservatives are who talk to me about this war. We know independents are against it. Many, many Republicans say, “Why are we here? When is this going to end?” It has to end. It can end. We’ve done what the president said we had to accomplish. I think he’s moving in this direction. He’s not going to play games with this regime much longer.
I think it’s time to take the win. It’s time to declare that this is a great American victory that has made our country safer. The Iranian regime can say other things to the New York Times as much as it wants. We need to make this case to the American people so the president can concentrate on our economy, on energy prices, and holding both the House and Senate this November. You may not all agree with me with this approach, but this is where I’ve come down to try to address this conflict, and I hope the president takes my advice. Thank you.
Sage Steele
Host
The Sage Steele Show
I am honored to be here. I really mean that. I think back on what you’re saying and the things I hosted, and all of it led to today, a place I thought I would never want to be at, talking about sometimes uncomfortable things, and certainly never thought I’d be allowed to once I found those things more interesting and important.
There is a real beauty in being canceled. Let me tell you. I’ve gotten really good at being canceled, probably half a dozen times. But the amazing thing is, despite what they try to instill in you and make you fearful of, you still wake up the next morning. It’s amazing how the sun comes up and you’re still breathing. The question is, what do you want to do with it? So, it does mean a lot to me to be here because people like you are the “why” behind why so many of us are slowly but surely finding the courage to speak up, even when it’s really uncomfortable.
Thank you, Bob McEwen, for being the one that invited me here. When he asked, it was an easy yes for me because of what you stand for. Your values are exactly what I have tried to live by in my life, failed at times for sure, but certainly try going forward to live that way and is what I want to encourage with my kids as well. Because of what you have chosen to focus on, I now feel free to speak up and not live in fear.
I just want to share a couple of stories and then take any and all questions that you want. This whole story of the dream to be a sportscaster and then to end up on a campaign trail with Donald Trump —things I would never, ever have said or wanted to do, but God always has a plan—for me, it all starts with a prayer. It’s the cadet prayer from the United States Military Academy at West Point. No, I did not attend. I could never have gotten in. They would have laughed at my application.
But my father did, and my father is a 1970 graduate of West Point. I will brag. He’s my hero. He turns 80 next month. He broke the color barrier there. He was the first black man ever to play varsity football at West Point. What he did throughout his life, but certainly starting there, was some adversity, certainly in the 60s, 1966, when you were the only black man on your football team and the campuses he would go to play. I mean, he experienced a lot, but you talk about perspective.
As kids, he made us memorize this portion of the cadet prayer: “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and to never be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.” That’s just one portion of it, but he made us memorize it, and it was really annoying. But my goodness, the number of times I have drawn on that, especially over the last couple of years —that first part in particular, “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.” We usually know what the harder right is. It’s just scary sometimes to choose it. Again, I haven’t always succeeded, but that’s been the goal.
What you believe in on your website is, gosh, it’s just so clear, limited government, traditional values, strong national defense. Seems so simple, doesn’t it? Then we have to try to live with it. I tied in some of my stories to those standards, beginning with limited government. We believe in limiting the size and scope of government to allow Americans greater freedom to reach their fullest potential. Again, simple…I thought.
The summers of 2020 and 2021, that’s when the whole world changed for everybody. When you think about the government’s role—and I know a lot of people want to move on from COVID—I’m not quite there yet. I don’t think we should be there yet because we are still learning exactly what went down. I liken it a little bit to 9-11 and that hashtag Never Forget. Do we have to move on and advance? Yes, but we must never forget because of what was done intentionally, in my opinion. So, President Biden and the Administration got involved in the pandemic, requiring vaccines and testing for any company with 100 or more employees. I worked for the Walt Disney Company at that time, definitely more than 100 employees.
They told us on September 30th, 2021, that we must be fully vaccinated or we would be fired. This is well documented. I had a problem with it right away. Not because I’m a doctor, certainly not, but because I thought, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense.” A simple Google search told me that it takes usually between six to nine years for the FDA to approve a vaccine. How is this being shoved down our throats, and how am I supposed to just willingly put it in my body? At the time I was a single mother with three kids. What do we do? So, I just asked questions. Disney said, “Yeah, sorry, you have a choice.”
At the time, again, I was 100% financially responsible for my three kids, their father, all of the above. These are the decisions that millions of Americans had to make. Do you take the shot against your will, something that is experimental, or do you fight back and lose your job? I was scared to death. I very much struggle to forgive myself still for what I call caving in. I caved because I needed that job. I also loved that job. It was the job that I had dreamt of from day one and worked really, really hard to get to at that point in 2021.
I’ll never forget going to the grocery store to get that shot because, you know, you go to grocery stores to get shots. I lived in Connecticut, where ESPN headquarters is, and I was in the car praying, “God, give me a sign. Should I do this?”
Another day with more time, I’ll share some of those signs. I walked in there and I sat down in the chair and the sweetheart of a woman, who was not a nurse, she was a cashier, came over to give me my shot. As she did it, she looked at me and said, “Are you okay?” My eyes were red. from crying in the car like a little girl. I said, “No. I’m being forced to take this shot, and I’m not okay with it, but I need my job.” This sweet woman looked at me. She said, “That is so wrong, and I am so sorry.”
When she put it in this arm, something changed in me at that moment. I had prayed that it would just go through me as if it were water. I wanted it not to be the real thing, just out of fear for what it could have been. Of course, we didn’t know at that time, but it turns out there was reason for concern for many people. I got up, and I thanked her, because she was on my side, but she needed her job, too.
I went home. I had a previously planned podcast to go on with Jay Cutler, former Bears quarterback and Broncos quarterback. He had just started a podcast. His publicist called and said, “He hasn’t had a female on. Will you do it?” I agreed—I kind of crushed him on Bears highlights through the years, so let me go be nice and help him with his podcast now. I went on, and apparently, he’s got a pretty good research team because he brought up several topics that were quite controversial, and I got in trouble for some of that. Story for another day when we have a glass of wine.
I had a Band-Aid on my shoulder from getting the shot, and I had forgotten. And he said, “Can I ask you about the Band-Aid?” And I thought, “Uh-oh,” but I can never be dishonest. I said, “Well, yep, I literally just got the shot.” And he raised his eyebrows, and I felt judged immediately, right? I said, “I had no choice in order to keep my job. I’m complying, but I think it’s sick and scary for any employer to require their employees to force them to do something to their body that they’re not comfortable with.” That’s what I said, and we moved on to the next topic.
When the podcast dropped about two weeks later, the phone rang and it was my agent and then-bosses, and long story short, I was suspended. I got pulled off the air. I had assignments taken away from me. I had to issue a public apology that, of course, ESPN and Disney disperse it to the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post, saying how they respect free speech, but we’re going to cancel her. We’re going to take her off the air, so it’s fine.
I was scared, and I needed the job. And you just say, OK, OK, OK, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You just do what they say. That doesn’t happen without the government intruding and forcing these mandates, and then companies not taking a stand. From there, the suspension lifted, and I came back on air. I was told by my bosses, “Everyone hates you. You need to apologize to your teammates,” etc. “Fine. I’ll apologize.”
The next couple of months were fascinating to me. All my peers were allowed to go on ESPN Airwaves and give their opinion on things that had nothing to do with sports. From how upset they were that Roe vs. Wade had been overturned, talking about that on NBA draft coverage, to talk the alleged Don’t Say Gay Bill in the state of Florida during NCAA women’s basketball coverage. I gave my opinion on a separate podcast on a day off, separating myself from ESPN while complying, and I’m suspended. I’m embarrassed. Yet, these people are promoted.
That’s when I said enough. I asked them to apologize and acknowledge that this was unequal. I talked to an attorney, and he said, “Young lady, you have a choice to make. It’s now or never.” We decided to file a lawsuit, not for anything but the contradiction that the company was showing. They were allowing all of my peers to say whatever they wanted on ESPN airways about things that people who come to ESPN aren’t there for. You want to hear about basketball and football and baseball, not their opinions on abortion, or why you didn’t post a black square on your Instagram during Black Lives Matter, or the COVID shot. That’s not what we’re here for. ESPN allowed that, but then suspended me? Enough. I filed the lawsuit.
I went to each one of my children the night before the lawsuit dropped. One was a freshman in college, one was a senior in high school, one was a sophomore in high school. The two girls responded as expected: “What are you doing? My friends will judge.” That has happened to them. Their mother’s words many, many, many times have affected my kids, and that breaks my heart. What I said to all three of them was, “ You do not ever have to defend me, ever. I don’t want you to defend me. That’s not your job as my child. But I do want you to remind your coaches, teachers, and friends’ parents who choose to come to you to complain about your mother, remind them that freedom of speech matters and that we all have a right to our opinion. You don’t have to agree, but you must respect my right.” That’s what I said to my kids.
My son, who’s the quiet one in between these two psycho daughters of mine, looked at me when I was in tears, and I said, “I’m sorry for what’s about to come your way, but I have to do this.” My 17-year-old son looked at me and said, “Mom, it’s about time you stood up for yourself.” So, when I heard him say that to me, I realized all these years about lesser things, bigger things, I’d stayed quiet, mainly to protect them, to keep the job, because I needed to take care of them. All these years of me being silent to protect them, what was I actually teaching them? I was teaching them silence when I was preaching to them about being strong and standing up for what you believe in and not giving in and doing it with kindness, but with strength. I was a hypocrite.
I realized at that moment that even if Disney beat me, which was a very high probability considering they could financially bleed me dry in seconds, I was going to win. My kids saw that I would no longer be quiet despite the real fears of cancellation, loss of employment, etc. That was a win for me.
On Valentine’s Day 2025, Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order prohibiting federal funding for COVID and vaccine mandates in schools. It does take courage that this President has certainly demonstrated. He’s Donald Trump! He does things his way, doesn’t he? In that moment, I was so grateful as one of the thousands of people who been hurt from the government intruding and doing the wrong thing.
Traditional values are something that I’m so grateful for. The fact that we can start this morning off with a prayer… I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to be, if you desire it! In so many spaces, we’ve not been allowed to. We’ve been condemned for that for years. We believe the founding fathers created this nation based on Judeo-Christian values and that our culture flourishes when we uphold them. That is on your website. Thank you for that.
My faith has always been so important to me, but it is something I felt I had to be quieter about to stay in the good graces of everybody in the “welcoming” industry of sports media. One of the faith stories I would like to share with you happened right after I took the vaccine. I was suspended. I was pulled off the air. I was cancelled for everything, and I got a really bad case of COVID two weeks after taking that shot. It was bad to the point where I was one of those people up in the middle of the night, heart beating out of their chest for what felt like 24 hours straight. I was alone. The kids were with their dad. I was contagious, I guess. And I thought, “I have to drive myself to the hospital. This is it. This could be it.” I was afraid that if I went to sleep, no one would find me. I hadn’t showered in three days. I try to get in the shower. And as I got up, I collapsed. I was on the ground and realized I couldn’t even drive myself. So, I crawled off the floor and I got on my knees and I just prayed. I said, “Lord, just help me wake up. I have too much to do. Not only do I have these babies to raise, but I have this fight on my hands. I can’t.” And I just prayed to be here the next morning. And when I woke up, I thought, “Okay, God has work for me to do.”
A couple months later, when I was still working at ESPN, I was asked by Fox News to give the invocation at a NASCAR race. I’m raised Catholic. We don’t pray out loud. I’m working on that. I found myself asked to pray in front of 100,000 people at the Texas Motor Speedway, before the big race, live on national TV. I’m a huge NASCAR fan. My first sports job was in Indianapolis—I’m a big redneck NASCAR fan. So, they asked me to pray in exactly 34 seconds—timed because this is TV—with the B-2 bombers flying overhead. I had 34 seconds to give this prayer, and I thought, well, if I’m going to pray, I have to speak from the heart, not read it, as someone who doesn’t pray out loud. I thought, “No, I can’t do it. Nope.” I turned it down. I heard a voice, and I called them back and said, “Let me try. Let me try it.”
At the moment when they’re bringing me out on stage and introducing me, every word of this perfectly procured prayer that I had in my mind left my brain, and there was nothing, nothing. Just clouds, fog. I started to panic, and I literally almost ran away. During this whole time—my lawsuit had been active for almost a year at this point—my aunt and my mother said to me, “Whenever you get that feeling, just close your eyes. Jesus, I trust in you.” And at that moment, thank goodness I remembered, and I just closed my eyes and said, “Jesus, I trust in you.”
They called my name, and I walked out to the front of the stage, and I looked and saw 100,000 people and closed my eyes again really quickly. Somehow, every single word that I had worked for a month to memorize, specifically for drivers and the first aid workers, the EMTs, the announcers, every word came out perfectly in exactly 34 seconds, and the B-2 bomber flew over me. I went down the steps, and I just sobbed, because God was challenging me in that moment to get really uncomfortable to do the harder right, even though I didn’t want to.
A couple of months later, I was covering the PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’d just gotten off the air, and I had been on a million golf courses, covered seven straight masters. I know where to walk and where to not walk. We were against the ropes in the trees, 280 yards away. I look up, and out of nowhere comes a golf ball hit by one John Rahm. For those of you golf fans, you know he’s a pretty heavy hitter. At 150 miles an hour, it was a direct shot in my mouth. It hit me in my mouth and bounced all the way back into the middle of the fairway. And they’re like, “Oh, great shot!” It sounded like it hit one of the thousands of trees that I was standing next to, but that was my mouth. And somehow, someway, we know why, I survived. If I had been looking down at my phone for a split second instead of up looking for John Rahm through the trees, I don’t think I’d be here, because it would have hit my temple instead of my mouth. People die every year from golf balls, especially when they are hit at 150 miles an hour.
While I was kneeling behind a tree waiting for the ambulance to come, I was very present, and all I heard were these voices. “This is what you get. This is what happens when you speak up. This is why. Shut up. This is your fault. Everybody’s going to laugh at you.” And it was true. Everybody did laugh, and I got mocked, and people said, “That’s what she gets for speaking up.” Of all places to hit here, in my mouth, the thing that did get me in trouble, my moneymaker, that’s where it hit me?
There was a part of me that said, yeah, this is what I get. And then, “Jesus, I trust in you,” flipped it. No, no, maybe it isn’t about you being silenced. Maybe it is as simple as, oh, no, I am keeping you here to keep using that thing that got you in trouble.
Eight teeth, three root canals later, it’s fine. But you have to ask yourself why. Why are you in these difficult positions? Why do you survive something like that? Sometimes you don’t ask why. You just realize that you did, and you must be here for a reason.
Every single time I looked, God was part of all of it. Every single part. Finally, your strong national defense. We believe that this great experiment called America, a nation founded on the promise that all men are created equal, is worth defending. I’m a proud Army brat. By the time I was 11, I lived in four countries. I saw at a young age how blessed we are to be Americans. I understood why people wanted to leave their countries and come here. The sacrifice it takes to protect and uphold, protecting ourselves, our borders, it is so simple. I am so over people arguing that point. It is up to us to continue to, in our kind way—because we are different from others—in our kind way to remind people why it is so important to have a strong national defense.
I’m often asked about my favorite moment on TV and in sports. I have been so blessed to achieve that dream and interview everybody from Michael Jordan to Stephen Curry to LeBron James to Tiger Woods, I mean, the list is so long, and I am so grateful for every moment of that 30-year career in sports. But my favorite day ever happened right here, on Veterans Day 2016 at Arlington National Cemetery. ESPN, one thing they do very well is Veterans Day coverage and taking care of the vets. That year, they asked me to host SportsCenter at Arlington National Cemetery. As mad as I was at them about other things, I said, “Absolutely!” I got to host my show at Arlington National Cemetery, with my father, who happened to be in town, the retired Army colonel, the West Point graduate, standing next to me to ask him what it meant to be an American and to stand up for our country. With my grandfather, my Grandpa Steele, buried 200 yards behind me, a Buffalo soldier who never could have envisioned his daughter, who looks like his granddaughter, who looks like me, doing that on that stage. It was the biggest blessing. You talk about full circle.
At Arlington, I could not have achieved this dream without people like my grandfather, people like you, who every single day have chosen the harder right, to stand up even when it’s uncomfortable and even when it’s really, really costly.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, my husband—we’ve only been married eight months, so we go everywhere together right now—he was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I have so many military members: three uncles, cousins who all went to West Point who have served, and so many of you.
It’s just that simple. Not just for our kids today, but our great-great-grandkids. And yes, to welcome people from all across the world, we welcome you legally. We are the most welcoming country ever, and I want us to remain that—if we do it the right way and take care of our own. It comes back to the harder right. Again, make me choose the harder right. instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.
When we edit it down to that in our minds, I really think that every single decision becomes so much easier. Without that ringing in my ear, I know I would never have been able to stand up to a company that I loved. I knew at one point it was so much bigger than me. There are so many people in the hallways who quietly came up and whispered, “Thank you,” because they were afraid. I think when we have that courage and continue to speak up, it isn’t just for us. It is for all those people who are afraid. And for many reasons, in many cases, have a real reason for that fear. It is what we must do. It is what you have chosen to do. Thank you, because without that, without you, I’m not here. There’s beauty, again, in being canceled. Thank you for accepting me. Thank you.