Iryna Zarutska - The Murder & Movement - The Straw that Breaks
Rough Show Notes
Introduction
This is a long-form podcast, and if you’ve listened to me before, you know I don’t do this to entertain. I do it to inform, to bring back history, to connect the dots, and to speak the plain truth that so many are too afraid to say out loud. Tonight, I will talk about the brutal murder of a young woman from Ukraine — Iryna Zarutska (phonetically: Ear-ree-nah Zah-root-ska). She fled a war zone, came here legally, did everything right, and was still slaughtered on a Charlotte train by a monster with a knife. That image is now burned into the conscience of this nation. If you believe in appeasement, if you hate America, if you spend your time finding fault in others instead of taking responsibility for your own actions — then this is not the podcast for you.
But I don’t do this to leave you depressed. I do it to light a fire. As Ronald Reagan said on June 12, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I say to President Trump: tear down the shackles, tear down the walls — plural — that have held America back. We are not here simply to make America great again. We are here to make America greater than it has ever been before.
Segment 1
Segment 1: The Catalyst and the Silent Majority
I believe the murder of Iryna Zarutska could be the single event that shatters the calm surface of American patience. She was a 23-year-old woman who did everything right. She fled Ukraine, escaping a war zone. She came to the United States legally, not as a rule-breaker but as a refugee determined to work and build a life. She was not a protester, not a criminal, not a burden. She was young, ambitious, and hopeful. And yet on an ordinary day in Charlotte, North Carolina, on a public light-rail train, her life was taken in the most vicious and personal way imaginable.
The nation has seen the video. There is no dispute about what happened. A large man with dreadlocks moved across the train car. He carried no gun, no bomb, nothing mechanical or distant. He carried a knife, a weapon that requires close contact, that forces the attacker into the space of the victim. Knives are quiet, concealable, and underestimated by people who do not know violence. But they are among the most savage weapons. A gunshot is loud and impersonal. A knife is intimate, deliberate, almost primal. When you see a man stab another human being in the neck on film, you are not looking at “crime statistics.” You are watching savagery up close.
That is why this moment is different. We are not reading a police report. We are not scanning a graph. We are witnesses. We watched a young woman trapped in a moving train car, with nowhere to run, no officer in sight, no rescuer able to arrive in time. We saw innocence cut down in seconds. And we saw it in America, the supposed land of safety, order, and opportunity.
Any man—whether born here or naturalized, whether wealthy or working-class—who does not feel a nearly uncontrollable fury watching that video is no man at all. I say that without apology. Fathers across this country imagined their daughters in that seat. Brothers imagined their sisters. Husbands imagined their wives. This is not toxic masculinity. This is the most natural, God-given instinct: to protect the innocent and to rage against the evil that preys upon them. And yet for decades, men in this country have been told to sit down, shut up, and stop being men. They have been told their instincts are outdated, that their strength is toxic, that their anger is inappropriate. I tell you this: anger is appropriate when watching Iryna’s life stolen before our eyes.
There is an old phrase that many young people no longer understand: “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” It means that burdens pile up, one after another, until even a small addition causes collapse. The straw itself is not heavy, but it tips the balance. Iryna’s murder may be that straw. For decades, Americans have endured violence in cities, endured crime on subways, endured excuses from politicians, endured the hand-wringing of academics, endured judges who turn violent criminals back onto the street. Each case has been explained away. But when the nation is forced to watch one more murder, one more innocent life crushed, the weight becomes unbearable. The back snaps.
We have seen this before. In March 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her apartment in Queens, New York. She was stabbed repeatedly by Winston Moseley, who returned to finish the job after initially fleeing. The newspapers reported that dozens of neighbors saw or heard the attack but did nothing. That reporting was later found to be exaggerated, but the story became legend: the bystander effect, urban indifference, the death of community. Kitty’s name became a symbol of what happens when society loses its nerve to act. The outrage shaped law enforcement, helped spur the creation of the 911 system, and left a scar on the American psyche. Iryna’s murder, captured not in print but on video, has the same potential—except this time, there is no myth. We all saw it. We all know it happened.
The context is as important as the crime. The United States in the late 1960s was a nation boiling over with anger. Violent crime surged, urban riots spread, and faith in institutions collapsed. The public grew exhausted with excuses. Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968 with a message that was blunt and direct: “law and order.” He spoke of the Silent Majority—those ordinary Americans who worked, paid taxes, raised families, and did not march in the streets but who were tired of chaos. Nixon promised to restore peace. That phrase, the Silent Majority, resonated then, and it resonates now. Today, the Silent Majority is as alive as ever. They are watching the Charlotte train video in silence, but silence does not mean indifference. It means patience. And patience can end.
Congress responded in 1968 with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. It expanded funding for police, increased surveillance authority, and marked a new era of federal involvement in local law enforcement. It was not perfect, but it was born of necessity. Americans were fed up. They wanted action, not speeches. And that is exactly where we stand now. The nation does not want another candlelight vigil. It does not want more hashtags. It does not want more speeches about “root causes” while repeat offenders roam free. The nation wants protection. It wants safety. It wants order.
That is why Iryna’s murder is not just “one more crime.” It could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. It is not September 11 in scale, but it carries the same moral punch because it exposes the lie that America is safe. It forces us to confront reality. This was a young woman who followed the rules, who built a life the right way, who asked nothing but to be left alone. And she was cut down on video for all to see. That image is now seared into the national mind, and it will not fade.
When the Silent Majority finally speaks, it speaks decisively. It does not whisper, it roars. It does not beg, it demands. And it does not settle for symbolic gestures. I believe we are at the edge of such a moment now. The anger is building, the fury is real, and the patience is running out. The camel’s back is bending. The straw has fallen. The question is whether our leaders will act before the break becomes complete.
Segment 2
Segment 2 (Revised & Expanded): History Repeats — Terrorism, Appeasement, and Failed Leadership
When I look at the murder of Iryna Zarutska, I cannot separate it from the broader arc of history. What we witnessed on that train in Charlotte is not an isolated tragedy; it is part of a long, shameful line of leadership failures, ideological indulgences, and national weakness that stretch back more than half a century. This is not the first time radicals and criminals have been excused while the innocent paid the price. And if we do not learn, it will not be the last.
Sterling Hall and Robert E. Fassnacht
Consider the night of August 24, 1970, in Madison, Wisconsin. Four young radicals—Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt—loaded a van with explosives and parked it outside Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin. Their supposed target was the Army Mathematics Research Center, which they claimed was part of the war machine in Vietnam. At 3:42 a.m., their bomb detonated with a blast so powerful it shattered windows across campus. They thought themselves revolutionaries. They imagined they were striking a blow for justice. What they produced was death. Robert E. Fassnacht, a 33-year-old postdoctoral physics researcher, husband, and father of three small children, was working late in his lab. He had no connection to the military, no tie to the war. He was simply doing his job. The bomb ripped through the building, and he was killed instantly.
The Sterling Hall bombing remains one of the most destructive acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. And what was the outcome? The radicals fled. Fassnacht’s children grew up without their father. His wife was left widowed. And America was left once again to face the reality that ideology, when indulged, produces corpses, not justice. His name must never be forgotten.
Violence in the Halls of Congress
Sixteen years earlier, in 1954, the very heart of American democracy was attacked. Four Puerto Rican Nationalists—Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodríguez—entered the visitor’s gallery of the House of Representatives, unfurled a Puerto Rican flag, and opened fire on the Congress of the United States. Five Representatives were struck by gunfire. They survived, but the message was clear: political violence had invaded the very chamber where laws are made. Lebrón shouted, “¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!” as bullets cut through the air. The Capitol had been breached by radicals long before recent memory. And the indulgence of ideology over order was already showing its cost.
Jane Fonda vs. John McCain
The era also produced scars of betrayal that never fully healed. In 1972, actress Jane Fonda traveled to North Vietnam. She sat smiling in the seat of an anti-aircraft gun, the same type of weapon that was used to shoot down American pilots. She posed, she laughed, and she played propaganda tool for the enemy. To this day, that image enrages veterans. She chose treachery in the name of “protest.”
Meanwhile, John McCain, a Navy pilot, was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured, beaten, and tortured for more than five years in a prisoner-of-war camp. He emerged scarred, but unbroken, and eventually built a long political career. Agree or disagree with his politics, his sacrifice was real. While McCain sat in a prison cell with broken bones, Jane Fonda was smiling on the enemy’s gun. That contrast tells you everything you need to know about the cultural divide of the 1970s.
Domestic Terrorism and the SLA
The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) brought terror into American living rooms. They kidnapped Patty Hearst, heir to one of America’s great publishing fortunes, brainwashed her, and paraded her as their revolutionary mascot. They robbed banks, planted bombs, and murdered innocents. Their images—camouflage, berets, rifles—were broadcast across the country. They claimed to fight for justice, but what they spread was fear.
The Weather Underground, another radical group, bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and police stations. They believed violence was justified, that bombs would topple the system. The Black Panthers waged armed battles in cities. One by one, radical groups convinced themselves that murder and terror were legitimate politics. Law enforcement was caught in a storm. Police officers were outgunned. FBI agents faced enemies with better firepower and no conscience. The nation was unraveling.
Earl Warren and the Handcuffing of Law Enforcement
And hovering over it all was the Supreme Court of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Once a prosecutor and governor of California, Warren had overseen the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. That decision, though perhaps seen as necessary at the time, weighed heavily on him. Out of guilt or remorse, he pivoted so far the other way that he crippled law enforcement with ruling after ruling. Miranda rights. Exclusionary rules. Endless technicalities. The police were told to fight radicals and criminals with one hand tied behind their backs.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower later admitted that appointing Warren was the worst mistake of his presidency. And the bitter irony? Richard Nixon helped arrange Warren’s path to the Court. At the 1952 Republican convention in Chicago, Nixon helped broker a deal between Eisenhower’s camp and Warren’s, paving the way for Eisenhower’s nomination. In exchange, Eisenhower promised Warren the first Supreme Court vacancy. That promise delivered us a Chief Justice whose guilt and overcorrection left American streets more dangerous.
Jimmy Carter’s Weakness and National Humiliation
By the end of the 1970s, America was weary. Inflation was out of control. Lines at gas stations stretched for blocks. And then came the ultimate humiliation: the Iran hostage crisis. In November 1979, Iranian radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage. They held them for 444 days. President Jimmy Carter was powerless to resolve it. His administration’s weakness left Americans glued to their televisions, night after night, watching their country humiliated on the global stage.
Weakness abroad mirrored weakness at home. The same indulgence that excused radicals in the streets left America impotent against radicals abroad. It was a presidency defined by impotence, drift, and humiliation.
The Rise of Ronald Reagan and the Shot That Followed
In 1980, America turned to Ronald Reagan. He offered strength, optimism, and clarity. He promised to restore order at home and respect abroad. His election was a repudiation of Carter’s weakness. But even Reagan was not spared violence. On March 30, 1981, just 69 days into his presidency, Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton by John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley nearly killed the president of the United States. White House Press Secretary James Brady was left permanently disabled. Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy took a bullet. D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty was wounded.
And what was the result? Hinckley was not convicted of attempted murder. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was confined to a psychiatric hospital, and today, John Hinckley Jr. walks free. Let that sink in: a man who nearly assassinated a president, who wounded and crippled others, is free. Where is the outrage? Where is the memory? Where is the lesson?
Appeasement, Then and Now
The through-line is unmistakable. When weakness reigns, violence rises. When leaders appease radicals, radicals grow bolder. Neville Chamberlain thought he could appease Hitler by handing him territory and time. Instead, he emboldened a monster and delivered Europe into catastrophe. Earl Warren thought he could cleanse his guilt by tilting the law toward criminals. Instead, he left police powerless and citizens endangered. Jimmy Carter thought weakness could pass for diplomacy. Instead, America was humiliated before the world.
And today? Judges release violent offenders. Politicians excuse murder as “root causes.” Media call savagery an “incident.” We are watching the same playbook repeat itself. The difference is that now, the people have seen the crime on video, and they are finished with excuses.
Iryna Zarutska’s murder is not isolated. It is the latest chapter in a book we should have closed decades ago. From Robert Fassnacht in Madison, to the Puerto Rican bullets in the House, to Patty Hearst and the SLA, to Carter’s humiliation, to Reagan’s near-assassination, the lesson is clear: when America indulges weakness, the innocent suffer, the violent thrive, and the nation pays the price.
Segment 3
Segment 3: The Reckoning Ahead — From Bastille Day to the Ballot Box
Begin with the image no one in this country will forget: a young woman who did everything right, seated on a Charlotte train, and a large man with dreadlocks closing distance with a knife. There is no debate about what happened. The camera did not blink. America saw a throat cut on public transit in broad daylight. The victim fled a war for safety and found a predator in the very place that promises rules, order, and shared peace. That is why the fury is different. It is not theoretical. It is not partisan. It is human, it is primal, and it is overdue.
At the same time, voices rise to protest the death penalty. They stage vigils. They hold signs. They speak of redemption for the worst among us while the innocent are buried and families sit in courtrooms year after year. The question is simple: is capital punishment a deterrent as America currently practices it? The answer is equally simple: no, because certainty and swiftness matter more than severity, and this nation has allowed certainty to erode and swiftness to die. Sentences stretch into decades of appeals. Executions, when they occur at all, are so rare and so delayed that they no longer communicate society’s resolve. In Florida, death row remains crowded and headlines are scarce; a tool that is constitutional, reserved for the most heinous crimes, is used so sporadically that it barely exists in the mind of the predator. Republicans talk a tough game and too often fail to act. Democrats oppose the penalty outright or bury it in process. The result is the same: the worst offenders learn that time is on their side.
I am not interested in performative outrage. I am interested in accountability that is visible, lawful, and decisive. Capital punishment is not a panacea, but it is a statement. It says there are lines in a civilized nation that, once crossed, forfeit the right to live among us. If the state will keep the penalty, then the state must use it with disciplined speed and moral clarity, not with endless litigation that mocks both justice and mercy. If the state will not use it, then be honest with the public and remove it from the books. What must end is the dishonest in-between: a death penalty that exists on paper while killers age into natural death, and families age into exhaustion.
Deterrence is built from three bricks: certainty, celerity, and severity. America argues about the third and neglects the first two. Certainty means violent people are quickly identified, apprehended, convicted, and incapacitated. Celerity means consequences follow swiftly enough to be connected in the offender’s mind to the crime. Severity comes last. We inverted the order. We debate punishments in the abstract while the streets absorb the cost of our delay. The train in Charlotte is the invoice for that delay.
I will connect this moment to another that too many people have conveniently forgotten. On the morning of June 14, 2017, a man named James Hodgkinson walked onto a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, and opened fire on Republican members of Congress who were practicing for a charity game. He had checked that they were Republicans. He brought a rifle and a handgun. Bullets tore the air. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot and nearly died. Capitol Police Special Agent Crystal Griner was shot. A congressional aide, Zack Barth, was shot. A lobbyist, Matt Mika, was shot multiple times. It could easily have been a massacre. Representative Ron DeSantis had left the field moments before the shooting began, after the gunman asked whether Republicans or Democrats were practicing. America was lucky that day. Luck is not a public-safety strategy.
Hold that field beside the Charlotte train. Different settings, same truth. Predators and political extremists do not care about your policy essays. They care about the opening you give them. They watch for hesitation. They thrive on your rituals of delay. And when they strike, it is the same unbearable story: the innocent pay while elites negotiate with reality.
There is a reason I keep returning to Howard Beale from Network. A rumpled man in a raincoat stared into a camera and told Americans to open their windows and yell, “I am as mad as hell, and I am not going to take this anymore.” It was satire. It became prophecy. Media, then and now, grant permission to say what millions already know: the emperor has no clothes. Public safety is the first promise of government. If leaders cannot or will not keep that promise, then the public has a duty to strip away the costume of competence and say, out loud, that the king is naked.
Step back and look at the structure of our failure. Cities tolerate open air drug markets. Transit systems tolerate disorder on platforms and cars. Prosecutors tolerate repeat violence under the banner of reform. Judges tolerate delay. Legislatures tolerate legal mazes that no officer can navigate and no citizen can understand. Voters tolerate the same faces selling the same excuses. The cost of this tolerance is measurable in blood and immeasurable in fear. The next time you hear that “overall crime is down,” ask a simple question: down for whom, and where? The national average is not the Charlotte train. The national average is not your daughter’s walk from class to car. The national average is not the field where a man with a list asked whether an early morning team was Republican or Democrat.
You want policy? Here is policy that works because it matches human nature. Flood transit with visible, trained, empowered officers. Enforce small rules to prevent big crimes. Demand that prosecutors file charges for violent offenses and refuse to dismiss them as bargaining chips. Impose strict pretrial detention for repeat violent offenders. Set firm clocks on appeals for capital cases and violent felonies; one full, fair review, not an infinity loop. Reserve the death penalty for the narrowest category of deliberate murders, and when a jury imposes it under a lawful standard, carry it out within a defined time period measured in years, not generations. For everything else, incapacitate swiftly and for as long as risk requires. End the dishonesty of pretending that the same handful of violent actors do not exist. They exist. Stop releasing them.
None of that is radical. It is maintenance. Civilization is a machine that needs oiling, cleaning, tightening, replacing. Ignore it, and the machine shakes itself apart. The French did not storm the Bastille because they woke up angry one day. They stormed it because a long chain of arrogance, mismanagement, and contempt snapped. That is what “the straw that broke the camel’s back” means. The straw is small. The load is not. Politicians keep telling the public to carry a little more fear, a little more disorder, a little more homicide, a little more insult to common sense. Then they feign surprise when the public sets the burden down.
I am often told to be careful with my words when I describe criminals. I am told to be clinical, to avoid “dehumanizing” language. I will be careful with one thing only: the truth. On that Charlotte train, a strong, imposing man armed with a knife closed distance and stabbed a young woman in the neck. He did not have a bad day. He did not make a mistake. He committed a moral atrocity. Call it what it is. And while we tell the truth about him, tell the truth about her: a refugee who did the hard thing, the right thing, and chose this country believing it offered safety and the rule of law. She chose us. We failed her.
There is another truth from the 2017 baseball field that belongs here. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of duty. The Capitol Police agents on that field returned fire while wounded. They stood between an assassin and a stadium of unarmed people. They did not deliver a speech. They did a job. If you want to rebuild public confidence, you will not do it with slogans and task forces. You will do it by putting the right people in the right places with the right authority and backing them when they act.
I will return briefly to the death penalty because the Charlotte train demands it. If you leave the ultimate penalty on the books and refuse to use it, you teach the worst people a lesson you did not intend: that the system’s bark is louder than its bite. The answer is not to execute more people indiscriminately. The answer is to restore moral seriousness to the narrow category the law already sets aside. Premeditated murders of helpless victims, murders committed during acts of terror, murders committed by repeat violent predators who have been given chance after chance—these are not ambiguities. If the penalty is imposed, carry it out. If you will not carry it out, remove it and replace it with life-without-parole that actually means life and is applied without delay. Either way, the public needs certainty and speed.
The political class should not misread the present moment. People are not demanding perfection. They are demanding protection. They will accept hard edges and occasional errors if the general direction is unmistakable: order over chaos, the innocent over the violent, the commuter over the predator, the family over the ideology. If leaders cannot deliver that direction, then voters must deliver leaders who will. That is the ballot-box version of Bastille Day. It is not a call to burn institutions. It is a call to rebuild them so they deserve survival.
Segment 4
Strength, Justice, and Renewal
Let me make one thing clear. I do not advocate violence, and I do not advocate war for its own sake. But I also do not believe in appeasement, weakness, or turning the other cheek until you are beaten to death. There is a line between forgiveness and surrender, and that line is written in the oldest book of laws we have. In the book of Leviticus, the principle is clear: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” That is not a call to vengeance; it is a call to proportionate justice. It is the foundation of deterrence. When evil men know that the penalty for their crime will match the crime itself, they think twice. When they see weakness, they act without hesitation.
Our nation has understood this truth before. President James Monroe gave us the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that the United States would no longer tolerate foreign powers colonizing or interfering in the Western Hemisphere. It was not bluster; it was a line in the sand. It said to the world: we will protect our neighborhood, and if you cross this line, you will meet resistance. That doctrine gave the young republic breathing space and strength to grow.
In modern times, we saw the Bush Doctrine, born out of the fires of September 11, 2001. Too many people today do not even understand what it means. Let me spell it out. It means that if the United States believes it is going to be attacked, it will not sit idle. It will strike first, preemptively, to eliminate the threat. It is common sense on a national scale: you do not stand with your hands in your pockets while an armed man points a weapon at you. You act. You defend. You strike before he can pull the trigger. That is the Bush Doctrine. President George W. Bush applied it when he took the fight to terrorists abroad rather than waiting for the next tower to fall at home.
President Donald Trump carried that same clarity. He crushed the so-called Islamic State, removed terrorist leaders, and sent the message that the United States was once again willing to use decisive power. He was not interested in endless “rope-a-dope.” He knew what happens when you lean back and let your opponent pound away, as Muhammad Ali once did in his later years. Ali may have won fights, but the cost was permanent brain damage and years of misery. That cannot be America’s fate. We cannot lean on the ropes, take endless blows, and hope our enemies wear themselves out. Nations do not get second chances after knockout punches. America must stay on offense, not endless defense.
That is why Trump was right to reframe our posture — to stop treating the Department of Defense as if it existed only to absorb blows, and to remind us that historically, it was called the Department of War for a reason. Words matter. Tone matters. Our enemies must believe that if they strike, or if they prepare to strike, they will be hit harder, faster, and more decisively than they ever imagined.
Meanwhile, look at our cities. New York. Los Angeles. Chicago. Minneapolis. All run into the ground by Democrat machines. Crime tolerated, law enforcement demoralized, prosecutors excusing the inexcusable. These cities are led no differently than Neville Chamberlain led Britain before World War II: waving papers, mouthing platitudes, and delivering their people to disaster. They must be made irrelevant. How? Not with vigilante violence — that has no place in a civilized republic. But with muscle in politics and in law enforcement. Aggressive policing. Aggressive prosecution. Aggressive organizing, campaigning, volunteering, and voting. The weak-minded who keep electing these fools must be confronted with truth, not with fists. Minds must be changed, and ballots must be cast.
That is the real fight ahead. If you live in a district that is safe, you must look outward. Contribute, volunteer, and help turn the battlegrounds. Do not settle for making America great again. Work to make America greater than it has ever been — stronger, freer, safer, and more confident than the world has ever known.
Ronald Reagan, who lifted this nation out of despair and showed it the power of faith and strength, said it best:
“I’ve always believed that this blessed land was set apart in a special way, that it was placed here between the oceans to be found by people from every corner of the Earth who had a special love of freedom and the courage to uproot themselves, leave homeland and friends, and come to America. And I believe that Americans today are ready to say that we will keep this blessed land a shining city on a hill, whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”
America’s best days are not behind us. They are ahead. But only if we find the will to see clearly, speak honestly, act decisively, and never again accept weakness as wisdom.
Segment 5
Let us end where this all began — with the murder that struck a nerve so deep it may change the course of this nation.
Her name was Iryna Zarutska. She was twenty-three years old. A young woman with soft features and an innocent look that reminded many Americans of their own daughters or granddaughters. She fled the war in Ukraine, choosing America because she believed this was the place where she could live free, work hard, and build a future without fear. She did everything right. She came here the legal way, worked, studied, and trusted that this country would protect her in exchange for her faith in it.
And then came the moment caught on film. On a Charlotte train, an ordinary ride turned into a nightmare. Her attacker was a large man with dreadlocks, physically imposing, and carrying a knife. He was the picture of menace. A predator closing the distance in a confined space, where no help could arrive, no escape was possible, and no one could intervene in time. The knife itself matters. Guns are loud, they can be impersonal. Knives are silent, intimate, and cruel. The act of stabbing is face to face, violent beyond words, and to watch it unfold on camera is to understand the depth of savagery human beings are capable of.
That video has seared itself into the conscience of America. It has forced people to see what most would rather ignore: that in our public spaces, in our buses and trains, in our neighborhoods, safety is no longer guaranteed. When people say, “This could have been my daughter, my sister, my wife,” they are not exaggerating. They are speaking a truth that chills the heart.
This is why I say it plainly: this could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many young people have never heard the phrase. It means that burdens pile on slowly — one after another, tolerated, endured — until one final, small addition causes collapse. The straw itself is light, but the back was already breaking. Americans have endured decades of excuses, of failures, of leaders who treat outrage as a passing story. They have endured Kitty Genovese, Robert Fassnacht, Patty Hearst, September 11, endless mass shootings, and the spectacle of criminals released again and again. Each time, the system says “be patient, understand, forgive.” Each time, the public absorbs the blow.
But now, after this young woman’s life was stolen before our eyes, patience may be gone. This murder is not just another statistic. It is not a headline to be buried and forgotten. It is a symbol, an image, a breaking point.
If the leaders of this nation do not respond swiftly, overwhelmingly, and unmistakably, then the Silent Majority will respond at the ballot box. They will roar in a way that cannot be ignored. Because America has reached the point where one young woman’s murder is no longer “just one life.” It is the line in the sand. It is the straw. And the camel’s back is about to break.
Segment 6
Segment 5: Enough
At the beginning of the film Idiocracy, the narrator describes the “Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505” — a collapse caused not by accident but by neglect, by stupidity piled so high it could no longer stand. That movie was meant as satire, but it reads more like prophecy. When you allow the dumbest among us to set the rules, when you let incompetence and weakness steer a nation, you should not be surprised when it caves in. The only antidote is for levelheaded, practical business men and women to step up, to lead by example, to lead with thick skin, to take the blows and keep moving forward. Like Howard Beale in Network, it is time to declare that we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.
Remember the face of Iryna Zarutska — a beautiful woman, a beautiful soul, murdered on a Charlotte train by a monster with a knife. Her life was stolen, but her death may yet awaken a people. This is the line. This is the moment. And let it be heard clearly across this nation: we are not taking it anymore.
Introduction
This is a long-form podcast, and if you’ve listened to me before, you know I don’t do this to entertain. I do it to inform, to bring back history, to connect the dots, and to speak the plain truth that so many are too afraid to say out loud. Tonight, I will talk about the brutal murder of a young woman from Ukraine — Iryna Zarutska (phonetically: Ear-ree-nah Zah-root-ska). She fled a war zone, came here legally, did everything right, and was still slaughtered on a Charlotte train by a monster with a knife. That image is now burned into the conscience of this nation. If you believe in appeasement, if you hate America, if you spend your time finding fault in others instead of taking responsibility for your own actions — then this is not the podcast for you.
But I don’t do this to leave you depressed. I do it to light a fire. As Ronald Reagan said on June 12, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I say to President Trump: tear down the shackles, tear down the walls — plural — that have held America back. We are not here simply to make America great again. We are here to make America greater than it has ever been before.
Segment 1
Segment 1: The Catalyst and the Silent Majority
I believe the murder of Iryna Zarutska could be the single event that shatters the calm surface of American patience. She was a 23-year-old woman who did everything right. She fled Ukraine, escaping a war zone. She came to the United States legally, not as a rule-breaker but as a refugee determined to work and build a life. She was not a protester, not a criminal, not a burden. She was young, ambitious, and hopeful. And yet on an ordinary day in Charlotte, North Carolina, on a public light-rail train, her life was taken in the most vicious and personal way imaginable.
The nation has seen the video. There is no dispute about what happened. A large man with dreadlocks moved across the train car. He carried no gun, no bomb, nothing mechanical or distant. He carried a knife, a weapon that requires close contact, that forces the attacker into the space of the victim. Knives are quiet, concealable, and underestimated by people who do not know violence. But they are among the most savage weapons. A gunshot is loud and impersonal. A knife is intimate, deliberate, almost primal. When you see a man stab another human being in the neck on film, you are not looking at “crime statistics.” You are watching savagery up close.
That is why this moment is different. We are not reading a police report. We are not scanning a graph. We are witnesses. We watched a young woman trapped in a moving train car, with nowhere to run, no officer in sight, no rescuer able to arrive in time. We saw innocence cut down in seconds. And we saw it in America, the supposed land of safety, order, and opportunity.
Any man—whether born here or naturalized, whether wealthy or working-class—who does not feel a nearly uncontrollable fury watching that video is no man at all. I say that without apology. Fathers across this country imagined their daughters in that seat. Brothers imagined their sisters. Husbands imagined their wives. This is not toxic masculinity. This is the most natural, God-given instinct: to protect the innocent and to rage against the evil that preys upon them. And yet for decades, men in this country have been told to sit down, shut up, and stop being men. They have been told their instincts are outdated, that their strength is toxic, that their anger is inappropriate. I tell you this: anger is appropriate when watching Iryna’s life stolen before our eyes.
There is an old phrase that many young people no longer understand: “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” It means that burdens pile up, one after another, until even a small addition causes collapse. The straw itself is not heavy, but it tips the balance. Iryna’s murder may be that straw. For decades, Americans have endured violence in cities, endured crime on subways, endured excuses from politicians, endured the hand-wringing of academics, endured judges who turn violent criminals back onto the street. Each case has been explained away. But when the nation is forced to watch one more murder, one more innocent life crushed, the weight becomes unbearable. The back snaps.
We have seen this before. In March 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her apartment in Queens, New York. She was stabbed repeatedly by Winston Moseley, who returned to finish the job after initially fleeing. The newspapers reported that dozens of neighbors saw or heard the attack but did nothing. That reporting was later found to be exaggerated, but the story became legend: the bystander effect, urban indifference, the death of community. Kitty’s name became a symbol of what happens when society loses its nerve to act. The outrage shaped law enforcement, helped spur the creation of the 911 system, and left a scar on the American psyche. Iryna’s murder, captured not in print but on video, has the same potential—except this time, there is no myth. We all saw it. We all know it happened.
The context is as important as the crime. The United States in the late 1960s was a nation boiling over with anger. Violent crime surged, urban riots spread, and faith in institutions collapsed. The public grew exhausted with excuses. Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968 with a message that was blunt and direct: “law and order.” He spoke of the Silent Majority—those ordinary Americans who worked, paid taxes, raised families, and did not march in the streets but who were tired of chaos. Nixon promised to restore peace. That phrase, the Silent Majority, resonated then, and it resonates now. Today, the Silent Majority is as alive as ever. They are watching the Charlotte train video in silence, but silence does not mean indifference. It means patience. And patience can end.
Congress responded in 1968 with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. It expanded funding for police, increased surveillance authority, and marked a new era of federal involvement in local law enforcement. It was not perfect, but it was born of necessity. Americans were fed up. They wanted action, not speeches. And that is exactly where we stand now. The nation does not want another candlelight vigil. It does not want more hashtags. It does not want more speeches about “root causes” while repeat offenders roam free. The nation wants protection. It wants safety. It wants order.
That is why Iryna’s murder is not just “one more crime.” It could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. It is not September 11 in scale, but it carries the same moral punch because it exposes the lie that America is safe. It forces us to confront reality. This was a young woman who followed the rules, who built a life the right way, who asked nothing but to be left alone. And she was cut down on video for all to see. That image is now seared into the national mind, and it will not fade.
When the Silent Majority finally speaks, it speaks decisively. It does not whisper, it roars. It does not beg, it demands. And it does not settle for symbolic gestures. I believe we are at the edge of such a moment now. The anger is building, the fury is real, and the patience is running out. The camel’s back is bending. The straw has fallen. The question is whether our leaders will act before the break becomes complete.
Segment 2
Segment 2 (Revised & Expanded): History Repeats — Terrorism, Appeasement, and Failed Leadership
When I look at the murder of Iryna Zarutska, I cannot separate it from the broader arc of history. What we witnessed on that train in Charlotte is not an isolated tragedy; it is part of a long, shameful line of leadership failures, ideological indulgences, and national weakness that stretch back more than half a century. This is not the first time radicals and criminals have been excused while the innocent paid the price. And if we do not learn, it will not be the last.
Sterling Hall and Robert E. Fassnacht
Consider the night of August 24, 1970, in Madison, Wisconsin. Four young radicals—Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt—loaded a van with explosives and parked it outside Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin. Their supposed target was the Army Mathematics Research Center, which they claimed was part of the war machine in Vietnam. At 3:42 a.m., their bomb detonated with a blast so powerful it shattered windows across campus. They thought themselves revolutionaries. They imagined they were striking a blow for justice. What they produced was death. Robert E. Fassnacht, a 33-year-old postdoctoral physics researcher, husband, and father of three small children, was working late in his lab. He had no connection to the military, no tie to the war. He was simply doing his job. The bomb ripped through the building, and he was killed instantly.
The Sterling Hall bombing remains one of the most destructive acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. And what was the outcome? The radicals fled. Fassnacht’s children grew up without their father. His wife was left widowed. And America was left once again to face the reality that ideology, when indulged, produces corpses, not justice. His name must never be forgotten.
Violence in the Halls of Congress
Sixteen years earlier, in 1954, the very heart of American democracy was attacked. Four Puerto Rican Nationalists—Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodríguez—entered the visitor’s gallery of the House of Representatives, unfurled a Puerto Rican flag, and opened fire on the Congress of the United States. Five Representatives were struck by gunfire. They survived, but the message was clear: political violence had invaded the very chamber where laws are made. Lebrón shouted, “¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!” as bullets cut through the air. The Capitol had been breached by radicals long before recent memory. And the indulgence of ideology over order was already showing its cost.
Jane Fonda vs. John McCain
The era also produced scars of betrayal that never fully healed. In 1972, actress Jane Fonda traveled to North Vietnam. She sat smiling in the seat of an anti-aircraft gun, the same type of weapon that was used to shoot down American pilots. She posed, she laughed, and she played propaganda tool for the enemy. To this day, that image enrages veterans. She chose treachery in the name of “protest.”
Meanwhile, John McCain, a Navy pilot, was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured, beaten, and tortured for more than five years in a prisoner-of-war camp. He emerged scarred, but unbroken, and eventually built a long political career. Agree or disagree with his politics, his sacrifice was real. While McCain sat in a prison cell with broken bones, Jane Fonda was smiling on the enemy’s gun. That contrast tells you everything you need to know about the cultural divide of the 1970s.
Domestic Terrorism and the SLA
The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) brought terror into American living rooms. They kidnapped Patty Hearst, heir to one of America’s great publishing fortunes, brainwashed her, and paraded her as their revolutionary mascot. They robbed banks, planted bombs, and murdered innocents. Their images—camouflage, berets, rifles—were broadcast across the country. They claimed to fight for justice, but what they spread was fear.
The Weather Underground, another radical group, bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and police stations. They believed violence was justified, that bombs would topple the system. The Black Panthers waged armed battles in cities. One by one, radical groups convinced themselves that murder and terror were legitimate politics. Law enforcement was caught in a storm. Police officers were outgunned. FBI agents faced enemies with better firepower and no conscience. The nation was unraveling.
Earl Warren and the Handcuffing of Law Enforcement
And hovering over it all was the Supreme Court of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Once a prosecutor and governor of California, Warren had overseen the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. That decision, though perhaps seen as necessary at the time, weighed heavily on him. Out of guilt or remorse, he pivoted so far the other way that he crippled law enforcement with ruling after ruling. Miranda rights. Exclusionary rules. Endless technicalities. The police were told to fight radicals and criminals with one hand tied behind their backs.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower later admitted that appointing Warren was the worst mistake of his presidency. And the bitter irony? Richard Nixon helped arrange Warren’s path to the Court. At the 1952 Republican convention in Chicago, Nixon helped broker a deal between Eisenhower’s camp and Warren’s, paving the way for Eisenhower’s nomination. In exchange, Eisenhower promised Warren the first Supreme Court vacancy. That promise delivered us a Chief Justice whose guilt and overcorrection left American streets more dangerous.
Jimmy Carter’s Weakness and National Humiliation
By the end of the 1970s, America was weary. Inflation was out of control. Lines at gas stations stretched for blocks. And then came the ultimate humiliation: the Iran hostage crisis. In November 1979, Iranian radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage. They held them for 444 days. President Jimmy Carter was powerless to resolve it. His administration’s weakness left Americans glued to their televisions, night after night, watching their country humiliated on the global stage.
Weakness abroad mirrored weakness at home. The same indulgence that excused radicals in the streets left America impotent against radicals abroad. It was a presidency defined by impotence, drift, and humiliation.
The Rise of Ronald Reagan and the Shot That Followed
In 1980, America turned to Ronald Reagan. He offered strength, optimism, and clarity. He promised to restore order at home and respect abroad. His election was a repudiation of Carter’s weakness. But even Reagan was not spared violence. On March 30, 1981, just 69 days into his presidency, Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton by John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley nearly killed the president of the United States. White House Press Secretary James Brady was left permanently disabled. Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy took a bullet. D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty was wounded.
And what was the result? Hinckley was not convicted of attempted murder. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was confined to a psychiatric hospital, and today, John Hinckley Jr. walks free. Let that sink in: a man who nearly assassinated a president, who wounded and crippled others, is free. Where is the outrage? Where is the memory? Where is the lesson?
Appeasement, Then and Now
The through-line is unmistakable. When weakness reigns, violence rises. When leaders appease radicals, radicals grow bolder. Neville Chamberlain thought he could appease Hitler by handing him territory and time. Instead, he emboldened a monster and delivered Europe into catastrophe. Earl Warren thought he could cleanse his guilt by tilting the law toward criminals. Instead, he left police powerless and citizens endangered. Jimmy Carter thought weakness could pass for diplomacy. Instead, America was humiliated before the world.
And today? Judges release violent offenders. Politicians excuse murder as “root causes.” Media call savagery an “incident.” We are watching the same playbook repeat itself. The difference is that now, the people have seen the crime on video, and they are finished with excuses.
Iryna Zarutska’s murder is not isolated. It is the latest chapter in a book we should have closed decades ago. From Robert Fassnacht in Madison, to the Puerto Rican bullets in the House, to Patty Hearst and the SLA, to Carter’s humiliation, to Reagan’s near-assassination, the lesson is clear: when America indulges weakness, the innocent suffer, the violent thrive, and the nation pays the price.
Segment 3
Segment 3: The Reckoning Ahead — From Bastille Day to the Ballot Box
Begin with the image no one in this country will forget: a young woman who did everything right, seated on a Charlotte train, and a large man with dreadlocks closing distance with a knife. There is no debate about what happened. The camera did not blink. America saw a throat cut on public transit in broad daylight. The victim fled a war for safety and found a predator in the very place that promises rules, order, and shared peace. That is why the fury is different. It is not theoretical. It is not partisan. It is human, it is primal, and it is overdue.
At the same time, voices rise to protest the death penalty. They stage vigils. They hold signs. They speak of redemption for the worst among us while the innocent are buried and families sit in courtrooms year after year. The question is simple: is capital punishment a deterrent as America currently practices it? The answer is equally simple: no, because certainty and swiftness matter more than severity, and this nation has allowed certainty to erode and swiftness to die. Sentences stretch into decades of appeals. Executions, when they occur at all, are so rare and so delayed that they no longer communicate society’s resolve. In Florida, death row remains crowded and headlines are scarce; a tool that is constitutional, reserved for the most heinous crimes, is used so sporadically that it barely exists in the mind of the predator. Republicans talk a tough game and too often fail to act. Democrats oppose the penalty outright or bury it in process. The result is the same: the worst offenders learn that time is on their side.
I am not interested in performative outrage. I am interested in accountability that is visible, lawful, and decisive. Capital punishment is not a panacea, but it is a statement. It says there are lines in a civilized nation that, once crossed, forfeit the right to live among us. If the state will keep the penalty, then the state must use it with disciplined speed and moral clarity, not with endless litigation that mocks both justice and mercy. If the state will not use it, then be honest with the public and remove it from the books. What must end is the dishonest in-between: a death penalty that exists on paper while killers age into natural death, and families age into exhaustion.
Deterrence is built from three bricks: certainty, celerity, and severity. America argues about the third and neglects the first two. Certainty means violent people are quickly identified, apprehended, convicted, and incapacitated. Celerity means consequences follow swiftly enough to be connected in the offender’s mind to the crime. Severity comes last. We inverted the order. We debate punishments in the abstract while the streets absorb the cost of our delay. The train in Charlotte is the invoice for that delay.
I will connect this moment to another that too many people have conveniently forgotten. On the morning of June 14, 2017, a man named James Hodgkinson walked onto a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, and opened fire on Republican members of Congress who were practicing for a charity game. He had checked that they were Republicans. He brought a rifle and a handgun. Bullets tore the air. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot and nearly died. Capitol Police Special Agent Crystal Griner was shot. A congressional aide, Zack Barth, was shot. A lobbyist, Matt Mika, was shot multiple times. It could easily have been a massacre. Representative Ron DeSantis had left the field moments before the shooting began, after the gunman asked whether Republicans or Democrats were practicing. America was lucky that day. Luck is not a public-safety strategy.
Hold that field beside the Charlotte train. Different settings, same truth. Predators and political extremists do not care about your policy essays. They care about the opening you give them. They watch for hesitation. They thrive on your rituals of delay. And when they strike, it is the same unbearable story: the innocent pay while elites negotiate with reality.
There is a reason I keep returning to Howard Beale from Network. A rumpled man in a raincoat stared into a camera and told Americans to open their windows and yell, “I am as mad as hell, and I am not going to take this anymore.” It was satire. It became prophecy. Media, then and now, grant permission to say what millions already know: the emperor has no clothes. Public safety is the first promise of government. If leaders cannot or will not keep that promise, then the public has a duty to strip away the costume of competence and say, out loud, that the king is naked.
Step back and look at the structure of our failure. Cities tolerate open air drug markets. Transit systems tolerate disorder on platforms and cars. Prosecutors tolerate repeat violence under the banner of reform. Judges tolerate delay. Legislatures tolerate legal mazes that no officer can navigate and no citizen can understand. Voters tolerate the same faces selling the same excuses. The cost of this tolerance is measurable in blood and immeasurable in fear. The next time you hear that “overall crime is down,” ask a simple question: down for whom, and where? The national average is not the Charlotte train. The national average is not your daughter’s walk from class to car. The national average is not the field where a man with a list asked whether an early morning team was Republican or Democrat.
You want policy? Here is policy that works because it matches human nature. Flood transit with visible, trained, empowered officers. Enforce small rules to prevent big crimes. Demand that prosecutors file charges for violent offenses and refuse to dismiss them as bargaining chips. Impose strict pretrial detention for repeat violent offenders. Set firm clocks on appeals for capital cases and violent felonies; one full, fair review, not an infinity loop. Reserve the death penalty for the narrowest category of deliberate murders, and when a jury imposes it under a lawful standard, carry it out within a defined time period measured in years, not generations. For everything else, incapacitate swiftly and for as long as risk requires. End the dishonesty of pretending that the same handful of violent actors do not exist. They exist. Stop releasing them.
None of that is radical. It is maintenance. Civilization is a machine that needs oiling, cleaning, tightening, replacing. Ignore it, and the machine shakes itself apart. The French did not storm the Bastille because they woke up angry one day. They stormed it because a long chain of arrogance, mismanagement, and contempt snapped. That is what “the straw that broke the camel’s back” means. The straw is small. The load is not. Politicians keep telling the public to carry a little more fear, a little more disorder, a little more homicide, a little more insult to common sense. Then they feign surprise when the public sets the burden down.
I am often told to be careful with my words when I describe criminals. I am told to be clinical, to avoid “dehumanizing” language. I will be careful with one thing only: the truth. On that Charlotte train, a strong, imposing man armed with a knife closed distance and stabbed a young woman in the neck. He did not have a bad day. He did not make a mistake. He committed a moral atrocity. Call it what it is. And while we tell the truth about him, tell the truth about her: a refugee who did the hard thing, the right thing, and chose this country believing it offered safety and the rule of law. She chose us. We failed her.
There is another truth from the 2017 baseball field that belongs here. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of duty. The Capitol Police agents on that field returned fire while wounded. They stood between an assassin and a stadium of unarmed people. They did not deliver a speech. They did a job. If you want to rebuild public confidence, you will not do it with slogans and task forces. You will do it by putting the right people in the right places with the right authority and backing them when they act.
I will return briefly to the death penalty because the Charlotte train demands it. If you leave the ultimate penalty on the books and refuse to use it, you teach the worst people a lesson you did not intend: that the system’s bark is louder than its bite. The answer is not to execute more people indiscriminately. The answer is to restore moral seriousness to the narrow category the law already sets aside. Premeditated murders of helpless victims, murders committed during acts of terror, murders committed by repeat violent predators who have been given chance after chance—these are not ambiguities. If the penalty is imposed, carry it out. If you will not carry it out, remove it and replace it with life-without-parole that actually means life and is applied without delay. Either way, the public needs certainty and speed.
The political class should not misread the present moment. People are not demanding perfection. They are demanding protection. They will accept hard edges and occasional errors if the general direction is unmistakable: order over chaos, the innocent over the violent, the commuter over the predator, the family over the ideology. If leaders cannot deliver that direction, then voters must deliver leaders who will. That is the ballot-box version of Bastille Day. It is not a call to burn institutions. It is a call to rebuild them so they deserve survival.
Segment 4
Strength, Justice, and Renewal
Let me make one thing clear. I do not advocate violence, and I do not advocate war for its own sake. But I also do not believe in appeasement, weakness, or turning the other cheek until you are beaten to death. There is a line between forgiveness and surrender, and that line is written in the oldest book of laws we have. In the book of Leviticus, the principle is clear: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” That is not a call to vengeance; it is a call to proportionate justice. It is the foundation of deterrence. When evil men know that the penalty for their crime will match the crime itself, they think twice. When they see weakness, they act without hesitation.
Our nation has understood this truth before. President James Monroe gave us the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that the United States would no longer tolerate foreign powers colonizing or interfering in the Western Hemisphere. It was not bluster; it was a line in the sand. It said to the world: we will protect our neighborhood, and if you cross this line, you will meet resistance. That doctrine gave the young republic breathing space and strength to grow.
In modern times, we saw the Bush Doctrine, born out of the fires of September 11, 2001. Too many people today do not even understand what it means. Let me spell it out. It means that if the United States believes it is going to be attacked, it will not sit idle. It will strike first, preemptively, to eliminate the threat. It is common sense on a national scale: you do not stand with your hands in your pockets while an armed man points a weapon at you. You act. You defend. You strike before he can pull the trigger. That is the Bush Doctrine. President George W. Bush applied it when he took the fight to terrorists abroad rather than waiting for the next tower to fall at home.
President Donald Trump carried that same clarity. He crushed the so-called Islamic State, removed terrorist leaders, and sent the message that the United States was once again willing to use decisive power. He was not interested in endless “rope-a-dope.” He knew what happens when you lean back and let your opponent pound away, as Muhammad Ali once did in his later years. Ali may have won fights, but the cost was permanent brain damage and years of misery. That cannot be America’s fate. We cannot lean on the ropes, take endless blows, and hope our enemies wear themselves out. Nations do not get second chances after knockout punches. America must stay on offense, not endless defense.
That is why Trump was right to reframe our posture — to stop treating the Department of Defense as if it existed only to absorb blows, and to remind us that historically, it was called the Department of War for a reason. Words matter. Tone matters. Our enemies must believe that if they strike, or if they prepare to strike, they will be hit harder, faster, and more decisively than they ever imagined.
Meanwhile, look at our cities. New York. Los Angeles. Chicago. Minneapolis. All run into the ground by Democrat machines. Crime tolerated, law enforcement demoralized, prosecutors excusing the inexcusable. These cities are led no differently than Neville Chamberlain led Britain before World War II: waving papers, mouthing platitudes, and delivering their people to disaster. They must be made irrelevant. How? Not with vigilante violence — that has no place in a civilized republic. But with muscle in politics and in law enforcement. Aggressive policing. Aggressive prosecution. Aggressive organizing, campaigning, volunteering, and voting. The weak-minded who keep electing these fools must be confronted with truth, not with fists. Minds must be changed, and ballots must be cast.
That is the real fight ahead. If you live in a district that is safe, you must look outward. Contribute, volunteer, and help turn the battlegrounds. Do not settle for making America great again. Work to make America greater than it has ever been — stronger, freer, safer, and more confident than the world has ever known.
Ronald Reagan, who lifted this nation out of despair and showed it the power of faith and strength, said it best:
“I’ve always believed that this blessed land was set apart in a special way, that it was placed here between the oceans to be found by people from every corner of the Earth who had a special love of freedom and the courage to uproot themselves, leave homeland and friends, and come to America. And I believe that Americans today are ready to say that we will keep this blessed land a shining city on a hill, whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”
America’s best days are not behind us. They are ahead. But only if we find the will to see clearly, speak honestly, act decisively, and never again accept weakness as wisdom.
Segment 5
Let us end where this all began — with the murder that struck a nerve so deep it may change the course of this nation.
Her name was Iryna Zarutska. She was twenty-three years old. A young woman with soft features and an innocent look that reminded many Americans of their own daughters or granddaughters. She fled the war in Ukraine, choosing America because she believed this was the place where she could live free, work hard, and build a future without fear. She did everything right. She came here the legal way, worked, studied, and trusted that this country would protect her in exchange for her faith in it.
And then came the moment caught on film. On a Charlotte train, an ordinary ride turned into a nightmare. Her attacker was a large man with dreadlocks, physically imposing, and carrying a knife. He was the picture of menace. A predator closing the distance in a confined space, where no help could arrive, no escape was possible, and no one could intervene in time. The knife itself matters. Guns are loud, they can be impersonal. Knives are silent, intimate, and cruel. The act of stabbing is face to face, violent beyond words, and to watch it unfold on camera is to understand the depth of savagery human beings are capable of.
That video has seared itself into the conscience of America. It has forced people to see what most would rather ignore: that in our public spaces, in our buses and trains, in our neighborhoods, safety is no longer guaranteed. When people say, “This could have been my daughter, my sister, my wife,” they are not exaggerating. They are speaking a truth that chills the heart.
This is why I say it plainly: this could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many young people have never heard the phrase. It means that burdens pile on slowly — one after another, tolerated, endured — until one final, small addition causes collapse. The straw itself is light, but the back was already breaking. Americans have endured decades of excuses, of failures, of leaders who treat outrage as a passing story. They have endured Kitty Genovese, Robert Fassnacht, Patty Hearst, September 11, endless mass shootings, and the spectacle of criminals released again and again. Each time, the system says “be patient, understand, forgive.” Each time, the public absorbs the blow.
But now, after this young woman’s life was stolen before our eyes, patience may be gone. This murder is not just another statistic. It is not a headline to be buried and forgotten. It is a symbol, an image, a breaking point.
If the leaders of this nation do not respond swiftly, overwhelmingly, and unmistakably, then the Silent Majority will respond at the ballot box. They will roar in a way that cannot be ignored. Because America has reached the point where one young woman’s murder is no longer “just one life.” It is the line in the sand. It is the straw. And the camel’s back is about to break.
Segment 6
Segment 5: Enough
At the beginning of the film Idiocracy, the narrator describes the “Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505” — a collapse caused not by accident but by neglect, by stupidity piled so high it could no longer stand. That movie was meant as satire, but it reads more like prophecy. When you allow the dumbest among us to set the rules, when you let incompetence and weakness steer a nation, you should not be surprised when it caves in. The only antidote is for levelheaded, practical business men and women to step up, to lead by example, to lead with thick skin, to take the blows and keep moving forward. Like Howard Beale in Network, it is time to declare that we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.
Remember the face of Iryna Zarutska — a beautiful woman, a beautiful soul, murdered on a Charlotte train by a monster with a knife. Her life was stolen, but her death may yet awaken a people. This is the line. This is the moment. And let it be heard clearly across this nation: we are not taking it anymore.