Another excellent column from my friend Paul Gleiser, KTBB 97.5 FM, Tyler, Texas

A Little Bit Put Out

by Paul Gleiser  · Published September 24, 2026 · Updated September 25, 2026

I’m a little put out with President Trump right now. If you believe the polls, I’m not alone.

He is doing things from Trump 1.0 that I thought he had left behind in Trump 2.0

First, there’s the Iran war. I’ll at least allow for the possibility that in the end this conflict might prove to have been the right thing to do. Time will tell. But from a political standpoint the timing couldn’t be worse.

The resulting four dollar-plus gasoline and six dollar-plus diesel may be enough to hand control of Congress to the radical loons who have taken over the Democratic Party.

Right thing or wrong thing, it certainly wasn’t over in a few weeks as Trump promised.

But let’s say Trump had no choice on that timing. He certainly had a choice about renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. There is no exigent circumstance that necessitates renaming Lake Ontario.

These are Trump 1.0 moves. They accomplish nothing of policy substance. But they risk annoying swing voters without whom no candidate can win a political race.

And I absolutely hated him calling himself, “the greatest president in the history of the United States” during his convention in Dallas. I mean, c;’mon. Even if that were true – and only history can render that judgement – it’s not polite to say so yourself.

But here’s the big reason I’m put out with Trump.

Republicans should be winning this midterm election in a waltz. That’s not going to happen. The GOP will be lucky if it isn’t a bloodbath.

An enviable economic record is getting crushed by a toxic combination of Trump ego and high gasoline prices.

Enviable?

Absolutely. Andrea Widburg at American Thinker did a great job running it down.

    One million new private sector jobs.

    The lowest poverty rate since we started tracking that statistic.

    Record low Hispanic poverty rates and near record low black poverty rates.

    Record high household income.

    The massive tax cuts of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

    A gargantuan amount of overseas investment in American industry.

    A soaring stock market that is dramatically improving the retirement prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

    A border that is under total operational control for essentially the first time ever.

    The largest-ever recorded drop in violent crime.

    The lowest murder rate since 1900.

Nothing Democrats are proposing will produce a record like this.

And it’s toweringly rich for Democrats to be running on the word, “affordability” when the places in which they dominate politically are the least affordable places in the country. (Don’t like four bucks a gallon for gas in Texas? Think about six bucks or more in California.)

So, yes, I’m a little put out with President Trump right now. You can be, too.

But now that I have said that, get over it.

Trump’s not on the ballot. His policy record is and it’s by and large a good one.

I’m never in the tank for a particular politician anyway. I’m always in the tank for the country.

And the country is on the line.

Here is where Buddy disagrees with Paul

Trump is being pilloried from every direction for going about the business of depriving Iran of its nuclear weapons dream, something he has done in no uncertain terms, and it is something no American president, Republican or Democrat, has had the guts to do all the past 45 years. 

Trump’s only mistake was listening to those in our government who told him that defeating the Iranian dictatorship would come easily once that rogue nation’s military had been destroyed. 

But while Western nations, be they democracies or dictatorships, have minds that are at best secular and at worst atheistic, the Iranian mind is rooted in a sixth century religious imperative that requires the destruction of anything non-Islamic, beginning and foremost with Israel, next the United States, and then absolute world domination.

Differences over territory and borders do not explain world terror and Iranian behavior in particular. Religious fanaticism does.

The war with Iran will not be won until that nation’s current homicidal leadership is replaced by a government representing the Persian people.

I argue that we should work towards that end, doing pretty much what we’re doing now—starving Iran’s cash flow—because an Iranian revolution grows much more likely with each passing day, AND what other alternative is there? What president coming after Donald Trump would pick up the sword and buckler?