☕️ THE SNITCH ☙ Saturday, September 6, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump renames Defense Dept; liberals unravel; Cold War reflections; DC makeover looms; Speaker hints Trump aided FBI on Epstein, rattling Dems; Kennedy autism rumors swirl like Pride streamers; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Time for the Weekend Edition. Your roundup includes: Trump renames the Department of Defense and liberals lose their last grasp on sanity; thoughts on the conclusion of the Cold War; DC to get a long overdue makeover; Speaker Johnson lets slip that President Trump may have been an FBI informant helping nail Epstein, threatening Democrats’ midterm political strategy; and wild rumors about Kennedy’s upcoming autism report fly like rainbow streamers at a Pride parade.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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New York Times deep-state apparatchik David Sanger penned an anguished “news analysis” this morning headlined, “The Return of the ‘War Department’ Is More Than Nostalgia. It’s a Message.” It was a heartfelt elegy to Cold War “soft power” dirty tricks. The sub-headline explained, “President Trump and his defense secretary say they want to return to the era when America won wars. They largely ignore the greatest accomplishment of the past 80 years: avoiding superpower conflict.”

A long time ago, a bestselling author asked, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” That author obviously never met a liberal like Times reporter David Sanger, to whom names are super duper important. Sanger excreted nearly 3,000 angst-ridden words over Trump’s much more concise (280 words) order rolling back the title of the “Department of Defense” to its original moniker, the “Department of War.”

Being so far over his word budget, one can —perhaps— excuse Sanger for not sparing a single syllable quoting Trump’s actual executive order. I mean, why bother? But I found the section Sanger was probably hunting for:

On August 7, 1789, 236 years ago, President George Washington signed into law a bill establishing the United States Department of War. The name ‘Department of War,’ more than the current ‘Department of Defense,’ ensures peace through strength, as it demonstrates our ability and willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our Nation at a moment’s notice, not just to defend. I have therefore determined that this Department should once again be known as the Department of War and the Secretary should be known as the Secretary of War.

It was Harry S. Truman (D) who, in 1949, after chewing a bad oyster, decided that George Washington’s original war department title was too old-fashioned. He preferred the name we’ve all grown accustomed to, the sly progressive euphemism crafted to convince our enemies that all our aircraft carriers and ICBMs and Middle Eastern military bases are purely defensive in nature. Nothing to worry about.

Mr. Sanger fretted that, by changing the name back, our enemies might finally catch on to the ruse. But I’m not sure. I sometimes get the feeling that, despite Truman’s clever re-naming trick, after Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Libya, Ethiopia, Taiwan, Bosnia, and maybe a couple other purely defensive military excursions, some countries might have been getting suspicious. A little.

The jig, as they say, was up. The game was over. The war cat was out of the duffel bag. At this point, every time one of our diplomats solemnly intones “Department of Defense,” the stoic Russians start snickering, the Chinese swap wagered yen, and the Iranians take another round of shots.

In other words, the fancy new name was already a sad joke. It might baffle Mr. Sanger, but Trump’s strategy is simple: America will stop pretending to be your best buddy and then shiv you in the back of the head while you’re asleep — usually in the form of a surprise color revolution or “totally organic” coup d’état.

Yesterday’s renaming is directly connected to the same reason Trump slaughtered USAID. USAID was the progressives’ passive-aggressive War Department, wearing lipstick and a sundress. The agency funded friendly-sounding NGOs that ripped countries apart more thoroughly than a heated barrage of cruise missiles.

Trump’s now ditching the subterfuge. He is saying, if we shoot you, you’ll be awake, armed, and facing us. We won’t shoot you in the back.

🚀 Nor will we keep duping the American people. For decades, the “Defense” label let Washington pretend our foreign misadventures were humanitarian projects or national-security musts. USAID disguised its regime-change operations as a philanthropy. NATO missions were sold as peacekeeping, and drone strikes were marketed as “surgical.” The happy-sounding branding pacified voters at home while sowing chaos abroad.

Trump’s name change is a promise that the era of euphemisms is over. Now, if America fights, it will be called war— and everyone will know it.

Progressive ideology survives on language manipulation like chupacabras survive on blood. Every bad idea needs a hypnotic cover euphemism: women are “birthing people,” censorship is “content moderation,” castration is “gender-affirming care,” and open borders are “humane migration policy.” They believe if they change the words, they change reality— at least long enough to pass the bill, pocket the grant money, or stage the coup.

That’s why Sanger is hyperventilating over Trump swapping “Defense” back to “War.” By killing the euphemism, you extinguish the spell. Nothing terrifies progressives more than plain English. (See, e.g., Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”)

🚀 I agree with Sanger that the renaming is not nostalgia— it’s demolition. Trump is knocking down the Truman-era Cold War scaffolding that layered a security-state bureaucracy atop our republic. The euphemism “Defense” didn’t just rename a department, it re-engineered the national mindset: America was always “responding,” always “deterring,” never admitting it was running a global empire. That Cold War distortion metastasized into permanent military bases, permanent wars, and permanent excuses.

Trump’s rollback says: enough. Strip off the jargon and return to the blunt clarity that existed before the euphemisms— when war was called war, and peace meant staying home.

People have wondered how the military-industrial complex could ever possibly be pruned. This is how. You don’t start by arguing weapons systems line-item by line-item— that just fattens the lobbyists. You start by stripping off the fig leaves hiding the whole racket in plain sight. Tear off “defense,” “deterrence,” and “humanitarian intervention,” and now the public can see the trillion-dollar machine for what it is: a War Department, feasting on endless war.

The deep state is, at root, a Cold War creation. Once the language vines are hacked back and the forest of euphemism is cleared, the pruning shears can finally get a grip on the roots themselves. That root system was laid down in the Truman years with permanent intelligence agencies, permanent surveillance, permanent overseas garrisons— all justified by “deterrence” and wrapped in the new jargon of “national defense.” Kill the roots, and the whole deep state shrivels.

To the deep state, plain English is the greatest national security threat of all.

That is why reporter and “news analyst” David Sanger, the deep state’s main man at the Times, is so upset about Trump restoring the War Department’s original, honest name.

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That wasn’t yesterday’s only example of actions over words. At a Rose Garden fundraiser, President Trump announced details of his ongoing project to beautify Washington, DC. Not just happy talk, but real changes that everyone can see and touch.

CLIP: President Trump announces citywide cleanup, maintenance, and landscaping (0:48).

"We're going to clean up the place,” Trump said. “We're going to put new grass in all the parks. We're going to re-grass them with the best guys in the country.” Then, tapping the nexus where law-and-order meets beauty, Trump said, "We're going to fix the curbs. I noticed some of your curbs are broken. You know why? They're hitting them with a hammer so they can pick it up and throw it at the police. But not anymore, they're not. Not anymore."

Optics matter. What we call things and what they look like isn’t just cosmetic— it’s strategic. Other countries don’t just measure our troop deployments, they also watch the words we use and the way our capital city presents itself. A nation that names its military “Defense” while maintaining 750 bases abroad looks sneaky and untrustworthy; a capital with parks that look like third-world dirt lots looks weak and structurally broken.

Trump’s point is that perception shapes power: restore the grass, restore the name, and you restore credibility. Allies see resolve, adversaries see strength, and the American people see a plain-talking government that’s finally willing to stop hiding behind ever-denser lexicons of euphemism.

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Yesterday, Broadband Breakfast ran a story that was surprising only in that it needed to be said at all, headlined, “FCC to Let Prisons Jam Contraband Cell Phones.”

Prisoners aren’t allowed to have phones. Obviously. But they still smuggle them in by the thousands. They use cell phones to run gangs, coordinate drug shipments and riots, and even order hits. Gangs are now even smuggling phones in using drones. But, since the devices connect to outside carrier towers, the prison can’t stop the signals without breaking federal laws against jamming.

The problem is so pervasive that, beyond the organized crime issues, thanks to smuggled mobile phones, hard-time inmates are making rap videos, in-cell microwave cooking demos (caged heat), long-hauler pro-tips, and their fugitive manifestos— all uploaded to TikTok and Instagram.

For years, Congress has tried and failed to pass laws letting prisons jam cell phones. I won’t trouble you with Democrats’ dumb objections, because it will just make you mad. In the meantime, a digital crime wave has rippled over the airwaves from the secure confines of federal custody, with guards and wardens impotent to shut it off at the switch.

Yesterday, Trump’s new FCC Director Brendan Carr tweeted that his agency would bypass Congress, and just redefine phones inside prisons as “unauthorized devices,” which will place them outside the federal anti-jamming law. You might consider that common sense, but common sense has been AWOL for some time.

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Yesterday, the UK Independent ran the week’s most astonishing news below the headline, “Donald Trump was an FBI ‘informant’ on Jeffrey Epstein, Republican Mike Johnson claims.” Well. Speaker Johnson didn’t exactly claim it. It was more like he let it slip out, possibly accidentally. Narrative whiplash ensued.

CLIP: Speaker Johnson says Trump was an FBI informant helping take Epstein down (0:18).

“When President Trump first heard the rumor, he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago,” an animated Johnson told reporters. Then: “He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.”

It would explain a lot.

In 2005, Trump famously banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club. A year later, Epstein was arrested in South Florida. Obama’s FBI gave him a wrist slap. Then nothing happened till Trump came into office in 2017, when —only three weeks after the Inauguration— he signed an executive order targeting “Transnational criminal trafficking.”

In 2019, Trump’s DOJ arrested Epstein, seized his island, and threw him in jail. Epstein literally died in prison.

The next year, in 2020, Trump’s DOJ arrested Ghislaine Maxwell, and gave her 20 years for crimes against kids. In 2018, Epstein victims’ lawyer Bradley Edwards said President Trump was the only prominent figure who voluntarily cooperated with their lawsuits since 2009, providing what the lawyer described as “very helpful information.”

Lawyer Edwards said —again, in 2018, after nine years on the case— that there was “no sign” Trump had been involved in any of Epstein’s crimes.

The victims have sued JPMorgan Chase (settled for $290 million), Deutsche Bank (settled for $75 million), Prince Andrew (settled confidentially in 2022), and even Epstein’s attorney Alan Dershowitz (litigated for years). But they have never sued Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, during eight years of Obama and four years of Biden, Democrats were mute about Epstein. They certainly never produced or even hinted at any connection to Trump. No subpoenas, no exposés, no whispered leaks.

🔥 Which theory is more consistent? That Epstein had blackmail on Trump, but President Trump prosecuted him anyway? Or that Trump was helping the FBI try to take Epstein down since as far back as 2005?

Low-information commenters on BlueSky remain skeptical:

It’s a bold claim for Johnson to make if it isn’t true. If Trump really was a formal FBI informant, there’s an official paper trail: source files, FD-1023 reports, handler notes, maybe even receipts for expenses. Those aren’t things the Bureau can wish away; by regulation, they must be logged and stored. And several FBI staff must have worked the file. They could also confirm (or deny) the claim.

Which raises an awful possibility for Democrats: what if he can prove it?

So far, DOJ has been mum. When do you suppose corporate media will start demanding DOJ answer the question? Do they want to know?

Imagine if, this whole time, Trump has been quietly sitting on his starring role in Epstein’s takedown, letting Democrats crawl further and further out on the conspiracy branch. He could lop it off anytime he wants. Which makes his silence so much more meaningful. Why attack your enemies when they are destroying themselves?

💉💉💉

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal triggered a cascade of corporate media stories by running its exclusive article headlined, “RFK Jr., HHS to Link Autism to Tylenol Use in Pregnancy and Folate Deficiencies.”

Citing only unnamed “people familiar with the matter,” the WSJ claimed that Secretary Kennedy “plans” (no time frame) to announce a link between Tylenol (acetaminophen) and autism, and will suggest that folinic acid may relieve some symptoms in kids with autism disorder.

But not only Tylenol. “The report,” the Journal said, “is expected to suggest other potential causes of autism and suggest further study.” The other potential causes were not named, for some reason. Another mystery.

Nothing was clear. And my passive voice detectors were chiming like smoke detectors with low batteries. It was all maybe and might: “The report … is likely to suggest”; “Kennedy’s report is expected to be…”; “The report is expected to suggest”; “It couldn’t be determined if the report will mention vaccines”; and my favorite: “an HHS spokesman said, ‘Until we release the final report, any claims about its contents are nothing more than speculation.’”

So … the “news” boiled down to anonymous sources whispering about what a report might say sometime in the future — and the only on-the-record source (HHS) saying, don’t believe any of this yet. Great job, Journal.

Translation: We don’t have the report, we don’t know what’s in the report, or when it’s coming out, but just in case we’d like to pre-spin your reaction to the report anyway.

The Journal’s speculation was expensive. Tylenol’s maker, Kenvue, lost -10% of its market value on the ‘news’ yesterday. But what the WSJ and the mockingbird media published isn’t real reporting, it’s just a rumor dressed up as fact by repetition. That’s literally textbook irresponsible journalism: running a market-moving headline about autism, Tylenol, and folate without either the actual report or a named official standing behind the claims.

I’m not saying it isn’t true, which is the point. Nobody knows, including the dumb reporters at the Journal. What a stupid story.

💉 Now let’s focus on the Journal’s narrative framing: Kennedy is dumb. But read critically. The Journal didn’t show any curiosity about what might actually be in the forthcoming report. Its framing was defensive and skeptical from the start, essentially prebunking any Tylenol–autism connection in advance, without even waiting to see what HHS comes up with.

That’s not journalism. That’s pharma propaganda.

For example, the Wall Street Journal failed to report that, just two weeks ago, Springer Nature published a peer-reviewed meta-study that puts Kennedy right on solid ground (assuming he is planning to make the connection):

“We identified 46 studies for inclusion in our analysis,” the authors wrote. “The majority of the studies (27 of 46) reported positive associations of prenatal acetaminophen use with ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or Neurological Development Disorder in offspring.”

But the Journal’s experts had a different opinion than the study’s authors. The Journal’s experts all declared that the “literature was mixed.” Not enough evidence!

When they want to force you to take an experimental drug to “slow the spread” of a common cold, then very little evidence is required. But when trying to get a handle on the autism epidemic, well, they require proof of links between autism and their profitable drugs beyond a shadow of a doubt first.

In other words, don’t move, don’t advise, don’t change guidelines until you can prove causation beyond any reasonable doubt.

For instance, hyphenated Johns Hopkins Doctor Dr. Christine Ladd-Acosta opined, “While there have been some associations, there has been no conclusive evidence I've seen to show that Tylenol itself causes autism definitively.” But of course, there is no record of Dr. Ladd-Acosta —or any other mainstream epidemiologist in her camp— demanding “definitive proof” or “conclusive evidence” before backing mRNA mandates. But never mind.

Anyway. The Journal’s “rumor report” is interesting and has already produced reams of controversy and destroyed millions in shareholder equity, but we know nothing about what will be in Kennedy’s real autism report.

Kennedy promised an autism report this month, and we’re just about a week in. Given the hysteria that a single rumor about the report provoked, I can’t wait to see how they like the real thing when it soon arrives.

Have a wonderful weekend! Come back Monday morning for a whole new coffee service of essential news and commentary, to help get your week started off right.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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