Political consultants have been proven very wrong time and again over the past few years. Perhaps that has always been the case, but I didn’t really start talking to them until 2015. I fondly remember being told I was insane in September, 2016, on a call with several Republican consultants when I said I was quite sure Donald Trump was going to beat Hillary Clinton.
They laughed at me. They literally laughed at me.
But I’ve had my share of massive failures as well. While I’m not a political consultant (I offer my advice for free, partially because no politician would pay me for my amateur services), I have been held to a certain standard of accuracy with my predictions because I publish them for posterity. The biggest predictive mistake I ever made was declaring after the 2020 Iowa caucus that Joe Biden was done.
That experience taught me a powerful lesson. Nothing is set in stone until the fat lady sings, or something like that. The backdoor wranglings, donor class shenanigans, and most importantly the Deep State manipulations can make the seemingly impossible become a certainty.
The powers-that-be coerced Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out of the 2020 primary race the week before Super Tuesday, which was absolutely required for the Democrats to nominate Biden and not Bernie Sanders. For those who don’t recall, both Buttigieg and Klobuchar were ahead of Biden in delegates at the time and Klobuchar had her home state coming up. It made no sense for them to drop out unless the plan was to help Joe beat Bernie.
The powers-that-be made 85% of voters either skeptical of the Hunter Biden laptop three weeks before the 2020 election, or completely unaware of its existence. I’m not sure there’s been a time in the digital age when something so shocking was as successfully covered up. In a poll conducted earlier this year (which I can’t seem to find but I’m not imagining it), even a large percentage of Democrats said they wouldn’t have voted for Biden if they knew about Hunter’s laptop.
And yes, the power-that-be can take an insurmountable lead by the current GOP frontrunner and decimate it through lawfare, lies, and outright fraud. Anyone who thinks Donald Trump is certain to be the nominee as of August, 2023, hasn’t been paying enough attention the last decade. The globalists learned their lesson following the 2016 election. They will never underestimate Trump or his base ever again. They will fire all weapons, pull every available string, and unleash every dirty trick in the book to destroy him.
Take all of that as you will. Trump’s supporters can use it as a rallying cry to not get complacent despite his massive lead in the polls. His detractors can take it as a grain of hope. As Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber might say, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
It’s Time for Trump to Switch Gears
It’s important to understand that my advice to the Trump campaign to focus on Democrats is NOT because I think he’s locked in. It behooves him to start acting like he’s locked in for the nomination in order to make it so; the longer he lingers on attacking DeSantis, the more attention he gives him. When Trump puts all of his focus on beating the Democrats and stops paying attention to the Republican contenders, they’ll start falling off.
The best time to do this is during or just after Wednesday’s GOP debate. If I were advising him, I would make sure he at least hints to if not explicitly announces that he’s putting his efforts going forward to beating the Democrats during his interview with Tucker Carlson.
The message after Wednesday should be, “Beat the Democrats.” And that doesn’t just mean Joe Biden. That means Gavin Newsom, Michelle Obama, and anyone else who gets rumored to be a Biden replacement. It also means going after Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Democrats on Capitol Hill who are vulnerable in 2024. Trump needs to establish that he’s going to help down-ballot and the easiest way to do that is to start hitting Democrats in all relevant races.
The only Democrat he shouldn’t go after is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Some of Trump’s potential general election voters are fans of RFK Jr. Moreover, RFK Jr is focusing his attacks on Biden, not Republicans, so there’s no need to draw him into a multifront battle. Let him go after Biden unabated.
If I were advising Team Trump, I would start laying out attacks through social media, emails, interviews, and in video messages to his base about multiple Democrats throughout the day, every day. And while I know there’s pride involved, it behooves Trump to return to Twitter (I’m not calling it “X” until I have to). From there, he’ll be able to use other Republicans as well as his base as massive force multipliers. Truth Social is an echo chamber. He’s not reaching anyone there who needs convincing.
He could advance his campaign messaging, remain in the news cycle incessantly, and start truly unifying the party before the Iowa caucus if he puts all of his efforts toward highlighting the idiocy of Democrat Party leadership. His fundraising would go through the roof. But if he continues to focus on his nomination opponents, he’s wasting valuable time. The nomination may not be locked up but it’s time for him to start acting like it is.
Again, this is advice for Team Trump. By no means am I telling anyone who supports his GOP opponents to give up. I wouldn’t want anyone telling me to give up on my preferred candidate if I still had hope and I would never tell anyone else to do it. This is about Trump’s strategy, not a call for anyone else to stand down. Lord willing, we’ll all come together as patriots sooner or later. I’m just hopeful that it’s sooner and the fastest path to get their in my humble opinion is if Trump starts working in that direction immediately.
Let me know how you feel about this on my Substack.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
