(WND)—On Dec. 10, 2018, just before the traditional Army-Navy football game, President Donald Trump made an announcement. While a well-coached Army team would go on to win 17-10 in what proved to be an exciting contest, more than two years later Trump would learn the consequences of his pregame announcement that day – one unfortunately made against the advice of his military “coaches.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, was due to retire in 2019. Thus, Trump had to designate a replacement. For some reason, Trump was high on the U.S. Army chief of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, despite the advice, not only of Dunford but Secretary of Defense James Mattis, that Milley was not their first choice. Nonetheless, Milley got the nod and was sworn in as CJCS on Sept. 30, 2019.
During his confirmation hearings, Milley assured the Senate he would resign before doing anything improper, such as obeying an “illegal, unethical or immoral order,” and would never soft-pedal his advice to the president. Just before being sworn in as CJCS, he told Trump, “I will always provide you informed, candid, impartial military advice.” Trump responded with, “You’re my friend. You’re my adviser, and you deserve this position. I never had a doubt. Congratulations.” Based on the insights of a whistleblower who personally witnessed how the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol unfolded, it appears Milley may have acted improperly, making the accolades given to him by Trump unwarranted.
A key issue concerning the January 6 incident is the National Guard’s failure to immediately deploy to stop the pro-Trump mob from entering the Capitol. But, instead, there was a four-hour delay. U.S. Army Col. Earl Matthews was in a position to know exactly what happened that day as he was serving as the National Guard’s legal adviser. But, after hearing two of Milley’s senior minions testify, allegedly contrary to what Matthews knew happened, he could no longer remain silent. In December 2021, he sent a shocking memo to the congressional committee investigating the incident.
The two senior officers involved were Gen. Charles Flynn, the deputy U.S. Army chief of staff, and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt. Matthews held nothing back, accusing them of providing “perjured testimony.”
Despite his memo, Matthews was recommended for promotion to brigadier general in November 2022, only later to have it denied. This led to him filing a 37-page complaint on Jan. 3, 2024, claiming retaliation by the Army for blowing the whistle on his seniors. His complaint called them “absolute and unmitigated liars” in their testimony before Congress.
It was primarily due to testimony by the two generals that reports by both a Pentagon inspector general and the House committee investigating the January 6 incident found no impediment was deliberately placed by senior military leaders to delay the National Guard’s deployment. It is the Army’s narrative of the events of that day, supported by these reports, upon which the Colorado Supreme Court relied to justify getting Trump’s name removed from the ballot.
But in a recent interview, Matthews identified the person who delayed the Guard’s deployment, someone who had no authority to do so – Milley. Although the National Guard falls directly under presidential control, Milley circumvented his role.
Matthews made some fairly damning statements about the former CJCS in a recent interview. “Milley is the Don Barzini (a reference to the crime family in the ‘Godfather’ movie) of the Deep State,” said the Harvard Law School graduate. “He’s the most powerful chairman of the joint chiefs in history. It was Milley all along, and I didn’t realize it. Milley was manipulating this entire stuff from point start.”
Matthews shared that Milley projected himself outside of his authority. As CJCS, Milley was only to serve in an advisory capacity to the president with no legal authority within the chain of command. However, through his position and exploitation of other generals, he was able to maneuver himself into controlling the Army. Matthews explained:
“The problem was not with Donald Trump; it’s Mark Milley and the Army leadership in control. They stopped the Guard from coming, then lied about it and said the Guard acted at sprint speed. This is about civilian control of the military. There was none. There is none. I argue that – Mark Milley had more control over the D.C. Guard on Jan. 6 than Donald Trump did – if Donald Trump wanted to call the Guard to go to the Capitol, Milley wouldn’t let him do it.”
Among those supporting Matthews’ account are several District of Columbia law enforcement officials, including former Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund. He reported that the Pentagon seemed more concerned about the “optics” of military personnel engaged in crowd control as opposed to quickly deploying the Guard. He noted,”I got on a call with the Pentagon and pleaded for the National Guard. There was delay after delay after delay.”
Matthews reported once Sund’s request was received, it took more than three hours to receive the authorization to move Guard troops – who already had been equipped and pre-positioned – to the Capitol. He squarely faults Milley, stating, “I’m saying that his people delayed us, but Milley is in the center of everything, making the decisions – no question about it.”
Both Biden and Trump have leveled charges against each other that the other’s actions endanger democracy. What both should be demanding now is an investigation specifically into Milley’s actions for a rogue CJCS may well have violated his oath of office. If Matthews’ claims are accurate, they strongly make the case for a CJCS to have breached his constitutional authority, contrary to the clear intent of our Founding Fathers that the military at all times remain under civilian control. Absent such an investigation, Milley may well have gotten away with taking an unconstitutional walk on the wild side.
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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.
WOW!!!!
Fantastic article, sir!!!
Not surprised another FLYNN would be involved in this PERFIDY of treason —– Gen. Michael Flynn is the ultra–loser Trump chose, along with Milley, along with Clintonista Peter Navarro, along with anti–Trumper and Robert Mueller BFF, William Barr (CIA all–the–way) and the demonic Christopher Wray and Gilday, and Pompeo and the worst of the worst, MARK ESPER, globalist swine and never–Trumper as well!!!
I knew Milley supported Marxist groups like the BLM (rebranded Maoist group, Liberty Road), but after PLA Gen. Milley’s infamous phone call to BEIJING, I went back and reviewed his very public, pro–CCP talks — — most ENLIGHTENING!!!
Somehow, Gov. Desantis looking better and better . . . .
I seriouely wonder who ever recommended PLA Gen. Silly Lilly Milley to Trump?
Was it loser Gen. Michael Flynn, whose loser brother appears to have perjured himself for Silly Lilly Milley?
Or was Trump the fool who appointed PLA Gen. Milley on his own?!