It has been amusing as well as entirely predictable to watch the Trump Derangement Syndrome crowing over the so-called Blue Tsunami of the Democrats’ midterm victory.
As I said on my Friday show, the metaphor of a tsunami is probably unintentionally accurate. Tsunamis are best known for the phenomenal mess they leave behind as every piece of toxic, putrid flotsam and jetsam imaginable gets dumped indiscriminately across the entire landscape. And the flotsam and jetsam that the Democrats have served up will, in my opinion, be sufficient to guarantee the next US President will be a Republican one.
The silliest opinion currently being expressed, among many silly opinions, is that the result spells ‘the end of populism’. Under this fanciful nonsense, Donald Trump is a fraud, a so-called ‘populist’ who surfed to power on a wave of populist grievances but had no idea how to actually run a government. Under the same theory, One Nation would be a disaster, as would Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, and so on.
The reason I say this theory is nonsense is because of the proof of the midterms itself. According to the exit polls and nearly every pundit, the result was a reaction against the Iran War. Yet the Iran was the opposite of populism. It was never popular. From the get-go. Trump launched the Iran War because it was the right thing to do, not for any populist motivations. He said it was the right thing to do 40 years ago, and he has never wavered in that opinion.
Trump was correct then and Trump now is correct. Destroying the Iranian regime is the right thing to do, and the very opposite of the populist thing to do. If Trump were a populist, he never would have launched the war in the first place.
But I’ll tell you who can be accused of so-called populism, in my humble opinion. And that is his Vice President JD Vance. JD Vance was very anti-Trump, likened him to Hitler when it was cool to be anti-Trump, then magically turned pro-Trump when it was cool to be pro-Trump, and is now in the process, or appears to be in the process, of distancing himself from Trump again. Arguably, that’s populism, right there.
In my humble opinion, and I said this all the way back in April, Trump should never have listened to JD Vance and pursued that ridiculous ceasefire and peace negotiations with Iran. He listened to Vance when he should instead have been listening to Hegseth and Rubio. Instead of going in hard and finishing off Iran when the mullahs and the IRGC were at their very weakest, demoralised, shocked, impotent, Trump caved in to the JD Vance school of thought and let him toddle off to Pakistan to launch the absolutely idiotic Memorandum of Understanding peace talks, where he claimed the talks were good news for America.
No, JD, it was very good news for Iran and very bad news for America and the rest of the free world. I said at the time that that April ceasefire was a disastrous decision. It gave the mullahs the upper hand, which they have exploited ever since, and gave them a platform that made them look powerful – which is fatal in the Middle East – and worse, set up an impossible goal for Trump. A kumbaya deal. A peace deal with the most evil and messianic regime on earth.
As I have said repeatedly, there is only one way this ends and that is either with the Iranian fanatics achieving their goal and wiping Israel, and ultimately the West, off the map or with the Iranian people rising up and throwing out the Islamic Republic. Take your pick. There ain’t no kumbaya alternative. When an Iranian uprising failed to take off in March, Trump and Netanyahu should have gone in harder. I’m sure they could have. Instead, to all intents and purposes, they capitulated to the regime. The key driver and architect of that disastrous decision was JD Vance. The equivalent would have been if, halfway through the Falklands war, after the sinking of the Belgrano, Thatcher had said, ‘You know what, let’s all go home now and I’ll leave it to Sir Geoffrey Howe to write up a Memorandum of Understanding with the Argentinians.’
But J D Vance wasn’t working alone. He had several extraordinarily influential fellow travellers who shared his populist antiwar, anti-Israel, anti-Netanyahu instincts. Fellow travellers by the names of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens.
Along with railing against the war, the three of them aggressively turned on Donald Trump, almost on cue, and, disgracefully in my opinion, allowed their antipathy towards Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu to spill over into what came a little too close to old-school antisemitism for my liking. For sure, it is legitimate to question the influence of Israeli politics on American politics and vice versa. They are critical allies and friends. But that is a world away from constantly inferring some kind of Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style conspiracy where the Jews and Jewish money controls Trump and America. Equally, and possibly more significantly, there are many questions that need to be asked about the role of Qatar and Qatari or other Arab money in buying influence amongst American institutions, media personalities, and politicians.
In recent times, I would go so far as to say much of the commentary, especially from Carlson and Owens, is downright unhinged. But that’s just my opinion, regarding, for instance, Carlson repeatedly telling his 23 million listeners that Trump was threatening nuclear war.
However, consider this. When Donald Trump won in 2024, that was after nine months of solid support and constant campaigning day in day out from those three podcasters who counted themselves as close friends of Trump. Both Carlson and Kelly proudly spoke at Trump’s rallies and eagerly bathed in the glory of his victory. At the time, many pundits credited these influencers for the size of Trump’s vote.
Now these same individuals wallow gleefully in denigrating Trump, and some have urged their audiences to vote against him. On top of which, back in 2024 Trump also had the campaigning skills and support of the brilliant Charlie Kirk, who was then assassinated. No Charlie Kirk at this election, although his organisation Turning Point USA still supports Trump.
I’ve always said populism simply means popularity. And I would argue the world of podcasting is self-evidently susceptible to pandering to populism, especially when people’s influence and, more importantly, the influence of their opinions is not only monetised but is clearly measurable in their ratings. Anyone can of course change their mind, and we should all be prepared to do so when there is overwhelming evidence. But the king and queens of US podcasting appear to do so with alarming frequency. Witness Megyn Kelly on Russell Brand in 2023, calling him a scumbag and now calling him sweet and charming.
But as I said, anyone can change their mind. But when your audience is as massive as some of these podcasters, you will also be changing many other minds, rightly or wrongly. So, let’s look at some numbers to put that sort of influence into perspective. These numbers are approximations, but they serve to make my point: the combined reach of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens is around 44 million. Charlie Kirk’s reach in 2024 was around a staggering 120 million. Now, there’s obviously overlap and audience numbers go up and down but for argument’s sake, especially when you throw Nick Fuentes and a few other Trump turncoats into the mix, let’s say there were around 150 million non-woke, normal everyday vaguely conservative people who were being urged to vote for Trump in 2024 by these influential influencers and then less than two years later being urged to vote against Trump, or in the case of Kirk, not being influenced at all. That’s a lot of influence.
So – how many people voted for the Democrats in the midterms? Roughly 125 million people – which is fewer than the Carlson-Kelly-Candace-Charlie audience combined.
The theory that Trump lived and died by being a populist is absurd. Yes, populist influences helped bring him to power. But it was Trump defying populism and ignoring the siren populist voices of the podcasters, that turned voters away from Trump. Iran was the number one issue among voters, along with the asinine idea of ‘the relationship with Israel’, according to exit polls, and it is not surprising that they were also key obsessions of the so-called ‘woke right’ podcasters. I say asinine because Netanyahu had already said he wanted to end US aid to Israel, and Trump agreed, although too late for it make any difference.
The so-called ‘woke right’ podcasters used their astonishing influence to turn people against Trump because he didn’t do the populist thing, he did what he thought was right. He stood by his principles. And he is still standing by them.
I, for one, applaud him for that. And it is incumbent on those who disagree rather than spreading lies about nuclear weapons or trying to formulate idiotic Memoranda of Understanding, to actually spell out what they would do about Iran. And if the answer is do nothing and cross your fingers or engage in fatuous peace talks then I’m afraid that’s not good enough. Here is Senator John Kennedy, who insists he has seen the classified information regarding Iran’s intentions, outlining why Trump has stayed the course:
? IF THIS INTELLIGENCE IS ACCURATE… EUROPE WAS IN IRAN’S CROSSHAIRS.
Senator John Kennedy has made an extraordinary claim.
He says he has personally reviewed classified U.S. intelligence showing that Iran was rapidly expanding its missile and drone arsenal with the… pic.twitter.com/P8YbMKYTln
— Jim Ferguson (@JimFergusonUK) July 2, 2026
So, congrats to Trump for not being a populist on Iran and Israel but being a president of principle and unlike all the podcasters I sincerely hope that over the next two years, Trump succeeds, the regime falls, and freedom comes to the men and especially the women of Iran.
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