Current player for Roma Maxima | Founder of Willow Lake Capital
New York, USA
Joined March 2012
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Matt Ryan retweeted
In Haiti, they told the Haitian people the Clintons came to save Haiti.
After the earthquake in 2010, the world watched Port au Prince crumble, and then the saviors arrived. Bill Clinton became the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, controlling America's aid. And the Clinton Foundation was right there, raising money in Haiti's name.
Husband approving the projects. Wife controlling the money. Foundation collecting the donations. That was a family business.
The world pledged 13.5 billion dollars. America pledged 4 billion. It was supposed to rebuild a nation. Instead, it rebuilt bank accounts in Washington.
Less than 40 percent of that money was ever spent inside Haiti. Only 2 percent of US aid ever reached Haitian organizations. The rest went to American contractors, foreign NGOs, and the UN: a circle of friends getting rich off someone else's tragedy.
Caracol Industrial Park, their great flagship, their promise of a New Haiti. Three hundred million dollars of taxpayer money, built on prime farmland. Farmers were kicked off their land to make room for it. They promised 65,000 jobs. What Haiti got was 10,000 low-wage sewing jobs for a South Korean company. Bill and Hillary cut the ribbon and smiled for the cameras. Haitians called it a sweatshop.
They promised hundreds of thousands of homes. They spent half a billion dollars on housing, and they built 6,000 houses. Years later, millions were still sleeping in tents, with no water, no electricity, and no roads, while the Foundation kept fundraising.
A company called VCS Mining, with a Clinton Foundation donor sitting on its board, suddenly got one of the rarest things in Haiti: a gold mining permit. In a country where those permits are almost impossible to get. Donate to the Foundation, get a deal in Haiti. That was the deal.
Haitians don't call this mismanagement. They call it theft.
Billions came in, cholera brought in by UN troops killed 10,000 people, and Port au Prince still has no reliable water, power, or roads. The Clintons left with their reputation intact. Haiti was left poorer.
This is how the liberal elite works. They find a poor Black country, use it as a charity poster, fly in, take photos with crying children, raise billions, hand the contracts to their friends, and then blame corruption in Haiti when nothing gets built.
The real corruption was never in Haiti. It was in Washington, and it was in the Clinton Foundation.
If a Republican had done this, it would be called a crime. Because the Clintons did it, they called it philanthropy.
Haiti didn't need saviors. Haiti needed to be left alone to rebuild with its own money.
The Clintons didn't save Haiti. They looted Haiti.
t.me/fmazhindu
Matt Ryan retweeted
When you don’t know anything you just ask questions on questions on questions… smart man right there
BREAKING 🚨: Kmele Foster: “It's one thing to not think capitalism isn't working, ideally. It's another thing entirely to insist that it is oppressive, that it is bound up with white supremacy.”
Jemele Hill: “How is it not?”
Kmele Foster: “I've always preferred Adam Smith's description of capitalism as the natural system of liberty. The idea that people can own property, that they can exchange it freely with one another for profit, that they can find ways to put their resources to good use and profit in a way that is actually beneficial to everyone else, that there can be gains from trade that are mutually beneficial. These are foundational ideas that have created more wealth than any other system in human history. That is what capitalism is. That is not white supremacy.”
Jemele Hill: “Do you think capitalism has always worked that way?”
Kmele Foster: “I’ve actually just described the basic facts of the economics.”
Hill: “That ain't how it's always worked.”
Kmele Foster: “Slavery is an institution that is older than writing. It predates capitalism. The notion that white supremacy and all these other things are bound up with capitalism in an intrinsic and fundamental way is so absurd and laughable, it barely needs to be defended.”
Jemele Hill: “How was it absurd?”
Kmele Foster: “It barely needs to be defended.”
Jemele Hill: “What do you mean it barely needs to be defended?”
Kmele Foster: “You actually have to articulate what the connections is. How are these two things the same? I'm talking about private property, the right to exchange and sell with whomever you like. What does that have to do with white supremacy?… What is the white supremacy dynamic of private property?”
Matt Ryan retweeted
This is what an actual autocracy looks like.
Matt Ryan retweeted
Charlie was murdered in the middle of a debate with people who hate him while wearing a shirt that said "freedom." He died defending Chappelle's right to be offensive. And Chappelle thanks him by reveling in his death.
But as offensive as that is, none of us who knew and loved Charlie want Chappelle to suffer the same fate. We don't want Chappelle dead, and we wouldn't "feel better" if someone murdered him. That's not how we respond to speech that offends us because we're not bloodthirsty lunatics.
If you're laughing about Charlie's murder, or feeling good about Charlie's murder, you're acting within your rights. You're free to be sadistic. But that's exactly what you are. Your soul is sick. The only thing I wish for you is that you'd come to realize it — before it's too late — and beg for God's forgiveness.
Matt Ryan retweeted
I genuinely don't get how over 100 Christians can be massacred by Islamists in the past week alone and nobody seems to care.
Matt Ryan retweeted
These are among the most influential liberals in America today, and their party now runs a significant portion of the country.
Matt Ryan retweeted
Its not an exaggeration to say thousands of Americans will die of fentanyl overdoses because of this.
Texas Gov-Elect Hinojosa likely will pull most or all of Texas state police, Texas National Guard, and intelligence assets from the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border if she still believes her past policy positions. Today, Texas provides an important second line of defense backing up Border Patrol. Trump will need to compensate but should be able to hold the line against runners and drug smugglers. But in two years when he’s gone? Also don’t expect Texas cooperation with ICE to make arrests in a state with the second highest illegal alien population in the nation.
Matt Ryan retweeted
I think it’s safe to assume the President receives better intel than any of us. There was a genuine (and likely true) belief that Iran would have nuclear weapons if we didn’t act.
He knew the political risk. He knew the consequences were even likely.
He did it anyway, and said he’d do it again.
Respect. 🫡 🇺🇸
If you were one of the people saying "this war is going to be politically catastrophic, it's going to be seen as a betrayal by the base, Trump made a huge mistake going in" you should feel vindicated today
But if you were one of the people saying "this war is substantively catastrophic! Tens of thousands of Americans will die! You should go vote for Democrats to punish Trump!" you should recognize that you were hurting, not helping - and nothing about the political fallout vindicates your analysis
Matt Ryan retweeted
And you thought you were voting against war.
Matt Ryan retweeted
History was made last night.
For months, we were saying that 2026 was the most consequential midterm election of our lifetimes.
Unfortunately, we were right. Sometimes history is to be celebrated; other times, it is to be mourned. Always, it must be reckoned with.
2026 was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an ass kicking. It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation. What happened, and why? What are the consequences, and where on earth do we go from here?
When all the votes were counted, the problem wasn’t turnout. Instead, our voters, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, showed up and voted, and rejected our candidates, voting Democrat instead. We’ve lost the House. We’ve lost the Senate. When all is said and done, we will have lost eight to 10 Senate seats.
We lost in historically red states, like South Carolina and North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. We lost in purple states, like Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Georgia. And we just barely won by just a single point in bright red states like Florida and Louisiana, and then there’s Texas.
Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas. In the Lone Star State, we lost every single statewide election. For weeks, I had been publicly warning on this podcast that we were in very real danger of losing everything in Texas. Far too few believed that was possible. I am very, very sorry that it came to pass. Texas has not had a Democrat governor since 1994. We haven’t had a Democrat senator since 1993. Now we’ll have both.
Why were the results so overwhelming? Pundits and analysts will break down the results for weeks or months or even years to come, but several things are already evident today.
Years ago, the very best political advice I ever got was from Heidi. She said, “It’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about their kids, their families, their hopes, their dreams, their futures.” Too many politicians forget that.
Take the state of Kansas, for example, a state that has not elected a Democrat senator since 1932. It just did. Here’s what exit polling showed were the top issues in Kansas.
Number one, cost of living, energy, and groceries. That was listed as number one by 30.6 percent of voters.
Corruption. Number two, 18.5%.
The cost of the Iran war, 10.1%.
The candidates are terrible, 7.9%.
The Canada trade war, 7.6%.
The GOP didn’t do enough to support Trump, 6.6%.
Republicans didn’t pass the Save America Act, 5.6%.
Trump’s focus on monuments, 5.5%, and data centers and AI, 3.8%.
The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it. They didn’t understand. They pointed to the macro numbers showing the stock markets soaring, median income at record highs, and poverty at record lows. Those data are true, but they don’t tell all of the story.
Here are some stats that are a lot more real and personal. Spam, Hormel’s processed meat substitute, broke record sales, selling 113 million cans last year. That is nearly as much spam as was sold during the entirety of World War II. 29 percent of Americans have used buy now, pay later for groceries this year. That’s double the share just two years ago.
In August, banks repossessed 42% more homes than they did last year. In 2024, car repossessions topped 2.3 million, above the 2009 peak in the middle of the Great Financial Crisis. In 2025, 6% of 401k holders took hardship withdrawals, paying penalties. That is a record, and triple the norm.
And here’s one that’s really stunning. Americans made more than 75 million paid plasma donations in 2026. That’s another record. That means 200,000 Americans every single day, with a needle in their arm, just to pay for groceries.
That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care. Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high.
Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over. It needs to end, and we should never, under any circumstances, give the Ayatollah billions of dollars.
There’s a very real economic disconnect. Our K-shaped economy is a yawning divide. Last year, we saw the world’s very first trillionaire, a modern-day Thomas Edison, at the very same time that millions were struggling to feed their families. Data centers being constructed were turning billionaires into centibillionaires, while simultaneously the average American’s electricity bill went up 30% in the last five years.
Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain.
So, what do we do now? We need to listen and respond. We need to champion economic policies that make a real difference in working people’s lives, and we need to deal with the consequences.
Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter. But Texas, today at least, is blue. As we sit here today, I am the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas. That’s not something I ever thought I would say.
We can be certain that the Democrats in Austin and in Washington will overshoot. In Texas, they will try to raise taxes dramatically. They may even try to adopt a state income tax, or even a California wealth tax. They will try to shut down the energy industry, destroying jobs across our state. They will embrace the radical transgender agenda. They will persecute those they perceive to be enemies, especially Elon Musk.
And in Washington, they will attack Trump every single day, constantly. Impeachment hearings, subpoenas, his family, cabinet members, business leaders, open persecution, and nonstop retaliation. Make no mistake. Nationally, the radicals are in charge. The communists and the Islamists who have taken over the Democrat Party have now taken over the United States Congress. They will be unleashed.
Sadly, that means many Americans will be hurt. Texans will be hurt. Their assault on business will make Texas a much less attractive place to start or grow a small business. Texas will become more like California if they succeed in halting all new investment into AI.
The economic results will be dramatic. Over $700 billion in new projects are scheduled to start in the next year. If the Democrats shut them all down, our country will very likely go into a recession. That will suit the Democrats just fine. They’ll just blame it all on Donald Trump.
In the next two years, we need to do two things.
One, fight the madness. I will work with Democrats when they’re willing to be reasonable. Last night, I called James Talarico. I congratulated him on his very impressive victory. It was a pleasant conversation, and I told him that I looked forward to working with him to try to benefit Texas.
So, if there are things like flood relief for the Hill Country, or trying to get the space academy to Texas, he and I will work together. But if the newly elected radicals push policies that hurt Texas, raising taxes, destroying jobs, opening the border, releasing violent criminals, threatening our children, undermining our constitutional rights, I will fight with all of my strength to defend Texas and to defend the Constitution.
And number two, we need to rebuild, getting behind policies that directly benefit the constituents we lost.
There’s a complicated story, no doubt, of what happened on Election Day, but as I see it, the key constituencies we lost were blue-collar voters, what had rightly become the core base of our party, Evangelical Christians, who didn’t show up with the same numbers and fervor as prior elections, farmers and ranchers. Tragically, we alienated rural America. Young people, who excitedly had voted Republican in 2024, and who shifted hard blue this cycle. And of course, Hispanics.
For Hispanics, there’s a strong overlap with young people and blue-collar workers. In 2024, just two years ago, I was proud to carry Hispanics statewide in Texas by six points, and we swung the Rio Grande Valley red for the first time in a century. It can be done, but in this election, those Hispanic voters overwhelmingly went back Democrat. We have got to turn that around.
And for young people, we need to be the party of the future. We need to champion policies that expand their future. Our two single biggest legislative accomplishments of the past two years, Trump Accounts and the school choice tax credit, which will unleash tens of billions of dollars in new scholarships for kids, are generationally powerful. I was proud to author both of those transformational policies, and yet too few candidates all across the country ran on that record.
Too few voters were even aware of what we’d accomplished for their kids and their future. But we need to build. We need to expand to continue creating a new investor class for hundreds of millions of Americans, help everyone, every American, become an owner, to have real skin in the game, to create new generations of capitalists ready to reject socialism.
People voted as they did because they were angry. Ironically, the Democrats that they elected are going to advance policies that will make affordability worse. The Democrats want gas prices higher. They want to ban gasoline engines altogether. Their extreme environmental mandates will drive up food prices and the prices of everything else.
But hear me now: we will bring Texas back. I am filled with hope and optimism. Texas will be red again. We have not suddenly become a bunch of tofu-eating, gun-banning, tutu-wearing pinko commie liberals. That ain’t us. Texas is still Texas.
We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives. The way we built the Texas economic miracle in the first place, and we will build and rebuild America as well.
When the zealots overreach, and they will, we will stand ready to lead in the direction of freedom, of prosperity, of safety, and security, and common sense. We will return to a new dawn of freedom in America.
It is dark right now, but it is always darkest before the dawn, and morning is coming. That is my fervent prayer, and that is my commitment to you.
Matt Ryan retweeted
Regardless of what anyone thinks of the Iran war, a president saying he would do what he thinks is right for the country regardless of short term political fallout is very refreshing.
.@POTUS: "I think it's largely true because it drove the gasoline up... At the same time, if I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again because long-term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon."
Matt Ryan retweeted
Understand the implications of what happened in Texas last night.
Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one.
Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas.
Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a “dog and pony show” and “political theater”.
Remember when 15,000 Haitians surged illegally into Del Rio, TX in 2021 under the international bridge? That was only stopped because Texas DPS responded on Abbott’s orders and physically blocked further crossings by lining up their cruisers to form a wall. The Biden Border Patrol was caught off guard and offered almost no resistance, except for some horseback agents who were falsely slandered for “whipping”.
Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump’s border security measures, if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level, and they can order Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.
Matt Ryan retweeted
Last night is exactly why no President has dealt with Iran before now
We don't reward Presidents for acting in the best long-term interest of the country
We reward them for avoiding difficult decisions if it means we don't have to make any sacrifices during any given 2yr period
Matt Ryan retweeted
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Matt Ryan retweeted
Russell Westbrook learning his jersey is being retired by OKC is the best thing you’ll see all day.
(via @SuaveCEO_, h/t @Fullcourtpass)