WHEN THE TRUMP DOJ GOT A MEXICAN DRUG LORD TO APOLOGIZE
🚨 “El Chapo’s” Sinaloa Cartel Co-Founder, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, has pled guilty to operating a continuing criminal enterprise and to RICO charges.
“His guilty plea brings us one step closer to achieving our goal: the elimination of the drug cartels and the… pic.twitter.com/7AUHrKJgCa— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) August 25, 2025
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Monday, August 25
In a watershed moment for the war on drugs, one of the most elusive and powerful drug lords in modern history — Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada GarcĂa, 77, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel — stood before a U.S. federal judge and admitted guilt.  Cartel bosses don’t typically apologize, but in court, El Mayo did just that:“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done. ... I apologize and take responsibility for my actions.”
Perhaps the most explosive part of Zambada’s plea was his acknowledgement of systemic bribery.  He admitted paying politicians, generals, and police officers to shield cartel operations.U.S. officials have long suspected pervasive corruption in Mexico but lacked testimony from someone at the top.  El Mayo’s admission undercuts decades of denials from high-level officials about bribery in Mexico.
His testimony also forces D.C. policymakers to grapple with the uncomfortable truth: Billions in U.S. taxpayer aid have gone to a country where officials have worked hand in glove with the cartels.
BEWARE YOUR NORMAL
First of all, let me apologize to everyone, and most particularly the editorial team for my hiatus recently. I had several things going on and several articles in the works, and each time I felt like I was making headway, something would happen in the world to push me in another direction.
One of the pitfalls that, I believe, ordinary people have when trying to predict or understand the possibilities of how others will act in the future is them thinking that those other people will process and view the world as they do. It’s easy to do. When we try to imagine others, we tend to nuance that with our own outlooks and the circle of people we know as a benchmark, of sorts.
But most of us TTP readers are, probably, more or less, on a normal baseline with like-minded conservatives; and therein lies the problem.
War story time.
COULD TRUMP WIN A HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENT IN SYRIA AND LEBANON?
To paraphrase Winston the Wolf from Pulp Fiction, let's not start shaking each other's hands quite yet. American presidents since Harry Truman have tried to establish Middle East peace as their legacy.
We could stretch that back another half-century if we include British and French leaders, for that matter. That even includes Trump 45, who came close with the Abraham Accords.
By the time Trump returned to office, Israel was in the middle of fighting a war started by Hamas and joined by Hezbollah and Iran. However, Trump has built enough momentum settling a half-dozen other conflicts -- as well as helping Israel take Iran out of the war -- that his influence in the region has hit a new zenith.
Axios' Barak Ravid reported ereyesterday (8/25) that Trump may leverage that into a spectacular advance toward a real peace in the region, one that will further isolate Iran's proxies and end their hegemonic ambitions for good:
THE ARIRANG MASS GAMES IN NORTH KOREA
The spectacle takes place in the fall at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang. I attended in 2010 and 2012. It has to be seen to be believed. You’re looking at 10,000 dancers, acrobats and performers on the stadium floor. The background screen of a rising sun and Korean letters is a “card stunt,” 30,000 students holding colored cards composing it.
The number “65” is for the 65th anniversary of the surrender of Imperial Japan in World War II (August 15, 1945 – I took this photo in 2010), their Liberation Day (our V-J Day). The snowy mountain depicted below the 65 is Mount Paekdu, where all North Koreans are taught their country’s founder Kim Il-sung defeated the Japanese and won the war (he was actually at a Soviet army camp near Khabarovsk, Siberia at the time).
They are never taught a word about the events a few days prior to their Liberation Day (i.e. Hiroshima and Nagasaki), nor to whom the Japanese surrendered. Hands down, NorkLand is the world’s most bizarre country. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #88 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
GRAND ESCALANTE STAIRCASE
As you can see, this place is aptly named. It is simply phantasmagorical – nature on LSD. Then again, so much of southern Utah is too, for close by Escalante are the Vermillion Cliffs, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, Monument Valley and a lot more.
The entire area is Navaho country, so it is no surprise their native religion is based on peyote, a cactus containing the hallucinogen, mescaline, with the Navaho belief that nature surrounding them was designed by the Peyote Bird.
However, it is not necessary to take any hallucinogen to achieve a sense of ecstasy being here – just a deep appreciation of what a wondrous world – a breathtaking world – it is that we are all privileged to be alive in. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #180 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
DESPERATE DEMS TRY TO TALK LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE
Talking points are out instructing Democrats to stop using terms like “birthing person” and “LGBTQIA+” and to begin talking again like Normal People.
First the details, then I’ll get to why this is so glorious…
Third Way, a leftist think tank that poses as moderate, released a memo Friday (8/22) calling on Democrats “Who Wish to Stop Donald Trump and MAGA” to stop using “words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.”
The Third Way’s blacklist is broken down into six categories, then an array of blacklisted terms. This is fantastic for two reasons.
WHAT MADE THE DEMOCRAT PARTY GO CRAZY?
The answer was not Trump alone.
Indeed, irony abounds when Democrats resonate with the claims of the vestigial Never Trumpers that the MAGA movement “hijacked” the Republican Party.
In characteristic projectionist fashion, the left is simply falsely attributing to their opposition the very hijacking that hit the Democrat Party.
But while the public knows how the left/Democrat agenda is imploding, they are confused over why the Democrat Party is hellbent on such nihilist missions.
Why did Democrats become unrecognizable to the middle class, and who is responsible for their collective self-destruction?
There are four root causes of the wreckage of the Democrat Party.
THE REGALEIRA INITIATION WELL
Do an internet search for “25 Most Mysterious Places on Earth” or similar listing, and almost always the Regaleira Initiation Well in Sintra, Portugal will be there. Since the photo is almost always looking from the top down, I thought you might like to see one from the bottom up, which is just as dramatic.
The Regaleira is a spectacular Gothic mansion with acres of gorgeous gardens built by a 19th century Portuguese-Brazilian millionaire, Carvalho Monteiro (1848-1920). I love it that his exotic eccentric extravaganza, his Regaleira Palace, was built by private capitalist with his own money – not some feudal king with money extracted from the peasantry.
I took this picture with fellow TTPers on one of our Portugal Explorations. Portugal really is a land of wonders, which I hope you’ll someday experience with Rebel and me yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #167, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE MYTHS THAT MADE PUTIN’S WAR
The remains of a burnt-out Russian tank in a vegetable garden in Velyka Dymerka, Kyiv
[My A Short History of Russia was first written for President Reagan and his National Security Council in January 1985, first published on TTP in March 2004, and as an Archive in February 2024 to expose Putin’s myth of Russia’s history in his interview with Tucker Carlson. Here is distinguished historian Timothy Snyder exposing that myth on a much deeper level.]
Vladimir Putin, the author of the worst war of our century, believes that an ancient priestly chronicle sanctifies the endless bloodshed. The truth about that work of art, The Tale of Bygone Years, helps us to see the truth about Russia’s war.
Its hero, the Danish chieftain Rørek, leads us to another work of art, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. We will need the art to get at the tragedy. Putin is a cynical man, a master of post-truth politics. But at the bottom of the deepest cynicism can often be found one very naive idea.
Putin’s is that Russia has an ancient, unbroken and holy past that includes Ukraine.
The Tale, a hodgepodge assembled by medieval Kyiv monks in the early 1100s, became for him a kind of prophecy. In a pre-invasion text of his own and in a long interview with Tucker Carlson last year, Putin presents the life of Rørek as the starting point of a sacred history in which Russia, 900 years later, must invade Ukraine.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – AT THE NORTH POLE WITH MY 10 YEAR-OLD SON
April, 2003. On my 21st expedition to 90 North, the geographic North Pole, I took my son Jackson. He was nine, but handled it like a trooper. And no wonder – it was his third time! The first was when he was just six, following his brother Brandon whom I had taken to the Pole back in 1990.
We landed our ski-equipped Twin Otter on the sea ice – and as it’s featureless with the ice slowly moving on the Arctic Ocean surface, nothing stays there for long. So if you want a physical candy-stripe North Pole, you have to bring your own! It is so indescribable to actually be on the very top of our planet that it has to be experienced to be understood. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #95 photo ©Jack Wheeler)