Trump’s Iran War Retreat: MAGA Backlash & Guilfoyle Scandal | TJ Walker

Ultimize. Breaking news, and I'm making it official since the Pentagon won't. America has lost the war with Iran. Not paused, not repositioned, lost. Somewhere a guy in a red hat is printing Mission Accomplished shirts with a very tiny not in front. Donald Trump just retreated from his own war, and the New York Times has the receipts. 7 months after Trump launched major combat operations against Iran, the Times reports he and Pete Hegseth have been forced to pull back American forces sent to the Middle East and Britain as a deterrent. Oil just jumped back to $104 a barrel. I get the appeal of this war. Iran's regime is dangerous, and plenty of Americans wanted a president tough enough to confront it. As a results coach, I love a bold goal, but Check the results. Gas went up, up, up. Our closest ally stopped taking our calls. Trump's own counterterrorism chief quit, saying Iran wasn't an imminent threat. It's like your fire chief resigning because you keep hosing down the parking lot. Trump promised peace through strength. He delivered retreat through stupidity. I can't prove Trump works for Vladimir Putin, but if he does, Putin owes him a raise, and if he doesn't, that's worse. He did all of this for free. Let's be clear about how dumb this war was. Historians rank wars by what they were fought for: independence, ending slavery, stopping Hitler. This one? Content. Nobody asked for it. Democrats didn't want it. Independents didn't want it. Tucker Carlson went on his own podcast and apologized for misleading people into voting for Trump. When Tucker Carlson is the conscience of your war, your war is in hospice. Trump couldn't even keep the goal straight. In February, he said regime change in Iran would be the best thing that could happen. By June, he said he never cared about regime change. That's not foreign policy. That's a man at the bar telling everyone he never liked his ex anyway. The sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln spent more than 260 straight days at sea without a port call. Their reward? Pete Hegseth welcomed them home with a rant about the media calling it a failed mission. 260 days at sea, and the first thing they hear on dry land is a former Fox weekend host doing crowd work. I assume several asked to go back. And Trump keeps pitching himself for the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming he settled 8 wars. Sir, you're currently losing a 9th. That's Bernie Madoff asking for a financial literacy award. So how do we get here? Remember 2024? Trump spent a fortune on ads warning that Kamala Harris was for they/them. Millions of Americans were so terrified of a stranger's pronouns that they handed nuclear codes to a man whose only pronoun is me. Congratulations, nobody in your house will ever be called they. You'll just pay $100 to fill up the truck. Speaking of wars nobody could have started, let's visit the most vicious battlefield in America, diet Instagram. Influencer Emily Gellis has to post a public apology to F-Factor Diet founder Tanya Zuckerbrot, and the New York Times reports the punishment including pinning it to the top of her Instagram. Pinned. For an influencer, that's not an apology, that's a scarlet letter with a ring light. Fashion influencer Emily Gillis just lost her 6-year war with the queen of the F-Factor diet, and the punishment is perfect. Back in 2020, Gillis posted more than 4,500 Instagram stories and posts about F-Factor founder Tanya Zuckerbrot in 75 days. That's 60 a day. I don't post 60 times a week about anything I love. My wife gets one anniversary post a year, and my analytics team says it underperformed. I understand why people cheered Gillis. The diet industry deserves scrutiny, and standing up for customers feels heroic. But in the reported settlement, Gillis pays $240,000 and admits her campaign was not grounded in verified facts. That's the most honest sentence ever posted on Instagram. It should come with a filter. This wasn't a whistleblower, it was a fire hose. And now the apology sits at the top of her page forever, right above her sponsored post. Finally, an influencer post that's actually true. Zuckerbrot says the lawsuit turned up fewer than 100 complaints. Her lawsuit says her business fell from over $1 million a month to under 90,000. Let me be clear, there are no heroes here. On one side, a fashion influencer who appointed herself Surgeon General of Instagram. On the other, a diet empire selling fiber bars and the dream that you can eat carbs and still fit into your jeans. That's not a feud, that's 2 infomercials in a knife fight. But here's the line, and it matters: in America, you're allowed to spread nonsense about vaccines, unfortunately, elections, and whether the moon landing happened. That's protected. Tell lies about one specific person that wreck her business, that's defamation. There's still a line. I hope this becomes a deterrent, and I hope that the next one costs a lot more than a slap on the wrist. Make every influencer who lies about a real person pin the apology. Instagram becomes one giant wall of shame, which would be its first useful feature. Full disclosure, I'm a personal development influencer. I sell online courses. My lawyer watched this segment and asked me to pre-pin an apology just in case. Would you like to be the sort of successful person who is dominating news, at least in your industry? Well, if so, it's time to up your skills. At ultimize.com, I've created online courses to help you do that. Now, here's the thing, no obligation. You can get a free course on communication skills, a free course on how to build better habits. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. No obligation. Go there now. Speaking of people who say nasty things about strangers' bodies, Donald Trump flew to San Antonio this week to campaign for Ken Paxton. It was his 3rd trip to Texas in less than a month. Texas. A Republican spending that much time saving Texas is like Colonel Sanders going door to door in Kentucky begging people to try chicken. The rally got interrupted at least 6 times. The first heckler was yanked to the ground by a man in a MAGA hat, and Trump looked out at the scene and asked, is there anything like a Trump rally? Well, no, sir. Most rallies don't need a hair-pulling referee. For the next protester, Trump said, That guy's got to lose a lot of weight. Well, Mr. President, we just covered this. That'll run you $240 grand and a pinpost. Then he claimed the protesters were paid by enemies of our nation. Hmm, paid by our enemies. Sir, we already have established that if anyone's working for our enemies, he's doing it for free. Next heckler: they're getting smaller. Next one: the Those are really bad-looking people. And the crowd chanted, we love you, Daddy Trump. As a relationship coach, I recognize this dynamic. When the crowd calls you daddy and you're calling strangers fat and ugly, that's not a rally, that's a custody hearing. Donald Trump's own voters are telling the New York Times he's lost them. The Times went to western Michigan, deep, deep Trump country. Here's a quote. He's not making sense. Who said that? Nancy Pelosi? AOC? No, Jim Paschek, 80 years old, voted for Trump twice. When one 80-year-old says another 80-year-old isn't making sense, that's not criticism, that's peer review. Paschek says Trump started a war he promised not to start and cares more about ballrooms than gas prices. I understand why people love Trump. He promised to fight for them. They didn't realize he meant fight Britain. Here's another quote. Very low energy. Who said that? Jeb Bush finally getting revenge? No, that was Doug Koopman of the Kent County Republican Executive Committee describing his own party. Volunteers won't even take the campaign flyers. The stacks are just sitting at headquarters. Trump's base isn't flipping, it's napping. And remember, Trump says the protesters are paid. Turns out his own volunteers won't do it for free either. Analyst Charlie Cook has a name for this: the red undertow. A Times/Siena poll found 61% of Democrats are absolutely certain to vote versus only 56% of Republicans. 5 points in a close race. That's not a gap. That's a sinkhole. Normally, I'd fix a motivation problem, set goals, track habits, make a vision board. But what goes on a MAGA vision board this year? A $100 tank of gas? A ballroom? A man in a MAGA hat holding a fistful of somebody's hair? Speaking of people who won't do anything for free, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump's ambassador to Greece and the former fiancée of Don Jr. is in big trouble. I use the word trouble loosely because in this administration, a scandal is a job interview. Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump's ambassador to Greece, reportedly begged, begged a Trump donor to pay her American Express bill. According to the Wall Street Journal, days before her confirmation hearing, Guilfoyle messaged donor Eric Detters, honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today. With a hands-folded emoji and a PDF of payment instructions. Even the fake toll road scam texts don't attach a PDF. She also reportedly wrote, it won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express. Kimberly, it's showing up everywhere. It's in the Wall Street Journal. Her lawyer disputes the messages, and I sympathize. Everyone has stared at an Amex bill and felt fear. But the Journal says Detters wanted help with tax and legal problems, and he turned her down because he said he'd lose his wife. Sink in. The only functioning ethics office in all of Trump world is Mrs. Detters. Someone make that woman ambassador to Greece. Detters, by the way, is a lawyer and former co-owner of Snappy Tomato Pizza. So in this story, the moral high ground belongs to a pizza guy. The Journal says he promised Guilfoyle up to $1 million if she used her Trump connections to help him, and she told him she was lobbying the Justice Department on his behalf. She also reportedly wrote, do not say we have an arrangement, which is exactly what you write when you have an arrangement. And what a nightmare, you'll literally cost me my ambassadorship. My prediction, she keeps the job. This is a one-day story. If anything, she gets promoted because this is the Trump model. Hire someone unqualified, hand her a title, although it's usually him a title, and watch her try to cash in on it. That's not a bug of this administration. That's the feature. It's the entire operating system. The embassy says she's guided by deep and abiding values. Currently accepting wire transfers. Full disclosure, back in 2008, I was a regular guest on a Fox News show Kimberly hosted. I sat about 10 inches from her. I'm on TV, so hey, I wear makeup too. A light professional dusting. Kimberly's was not a dusting. It was a renovation. I've seen drywall with less spackle. I remember thinking, that's not foundation. That's a foundation you could build a Trump Tower on. I have to confess, she scared me then. She scares me now. The difference is now she has a diplomatic passport. So here's the Trump world this week. The president loses a war for free. His volunteers won't hand out flyers for free, and his ambassador won't do anything for free. Honey, please. Please. I'm TJ Walker. See you tomorrow. Ultimize.