(DCNF)—British MSNBC contributor Katty Kay on Monday pondered why former President Donald Trump has the right to speak openly about the Democrat-led prosecutions he has faced.
Trump has consistently spoken out about the cases against him, characterizing them as “election interference” and a “sham.” Kay on “Morning Joe” questioned MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade about why Trump is able to make these remarks and what dangers this ability may pose.
WATCH:
MSNBC Contributor Wonders Why Trump Is 'Allowed' To Speak Freely About Dem-Led Prosecutions pic.twitter.com/mtuQBM8p6w
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 10, 2024
“Somebody actually just last week from the U.K. was asking me, ‘how is it that Donald Trump can stand outside the courtroom and say the system was rigged, this was a sham trial, it was a corrupt judge?’ … What he was suggesting is that in the U.K., you wouldn’t be allowed to say that because it’s a danger, there … to the system itself, that it is a form of incitement to violence, but I guess here it’s a free speech issue. We’ve also seen the former president say that there was this huge raid in Mar-a-Lago and that they came in kind of guns blazing as it were, suggesting that, again, that’s the way that they went into Mar-a-Lago was exactly as they should have gone into Mar-a-Lago. The FBI. What is the danger of when he says things like that? And why is he allowed to say things like that?” Kay asked.
Trump is still under a gag order, imposed by Judge Juan Merchan in his Manhattan trial in the case brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg where a jury found him guilty. The order prevents the former president from making public statements about witnesses, prosecutors other than the district attorney, court staff and jurors, as well as family members of the staff, district attorney or judge.
“Well first, let’s talk about why he’s allowed to say things like that. I believe he is someone, like others, who actually exploits our First Amendment to free speech,” McQuade said. “He knows where the lines are. He goes right up to them. Sometimes he tiptoes over them. But mostly, he includes a few throwaway lines to try to keep within the boundaries. Here in the United States, we have a cherished First Amendment right to free speech, even ugly speech, even sometimes dangerous speech. And the Supreme Court has placed the bar on what becomes criminal or prohibited speech really quite high,” McQuade answered.
“The court … held that speech may only be prohibited in that dangerous situation where there is an intent to cause imminent lawless action and a likelihood of causing that result,” McQuade added. “Now, I think there’s an argument that that bar was crossed on January 6th. But when Donald Trump says these things at the courthouse, it may be planting ideas in people’s minds, but it’s probably not rising to that level of imminent lawless action. But what does it do? What is the outcome of that? It does have an effect, as you mentioned, especially, let’s take that example of Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump falsely claimed not only that the FBI came in with guns blazing but they planted false evidence in his home … When these things are said, it may be that many people roll their eyes, some people may believe it, but there are people out there who will take that as a call to action. And we know that based on past experiences. So it is incredibly reckless simply to utter these phrases.”
An MSNBC panel in May burst into laughter about Trump’s inability to conduct a typical reelection campaign because of the gag order hindering his speech, linking the order to the former president’s upcoming debate with President Joe Biden where microphones will be shut off during the other candidate’s speaking time.
“Donald Trump does have some experience with having his mic cut off. Which is he’s been sitting in court and wanting very badly to respond to everything with his mic cut off,” NBC News senior national politics reporter Jonathan Allen said, prompting laughter from his fellow panelists. “So it’ll be interesting to see if he’s able to do that in a debate. But he has definitely had his mouth shut over the course of the last several weeks.”
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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.
