“You Know Who You Are”: The Empire Trump Didn’t Have to Name

The Gulf’s trillions used to land in London. Not anymore. The strait that stopped mattering, the “grassroots” that turned out to be billionaires — and your 10-to-15-person assignment before November.

“You Know Who You Are”: The Empire Trump Didn’t Have to Name
President Trump delivers remarks at the David S. Mack Center for Training and Intelligence in Garden City, New York, Friday, August 14, 2026.

Wednesday night, President Trump announced “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY.”

The media covered the Iran half. Then they stopped reading — one sentence too early.

Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — it all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are.
— President Trump, Truth Social

Trump didn’t put a name on the address line. He didn’t have to. Barbara spent two hours filling it in: the empire whose flag flew over the Middle East for a century — and whose London banks the Gulf’s trillions used to flow through, before Trump redirected them to America.

Susan had a family obligation this week, so the man who preps this show from the back end every week stepped in front of the camera: Bruce Director, Promethean Action board member and chief scientist.

Two hours with Barbara and Bruce: why the Strait of Hormuz stopped mattering, what the Mecca Pact replaces, who actually funds America’s “socialist grassroots” — and the one assignment that outranks everything else between now and November.

The enemy wouldn’t be acting so crazy if they were winning.
— Bruce Director

REPLAY — Thursday, August 20th

What Flag Flew Over the Middle East Ten Years Ago?

Barbara’s frame for the whole week: ten years ago, anyone who knew history could tell you whose flag really flew over the Middle East. The UK’s.

That’s what just ended. The UAE — the center of Iran’s financial transactions — left OPEC and cut all ties with Tehran. Barbara’s words: a crippling blow.

All of that Gulf money, which is currently coming into the United States in the trillions to invest in our development, used to go to banks in London. Are you getting the bigger picture in terms of what’s really going on in this war?
— Barbara Boyd

And the Mecca Pact: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan — the biggest-moving economies in the Muslim world — underwriting their own security and Gaza’s development, with Trump cheering it on. Bruce put it in sequence: Hamas agreeing to disarm, Lebanon disarming Hezbollah, Syria cutting Iran’s land route — every piece of the Board of Peace clicking into place.

You don’t make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies.
— Bruce Director, quoting Rabin and Peres at Oslo

The Kissinger doctrine kept the region divided, dependent, and at war for fifty years. Its replacement is being signed in Mecca — and financed in dollars.

Meet the Backend Intelligence Guy

Most viewers had never seen Bruce Director on camera. Barbara introduced him the way she knows him: “he’s our backend intelligence guy — really critical to me and Susan every single week.”

You got two hours of why. The Strait of Hormuz “leverage” everyone screamed about? Becoming less of a factor by the week — even the Iranians admit it. Gas prices? A refining-capacity problem — no new refineries in decades, the wrong crude, the Jones Act — and he expects them to keep falling into the fall.

If you want to save the country, stop getting the heebie-jeebies about this and that — go out and save the country.
— Bruce Director

A Jacobin Movement, Funded by Billionaires

Barbara went to the source: Antonio Gramsci, the patron saint of the DSA, who taught that revolution in the West requires destroying Western civilization first. Then the Pelosi deal Michael Shellenberger documented: keep the woke crusades — just drop the attacks on Wall Street.

Bruce added the receipts: Evan Barker, a Democrat fundraiser who rose through the progressive movement, now confessing in print that nearly all of it is financed by billionaires — hedge-fund heiresses, oil fortunes, Soros front companies.

You’re not looking at a grassroots movement. You’re looking at a bunch of Jacobins financed by billionaires who are out to destroy America — and they ain’t for the working class.
— Bruce Director

And the deeper history: Marx didn’t invent a movement. He inherited one — built by the same European financial elites who backed the Confederacy, to stop the American System from spreading.

10 to 15 People. That’s the Task.

Barbara ended where she began: everything else — the smears, the polls, the manufactured splits — is designed to demoralize the people who delivered 2024.

You’re the people who delivered 2024 in an election which was too big to rig. And you gotta do it again — except even bigger.
— Barbara Boyd

Don’t take the bait. Get your 10 to 15 committed. Start now.

🎓 This Saturday: AI, Data Centers, and the Real Physical Economy

Barbara announced it on air: Bruce Director and Brian Lantz teach this Saturday’s class on the breakthroughs in AI and the truth about data centers — what they are, why we need them, and what physical AI makes possible. If Donna’s question is on your mind too, this is the answer in full. Join us live tomorrow.


Next Midterm Bootcamp — Monday, August 24th, 8pm Eastern

Barbara’s answer to “how do I actually get 10 to 15 people” isn’t a slogan — it’s a standing Monday-night working session. Bring the problems you’re hitting; they feed directly into the literature and door tags Promethean PAC produces.

See you Thursday.

Adam Sturman
Producer, Promethean Action
https://x.com/AdamSturman23

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