The Midterm Battle Lines Have Been Drawn [WATCH]

Mike Steger is framing the upcoming midterm elections as a larger fight over American sovereignty, industrial strength and foreign policy, arguing that the country has spent decades trapped inside a global system that weakened domestic manufacturing, expanded foreign entanglements and eroded national borders.

“This isn’t an election; it’s a war to break our nation free from encirclement,” Steger said.

He argued that the election should not be viewed primarily through issues such as gas prices or the conflict with Iran, but as a decision over whether the United States will continue operating under international arrangements that he says have constrained the country for roughly 50 years.

“The press wants you to believe November is about gas prices and a war with Iran. It isn’t. It’s about the right of sovereign nations to build, not migrants to invade or globalist organizations to destroy,” Steger said.

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Steger identified trade policy as one of the first major fronts in that fight. He pointed to the decline in Michigan manufacturing employment, saying the state had more than 1 million manufacturing jobs in 1979 before losing roughly half of them over the next 30 years.

He blamed the 1988 free trade agreement with Canada and the adoption of NAFTA in 1994 for accelerating industrial losses across the Midwest.

“The promise was prosperity for all, but what the Midwest got was shuttered plants, towns hollowed out, and a generation of young men with no future,” Steger said.

He argued that trade liberalization was accompanied by increased cross-border trafficking involving drugs, weapons, and people controlled by cartels.

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Steger said President Donald Trump is now attempting to reverse that model through direct trade negotiations and tighter border enforcement. He pointed to the United States declining to renew the USMCA during its July 1 mandatory review and said Trump is negotiating directly with Mexico.

“For the first time since 1994, real North American trade is back on the table,” Steger said.

He also argued that the border situation has changed substantially.

“While at the border, the flood has stopped. No aliens have been released into our country for months,” Steger said.

The second front, according to Steger, is Europe and the European Union. He traced the development of the EU to the Maastricht Treaty signed in February 1992 and argued that the organization transformed a trading arrangement into a political union that weakened national sovereignty.

Steger said Trump’s approach favors individual European nations reclaiming power from Brussels.

“But if we break up the EU, the migration stops in minutes,” Steger said. “National sovereignty spreads throughout Europe, and so will the climate coal. It will perish.”

He argued that Germany and other European countries would return to policies focused on energy production, economic growth and national interests if the EU’s influence weakened.

Steger also pointed to political changes in Germany, saying the AfD had won two state elections during the month and had become the leading party nationally. He said similar political movements were growing in France and the United Kingdom.

“This is the second front,” Steger said.

The third major front, in Steger’s assessment, involves Russia and Ukraine. He argued that NATO expansion after the Cold War created conditions that eventually contributed to the war that began in February 2022.

Steger criticized the Biden administration’s approach and said Trump is instead pressing both Russia and Ukraine toward a negotiated settlement.

“Trump has refused to play along, he’s pressed both sides of this war towards a real settlement,” Steger said.

He pointed to Russian participation in the G20 Energy Summit in Houston and Trump’s invitation for Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 heads-of-state gathering in Miami in December.

“Business deals and energy cooperation are on the agenda, not just a ceasefire,” Steger said.

He then turned to Iran and the Middle East, arguing that the United States has repeatedly been drawn toward conflicts that threaten to become prolonged ground wars.

“Iran has sought a war with the United States since 1979, when they took 52 Americans hostage and threatened to kill all of them,” Steger said.

He said Trump’s strategy is designed to end the confrontation without giving Iran the large-scale American ground war he believes Tehran wants.

“Trump’s not going to give them what they wish,” Steger said.

Steger highlighted the Gaza ceasefire brokered in October 2025, followed by United Nations Security Council approval of Trump’s plan and the creation of the Board of Peace.

He said the organization recently unveiled a $2.5 billion Gaza reconstruction plan covering 66 projects involving rubble removal, electricity, water and hospitals.

“For the first time in generations, the future of Gaza isn’t being written by Hamas or Tehran,” Steger said.

He also said Trump has maintained a blockade on Iran rather than deploying American ground troops.

“But Trump has a full blockade of Iran, not ground troops,” Steger said.

Steger argued that defeating what he calls the system of “encirclement” would create the conditions for a major American economic expansion driven by artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing and energy development.

“We’re standing at the edge of the greatest productive revolution since the steam engine,” Steger said. “Super intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing-all of it coming home.”

He said productivity growth of 4% annually could raise living standards and help reduce the national debt without relying primarily on tax increases.

“Every American gets wealthier by doing more with less. That’s how prosperity has always worked,” Steger said.

Steger also connected the strategy to the Western Hemisphere, pointing to Venezuela and the Shield of the Americas, which he described as a coalition of 17 nations focused on combating cartels.

He argued that defeating cartel influence would open the region to expanded trade and investment.

“Because if we break the cartels, we don’t just save lives; we open an entire hemisphere to investment, trade, and growth from Buenos Aires to Detroit,” Steger said.

Steger cited declining overdose deaths, negative net migration, rising blue-collar wages, falling poverty, improving life expectancy, lower murder rates and rising household income as evidence that the broader strategy is already producing results.

He also compared the current moment to the period from 1870 to 1900, when the United States rapidly expanded industrial production through railroads, steel, energy and protective tariffs.

“It wasn’t built on cheap labor or clever finance. It was built on production,” Steger said.

He concluded by saying the midterms will determine whether the United States continues moving toward industrial expansion and national sovereignty or returns to the trade, immigration and foreign-policy systems he believes weakened the country.

“But this isn’t an election about issues. It’s a war to break free from the encirclement of the last 50 years that has suffocated the American dream, and to revive the American system,” Steger said.

“America has survived because we are a nation of citizen warriors.”

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