Erick Erickson explains what the media is getting wrong about President Trump cutting back joint military exercises with South Korea: the real driver is a Seoul government drifting toward China, not an attempt to woo Kim Jong-un, and Trump keeps undermining a defensible decision with his own social media. He walks through Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column on Trump's collapsing approval numbers and lame duck status, the JD Vance camp's "America in decline" argument against Marco Rubio's case for American strength, and why Ronald Reagan beat Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter's politics of managed decline. Then the story he refused to chase until now: Admiral Brad Cooper's Wall Street Journal piece on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the fake videos seeded by Iranian propaganda, and the planned rotation of the USS George Washington that the press recast as a crisis.

• Trump, Kim Jong-un, and the South Korea drills: the China concerns inside the US military and intelligence community that nobody is reporting
• Peggy Noonan on Trump's 39 percent approval, The Economist's 34 to 61 poll, and a president who is now a lame duck
• JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and the fight over whether America is in decline or should lead again, with Reagan versus Kissinger, Carter, and Brzezinski
• Terry McAuliffe and Rahm Emanuel tell Democrats to stop fighting the socialists as the DSA wears the party like a skin suit
• USS Abraham Lincoln: Admiral Brad Cooper's report, Iranian propaganda videos, the crippled Bahrain base, and Erick's childhood hosting the Fifth Fleet in Dubai