China’s Phony Diplomatic Narrative Doesn’t Square With Its Escalating Aggression

Chuck DeVore reporting for The Federalist 

As America, and much of the world, remains focused on conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to ramp up its bellicose actions in the South China Sea and in the waters and airspace around Taiwan.

The PRC’s use of water cannons — capable of inflicting fatal injuries — against Philippine resupply vessels seeking to reach a Philippine outpost in Philippine waters; engaging in dangerous maneuvers at sea and in the air; and aggressively employing “gray-zone” tactics with hundreds of maritime militia boats, the PRC is aiming to wear down its opponents short of open warfare.

It might be working.  

The most recent incident adding to the litany of dangerous Chinese provocations involves the use of sonar by a Chinese warship against Australian Navy divers. The divers, clearing fishing nets from the HMAS Toowoomba’s propellers in international waters, were subjected to sonar pulses from a nearby Chinese destroyer, causing minor injuries. Despite the Chinese warship being warned about the divers, the Chinese vessel continued to aim its sonar pulses at the divers, an action labeled as “unsafe and unprofessional” by Australian officials.

Even so, left-wing Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declined to raise the incident with paramount leader Xi Jinping, raising questions about Australia’s non-existent diplomatic response to China’s actions​​.

A One-Sided Summit in San Francisco

In the meantime, as the PRC continues its aggression in the physical world, its diplomatic efforts spin a different narrative.

During Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s recent visit to San Francisco, he scored some points at very little cost. China agreed to restore military-to-military talks that benefit their military more than America’s, promised to crack down on fentanyl precursor shipments (where have we heard this before?), granted Mastercard approval of a joint venture to process payments in China, and restarted direct flights between Washington, D.C., and Beijing this week, the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic. For this, Xi was able to get full decoupling off the table for his struggling economy.

Importantly, Xi also said Beijing does not have plans for an invasion of Taiwan.

But in 2015, Xi promised President Barack Obama that “China does not intend to pursue militarization” of the South China Sea. A year later, that promise was shown to be a lie. This is a red flag for Taiwan.

In the meantime, in the South China Sea — a region claimed by China with a ridiculous Nine-Dash Line map dating, ironically enough, to Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalists in 1933 — the illegal Chinese claims stretch more than 700 nautical miles from Chinese territory, bumping up and over the sovereign waters of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei.

But, as George Costanza said on “Seinfeld,” “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” And in the meantime, the provocations will continue until war ensues.

China’s Strategic Use of Maritime Militia

In the South China Sea, tensions have been particularly acute between China and the Philippines. The Philippines has an outpost on a reef in waters that are not disputed, as some reports note, but are legally part of the Philippines, with China making an unlawful claim to them. Filipino fishermen have reported harassment and blocking by Chinese vessels in these waters, and the Philippines has accused China of aggressive actions, including using water cannons to obstruct supply missions to its troops stationed in the area​​​​.

China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea is exemplified by its use of the maritime militia, a paramilitary force disguised as civilian vessels. This force, along with the Chinese Coast Guard, engages in gray-zone tactics, pushing the envelope of aggressive behavior without provoking a full military response. Examples include the swarming of the Senkaku Islands and aggressive actions against Australian naval forces​​.

Disregard for International Law

China’s actions in the South China Sea, including its broad territorial claims, blatantly disregard international law. Despite a 2016 Hague ruling invalidating China’s fabricated “historic” claims, Beijing continues to assert its dominance, seeking control over this vital maritime area for strategic and economic benefits, such as trade route control and access to natural resources​​. In addition, portions of the South China Sea contain deep waters favored for operations by China’s strategic ballistic missile submarine force.

The actions of China in the South China Sea have significant regional and international implications. Countries like the Philippines have had to shift their military focus toward defending their borders and sovereignty. The involvement of major powers like the United States and Japan, both strengthening their defense ties to the Philippines, highlights the broader security implications of China’s actions​​.

China’s continued maritime provocations, from the use of its maritime militia to aggressive actions against nations like Australia and the Philippines, underscore a strategy that risks escalating to open conflict. These actions challenge not only regional stability but also international norms and laws.

The response from the international community, including affected nations and global powers, will be crucial in addressing these provocations, requiring a blend of assertiveness — including a self-defense response against offending Chinese warships or maritime militia — diplomacy, and adherence to international law. The risk of these provocations spiraling into conflict remains a pressing concern, as the stakes in the region continue to rise.

X22, And we Know, and more- Nov 29

 

Trad Catholic Family Dragged Out of Home at Gunpoint, Locked in Van After FBI ‘Goaded’ Teen to Post Offensive Memes,

by Debra Heine reporting for American Greatness

A traditional Catholic family was allegedly “dragged out of their home at gunpoint, handcuffed and locked in a van” earlier this year after the FBI “goaded” their 15-year-old son to post  “offensive memes” online. The teen, a volunteer firefighter and altar boy, was then hospitalized on mental health pretenses, according to his father, Jeremiah Rufini.

The FBI’s aggressive “investigation” only resulted in a misdemeanor conviction against the boy for breach of peace, but financially devastated the family with substantial legal expenses.

The FBI targeted the boy as part of a sting operation catfishing traditionalist Catholic teenagers with “extreme political content,” Rufini explained in the family’s GiveSendGo crowdfunding site. 

The family’s difficulties began early in 2023 when Rufini’s father became too ill from chemotherapy to work at the family business or care for his 93 year-old grandmother who lives in an in-law apartment at his home.

The home-schooled 15 year-old took on the responsibility of caring for his great grandmother until his father got home from work each day.

“It was a very stressful time, compounded by several unrelated deaths in the family that happened in the same time period,” Rufini explained. The long hours alone with his grandmother led the boy, equipped with a brand new cell phone, to become ensnared in an FBI scheme targeting trad Catholics.

None of our children, including my son, had been raised with cell phones or unrestricted internet access. It became necessary for him to have a phone so we could communicate while he was alone at my father’s house caring for my grandmother, and so we reluctantly allowed him to have a cell phone. He spent a lot of time alone with nothing to do but wait and think and the cell phone became a welcome distraction. His interests in history and theology led him down a rabbit hole where he was recruited into group chats targeting teenage traditionalist Catholics with extreme political content. We later learned that these chats were being closely monitored, and possibly operated by, FBI agents as part of an effort to investigate Traditional Catholics that was downstream of a broader domestic investigation spurred by the events of January 6th.

Indeed, since the early days of the Biden regime, the DOJ has executed a policy of treating traditional Catholics and pro-lifers like violent domestic extremists.

Back in April, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to FBI Director Christopher Wray after learning that the Bureau planned to enlist sources at traditionalist Catholic churches as well as “mainline” (Novus Ordo) Catholic parishes to inform on purportedly radicalized fellow parishioners.

“We have repeatedly sought information from the FBI relating to a January 23, 2023 document generated by the Richmond Field Office entitled ‘Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities’ (FBI’s Richmond document),” Jordan wrote.

The memo claimed that there was a link between “radical-traditionalist Catholics” and “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”

Last March, when news of the memo first broke, Wray told lawmakers that he was “aghast” upon discovering the memo’s existence, and that the FBI “took steps immediately to withdraw it and remove it from FBI systems.”

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked: “Attorney General, are you cultivating sources and spies in Latin mass parishes and other Catholic parishes around the country?”

“The Justice Department does not do that, it does not do investigations based on religion,” Garland responded. “I saw the document you have, it’s appalling, I’m in complete agreement with you. I understand that the FBI has withdrawn it and is now looking into how this could ever have happened.”

“I’ll tell you how it happened. This memorandum, which is supposed to be intelligence, cites extensively the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which goes on to identify all these different Catholics as being part of hate groups,” Hawley said. “Is this how the FBI under your direction and leadership does their intelligence work? They look at left-wing advocacy groups to target Catholics?!

Hawley added, “Is this what’s going on? Clearly it is. This is happening!”

“The FBI is not targeting Catholics, and as I’ve said, this is an inappropriate memorandum and it doesn’t reflect the methods the FBI is supposed to be using,” Garland insisted.

The FBI’s apparent entrapment operation into the young Rufini’s Catholic online chat group continued, however.

“My son is very stoic so we had no idea any of this was occurring,” Jeremiah Rufini explained. “He dutifully assisted my father during the day and went home in the evening while I took over at my father’s house.”

Unbeknownst to us, he was being drawn deeper and deeper into these chat groups and goaded into doing things like take pictures of himself in public wearing ski masks and to print out memes and leave them on picnic tables. They would ask him if he had access to guns (he would go target shooting under the supervision of my brother, who lived in an in-law apartment at our home and owned firearms) and encourage him to sneak photographs of the guns and post them. Ironically, our legal troubles began when he had an attack of conscience and abruptly deleted all of his chat apps. He later told us that he felt using social media was a coping mechanism and it had been affecting his mood and ability to sleep.

After the boy broke free of the FBI’s dragnet, the Bureau, according to Rufini, assumed that “he must have connected to a terror cell in real life and ‘gone dark’ ahead of some potential violent act.”

There was no such plan and they had no evidence of one, but it didn’t stop them from spending two weeks fabricating a legal pretense for a search warrant of our home. At 10:00pm on a Sunday evening we were dragged out of our home at gunpoint, handcuffed and locked in a van while they searched our home for evidence of this imagined plot. Having found no such evidence, they seized my brother’s firearms and had my son hospitalized on mental health pretenses.

Rufini professed that he was disappointed in his son’s “severe lack of judgement” online while noting that the FBI’s actions “seemed very disproportionate.”

We didn’t learn until that night the scope of the investigation or the amount of time and resources expended on my son. We know him to be a kind and conscientious boy who is active in his community and church. He is a volunteer firefighter and altar boy. He said some things we aren’t very happy with and showed a severe lack of judgement in his associations but the response seemed very disproportionate.

The FBI, Rufini said, lost interest in the case after it “became clear that there was no grand conspiracy or imminent danger.”  The family however, has allegedly become financially destitute due to the legal fallout.

There was a Department of Children and Families investigation that went nowhere but required us to go to daily appointments for months. The state brought criminal charges against my son that were eventually disposed of but required a legal battle that lasted months. When his charges were disposed of, my brother and I were charged for allowing my son to target shoot based on the assumption that we must have somehow known that he was involved in political extremism online. It seems unlikely to amount to much but has cost us over $20,000 we don’t have so far.

“We are a working class family that lives paycheck-to-paycheck and bankruptcy is a near certainty,” Rufini wrote. “It will be a struggle to keep our home without help.”

I have been reluctant to seek help but the threat of losing our home has become very real. I work with the homeless for a faith-based non-profit organization, and my brother manages a family owned butcher shop. My wife stays at home and home schools our younger children while managing a small homestead. We are paying legal bills by not paying other bills.

Our credit is extended as far as it can go so our kids can have Christmas. The mortgage is a few weeks behind and we have zero breathing room for any unexpected expenses at this point. Our son is racked with guilt and believes himself to be at fault for our dire financial straits. While it is very humbling for me as someone who has always provided for others to ask for help, I know it is sometimes necessary and for us that time has come.

The Rufini family has already raised over $25,000 after setting a goal of $22,000.

“I am incredibly humbled and speechless,” Rufini wrote on GiveSendGo. “A day ago I was trying to figure out how to sell a 2001 Jetta parked in my lawn to catch up on my mortgage. We are incredibly blessed and moved and will pray for all of you.”

Former FBI agent/whistleblower Steve Friend blasted the FBI for targeting people based on their religious convictions.

“Despite its ludicrous caveats and claims to the contrary, the FBI is clearly targeting American citizens for engaging in first amendment protected religious activities,” Friend told American Greatness in a text message. “The nation’s premier law enforcement agency is maliciously targeting and entrapping vulnerable people because they have deeply held biblical convictions. This agency is beyond redemption.”

Democrats Being Mugged by Reality: Is There Any Hope for a Return to Sanity?

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

Watching the news this morning has me thinking dark thoughts. My beloved nation seems to have fallen into the hands of lunatics and criminals. Thousands are marching in support of people who gang-rape young women and murder children and babies; our cities are beset with crime; our government has fallen into the hands of the corrupt. And so, once more I'm going to step into my self-appointed role as the stormy petrel of RedState.

There's an old saying that goes, "A conservative is just a liberal who has been mugged." It's unclear, of course, to what extent something like a mugging can affect some of the deeply-seated misconceptions of the political left, there is some hope, though; more and more these days, Democrats and leftists in general are being mugged by reality. But will that be enough to overcome the cognitive dissonance of the left? Will it finally cause big-city voters to take a good, hard look at what is happening, and to consider that it may just be time for a change?

Some Democrats are waking up and noticing that the policies they’ve been cheerleading have produced violent crime waves, a massive migrant crisis, and genocidal antisemitism. One would hope the public at large is catching on as well.

Just over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a spate of headlines about lefty, soft-on-crime Democrats attacked on the mean streets they’ve helped create.

Here's a summary of the mean streets of the nation's capital:

For the record, crime in Democratic-controlled D.C. has been skyrocketing. So far this year:

• Homicides are up 33%.
• Robberies up 67%.
• Motor vehicle theft has jumped 97%.

The same trends are happening around the country, as soft-on-crime leftists coddle criminals in the name of social justice. The public pays. Now, so are Democrats.

It's even happening here in Alaska. Not even the Great Land, home of many stubbornly self-sufficient folks living on the modern frontier, is immune from the effects of failing leftist policies. Anchorage, I would point out, is a Democrat bastion in mostly Republican Alaska.

Crime rates in pretty much all of our major cities are seeing similar rises. Smash-and-grab robberies are becoming more and more common. Shoplifters are walking into retail establishments and stealing with a brazenness previously unimaginable. And now, in the post-October 7th world, pro-Hamas terrorist sympathizers are taking over the streets of not only American cities but many in Europe as well.

Stein's Law was first observed as a rule of economics but it applies here as well; If something can't go on forever, it will stop. The situation of the left's dominance of our cities can't go on forever. It will stop. The question is, what form will that take?

When will the people of these cities decide they have had enough? When will they finally tire of stepping over sleeping addicts, piles of human feces, and puddles of urine while simply trying to go about their daily business? When will they tire of the smash-and-grabs, the attacks on store clerks, and the rampant theft that is causing retailers to close up their establishments? Well, there may be some signs of hope. In a recent piece, my colleague Duke brought us the tale of Representative Ro Khanna suddenly being gobsmacked by the idea of a Kamala Harris Presidency. Nick Arama tells us how even as obtuse a leftist as Eric Swalwell got bang-banged by reality after being hammered on a stupid statement he made about the Middle East. Finally, Matt Funicello tells us how, apparently, things are starting to look bad for Dems in the 2024 Presidential election.

Maybe there is hope for our cities yet. Maybe. As long as the residents of those cities keep voting the same lunatics back to positions of authority in those asylums, nothing will change. Surely, though, there is a breaking point; there must be a breaking point; there has to be a breaking point when people just decide they are not going to take it anymore.

And the key to the return to sanity? It may just be the Democrat's tacit acceptance of antisemitism.

...in the wake of Hamas’ genocidal attack on Israel, liberals got figuratively mugged by the realization that the Marxist “critical theory” ideology they’ve been peddling has spawned virulent antisemitic hatred among college students, and faculty, and prominent leftist Democratic lawmakers.

Douglas Schoen, an adviser to President Bill Clinton, wrote that:

Six weeks after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, American Democrats can no longer deny that their party has an antisemitism problem which, if left unchecked, may very well split the party ahead of next year’s elections and likely for the foreseeable future.

Things have to change. They can't go on like this. If nothing changes, within the next decade, two at most, our major cities will collapse, bringing the economy down with them and plunging the world into a depression that could last a generation.

Senate Republicans Demand Biden Drop Nomination Of Hunter’s Buddy To Whistleblower Oversight Job

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist 

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee penned a letter to President Joe Biden on Tuesday demanding he withdraw the nomination of Hunter Biden’s former coworker to the administration’s top whistleblower oversight post.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn and her GOP Senate Judiciary colleagues Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton expressed “deep concern” about Biden’s decision to task Hampton Dellinger with protecting “whistleblowers—including the IRS whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden matter” from retaliation, due to Dellinger’s closeness with the Biden family and their influence-peddling schemes.

The Republicans say Biden’s reluctance to “find a nominee that is free from even the appearance of a conflict of interest” proves the Biden administration’s “continued pursuit of a two-tiered system of justice.”

“In light of Mr. Dellinger’s reported connections to Mr. Biden, and the appearance of a conflict that it creates, we have serious doubts as to whether he could act impartially in fulfilling OSC’s obligations,” the Republicans wrote.

President Joe Biden tapped Dellinger in October to lead the Office of Special Counsel, a position “crucial to protect thousands of federal civil servants—particularly whistleblowers.” In its announcement, the White House lauded Dellinger for his success as a DOJ assistant attorney general overseeing the Office of Legal Policy.

Emails from Hunter’s laptop, however, show Dellinger worked on the crisis management and government response team for the Washington D.C. law firm that not only employed Hunter but began aiding the younger Biden in “various Burisma-related matters” shortly after Hunter and Dellinger dined together.

While Hunter raked in $83,000 a month to sit on the Ukrainian energy company’s board — a decision Biden family associate Devon Archer admitted was designed to build the firm’s “brand” — his father served as the lead for the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

In 2018, Joe Biden openly bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor who had been investigating Burisma fired. A “highly credible” informant confirmed that Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky told him the company had paid the Bidens millions of dollars in return.

Zlochevsky also said he felt “coerced” to pay the Bidens in exchange for political favors, explaining to the informant that he wired the Biden patriarch and his son payments through a series of accounts. Zlochevsky further claimed to possess 15 audio recordings of calls with Hunter and two audio recordings of phone conversations he had with the VP as proof.

Dellinger’s proximity to the Bidens and their pay-to-play scheme, the senators argue, suggests he is unqualified to uphold the Office of Special Counsel’s (OSC) pledge to “safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially whistleblower retaliation.”

“It is critical for the American people to know that the Special Counsel is fair and impartial,” the Republicans wrote.

If Dellinger becomes the head of the OSC, he could determine the treatment of whistleblowers such as the IRS’s Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler who uncovered new evidence of Biden family corruption but were repeatedly stonewalled by the DOJ.

“The Office of Special Counsel’s core mission is to protect whistleblowers, who are essential to ensuring accountability in our system of government,” the Republicans concluded. “Mr. Dellinger’s reported connection with Hunter Biden and the Burisma matter creates significant doubt that he can carry out his duty to safeguard the IRS whistleblowers, who are critical in shedding light on the two-tiered system of justice perpetrated under your watch.”

Robert De Niro Throws Tantrum at Awards Show for Editing His Anti-Trump Speech

Matt Funicello reporting for RedState 

Robert De Niro was visibly angry at the producers of the Gotham Independent Film Awards on Monday when they apparently edited his speech to remove anti-Trump comments from his prepared remarks. De Niro, a vocal and unabashed critic of the former president, was in the middle of his speech presenting an honor for the film “Killers of the Flower Moon," when he noticed his speech on the teleprompter was different than he expected. 

It was then that he started his rant at the producers for cutting some of his speech out. He then pulled out his phone and read the speech in its unedited form, and the comments went directly into politics, specifically about former President Donald Trump. In his remarks on Trump, De Niro wasted no time calling him names and more during his rant. 

“Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal,” he added. “The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office, and he’s keeping up the pace in his current campaign of retribution,” he said. “But with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul.”

De Niro has a solid reputation in Hollywood for being one of Donald Trump's most rabid haters and using any and all platforms to blast the former president and his family. Telling the crowd of attendees that it was at that point he knew his speech was edited. 

“He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature, and shows disrespect, for example, by using Pocahontas as a slur,” De Niro said, referring to Trump’s regular usage of the Indian chief’s daughter as a slight against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who has some Native American ancestry in her family tree.

“This is where I came in and I saw they edited all that,” De Niro told the crowd as some cheered and clapped.

In his off-the-cuff remarks, De Niro told the crowd that he was supposed to thank and honor Apple, who produced the movie, in which he also stars, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. Instead, he chose to criticize them for allegedly altering his speech. 

“So I’m going to say these things, but to Apple and thank them and all that, Gotham, blah blah blah, Apple, but, who — I don’t feel like thanking them at all, for what they did. How dare they do that, actually,” he said.

Robert De Niro is the perfect example of why so many conservatives hate Hollywood. It never ceases to amaze how many members of the Hollywood elite are ideologically aligned with the far left. Furthermore, the members of the film and television industry in Hollywood who are conservatives feel isolated and afraid even to admit that they are anything but far leftists. Because often, when these conservatives are found out, they suffer from loss of work due to being essentially blacklisted for their political leanings. 

I have news for those in Hollywood: Nobody cares about your politics; they just want you to act, produce, work, or whatever it is you do without going off the rails on some political rant. And that goes the same way for right-wing Hollywood people, too, though typically, the only thing that they are "guilty" of is professing their faith or offering a prayer or thanks to God for their achievements. Nobody dares go up on stage and unleash an expletive-laced tirade against President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. If that happened, they'd be fired before they walked off the stage. 

We get it: De Niro was talking to his base of fellow leftists in the audience, evidenced by the applause he received for his anti-Trump remarks. But that doesn't hold true for the millions of people who make up the broader audience — who'd prefer celebrities stop making it about them and their political beliefs. In the spirit of the infamous words spoken by FOX News personality Laura Ingraham, De Niro and others like him need to just "shut up" and act.

Astonishing Number of Black Voters Would Bail on Biden for Trump, Including BLM Leader

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

We've seen a lot of folks fleeing the Democrats in the past few years, and it's little surprise given the poor results that Joe Biden has delivered to the country. 

There have been reports for a while now about a significant portion of the black vote moving away from Democrats and Joe Biden. Now, every election, there seems to be big speculation on that. But the New York Times noted an astonishing number that should make everyone sit up and take notice.

In a poll of residents in battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College this fall, 22 percent of Black voters said they would support former president Donald Trump over President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.

For comparison's sake, in the close race in 2020, former President Donald Trump allegedly got eight percent of the black vote. 

Twenty-two percent would be a tidal wave and likely spell doom for Biden. I'm not sure I believe the number is that high. But if it's anywhere close, Biden's goose may be cooked, as Cook Political's David Wasserman explained. 

Fox's Lawrence Jones discussed the phenomenon with Mark Fisher. Fisher should have some insight because he's a black former Democrat who is now for Trump. He also was co-founder of a BLM chapter in Rhode Island. So that's quite a switch. 

Jones says he's seen this movement when he's talking to men in the barbershop. He asked Fisher what he thought the reason was for the big movement. 

Fisher said he thought it was "the duplicity of the Democrats." 

“We’re not stupid. The brothers are not stupid. We understand when someone's for us and when someone is not and it's obvious that the Democratic party is not for us.”

Fisher said that the Democrats' policies strike at the heart of the black family and the nuclear family. How true that is, and a great point to make. 

“A lot of people are misinformed [about Trump]," Fisher said. "They don't really understand because they don't educate themselves on Donald Trump as a person and his history.” So true — Democrats are fed a constant diet of "fine people" and "racist" by the liberal media, despite that not tailoring with reality. 

“Personally I love the man," Fisher said. "I mean, how could you not like a real man? How could you not relate to someone like that?”

Jones made the point that if it's 22 percent in the battleground states, it's probably more than just the men making the move. Jones asked Fisher what he would say if Trump were watching the show, and Fisher said he would "Stump for Trump." 

Fisher said he wanted to bring all the groups together: "one nation, indivisible, under God."  

Democrats have to be tearing their hair out.

4 Of The Most Morally Bankrupt Lies Anti-Israel Pundits Are Spreading About Hostage Swap

Terrorist sympathizers are spreading fake news as Israel executes a swap with Hamas for hostages taken by the terrorist group on Oct. 7.

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

Terrorist sympathizers are out in full force spreading fake news about Israel’s treatment of its prisoners, as the country executes a swap with Hamas for hostages taken by the terrorist group on Oct. 7. Here are four of the most outrageous lies circulating on social media.

1. Israel Is ‘Only Country That Keeps Children As Prisoners’

This week, American supermodel Gigi Hadid shared a post to her more than 79 million Instagram followers condemning Israel as “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war.” The post, which has been deleted, claimed Palestinian terrorist Ahmed Mansara was “abducted” by Israeli officials at 12 years old and “has endured solitary confinement despite his severe health condition.”

According to the New York Post, Mansara went on a “stabbing rampage” in East Jerusalem with his 15-year-old cousin in 2015 that left a 20-year-old security guard and a 13-year-old boy with critical injuries. Mansara was convicted of two counts of attempted murder after his cousin was killed in the attack by a police officer.

“He initially received a sentence of 12 years in prison, which was later reduced” to nine and a half years, the Post reported. “During his incarceration, Mansara has repeatedly attempted to harm himself and others. He has been in and out of solitary confinement, drawing the ire of Amnesty International, a nongovernmental human rights advocacy group.”

Terrorist sympathizing aside, Hadid’s post claiming Israel is “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war” is fake news on its face. Roughly 30 children — some of whom still remain in captivity nearly two months later — were taken hostage by Hamas, after the terrorist group slaughtered Israeli women and children in the Oct. 7 massacre which killed at least 1,200.

Unsurprisingly, child hostages held by Hamas have been subject to physical and emotional abuse. A 12-year-old was even reportedly placed in solitary confinement for more than two weeks.

2. Israel's Fault for Injuries by Suicide Bomb

In another episode of terrorist-sympathizing disinformation, anti-Israel pundits spread false narratives online about Israa Jaabis, who was released from Israeli custody in a prisoner swap on Monday. They claimed Jaabis’s disfigured condition was a result of Israeli brutality after nearly a decade of incarceration.

“For those of you who don’t know who Israa is, this is a photo before and after what the [Israel Defense Forces] has done to her,” wrote one user on X. The side-by-side images show Jaabis with a permanently scarred face from severe burns. But the IDF didn’t do that to her; she did it to herself in 2015 when she attempted to kill scores of civilians by detonating a suicide bomb.

3. Hostages Held in ‘Reasonable Conditions’

Dominic Waghorn, the international affairs editor for Sky News, wrote on X that hostages held by Hamas were “held in reasonable conditions.”

“Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar met with the Israeli hostages a day after they were taken in tunnels under Gaza and told them they would not be harmed and would be returned as part of a hostage deal,” Waghorn wrote. “Undermines the Israeli Hamas = ISIS storyline.”

Testimony from released prisoners, however, has revealed “horrors” endured by those held captive. Hostages were reportedly forced to use plastic chairs for beds and were given irregular meals. One 84-year-old hostage was even hospitalized in critical condition upon being released.

4. Hostage Looks ‘Thankful’ For Captivity

Maree Campbell, who claims in her bio on X to be an international relations analyst and “journalist,” contended that a released Israeli hostage looked appreciative to her captors.

“I’m not a facial expression expert,” Campbell professed on X, “but judging by the look in her eyes and the expression on her face, I’d say that is a look of appreciation and thanks.”

“Might it be that she is saying thanks for being treated unexpectedly well whilst in captivity?” Campbell asked.

A community note on the platform clarifies that the hostage in the photo, Mia Regev, was shot by Palestinian terrorists before her abduction.