‘Make Peace, You Fools! What Else Can You Do?’

posted by James Soriano at American Thinker 

It would take 81 days for the Allies to move from the killing beaches of Normandy to parading down the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The months of June and July 1944 were spent in a brutal and slow fight across the small fields and farms of Normandy. One objective was the city of Caen, barely nine miles from the beaches. Its capture would open the way for the push on to Paris.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was the overall commander of German forces in the West. His job was to slow the Allied advance. He had Caen fortified, and the fighting around the city was fierce. Slowly, the German forces were giving way to the inevitable.

On July 1 von Rundstedt got a call from Berlin. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German army, was on the phone. Von Rundstedt briefed him on the deteriorating situation. Keitel was distressed and asked for his opinion about what to do next. Von Rundstedt retorted, “Make peace, you fools. What else can you do?” For his insubordination, von Rundstedt was relieved of his duties the next day.

This story comes back to us after an exchange on April 18 between President Trump and a news reporter. When asked about the lack of progress in the American efforts to broker a cease-fire in Ukraine, Trump retorted,

Now, if for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: “You’re foolish. You’re fools. You’re horrible people”—and we’re going to just take a pass.

Trump was talking about both Russia and Ukraine, but it is clear that the fools he had in mind are in Ukraine. A day earlier, Trump had said that he “is not a big fan” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and that he hasn’t done “the greatest job” as Ukraine’s wartime leader.

Trump may have believed that he could bring the Ukraine war to an end early in his administration, but now he finds himself in a situation where he may have to “take a pass” on peace efforts. There is practically no chance that Ukraine or Russia can be brought together.

Russia’s terms for peace have taken several forms over the course of the war, but many observers point to a June 2024 speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the outline of a peace settlement. Putin said Russia would halt combat operations and enter into peace talks if Ukraine accepts the following conditions:

• Ukrainian forces must withdraw from the four disputed provinces in eastern Ukraine, provinces that Russia annexed in 2022.
• Ukraine and its allies must recognize Russia’s sovereignty over those provinces.
• Ukraine must abandon its plans to seek membership in NATO.
• Ukraine must adopt a policy of neutrality and refrain from aligning with any military bloc.
• Ukraine’s allies must agree to remove the economic sanctions they imposed on Russia.

To Zelensky, accepting these terms would be tantamount to surrender. He is right: The Russian terms amount to a Ukrainian surrender.

In contrast to the Russian position, the Trump Administration has reportedly been urging a cease-fire plan associated with Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg. Parts of it have made their way into the news and in opinion pieces, and from what we can piece together, that approach includes the following elements:

• Combat operations would be frozen along the existing line of contact.
• A demilitarized zone would separate the warring factions.
• Russia would have de facto control over those territories in the disputed provinces that it now holds.
• The status of Crimea, which was annexed into Russia in 2014, is not clear, with some reports saying the U.S. would commit to recognizing it as part of the Russian Federation.
• Ukraine would acknowledge the loss of territory but would not be required to extend formal recognition.
• Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO.
• European “peacekeepers,” sometimes referred to as a “reassurance force,” would take up positions in Ukraine’s western provinces. Britain and France have talked about forming such a force, which would exist outside the structure of NATO.

Both warring parties have strong objections: Ukraine because it does not accept the loss of land, and Russia for several reasons, notably because the presence of a European “reassurance force” does not square with its long-held position that NATO’s expansion eastward is one of the “root causes” of the war. The so-called Kellogg Plan does not see the future Ukraine as a neutral state, which is Russia’s vision, but rather as a territory existing under some kind of East-West spheres of influence.

On April 18, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that progress must either be made on a peace deal within a matter of days or the U.S. will close down its peace brokering and “move on.” Speculation on social media expects Trump to make that decision at the end of April.

Note that, from the outset of Trump’s initiative, there has been a disconnect between Washington and Moscow on the sequencing of events. The U.S. thinks of a ceasefire as something that takes place before peace talks begin. But Russia’s position has been to front-load the political settlement before halting military operations. Russia does not want to be left holding the bag if the guns fall silent and there is no progress on achieving its political goals. To the Kremlin, a ceasefire and a political settlement blend into one another.

If the U.S. “takes a pass,” as Trump says, on a peace deal, what will that mean for the future of U.S. support towards Ukraine? At this juncture, we don’t know. There is only speculation. Will Trump get tough on Ukraine and stop the future flow of military aid? Will he get equally tough on Russia and impose even more stringent economic sanctions?

There is more certainty when we consider what might happen on the battlefield. The war will run to its “natural conclusion,” which we can define as an either/or outcome: Either Ukraine accepts Russia’s terms in a diplomatic exchange, or the Russian army will impose them in a military decision.

There is no alternative. There is no middle ground. There is no “compromise.” Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield. The U.S. should know this. Russia is not looking for an exit ramp. To the contrary, along the line of contact, the Ukrainian army is slowly giving way to the inevitable.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is known for his brutally frank posts on social media. On April 18, he posted his own take on the situation:

In 1944, Gerd von Rundstedt figured it out faster than the others in the German government. His advice to Berlin then suffices as advice to Ukraine today: “Make peace, you fools. What else can you do?”

X22, On the Fringe, and more- April 23

 

Furious Stephen Miller Demands Reparations for All Americans Harmed by Unchecked Illegal Immigration

By Martin Tribe   |   for WokeSpy   |   22 April 2025

United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller has identified the right group of Americans who are rightly entitled to reparations for harms resulting from bad government policies. 

Over the years, the debate has ignited strong emotions from the left that believe children of former slaves were entitled to reparations based on race alone. U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) even sponsored House Bill H.R. 40, dubbed the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.

However, Miller threw a new wrench in the works by making a strong case for reparations for all Americans who have endured the negative effects of uncontrolled illegal immigration, whose harms, he said, could take more than a lifetime to enumerate.

Appearing on Newsmax, Miller responded to arguments that the deported alleged MS-13 gang member, Kilmer Abrego Garcia, should receive $1 million in daily compensation for each day he spent in his home country of El Salvador after Trump’s deportation.

“Where is compensation for Americans… where do they go to get their reparations?” Miller asked. 

He listed various groups of Americans harmed by the former administration’s open borders policy. They include millions of schoolgoing children who can no longer learn to read and write because their schools need hundreds of translators to cater to non-English speaking learners, disrupting the entire learning process.

“We had an entire generation of Americans, multiple generations, in fact, have been robbed of educational opportunities,” Miller lamented.

Others qualifying for reparations due to unchecked illegal immigration include city residents who can no longer access basic services that have been overstretched by illegal immigrants. Urban dwellers who also have endured increased crime and have been internally displaced when foreign gangs, like Tren de Aragua, take over cities and apartment buildings, are also entitled to reparations. 

“Entire cities. Look at Los Angeles…once a paradise of safety, security and prosperity, entire neighborhoods occupied and controlled by foreign gangs,” he added. “Where do all the residents who have been displaced, who have been forced out of Los Angeles? Where do they go to get their reparations?”

Similarly, victims of the immigration-fueled fentanyl crisis and angel parents of children killed by illegal aliens. Recently, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen faced backlash after making grand gestures in support of the deported alleged MS-gang member while barely acknowledging one of the angel moms in his backyard. 

At least 6 illegal immigrants, including an El Salvadoran national, have been convicted or accused of murder in Maryland, while over 13,000 alien murderers countrywide are living outside ICE detention. Maryland also peaked in fentanyl-related deaths in 2021 when Biden took over, with “Black individuals, males, and adults aged 31–60” mostly affected.

“What about the victims of fentanyl poisoning brought in by Democrats’ open border, hundreds of thousands of moms and dads whose kids are dead and buried in the ground,” Miller continued. “Where do they go to get their reparations from the government, and then all the women who have been raped, who’ve been beated, who’ve been murdered.”

Ironically, the Democratic martyr was twice accused of domestic violence by his American wife and slapped with a restraining order.

“[What about] All the dads who’ve been shot dead and our home? All the police officers who have been slain by illegal aliens in ambush attacks in the line of duty?” Miller asked.

Others include hundreds of thousands of childrens trafficked into the country, raped and assulted during the process and placed with unvetted guardians who could be their traffickers. According to Miller, all Americans are entitled to reparations due to decades of illegal immigration that have robbed the country of its wealth, prosperity, and security.

“We can spend the rest of our lives trying to document those harms,” he added.

“Where does our whole country go to get repaid for all of the wealth, all of the prosperity and security that has been stolen from us by decades of uncontrolled, illegal mass migration? Because we all deserve reparations…for what has been stolen from us.”

Ironically, Democrats do not demand compensation for scores of Americans illegally kidnapped and held in foreign hellhole prisons, including those still captured in Gaza by the Islamic terrorist group Hamas, without due process. Additionally, Democrats have been fighting to prevent the deportation of pro-Hamas demonstration organizers, who have declared war on Western civilization.

https://wokespy.com/furious-stephen-miller-demands-reparations-for-all-americans-harmed-by-unchecked-illegal-immigration/

Where Do We Stand Right Now in the Fight to Make America Great Again?

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

During any massive operation, like a military campaign or a struggle to save our country, you must occasionally pause to take stock and evaluate where you are. This self-evaluation allows you to reorient resources, change strategy, and refocus your efforts. In this epic battle to Make America Great Again, we’re making definite and measurable progress on multiple axes, re-ordering the executive branch, reining in the administrative state, and changing the terms of engagement with all our allies and enemies, both foreign and domestic. Of course, it’s not going perfectly. There are problems. There are setbacks. There are challenges. But you know what? There were always going to be problems, setbacks, and challenges. That’s the nature of the beast.

The bottom line is that we’re winning.

Unequivocally in the win column are victories such as getting all of Trump‘s appointments through the Senate, getting the reconciliation bill on track, unleashing DOGE on the fat, stupid, and corrupt administrative state, reorienting the military towards victory, reorienting our health policies towards health, and shutting down the border. Our progress has been measurable, and these wins will set us up for future victories.

In other fields, we have not yet won. We’ve had mixed success fighting back against the Democrat judge insurgency. We have yet to lock up any Democrat or Dem-adjacent criminals for their crimes over the last several years, though the noxious Leticia James may be the first to don the striped suit. The economy is mixed, and the tariff issue is unsettled. We don’t have peace in Ukraine yet. We haven’t smoked the mullahs, and there are still Hamas members alive and holding an American. But none of these fights are over. It’s just that these fights haven’t been won yet.

As for outright losses, there aren’t any. There are no distinct failures yet, which is pretty impressive. Some might argue the tariffs are, but the tariff initiative has not yet ended. Others may complain about our relations with other countries. There are lots of foreigners mad at us because we’re demanding they pay their fair share. Again, that will shake out. This is the result of Trump being audacious – he’s attempting to remake, in a very short time, the whole post-war order. 

And it needs remaking. This is a new age, with new issues, and jamming the square peg of the monopolar United States that graciously subsidizes everybody else into a round multipolar hole of an America that is burnt out from picking up the check isn’t going to fly. We don’t know how all this is going to turn out. It would be nice not to have an epileptic seizure every time I look at my 401(k), but it doesn’t matter what it looks like now. It matters what it looks like in November 2026 and when I decide to start taking money out. And asked for the foreigners, let them cry.

Objectively, Donald Trump has done much better than we have any right to expect. He’s fired off a fusilade of different initiatives with absolutely no hesitation and no doubt, each aimed directly at our enemies’ most vulnerable points. It’s his utter confidence that is running up the score. He doesn’t hesitate. He wants to win, and that’s a refreshing change. 

Trump doesn’t listen to the people who babble about norms and guardrails, norms, and guardrails that have been blown to smithereens over the last few years and now function only to restrain the right while they provide no obstacle to the left. Weak-hearted Fredocons are terrified of acknowledging the new reality where the old rules are gone because to acknowledge that the battlefield has changed requires a change in tactics. Those new tactics require confrontation, not complacency, and the common currency of the soft right is cowardice. They don’t want to fight. They don’t want to engage the enemy. In theory, they would love to win, but they have no intention of doing so. Winning requires combat, and they frankly don’t have the stones for it. They are much more comfortable riding out the slow decline of America into socialist serfdom as long as they get to maintain their power, prestige, and position for just a little while longer.

Thankfully, these sad and degraded pseudo-men no longer represent the heart and soul of the Republican Party. I deeply wish I had said it myself, but somebody else on X beat me to it: Republicans are no longer interested in winning the argument; they are interested in winning the fight.

The age of Thatcher and Reagan has passed. As glorious as they both were, and they were glorious, their tactics, techniques, and, most importantly, their mindset are obsolete. Margaret Thatcher famously said that first you win the argument, then you win elections. That was true at the time, but we’re in an age where the argument doesn’t matter. We’re in an age where our enemies will look you in the eye and lie to you. Look at the Maryland Man and his alleged lack of due process. We all know he’s not a Maryland man. And we know he had due process, including an appeal, which led to an order that he be removed. We know he’s an MS-13 affiliate, and we know his wife (under penalty of perjury) testified he beat her up. But his advocates won’t tell you that, and when confronted by the facts, they simply deny them. You can’t win an argument with someone who doesn’t argue. You can’t debate someone who simply shuts his eyes, puts his hand over his ears, and yells “Nanananananananana!”

But that’s what the left, aided by the regime media, does. Part of the reason is that they don’t know how to argue. They have never had to in their comfortable commie conformity campuses. They don’t consider us worthy of debating either, and they also don’t believe that there even can be a contrary argument to what they’re currently feeling. Those feelings change. They are endlessly mutable based on what’s convenient. Democrats last week loved tariffs. Then Trump imposed tariffs, and they suddenly hated tariffs. They’ll love tariffs again when Trump is gone, and they think it’s to their advantage. 

You can’t debate or argue with an opponent who is completely divorced from objective reality and basic facts, an opponent driven by a fervent cause a religious faith in their pagan ideology. The only thing to do is beat them. And the good news is, at about 100 days in, Trump is beating them.

It won’t last forever. Every campaign peters out. Every empire falls. We can look back over the last decade and there were times the Democrats were riding high above us, without a care in the world. Right now, they’re swimming in the cesspool, dodging floaters. Eventually, they will arise from the muck. This is the way of the world. Let’s enjoy our success while it lasts and make it last as long as possible. This is the time to run up the score. 

We will never grow tired of all the winning.

A New Pope With Courage

A New Pope With Courage

By Frank Friday for American Thinker

It’s a sad ending for Pope Francis. I pray for his soul and trust the Lord has mercy on him, like all of us sinners.

I never expected much from his papacy and given he was elected with the support of the scandalous and homosexual St. Gallen Mafia in the first place, it might have been worse. Pope Francis was supposedly going to clean up the priest abuse scandals in the Church, but these were largely addressed 25 years ago, as victims started winning expensive lawsuits.

What remained were some of the worst offenders, who stuck around because they were in high places, and smart enough not to get involved with men under 18. The defrocked former cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, a St. Gallen ally, was a great example of this.

If anything, the Church went way overboard, paying just about anybody who claimed to be a victim and ruining the reputations of many innocent priests in the bargain. I have written in the past about the disgraceful situation in New Hampshire, where unscrupulous trial lawyers and their friends in law enforcement concocted a frame-up of Fr. Gordon McCrae.

The same thing was done more recently to Australian Cardinal George Pell, whom Pope Francis hired to clean up Vatican finances. Instead, enemies in Rome and Australia concocted a massive frame-up that sent him to jail for a while, before he was resoundingly vindicated upon appeal.

Interestingly, the same issue cropped up in Chicago last month. A massive plot by trial lawyers has been underway there for years to bilk the archdiocese with phony abuse claims. Cardinal Blasé J. Cupich, of all people, found the courage last month to finally stand up to these people, and has filed suit to recover some of these phony claims.  

And courage really is the key here for the Catholic Church and Western Christianity in general. I always got the feeling Pope Francis just did not have the courage of his Christian convictions, the way somebody like St. John Paul the Great so obviously did. (As opposed to the head of the Church of England, who has no convictions whatsoever.)

As the papal conclave meets in the following weeks to find a successor, we can only hope someone with more Christian confidence, better attuned to the real challenges of today, is selected.

Unfortunately, two-thirds of the current College of Cardinals have been chosen by Pope Francis. They are a mostly unimpressive bunch. In the Catholic Church, traditionally, cardinals are promoted from the great archdioceses. But most of those men were not to Francis’ liking.

For example, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez has never made cardinal, though he leads the largest diocese in America. Instead, his very political subordinate, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, was given the honor. McElroy was even sent to run the Washington, D.C. diocese, apparently just to tick off President Trump.

Same thing with Archbishop Charles Chaput in Philadelphia, a huge diocese that is considered an automatic for cardinal. But Chaput is one of the Church’s celebrated leaders, so Francis and his cronies were jealous and insecure about elevating him.

Same thing with my favorite prelate, the recently retired Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville. Though our town is not quite big enough to rate an automatic cardinal, Kurtz was a legendary builder of the faith everywhere he went and he led the fight for the religious freedom of the Little Sisters of the Poor against the Obama regime. In any other papacy, this would have made him a hero in Rome. Instead, it got him on Pope Francis’ enemies list.

So, what are the odds someone decent is chosen this time around? There may still be a chance. While the old guard, traditional cardinals like Raymond Burke don’t have the numbers to make a difference at this point, practical necessity may lead to a good choice anyway.

That’s why I am counting on New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a Pope Benedict appointee, to carry the day. Not that an American would be chosen, but I suspect Dolan, the effervescent Irishman and New York dealmaker, may be just the guy who can convince Francis’ cardinals they need to pick a moderate, consensus Pope. Somebody who is done with rocking the boat and ticking off traditional Catholics (i.e., all of us who actually show up on Sunday and contribute).

Most of the cardinals understand as well that the Vatican’s finances are a disaster. A Francis clone would only make this worse.

Even Pope Francis had to recently rein in his most problematic supporters, the German bishops, who are still pushing their 1960s-style gay-friendly agenda. Anyone who has paid the slightest attention in the last 30 years knows this kind of thinking has all but annihilated Mainline Protestantism.

Presumably, in the private sanctuary of the Sistine Chapel, Cardinal Dolan can remind his colleagues of these truths and offer a way forward. We don’t need a great Pope, but it sure would be nice just to have a good one.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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Van Hollen's Post From 2017 on MS-13 Comes Back to Haunt Him

Rebecca Downs reporting for Townhall 

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has been talking quite a bit about "Maryland man," a deported illegal immigrant whose real name is Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. The Trump administration has provided evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, with the release of documents last week coming the same day that Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia. Van Hollen's focus becomes even more curious, given that back in 2017, during the first Trump administration, he was posting to his X account about concerns with MS-13 gang members.

"Shame on President Trump for tearing apart hardworking immigrant families," Van Hollen lamented in a post from close to eight years ago. He also went on to reference MS-13, indicating that "We should be focused on MS-13, not scholarship winners." Van Hollen was referencing the deportation of Lizandro Claros Saravia, who went on to become a "rising soccer star" in El Salvador. 

The resurfacing of such a post, which now has over 200 replies, is full of people recently calling on the senator to show more care and concern about his own actual constituents, rather than illegal immigrants.

And again, there is evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, though Van Hollen and other Democrats have been clamoring for his return, even traveling to El Salvador.

Many of the quoted reposts, including from Alex Pfeiffer at the Trump White House, pointed out Abrego Garcia's affiliation, with Pfeiffer even asking for applause over the administration deporting the illegal immigrant.

Van Hollen had been confronted about Abrego Garcia's gang member status by various moderators of all the Sunday show appearances he did earlier this week. This notably included during the senator's appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," as Guy covered on Monday. 

When moderator Dana Bash brought up MS-13, Van Hollen tried to change the subject and refused to say if he himself could or could not say with certainty that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, instead deferring to what Abrego Garcia himself has said. 

As he has done on other media appearances, Van Hollen tried to put the focus on due process and constitutional rights, which is absurd, given that Abrego Garcia is not even an American citizen, but one who admitted to coming into the country illegally.

When Bash reminded the senator of how Abrego Garcia came here, Van Hollen expressed a specific concern for the man he has dubbed "Maryland man" and even referred to multiple times by his first name, though he is not a citizen, be "given his due process rights under the Constitution."

He also, ironically given how much he had been speaking out about Abrego Garcia from his own X account, spoke out against President Donald Trump "go[ing] off on social media" about the case. 

Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left's lies, new legislation wasn't needed to secure our border, just a new president.

The Barack Obama of the Roman Catholic Church Has Died

The Barack Obama of the Roman Catholic Church Has Died

Pope Francis worked to weaken, and ultimately destroy, the Roman Catholic Church and Christianity itself.

Robert Spencer for 

Frontpage Magazine

The twelve-year reign of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, as the head of the Roman Catholic Church began shortly after the strange and still-unexplained resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and seven weeks into the second term of Barack Obama as president of the United States. It was fitting that Obama was president during the first four years of Francis’ papacy, as Francis was the Barack Obama of popes: just as Obama did as president of the United States, Pope Francis worked to weaken, instead of strengthen, the institution he was leading, and to provide aid and comfort to its enemies, while confusing and maddening its ardent supporters.

Pope Francis was the first pope, at least in modern times, to put the answer to the old question, “Is the Pope Catholic?,” in doubt. Argentine President Javier Milei didn’t think Francis was much of a Catholic, deriding him as a “Communist” and even saying that he was “the representative of the evil one on earth.” Francis sowed so much confusion about Catholic doctrine that in 2022, Cardinals Walter Brandmüller and Raymond Leo Burke, along with the support of three other Cardinals, Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Sarah, and Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, asked him a series of public questions about where he stood.

The pope replied the following year, clarifying his position on these issues and trying to dispel the impression that he had departed from the actual teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Vatican News identified these issues as “the interpretation of Divine Revelation, the blessing of same-sex unions, synodality as a constitutive dimension of the Church, the priestly ordination of women, and repentance as a necessary condition for sacramental absolution.”

However, the issues at hand were not the most arresting aspect of this entire controversy. The pope’s answers weren’t even the most important aspect of this affair. What was most important about it was the fact that it had happened at all, that it had been necessary to question the guardian and anchor of the Roman Catholic faith over his own adherence to that faith. There was no parallel to this in modern times, and it exemplified how much Francis, in the minds of many both inside and outside the Church, had departed from the Roman Catholic faith.

Francis even cast aside the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional definition of itself as the Church that Christ founded. The Catholic Herald reported in Sept. 2024 that he had declared that “all religions are a path to God.” He explained: “They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God. If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t’, where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are [Sikh], Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].”

In this, Francis seemed to be contradicting both Jesus’ statement: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). He also seemed to be contradicting the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council, which emphasized that it was “the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.” (Nostra Aetate 2, 4) The Catholic Herald noted, apparently by way of explanation, that in making these remarks, the pope had set aside his prepared remarks and was speaking extemporaneously.

Predictably, Francis was a doctrinaire leftist on political issues. He seemed to think that it was incumbent upon the people of Europe and North America to relinquish their national character and culture voluntarily, and become minorities in their own countries. In 2016, he declared that someone who built a border wall was “not a Christian.” In Feb. 2025, he sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, excoriating Trump for securing America’s southern border. He repeatedly insisted that welcoming any and all migrants was a Christian duty, and rejected “any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”

Like many other leftists, the pope was also a dutiful shill for the warriors of jihad. He worked hard to build bridges with the international Islamic community, downplaying jihad terrorism, ignoring the rampant Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa, and even obliquely justifying the 2015 murders of cartoonists of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo who had lampooned the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Francis said that “it is true that you must not react violently, but” — ah, yes, there is always a “but” at such moments — “although we are good friends, if [an aide] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch, it’s normal. You can’t make a toy out of the religions of others. These people provoke and then (something can happen). In freedom of expression, there are limits.” This was, in essence, a submission to Islam’s blasphemy laws which would, if followed, mean the end of free societies.

What will the Roman Catholic Church do now? If it continues to follow in the way of Pope Francis, it will destroy itself. Will it pull itself back from the brink? We shall see.

CBS 60-Minutes Executive Producer Resigns Citing New Constraints Blocking Anti-Trump Propaganda Efforts

Sundance reporting for CTH 

CBS 60-Minutes has been one of the most deliberately manipulated news and opinion programs in the past several years.  They have been so over-the-top in their gaslighting and biased media coverage, that all credibility within the weekly broadcast TV show has been eviscerated.

Bill Owens has been the executive producer of the show since 2019, specifically responsible for increasing the bias and propaganda openly displayed.  President Trump has sued 60-Minutes over their extremely manipulative editing of an interview with Kamala Harris in 2014.  That lawsuit is ongoing.

Today, Bill Owens announced he is resigning as executive producer of the broadcast, citing his inability to continue making independent decisions about the subject matter presented on the broadcast.

(VIA MSM) – Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, said Tuessday that he is resigning from the program, telling staffers he had lost his ability to make independent decisions about the show.

“Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it,” Owens wrote in a memo obtained by Deadline. “To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience. So, having defended this show – and what we stand for – from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward. (read more)