JB Pritzker Promises to Weaponize Government

Townhall 

There are few things worse than someone who has had everything handed to them who acts like they’ve somehow earned all of it. We say these people “were born on 3rd base and act like they hit a triple.” I don’t have a problem with inherited wealth, but that, coupled with a sense of entitlement, is too much form. I call it the “Lucky Sperm Syndrome” – the people whose greatest, and often only, accomplishment in life is that they were the sperm that cracked the egg. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker comes to mind.

Pritzker, whom I affectionately call “Governor Fat B*****d,” after the character in the Austin Powers movies, is someone you can tell hasn’t been told “no” by anyone who could make it stick since he was a kid. An heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, this accidental billionaire has basically lived off his family’s fortune, “running” businesses he’d start up to pass the time before falling into the business so many other young, lucky sperms wall into: politics.

JB had nothing better to do and no real reason to do anything at all, so he took his entitlement and tried to campaign for Congress in 1998. He spent more than a million dollars – a pittance of his inherited wealth, but a fortune at the time – and came in 3rd out of 5 candidates.

After that, he floundered around the state, taking “jobs” that rich kids get in government that have very little notoriety and even less responsibility, but the titles sound good on a resume. For JB, it was “Chair of the Illinois Human Rights Commission.”

Then he decided to use his ample wealth to run for Governor. Well, walk…slowly…while having trouble breathing (I don’t call him “Fat B*****d” for nothing).

He managed to buy the win and become a loud “progressive” voice for all the left-wing policies that would, if enacted, prevent any other family from amassing a fortune like his did.

Where to next for GFB? The White House, or at least he hopes.

His “greatest accomplishment” as Governor is “standing up” for criminal illegal aliens, leading to murders, assaults, rapes and any number of other criminal activities harming the American citizens with the misfortune of living in Illinois, so he naturally thinks he deserves a promotion. Only someone who has never earned anything could confuse the concept so spectacularly.

And what would be his agenda, should he become President Fat B*****d? First, he’d probably get rid of the BMI index or obesity standards and roll back any health regulations, getting rid of delicious artificial colors and flavors. After that, it would be revenge.

Not revenge against the people who called him names his whole miserable life at the rich kids' schools he attended, but against anyone who dared displease him by working for the American people in the Trump administration.

He’s come up with “Project 2029,” his answer to the innocuous, horribly messaged, and therefore weaponized “Project 2025,” only completely based on using the power of the federal government to smear, break and imprison anyone who dared displease the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Pritzker told the New York Times, when asked what his little project was about, said, “I don’t think you can speak of it in shorthand, but we’ve got to restore the rule of law, and that means holding people accountable who’ve broken the law. I’m talking about the people in this administration who’ve broken the law and federal agents who’ve broken the law.”

How did these people break the law? Fat B*****d wasn’t asked because of so-called journalism. They simply asked if they’d be criminally gone after, to which he responded, “Criminally prosecuted, civilly prosecuted. Whatever it is that we can do.”

“Civilly prosecuted”? So, sued? But for what? He wasn’t asked; the next question was about why someone hadn’t used the power of government to go after their political enemies already, apparently unaware of the Obama and Biden administrations – very few people at the New York Times actually follow the news, apparently.

But he’s going to use the government to charge people for crimes he can’t define – “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” – and will sue in civil court anyone else with the intent to ruin them financially. Not because they’d stolen government money he’s trying to recoup, but with legal fees since the government’s pockets are endless.

JB Pritzker is Hitler, albeit with a gravitational pull. Or maybe Mao with more chins? Whatever he is, he’s a monster who shouldn’t be any closer to the levers of power than “progressive hero” Cesar Chavez should’ve been allowed near a school. The reasons may be different (as far as we know, so far), but both men are truly gross people.

Podcast thread for March 19

 

Spring is in the air

Is Trump Looking to Acquire Real Estate in the Middle East?

American Thinker 

Ah, yes.  Donald Trump, ever the savvy real estate man, may be looking to add some Middle Eastern real estate to the American Empire.  

Can I call the homeland plus all the bits and pieces around the world an empire?  Yeah sure.  Why not.

You can tell that acquiring property is part of his mindset, and developing it is part of who he is.  

First, it was Canada becoming the 51^st state.  Then he wanted the Panama Canal returned to American control.  Then it was Greenland.  Later, he mentioned getting title to a chunk of Palestine as part of a peace settlement.  For a while, he was talking about building luxury hotels there.

Right now, the only possibility for the U.S. to gain any new territory, short of a war, rests with the Canadian Province of Alberta.  They have a Canadian separation plebiscite scheduled for this fall.  If it passes and they ask for statehood, Alberta could become the 51^st state.  But that is a long shot.

Yet, despite what many see as bullying or negotiating tactics, Trump has had some significant success.  The United States now, directly or indirectly, controls petroleum exports from Venezuela.

This matters in the world of geopolitics.  By virtue of controlling Venezuelan oil exports, Trump also controls oil imports to Cuba.  You might have heard that the island nation depends on oil to run its old, decrepit Soviet-era power stations.  Without oil, the island is slowly returning to the Stone Age.  Let us declare the glories of socialism, no electricity, little food, and maybe a pot to pee in.  Every American teenager should be forced to study this in school.

Is regime change coming to Cuba?  Who knows?  Old socialists are remarkably stubborn and repressive.  The socialist elite somehow always manage to eat well while the common folk starve.

There is another side to this that is quickly coming to light.  Due to previous and ongoing American sanctions on oil from Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, a shadow oil-trading and transportation market developed.  This market used a fleet of old oil tankers to transport crude oil worldwide at discounted prices.  Sellers were the aforementioned Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.

Buyers were mainly India, China, and, to a lesser extent, Turkey.  Turkey and India agreed to back off from buying sanctioned oil after Trump threatened them with tariffs.  China, not so much.

China bought oil through the shadow market because it could and because it was a great deal. China had the cash, and the three sanctioned countries were desperate to sell their oil.  The Russians were so desperate to get cash that they were selling oil at close to cost, which was almost half of the world market price.

The Chinese profited greatly from discounted oil.  They used cheap oil to manufacture cheap goods at even lower prices than everyone else, and got wealthy in the process.  They used that wealth to lend to and bribe developing countries to slowly gain control over other natural resources, such as rare earth elements.  This was part of China’s strategy for years.

Now, that strategy may be coming to an end.  The world oil market price is approaching $100 per barrel.  This is around $40 more per barrel than it was just a couple of months ago.  The Iran war is helping Russia temporarily, but it is having the opposite effect on China.  The cost of Russian oil is rising, and China can no longer get discounted oil from Venezuela.  This brings us to Iran.

The U.S. and Israel had plenty of reasons to drop the hammer on Iran.  Nuclear weapons development was just the final straw.  You cannot trust religious fanatics with weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.  We have a similar issue with North Korea.  The only difference is that Kim Jong-un knows war will cost him his communist paradise.  The mullahs in Iran think war will make them martyrs in heaven.

One way of getting the upper hand on Iran is to either get control of Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf or threaten to destroy the oil export terminal there.  The export terminal accounts for 90% of Iranian oil shipments by sea.  Destroy the terminal or get control of the island, and the Iranian regime runs out of money fast.

The mere fact that the U.S. can destroy the terminal should be enough.  The U.S. military took out most of Kharg Island’s defenses just the other day, but left the oil terminal alone.  There is a method to this madness.  Those of you who have read Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel or watched the movies will remember that in relation to the spice, Paul Atreides, aka Muad’ Dib, says, “The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.”

So, now that the U.S. can destroy the terminal, will they do it?  No. Trump wants oil prices to drop as quickly as possible before the midterm elections.  Destroying the terminal would very likely keep prices high for months.  For the price to come down, the oil must flow.

Of course, we are dealing with a government of Muslim Shia clerics.  Those who have not already fled to Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, or Canada might decide to blow it up to spite Trump.  This means the next most logical step is for the U.S. military to get control of it.

I did not intend to equate Donald Trump to Muad’ Dib.  Trump is more like the Emperor in the story of Dune.  But, just for fun, let me carry this analogy a step further.  Trump recently sent for America’s version of Muad’ Dib’s Fedaykin death commandos, otherwise known as the Marines.  I can almost guarantee you they are going to the island to guard the terminal.

This creates a unique and interesting situation.  Kharg Island is a valuable piece of real estate.  Donald Trump is a transactional type of president, who does not like to see the U.S. military used without getting something in return.  Recall that Ukraine was forced to sign a minerals deal as payment for American military assistance.  Once the U.S. takes Kharg Island, why not keep it?

There is some logic to it.  The U.S. could ensure the oil is sold at market price, say, with a 5%-10% handling fee for guarding the Strait of Hormuz.  If that happens, China can get discounted oil only from one place: Russia.  Once the war with Ukraine is over, it’s likely those oil sanctions will be lifted, then China will likely be forced to pay full price or at least a higher one than they are now.  If the U.S. controls Kharg Island and China misbehaves, then we can effectively cut off a large portion of their oil at the source.

Will Kharg Island become American territory?  If Trump starts to talk about building a golf course there, we could have an answer.  

NAS Supports Idaho Senate Bill 1336 to Reform K-12 Social Education

 

National Association of Scholars

The National Association of Scholars and the Civics Alliance are pleased to support Idaho Senate Bill 1336 (SB 1336), introduced by the Senate State Affairs Committee. SB 1336 would enact a wide range of reforms to Idaho’s public K-12 social education, including:

• Dedicating social studies instruction to fostering the cardinal virtues and the civic virtues.
• Grounding social studies instruction in America’s foundational documents of liberty, from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution to the Gettysburg Address.
• Detailing the substance of American history and American government instruction, with complementary English Language Arts instruction, to include core instruction in our institutions, ideals, and foundational documents of liberty, republican self-government, and civic virtue.
• Requiring high school students to take a year of American history and a year of American government.
• Requiring Grade 8 students to take a year-long course in Western civilization, from Ancient Greece through the Enlightenment.

These are excellent reforms—and the requirement for Western Civilization instruction is groundbreaking. We enthusiastically endorse Idaho SB 1336.

SB 1336 has been informed by several of our model bills, including the Civics Course Act, the United States History Act, and the Western Civilization Act. Our model material also has been modified to fit Idaho, and we are grateful to SB 1336’s authors for their intelligent work refashioning our model language to make it suitable for Idaho’s public schools. We want the material in our model bills to be modified by state policymakers, who know what suits their own state.

SB 1336’s proposed reforms of American history and American government instruction are essential. The default K-12 instruction in these subjects, around the nation, has become some mixture of deracinated pablum and a hate-reading of America, its history, its government, and its ideals. State governments have the right, indeed the duty, to frame public K-12 social studies instruction so that it includes core instruction in America’s ideals and institutions—and, above all, direct instruction in our documents of liberty. Students who read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address themselves will know when they’re lied to about America by textbooks or teachers.

But we are particularly enthusiastic about SB 1336’s pioneering proposal to have students study Western Civilization for one year in Grade 8. No state in America now teaches Western Civilization as a coherent subject. This is an educational calamity.

Traditionalists scarcely noticed the quiet revolution a generation ago, in every state in the union, that substituted World History for Western Civilization in our public schools—including in the authorizing statutes in every state. This change has had disastrous results. The removal of the historical narrative of Western Civilization from the K-12 curriculum has removed the history of our long struggle for liberty’s ideals and institutions. Students cannot understand America’s own ideals and institutions of liberty if they do not learn about their origins in an extended, coherent account of Western Civilization, from Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome to the present. World History at best abbreviates the West’s history of liberty and usually chops up Western history so that liberty’s history disappears entirely.

Idaho’s SB 1336 is the first attempt to heal this lobotomized history that perverse pedagogues have inflicted on American students. It provides for a full year of instruction in Western Civilization in Grade 8, from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment—the history the Founding Fathers knew when they made America. This will provide far more sophisticated instruction than if Western Civilization were presented in elementary school. Other states might consider whether to require Western Civilization instruction in high school—but SB 1336 requires intensive instruction in American history and American government, and these also are excellent choices. Idaho high school students can still take elective, dual enrollment, or advanced placement courses in Western civilization.

We might suggest as an emendation that Idaho’s policymakers add “ancient Israel” to its list of Western civilization topics, as a pendant to “the history and influence of Christianity.” We also would suggest that Idaho policymakers, formally or informally, suggest to Idaho’s Department of Education that it create a high-school World History elective, including discrete narratives of the political, religious, and intellectual history of China, India, the Islamic world, Africa, and Latin America, from ancient times to ca. 1200. (A World History course with this focus would complement the College Board’s AP World History course, which covers history from ca. 1200 to the present.) Idaho students—as should all American students—should first learn the coherent history of the West, but they would also benefit from the opportunity to learn World history.

If and when SB 1336 passes, we urge Idaho policymakers to keep an eye on how the Idaho Department of Education carries out its measures. Social studies reform measures in both Iowa and Oklahoma have suffered from sustained noncompliance and sabotage by education department administrators. It would be best if the Idaho Department of Education entrusted revision of SB 1336 mandated social studies standards to an independent committee of education reformers rather than to members of the education establishment. Failing that, Idaho policymakers should keep an eye on what the Department of Education does to revise its social studies standards and other educational materials and policies, to make sure that the Department follows legislative intent.

Idaho’s policymakers will greatly improve public K-12 education if they pass SB 1136 into law. SB 1336 will educate Idaho’s children to know more of America and the West, and above all, to know what there is to love about our country and its ideals. It should not require legislation to ensure that public schools meet this low bar—but, alas, there has been great rot in American education. Idaho’s SB 1336 is a good bill, it is a necessary bill, and it is a well-tailored bill. We urge Idaho’s policymakers to pass it into law.

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Photo by Alexandra Gold on Unsplash

Israel Didn’t Make Us Do It

Israel Didn’t Make Us Do It

The Editors for National Review 

Joe Kent attends a House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 26, 2025.(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Joe Kent, the Senate-confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned on Tuesday in protest against the war on Iran.

“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Kent wrote. So, what, in his estimation, was the reason for this war? Simple: The Israelis wanted it, and they get what they want.

Kent accused “Israeli officials” and their American fifth columnists of mounting a “misinformation campaign” that “sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.” They whispered sweet falsehoods into President Trump’s ear about the “path to a swift victory” before him. That was a “lie.” Indeed, it was the same lie “the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq War.”

Israeli perfidy is so extensive that Kent even blamed them for the rise of ISIS in the last decade and the “manufactured” war against them in which the former director tragically lost his first wife, a Navy cryptologist killed in an ISIS suicide attack in Syria in 2018.

If these are the baseless suppositions Kent took with him into public service, Americans should be gratified by his departure.

Iran may be more of an existential threat to Israel, but the Iranian threat to U.S. civilians, service personnel, and interests abroad is constant and has been since 1979.

Iran has killed hundreds of Americans in terrorist attacks throughout the decades in Lebanese and Saudi barracks, in U.S. embassies, and on the streets of Iraq. They have plotted assassination campaigns and terror attacks on U.S. soil targeting foreign dignitaries, American civil servants, and even U.S. presidents. They built the region’s most formidable arsenal of missiles, were racing toward a nuclear bomb that many Iranian officials insisted they had every intention of using, and aligned themselves with America’s foreign adversaries in an active campaign designed to overturn the U.S.-led world order.

Such a regime cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, as every recent American president has said.

Israel didn’t drag us into the Iraq War. In fact, as the historical record demonstrates, Ariel Sharon’s Israeli government lobbied George W. Bush’s administration against toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime in favor of neutralizing Iran.

As for ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (or Greater Syria, essentially the Levant), it was al-Qaeda’s Iraqi franchise, before breaking away. Al-Qaeda arose in the 1980s out of the Afghan mujahideen’s jihad against the Soviet Union. While it is doctrinally opposed to the Jewish state, as are all jihadist groups, the principal mission al-Qaeda defined for itself was global jihad against the United States. It thus serially attacked our nation throughout the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 atrocities that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the faction that evolved into ISIS, dedicated itself to jihad against American troops and the fomenting of insurrection in Iraq; it opposes Israel in principle, but its preoccupation, like al-Qaeda’s, is jihad against the West and the “head of the snake” (us).

But the facts are no obstacle when the goal is to accuse Israel of hypnotizing the American political class into doing the bidding of the Jewish state.

Much has been made of a statement Secretary of State Marco Rubio made at the outset of hostilities that was distorted to suggest that the U.S. had no choice but to join Israel’s war. But Rubio was explaining the simultaneity of the initial U.S. and Israel attacks — if Israel went first, we’d get hit anyway — not the justification for the war. About that, he was clear: Within a year to 18 months or so, he said, Iran “would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it, because they could hold the whole world hostage.”

Given the unwillingness of Iranian negotiators to abandon their nuclear weapons program even in exchange for U.S.-provided civilian-grade radioactive materials, the administration concluded that this project could not be allowed to mature.

It’s not surprising that Trump made this determination, given that he has been an Iran hawk for a long time. In 1980, amid the Iranian hostage crisis, Trump called it “ridiculous” that Jimmy Carter’s administration allowed that “horror” to continue. So, should that president have ordered a major military operation to rescue them? “I absolutely feel that, yes,” he said, adding that “we would be an oil-rich nation” if we had.

In 1988 he told a reporter: “I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look [like] a bunch of fools.” And Trump appeared to have a granular understanding of what it would take to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. “One bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I’d do a number on Kharg Island,” he said of Iran’s primary oil transshipment hub in the Persian Gulf on which he ordered airstrikes last week. “I’d go in and take it.”

“I would never take the military card off the table, and it’s possible that it will have to be used, because Iran cannot have nuclear weapons,” the future president reiterated in 2011. If it wanted to, the U.S. could “blow them away to the Stone Age,” he said the following year.

In both presidential campaigns, he said Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. In his first term, he tore up Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal in favor of a policy of “maximum pressure” and ordered the killing of Iran’s terror chief Qasem Soleimani. During his second run for president, Iran tried to assassinate him, which he did not forget. In comments about the elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Trump boasted, “I got him before he got me.”

At times, Trump has said that presidents he didn’t like would launch a war against Iran only to boost their domestic popularity — comments his critics often cite. But the president has consistently entertained a military solution to the dangers posed by the Islamic Republic. There is no indication that Israelis and their interests ever factored into his thinking on the question over the years.

The notion that now Donald Trump has been cowed by Bibi Netanyahu into meekly following him into the Iran war is manifestly absurd. It is contradicted daily by Trump’s evident passion — relish even — for the mission, and the president has been happy to pull the reins on Israel in the past, whether at the end of the Twelve-Day War, over the war in Gaza, or on the question of Israeli settlements.

There are legitimate reasons to oppose, or be skeptical of, the Iran war, but they are not the ones offered by Joe Kent, or the conspiratorial claque that sees Israeli or Jewish manipulation behind U.S. foreign policy, indeed all of American national life. Evidence and common sense mean little to this faction. You cannot reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

Don’t Listen to Idiots About the Iran War

Townhall 

You could be forgiven for wondering who and what to believe when you go on social media or look at the regime media, or listen to politicians, and you’re bombarded with all sorts of information, opinions, and assertions about the Iran War, but take heart. There’s an easy way to sift through it all to separate the wheat of valuable insights from the chaff of absolute stupidity. If somebody’s telling you that we are losing this war, he’s an idiot, or a liar, or both, and you should ignore everything he says.

Right up front, let’s be clear about something. The American and Israeli campaign against the mullahs is an unparalleled achievement in the military art, a victory so sweeping and complete that it defies any precedent. Within a couple of days, we decapitated their leadership, and not just at the neck – we’ve made the cut down around their colons. The High Poobah they started with got smoked faster than a fat doobie at Snoop Dogg‘s birthday party. Their alleged leader du jour – a guy who once had to go to England because he couldn’t make his little mullah stand at attention – is probably dead. But it’s not only impotence in the barnyard with these guys; it’s impotence on the battlefield as well. We removed their allegedly advanced integrated air defense system. We converted their surface fleet to an all-submarine navy. We’ve smashed their ability to project combat power, degrading their ballistic missile and drone forces from a fearsome fusillade to a pathetic trickle. We dominate every sphere of the battlespace, but one – air, sea, space, cyber, and the electromagnetic spectrum. The only one we don’t dominate (yet) is the ground. Still, with the Israelis taking out squad-size units of whatever the Farsi word for Gestapo is using exploding drones, and the people beginning to take to the streets, it’s only a matter of time before the mullahs lose control of the dirt, too. 

It’s a victory so complete that it increases the potential to doubt it because the achievement is so incomprehensible. Sure, they fired some missiles and drones. Yeah, the enemy gets a say. Of course, they tried to close the Straits of Hormuz, but that won’t last. Tactically, they can’t do anything to us that impacts our combat power. Our casualties in men and material are minimal. In fact, about half of our casualties are from accidents. The other half are from a lucky hit. Strategically, they’ve completely blown it. Their goal was to get the surrounding states to force America and Israel to stop by attacking Iran’s neighbors. Instead, this just ticks off the neighbors, and now they’re helping us. Great job, guys! Tired of all the winning yet?

As Clausewitz pointed out, war is simply politics with different means. The end result here will be a non-nuclear-capable Iran without a ballistic missile capability, but let’s understand that that’s not the real objective. Those are collateral benefits that come from the political effect that this war is meant to achieve. Regime change gets a bad name from stupid people who don’t know history. A significant number of wars throughout history have had the specific purpose of regime change. The Romans used to march into barbarian nations specifically to change their regimes into ones that would be allied and pay tribute. We don’t need Iran as our ally or a tributary; we just need an Iran that’s not run by pagan apocalyptic psychos who hate Jews and Americans nearly as much as Candace Owens, Ilhan Omar, and Medhi Hasan do.

In support of a garbage agenda to salvage defeat from the jaws of victory – because the only thing these people hate more than the idea of America winning a war against Third World semi-humans is an America led by Donald Trump winning a war against Third World semi-humans – these influencers are trying to talk you into thinking we’ve lost. That’s where the aforementioned stupid people test comes in. If they tell you we’re losing, they’re stupid.

Now, some are just Internet randos grasping at clicks or are the product of Macedonian bot farms. But some of these people saying stupid things have what one might assume are quality credentials. One way to evaluate their credentials is to check whether someone is a college professor. If he is, he’s presumptively wrong about everything. The same goes for members of think tanks with names like The Center for Foreign Policy Policies, or any organization whose name contains the word “Democracy,” “Peace,” or “Future.” These are inevitably people who have been part of the foreign policy establishment for the last several decades and who have aggregated a collection of spectacular successes as barren as the Gobi Desert. They have been wrong about everything forever, but you have to hand it to them. They’re consistent.

And then there are the Democrats who come out of classified briefings insisting that Donald Trump has absolutely no idea what’s going on, that the military campaign is a total failure, and that their erectile dysfunction is a direct result of Bibi Netanyahu and the Jews. OK, maybe that’s exaggerating it a little bit – they do sometimes give our military a little bit of credit, though it’s painful for them to do so, and they’re much more comfortable being mad that soldiers occasionally get to eat rubbery steak and third-tier lobster.

As for the regime media reporters who purport to cover the military campaign, they provide exactly the kind of deep, probing, informed commentary that you would expect from pick-me twenty-somethings named Ashleigh who double-majored in journalism and gender studies at the University of College, and whose entire résumé consists of having been born and then writing for the Wall Street Journal. You probably shouldn’t get your tactical assessments from people who you need to explain to that the Navy is the one with boats.

As for the AI slop out there, with poorly rendered five-second clips of Tel Aviv being annihilated, America’s Air Force being wiped out, and victorious Iranians raising the mullah’s flag over the White House – maybe they just used a real clip from the Obama administration – it’s less for you than for them and their friends. You’ve got to understand the humiliation they’re going through. Once again, little tiny Israel and big mean America have beaten the living snot out of their pals. These Third World goofs have demonstrated their utter cowardice and incompetence, failing on every level at to competently perform even the most basic military tasks. They’re hoping that you’re just as stupid as their own people are, and, sadly, we have seen that some of our people are just as stupid as their people are. Luckily, most people are not stupid.

There’s a never-ending cycle of fringie allegedly based America First people who are nothing of the sort complaining that this forever war – it’s not a forever war if you’re ending it in victory – is going to split the MAGA coalition in two. Perhaps that might mean splitting off the 5% who eat paste and lick windows from the 95% who are patriots, but it demonstrates an absolute misunderstanding of the movement to think that any substantial number of Donald Trump’s supporters, much less Donald Trump himself, are going to line up against the red, white, and blue and in favor of the goat-molesting butchers who have been murdering Americans throughout the nearly 50 years since Jimmy Carter helped them to take power. They can cry about how “I’m not going to fight for Israel!” all they want, but we know they’re not ever going to fight for anything except for a piece of that sweet, sweet grifter pie.

Nor are they going to convince us that Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and the entire United States military are a bunch of incompetents who are somehow covering up the utter disaster that is this war. They throw everything against the wall, but apparently, it’s made of Teflon because nothing sticks. They tried getting mad because the troops were being too well-fed. Then they got mad because we had casualties. Then they got mad when our military leaders pointed out that you take casualties in a war. Then they went through a hilarious journalistic journey of discovery regarding the Straits of Hormuz, which these budding geographers had never heard of before last Tuesday:

1. It never occurred to Trump and the Pentagon that the Iranians might move to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, even though we’ve previously fought with the Iranians when they tried to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, have done literally dozens of major exercises wargaming Iranian options to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, and have moved significant military power into the theater to prevent the Iranians from shutting down the Straits of Hormuz.

2. Then how about Trump was warned about the risk of the Iranians trying to shut down the Straits of Hormuz yet decided to finish this war despite knowing the risk, although we previously argued that he didn’t know about the risk, and even though the most basic part of military leadership is analyzing the potential risks of each course of action, weighing the potential benefits against the potential costs, and developing strategies to mitigate said risks?

3. Well, then, the Iranians not actually shutting down the Straits of Hormuz is actually a cunning plan to sucker in the Americans and the Israelis somehow.

4. Okay, then, how about you’re all Islamophobes, even though we’ve had multiple Muslims specifically attacking Americans while citing their Muslim beliefs as the cause of their attacks on Americans?

It is all so tiresome.

The bottom line is that we’re winning. We’re beating them militarily, with the military campaign the primary means of achieving the ultimate objective of political change, which will reset not only the Middle East but the entire world. We’re already seeing the Cuban communist government watching what’s happening on the other side of the world and doing that thing where they take their finger, pull out their collar, and swallow hard. As for the Chinese, if we have a friendly government in Iran, we have our hands on the spigot of China’s oil, which drastically limits their strategic options. Xi can’t invade Taiwan without gas.

Anybody who’s telling you we’re losing is either an idiot or a liar. The only determination you need to make is which one, or both.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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‘We Can’t Send This To DOJ’: New Doc Alleges More Deception From Russia Hoaxer Kevin Clinesmith

A newly uncovered report suggests Clinesmith withheld exculpatory findings that undermined the legal basis for monitoring Trump adviser Walid Phares.

The Federalist

A newly released document from Sen. Chuck Grassley adds a significant and troubling dimension to what was previously known about the conduct of former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, a central figure in the surveillance of Trump campaign associates during the Russia collusion investigation. Clinesmith had already pleaded guilty to falsifying evidence in connection with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The new information shows that his misconduct was not limited to a single target, but was part of a broader, systematic pattern of abuse that extended to another investigation against Trump adviser Walid Phares.

Phares, a scholar of jihadist ideology who advised both the Romney campaign in 2012 and the Trump campaign in 2016, has received far less public attention than Page. Yet the newly disclosed material reveals that the same investigative approach was applied in his case. The Grassley document shows that Clinesmith played a central role in the FISA process targeting Phares over alleged foreign ties. As with the Page surveillance, the Phares warrants were repeatedly renewed, even though investigators had found no evidence supporting the allegations.

What makes this especially troubling is not simply that the investigations came up empty, but that Clinesmith knew they had while the surveillance was still ongoing, according to the whistleblower cited in Grassley’s letter. Rather than ensuring that the court and the Department of Justice were fully and accurately informed, the newly uncovered report suggests he withheld critical exculpatory findings that undermined the legal basis for continued monitoring.

The document unearthed by Grassley is an FBI FD-302 report from December 2020, which records a member of Robert Mueller’s special counsel team stating that, after months of investigation, it had become obvious that Phares had been truthful and that there was no case against him. It is not known who the whistleblower within the Mueller team is, nor how Grassley obtained the document.

In the words of the whistleblower, “there were no corroborating facts that tied [Phares] to certain facts that we thought were originally true … there was nothing confirming [Phares] received a large money payment, and nothing confirming [Phares] had a meeting in another country for the purposes of the initial allegation.”

Despite this, Clinesmith is described as having prevented these conclusions from being sent to the DOJ officials responsible for presenting the FISA renewal applications, telling colleagues directly, “We can’t send this to DOJ.” According to the report, Clinesmith then “set up a meeting with DOJ and led a discussion on the FISA renewal.”

This account closely tracks what was already established in the Carter Page case. There, Clinesmith altered an email to indicate that Page was not a CIA source when he had, in fact, previously provided information to the agency. That falsification was used in a FISA renewal application and formed the basis of the single criminal charge brought against him by Special Counsel John Durham.

The one-year probation sentence Clinesmith received was widely regarded as disproportionately lenient given both the seriousness of the conduct and the central importance of candor in a process that operates without any adversarial check on the government’s representations. Clinesmith was quickly reinstated in good standing with the D.C. Bar, even as that same organization is actively seeking to disbar former Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark for doing his job — drafting a memo on potential irregularities in the 2020 election. The contrast in standards is striking and underscores just how skewed accountability has been.

Even before the latest disclosures, it was clear that the single charge captured only a fraction of Clinesmith’s misconduct. In the Page FISA applications, Clinesmith had portrayed Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko as being based in Russia, implying direct access to Kremlin secrets. In reality, Danchenko was based in Washington, D.C. An analysis of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 2019 report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation suggests Clinesmith not only knew this but had been explicitly warned by colleagues not to describe Danchenko as Russia-based, and did it anyway.

That false representation created the illusion of access that Clinesmith evidently knew did not exist and directly shaped the court’s perception of the Steele dossier’s credibility. It appears to have been a knowing misrepresentation of a basic fact designed to prop up a failing case.

Despite the centrality of that deception, it was never charged.

The Grassley material adds another layer, indicating that Clinesmith employed the same deceptive tactics in the Phares investigation. The structural vulnerability in both cases is identical. FISA applications are one-sided: the court sees only what the FBI and DOJ choose to present, with no opposing counsel and no independent verification. That asymmetry places an extraordinary duty of candor on the government. When information is withheld or falsified, the court is not merely misled on a technicality; it is stripped of the only mechanism guarding against abuse of the government’s surveillance powers.

The implications are enormous. We now know that FISA was used against at least two Trump advisers, with a minimum of eight warrant applications spanning two years.

The record makes clear that Clinesmith’s role was neither peripheral nor isolated. His involvement across multiple FISA matters, combined with the allegation that he concealed material information not just from the court but even from colleagues within the government, demonstrates conduct that was sustained and deliberate, far beyond a single lapse in judgment as the public narrative has suggested. He was a central operator exploiting the system at its most vulnerable point, repeatedly misleading the court and hiding the truth from within the government itself.

The obvious question is why Durham treated this as a narrow, isolated offense. If Clinesmith’s role in the Phares case was deliberately concealed from Durham and his team, it raises serious questions about who was doing the hiding and what else may have been suppressed. There could also be legal consequences, particularly if those actions fall within the five-year statute of limitations for additional charges, which they likely do given that Durham’s investigation ran through May 2023.

What is beyond dispute is this: Clinesmith engaged in a sustained pattern of misconduct across multiple investigations, knowingly falsifying and withholding information to justify surveillance of innocent American citizens.

A single charge and a minimal penalty do not come close to reflecting that reality. This was a systematic abuse of one of the most powerful and least scrutinized tools in the federal government’s arsenal, and the reckoning for it has, so far, largely failed to arrive.

Even Chris Cuomo Is Calling BS on Joe Kent's Letter of Resignation

Townhall 

Even Chris Cuomo is now calling BS on the claims, including those from former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who in his public resignation letter Tuesday baselessly argued that the Trump administration was beholden to Israeli foreign policy positions.

"I'll tell you one thing," Cuomo said. "I believe is that we know this president well enough if it were true. He'd be saying it right now. He'd be saying I shouldn't listen to Bibi."

"Boy, did he have this wrong," he said. "[Trump] is not slow to throw people under the bus if they lead him into a bad position. I can't get anyone around him other than the guy, Joe Kent, who just resigned, who gives that a shred of credibility that this president did anything in Iran that he didn't want to do."

Kent’s resignation has ignited a firestorm, as he invoked claims with little historical backing, such as the notion that Israel drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and made sweeping assertions about Israeli influence over the president with little to no evidence.

"I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term," Kent wrote in his resignation letter. "Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation."

"Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran," he claimed. 

"This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again."

Observers have questioned why Kent made those claims in his letter, noting that several of his positions appear to have shifted over the past year.