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‘No Kings Day’ Street Theater Meets Shutdown Politics: A March for Democracy or a Midterm Ad Buy? David Manney

Posted By on October 19th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/10/18/no-kings-day-street-theater-meets-shutdown-politics-a-march-for-democracy-or-a-midterm-ad-buy-n4945017

Like a high school pep band after practicing all week, the crowd had the optics down cold: waving signs, rehearsed chants, and flags snapping in the wind.

“No Kings!” they shouted, filling city squares from Washington, D.C.,  to Chicago. On its face, it was a noble-sounding message, but the more you watched, the more it resembled a movie using the wrong genre tag — less a protest against tyranny and more a well-produced commercial for the Democratic Party.

With prices still high and a government shutdown stretching into a third week, the nation’s political theater troupe invaded the streets, with predictable corners providing glowing reviews. At the same time, the rest of the country wondered what it was really watching.

The Left’s Framing: A Patriotic Uprising

If you had the time and stomach to scan progressive outlets, from The Guardian to NBC News, “No Kings Day” was sold as a modern version of 1776. Writers on the left called it a peaceful stand for democracy, a people’s rejection of authoritarianism. Labor unions trucked supporters in, celebu-tards posted solidarity selfies, and public officials, from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, made cameo appearances during major rallies.

Boasting of thousands, organizers of local events declared “record-breaking” participation in Washington, D.C. It was a self-congratulatory tone, showing, they said, proof that America still had fight left in her.

Chants about liberty mingled with pop-up art shows, drum circles, and costume parades.

Organizers insisted it was democracy in motion, with families, veterans, clergy, and students linking arms in defense of the republic.

This is how the left told the story: peaceful, inclusive, righteous, and even necessary; a warning to would-be strongmen that Americans hadn’t forgotten their founding creed.

The Right’s Reaction: A Political Performance

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Gaza, Israel, and Anti-Semitism Israel’s victory on the battlefield has sparked a new war of ideas—one in which the Cultural Left blames not just Israel, but Jews themselves, for refusing to lose. By Stephen Soukup

Posted By on October 19th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/18/gaza-israel-and-anti-semitism/

The other day, while the civilized world was celebrating the ceasefire brokered by President Trump, ending the current hostilities between Israel and its neighbors in Gaza, the folks at the New York Times were wondering what Israel could possibly do to “repair its ties to Americans.” According to the Times—and the smart set it represents—Israel’s “conduct” of the war has likely “cost it the support of an entire generation of U.S. voters.” Israel, you see, did its best to destroy its enemies—in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, and in Yemen. It destroyed Hamas’s leadership and its ability to conduct operations. It ended Hezbollah’s four-decade reign of terror. It set the Iranian nuclear program back by years, if not decades. And it, by and large, made the Persian Gulf safe for trade and travel again. I won’t go so far as to say that it accomplished all of its goals and won a decisive victory. Some of the very smartest analysts of the Middle East I know and respect think that the deal Israel agreed to is problematic at best. Nevertheless, the war didn’t go the way much of the American Left would have liked, and so its media mouthpieces think it did ugly and horrific things.

Ironically, despite the fact that Israel’s “conduct” of the war was, by most honest accounts, as just and as conscientious as any such efforts could be, the New York Times isn’t necessarily wrong about Israel’s support in the United States. That support has suffered, and it is unlikely to be easily restored. For reasons that the Times and the rest of the American ruling class seem hellbent on pretending don’t exist, Israel may indeed have lost the support of an entire generation of Americans—if not more.

In a now-deleted exchange on Twitter/X, the British-American political commentator and Islamist apologist Mehdi Hasan gave the giveaway. Angry about the terms of the ceasefire and the fact that he will no longer be able to prattle on endlessly about genocide and other inanities, Hasan lashed out at the American journalist Eli Lake. In response to a tweet by Lake noting how quickly Gaza seemed to recover from its terrible ordeal, Hasan complained, “One of the ways in which the Gaza genocide is worse than a lot of the previous genocides—Rwanda, even the Holocaust—is that you didn’t have Hutus or Nazis mocking the genocide after it was over. They were shunned/deradicalized/prosecuted.”

This was quite a statement—even for Hasan, a noted, radical Israel-hater. Not only did he compare Gaza to the Holocaust and Eli Lake to the Nazis, but he also suggested that people like Lake should be prosecuted and shunned, even though Lake had nothing whatsoever to do with the war, its conduct, its conclusion, or the losses Hasan’s Islamist allies suffered.

ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bill Maher asks where ‘keffiyeh-wearing college kids’ went as Hamas is ‘shooting everybody’

Posted By on October 19th, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/bill-maher-asks-where-keffiyeh-wearing-college-kids-went-as-hamas-is-shooting-everybody/ar-AA1OJ84g?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=59cdaef6a3ef4d0a90cd1bcfe155f5fd&ei=6

TV talk show host Bill Maher questioned the recent silence of campus protestors over Gaza during Friday night’s episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, pressing, “Where are the protesters?… Suddenly, the keffiyeh-wearing college kids are very quiet.”

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, appearing on the panel, responded: “Can’t be found. Yeah, can’t be found anywhere.” Maher added that Hamas is “shooting everybody,” calling out what he described as “the asymmetry of what goes on.” 

Criticizing pro-Palestinians who ignore Hamas’s atrocities

Maher has repeatedly criticized American activists he sees as excusing or overlooking Hamas abuses while focusing their ire on Israel. In May, he similarly challenged US liberals who expressed support for Hamas despite the group’s extremist ideology.

Friday’s remarks extended that critique to student protest movements that were highly visible last academic year.

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The ‘No Kings’ Protests Against Democracy Itself Trump’s decisive 2024 victory exposed the irony of the left’s “No Kings” protests—an anti-democracy tantrum against the most democratic act of all: an election. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on October 19th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/19/the-no-kings-protests-against-democracy-itself/

On November 5, 2024, Donald Trump won the United States presidential election against Kamala Harris. It was a convincing win. Trump snagged victory in the Electoral College, where the contest is officially decided, 312 to 226. He needed only 270 to prevail. He also won the popular vote (a nice but unnecessary distinction), with 77,302,580 votes to 75,017,613, a margin of almost 2 million votes.

I mention these well-known facts to underscore the black comedy of the “No Kings” protests taking place across the country as I write. According to several sources, some 2500 separate protests are planned. Millions of people are expected to join in the fun. More than 200 left-wing groups, from the ACLU and Antifa to Indivisible, have helped organize the events. Prominent Democrats from Bernie Sanders to AOC to Gavin Newsom, and Chuck Schumer are panting to attend and proclaim their virtue and denounce the duly elected president of the United States. Really, as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson observed, the “No Kings” rallies ought to be called “Hate America” rallies.

I live in deep-blue Fairfield County, Connecticut. In nearby Westport, terminally disgruntled middle-to-late-aged citizens joined, but clumps of unattractive GenZeers—Geezers and Zeers—regularly congregate on a certain bridge to protest for or against whatever the central committee has handed down as this week’s issue: climate change, fossil fuels, Brett Kavanaugh, or Israel. Whatever it is, they are there with their signs, self-righteousness, and ire. I am pretty sure I recognized some old-timers today from their stints protesting against George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Naturally, the crowds were out in force today to disrupt traffic and inform the world that they disliked Donald Trump and all his works.

It was a large gathering. It was also depressingly pathetic. As one commentator observed, “Protests are meant to be the voices of the unheard. Yet these protests are the voices of those who never shut up.”

The ironies abound. The announced theme of this Soros-funded, Communist-Party-endorsed network of protests is “No Kings.” But Donald Trump is not a king. He is a democratically elected president. He obeys (and then appeals) every outrageous injunction issued by hubristic district court judges to stymie his agenda. But Trump is nonetheless excoriated by the media and professional leftists for acting in a tyrannical, king-like (they never say “regal”) way. Trump himself had fun with this absurdity. “I was very concerned that a king was trying to take my place,” he wrote, “but thanks to your tireless efforts, I am STILL YOUR PRESIDENT!” If Trump were really a king, as another commentator on X observed, the government would be open now. Trump would simply decree it.

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Mamdani Poses With Unindicted WTC Bombing Co-Conspirator “If 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.” by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 19th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/mamdani-poses-with-unindicted-wtc-bombing-co-conspirator/

Siraj Wahhaj had previously donated to Zohran Mamdani’s campaign and posted a video endorsement. Even as a number of papers were preparing to run stories linking Mamdani to associates of Wahhaj, he sprung the trap by tweeting a photo of himself with the imam.

Mamdani’s pretty confident about his chances and the larger goal here is to normalize the worst possible elements of Islam. So what is Mamdani normalizing here?

Take a look at our Discover the Networks profile of Wahhaj.

Wahhaj urged U.S. Muslims to become politically active as a means of augmenting the influence of their faith: “As long as you remember that if you get involved in politics, you have to be very careful that your leader is for Allah. You don’t get involved in politics because it’s the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.”

In a 1992 sermon, Wahhaj emphasized the importance of jihad to his Al-Taqwa mosque congregation: “I will never ever tell people, ‘don’t be violent, that is not the Islamic way.’ The violence has to be selected…. Islam is the only answer because it is only Islam that we do it for Allah…. [We are] commanded to do jihad….”

In an autumn 1992 address to an Islamic gathering in New Jersey, Wahhaj expressed his desire to have Muslims seize control of the United States and replace the country’s constitutional government with an Islamic caliphate. “If we were united and strong,” Wahhaj said, “we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him…. [T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.”

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Trump inherited a weaponized justice system The President’s vigorous effort to call to account those who waged lawfare against him is a necessary purgative Roger Kimball

Posted By on October 18th, 2025

https://thespectator.com/topic/trump-inherited-weaponized-justice-system/

Has Donald Trump “weaponized” the justice system to go after his political enemies? The answer is no.

“What about former FBI director James Comey?” you ask. “What about New York Attorney General Letitia James?” Both went after Trump hammer and tongs. Now both have been indicted by the Trump Justice Department. Are those not textbook cases of “weaponization,” of “retribution,” of using the power of the system to punish people who have punished you?

Hold on. I write this in mid-October. By the time you read it, I suspect that the list of indictments will be much longer. Candidates for inclusion on this Ko-Ko-like “little list” include John Bolton, national security advisor during Trump’s first term; Jack Smith, the special counsel who managed to rack up 37 indictments against Trump in two criminal cases; and sundry other former intelligence officers and DoJ officials. The dragnet will be large; it will be relentless.

So haven’t I just admitted that Trump weaponized the justice system?

No. Trump didn’t weaponize the justice system. He inherited a weaponized justice system.

More on that shortly. First, here’s another little list. Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Jeffrey Clark and George Papadopoulos.

That’s a very incomplete roster of Trump aides and supporters who were indicted, prosecuted, disbarred and/or jailed. The list does not include the more than 1,200 people convicted over the January 6 protest at the Capitol. Nor does it capture a contrast that Navarro describes in a post on X: “I was dragged through Reagan Airport in leg irons, mug shot, handcuffs, jail cell, the full circus. Meanwhile, Comey faces felonies up to 10 years for the worst political conspiracy in modern history, and he slips quietly through a side door.”

Responding to demands that Comey be subjected to the humiliation of a “perp walk,” Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel said there would be “no drama.” But the FBI that Trump inherited specialized in such drama. Remember their guns-drawn, dawn raid to arrest his confidant Roger Stone? The tipped-off media were there in force to lap up and regurgitate the entertainment.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe Has Apparently Learned Nothing by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on October 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21995/iran-europe-learned-nothing

Once again, Europe seems to have slipped into a dangerous fantasy: that engaging in polite diplomatic parleys with promises of sugar plums will tame Iran’s rapacious ambitions.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (E3), acting as the European Troika, declared their intention to revive the long-stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran.

At the core of the E3’s plan lies the deeply flawed assumption that Iran can be wooed into restraint through incremental “incentives.” These generally consist of easing financial pressure, lifting trade restrictions, or delaying multilateral sanctions in exchange for ephemeral commitments.

Sadly, Europe appears to be pursuing the worst lessons of appeasement: the dangerous illusion is that you can temper a ravenous aggressor by conciliation, weakness and generosity. The aggressor immediately sees that the best route for him is to demand more. The cycle becomes self-reinforcing.

By treating the Iranian regime as a legitimate negotiating partner — and by discounting the moral and strategic gulf that separates it from liberal democracies — Europe is bankrolling the terrorism industry.

President Donald J. Trump’s current posture — doubling down on sanctions, refusing immediate diplomacy until leverage is secured — should jolt Europe out of its passivity.

The European Troika’s charade must stop. Anything less just prolongs the threat.

Once again, Europe seems to have slipped into a dangerous fantasy: that engaging in polite diplomatic parleys with promises of sugar plums will tame Iran’s rapacious ambitions.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (E3), acting as the European Troika, declared their intention to revive the long-stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran. In a joint statement, they pledged to “reopen a path toward a comprehensive, lasting, and verifiable agreement.”

This is the same play we have seen before: bold headlines, carefully phrased commitments, and the faint hope that seduction can substitute for strength. Unfortunately, these gestures always carry a hidden cost. Once the diplomatic machinery is set in motion, we soon hear about sanctions relief, softening of UN mandates, and felicitous loopholes to reintegrate the Iranian regime into global markets. What begins as promise too often ends as reward for terrible behavior and a prelude to even more.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s critics pine for old-school diplomacy. But Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff triumphed where Joe Biden’s national security professionals failed. By Niall Ferguson

Posted By on October 18th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-how-real-estateism-got-the-deal-done-in-gaza?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

t has been a tough week for the professional Donald Trump haters. Only the most unhinged of them could not share in the joy of the families of the surviving Israeli hostages as they were reunited on Monday. But there must always be liberal ghosts at any feast of which Trump is the host.

“Everyone should be glad that the hostages have been freed” and hope “that this peace process succeeds,” acknowledged the editor of The New Republic, Michael Tomasky. But? Well, “he’s still the Donald Trump who is destroying democracy and ruining lives here in America.”

“We may grimace in doing so,” wrote Kenneth Roth in The Guardian, “but Donald Trump deserves credit for finally ending the U.S. government’s funding and arming of the genocide, and arm-twisting Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting his 20-point plan for Gaza.”

This was more than Guardian columnist Owen Jones was prepared to concede. His commentary yesterday carefully avoided giving Trump any credit for the ceasefire and the return of the hostages, ranting instead that “Israel’s Western-facilitated genocide. . . . will boomerang back to the West from the killing fields of Gaza.”

At least Tomasky was prepared to entertain “the possibility that the Trump-Netanyahu worldview got it right this time.” The New Statesman went further. Freddie Hayward’s account of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal explicitly acknowledged the triumph of “the dealmakers.” But it bemoaned the new world order that this triumph signifies: “a world in which Trump rules like an emperor. . . . a world where leaders court the president’s favor to receive his patronage and avoid his wrath. Institutions such as the United Nations are ignored. Diplomacy is personal. Job titles matter less than getting things done. Raw power dominates international law. And protecting capital takes precedence over protecting human rights.”

The key roles played by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—respectively, Trump’s friend and son-in-law—were especially painful for Hayward to acknowledge. But he could not deny it: “Trump succeeded in ending the war in Gaza, where Biden and his expert class failed.”

It is excruciating for anyone on the left to admit any of this. For all these authors are in the grip of a pathetic nostalgia for a vanished age in which the United Nations mattered; job titles mattered; international law mattered; and human rights transcended mere economics. They appear not to have processed that “Biden and his expert class failed” precisely because all those things ceased to work many years ago.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Flotilla Falsehoods, or Lie, But Know When to Stop “They forced her to kiss the Israeli flag.” by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on October 17th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/flotilla-falsehoods-or-lie-but-know-when-to-stop/

In the play “Woe From Wit” (Gore ot uma) by the Russian playwright Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov (yes, he has the same name and patronymic as Pushkin) the character Repetilov says to the play’s protagonist Chatsky “Vri, da znaj zhe meru,” which means “Lie, but know when to stop.” That line came immediately to mind when I read the pack of lies the flotilla flotsam and jetsam have been spreading in the media about how the Israeli sailors mistreated the Gaza Sumud Flotilla’s participants when they boarded their 47 boats and then put the pro-Hamas demonstrators on dry land, to be briskly processed and deported. More on those lies can be found here: “‘They dragged little Greta by her hair,’ Turkish flotilla activist claims – report,” Jerusalem Post, October 5, 2025:

Environmental and social activist Greta Thunberg accused Israel of subjecting her to harsh treatment following Israeli forces’s interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, according to a report by The Guardian.

An official who visited Thunberg in prison said she claimed that she is being held in a cell infested with bedbugs, with little food and water, the Swedish foreign ministry said in an email.

The email, which was disclosed by The Guardian, read, “The embassy has been able to meet with Greta. She informed of dehydration. She has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She spoke of harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.”…

The Swedish author of this email simply accepts Thunberg’s charges as true, when he ought to have said “Thunberg claimed….Thunberg claimed,” and not “she informed” and “she stated,”

Really, how likely is it the Israelis would have mistreated Greta Thunberg or any of the other flotilla participants? The international media were right there to record the moments when the boats, one after the other, were boarded. They filmed the proceedings; I saw myself a video on Italian television showing a sailor doing nothing more than placing a blanket on Great’s shoulders to keep her warm. The Israelis also could be seen distributing food and water. As to the bedbugs that Greta says “she suspects” caused her rashes, this is calumny. No evidence of bedbugs were presented by her or anyone else, and no other flotilla participants complained of them. It’s a story made up out of whole cloth for the media.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

This Is Not the Time to Give Tomahawks to Ukraine As Trump’s diplomacy opens new talks with Putin, Ukraine’s push for U.S. Tomahawk missiles tests the line between deterrence and dangerous escalation. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on October 17th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/17/this-is-not-the-time-to-give-tomahawks-to-ukraine/

In response to Russian President Putin’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire in the Ukraine War and his stubborn defiance of President Trump’s peace efforts, Ukraine wants the U.S. to give it Tomahawk cruise missiles. Ukraine’s rationale is that enabling it to go on the offensive against Russia with these advanced, long-range missiles might force Putin to agree to a ceasefire.

Providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine might be dangerously escalatory. Still, this proposal, coupled with the success of President Trump’s diplomacy to end the Israel-Hamas War, may have motivated Putin to agree yesterday to new rounds of high-level diplomacy with the U.S.

Ukrainian President Zelensky likely will still request Tomahawks during his meeting with President Trump at the White House on Friday, October 18. Trump indicated on Wednesday that he was open to this idea when he told reporters, “I might say, ‘Look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send Tomahawks.’”

Trump is unlikely to agree to this when he meets with Zelensky today, as he had a positive phone call yesterday with Putin, during which the two presidents agreed to new high-level talks and a summit in Budapest.

The Tomahawk is a low-flying, difficult-to-intercept cruise missile with a range of about 1,500 miles. This would put Moscow (about 450 miles from Ukraine) and areas of Russia west of the Ural Mountains in range of Ukraine. This far exceeds the ranges of advanced U.S., French, and UK missiles provided to Ukraine, none of which exceed 350 miles. Ukraine also agreed to range limits for these missiles.

Although Ukraine has produced some long-range drones and cruise missiles with ranges of about 620 to 1,900 miles, the Tomahawk’s reliability, precision guidance, and capability to carry larger warheads would make it a much more effective and lethal missile in the Ukrainian military’s arsenal.

If the U.S. provided Tomahawks to Ukraine (probably by selling them to NATO), there likely would be an end-use agreement limiting their use to military targets and barring attacks against very sensitive targets like the Kremlin, which could cause massive Russian retaliation against Ukraine and NATO states. Moreover, Ukraine would be dependent on U.S. training and targeting intelligence to use these missiles, which would give the Trump administration control over how they could be used.