Even before competition became fierce among the 11 eventual Democratic contenders, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams dropped out to run for reelection as an independent when early polling showed that he would probably lose the nomination to disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Then, on Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old New York state assemblyman, stunningly defeated Cuomo, by 43 percent to 36 percent. The margin was so high that Mamdani did not have to rely, as was widely predicted, on the city’s bizarre ranked-choice voting system, introduced in 2021, which allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference and thus amalgamate support for underperforming candidates.

Cuomo was long favored to win the primary despite his scandal-plagued record. He racked up high-profile endorsements, secured millions in campaign contributions, and pledged a law-and-order approach to city governance. It was not enough.

Mamdani swept the former governor aside through a grass-roots campaign that promised affordable housing, free bus transportation, and other attention-grabbing socioeconomic pledges that appealed to dissatisfied younger voters, struggling immigrants, and guilty progressive elites. Mamdani was also perfectly situated to benefit from the Democrats’ increasingly vituperative intergenerational civil war, which has pitched the party’s younger and more racially diverse progressive faction against its more moderate gerontocratic and almost entirely white leadership.

Mamdani’s campaign thus became an issue of national importance, scoring endorsements from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the two most important national progressive leaders, while Cuomo, 67, looked like the corrupt creature of a decrepit old guard.

The race between Mamdani and Cuomo was bitter enough that both said that they, too, would run as independents if they lost the Democratic primary, mainly to deny each other ultimate victory. Cuomo has confirmed to The New York Times that he is still considering an independent run.

If he follows through, New York City’s leftist voters will be divided into three rival groups supporting Mamdani as the official Democratic candidate, Adams as the incumbent mayor, and Cuomo as an unreconciled challenger to both.

All three camps have weaknesses that will alienate broad blocks of Democratic voters. Mamdani, a self-professed “anti-Zionist” and “democratic socialist,” is widely perceived as an anti-Semite and political radical whose policies would be prejudiced and economically ruinous.

Cuomo would presumably retain support from the powerful but unpopular Democratic establishment while still trying to live down his bail reform policies, which led to New York City’s recent massive crime surge, his pandemic-era public health directives that are widely believed to have caused mass death among New York’s elderly, his humiliating 2021 resignation as governor following numerous sexual harassment claims, and other scandals.

Adams, rated the least popular mayor in city history, has been mired in corruption allegations that led to his criminal indictment—the first of a sitting New York mayor—by Joe Biden’s Justice Department, and then to allegations of a quid pro quo in which Donald Trump’s Justice Department dropped the charges, possibly in exchange for responsible law and immigration policy enforcement by Adams.

These three deeply flawed candidates could easily cancel each other out. Progressives loathe both Adams and Cuomo as enforcers of a corrupt status quo and will certainly stick with Mamdani.

Adams and Cuomo supporters regard Mamdani as a dangerous and inexperienced radical, and would split centrist Democrats, whose main issues are crime and business growth. Adams remains popular among blacks, Hispanics, and an important segment of city businessowners, while Cuomo would retain blue-collar Democrats, older voters, and Catholics. Mamdani will continue to win immigrants and younger voters but lose many Jews and most, if not all, moderates. Despite Mamdani’s surprise victory, his primary win rests on a mere 43 percent plurality, meaning that 57 percent of New York Democrats voted for someone else in a contest where voters already tend to skew further to the activist left than they do in general elections.

The Republicans have the discreet advantage of unity. Unlike the Democrats, they have one uncontested candidate, Curtis Sliwa, a radio talk show host who in the 1970s famously founded the Guardian Angels, a civic organization to fight crime. Sliwa was the GOP candidate in 2021, when he lost to Adams by nearly 40 points. Adams, however, was then running unchallenged on the left, on what many believed to be a promising professional record as a former transit cop and New York City police captain, and as a black man on the heels of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.

Sliwa was an anti-Trump Republican who had just disaffiliated from New York’s small centrist Reform party. In the years since, the electorate largely soured on Adams and Sliwa reentered the Republican fold with strong and dramatically more relevant anti-crime credentials. Meanwhile, Trump doubled his voting base in New York City from 15 percent in 2020 to 30 percent in 2024, with his greatest advances among minorities and in the outer boroughs, where Sliwa was strongest in the 2021 mayoral race.

Sliwa has some foibles and eccentricities, but they pale in comparison to the massive deficiencies present in the Democratic field. In any case, it is inconceivable that Trump’s 2024 voters would now drift back to uninspiring Democratic candidates.

If Sliwa can match Trump’s numbers from 2024 and win over even a small percentage of anti-crime Democrats, it is entirely conceivable that he could win the mayor’s office by a plurality that beats out a non-Republican bloc divided among Mamdani, Adams, and Cuomo. It would be the first mayoral victory by plurality since John Lindsay prevailed in a three-way race in 1969, but a low bar above the three Democrats is all Sliwa would have to 

New York City has not had a Republican mayor since 2007, when Michael Bloomberg left the GOP to finish his remaining time in office as an independent. Republican fortunes in the traditionally left-leaning city could change this year, however, as New York’s Democratic establishment reels from its fractured primary process.

Even before competition became fierce among the 11 eventual Democratic contenders, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams dropped out to run for reelection as an independent when early polling showed that he would probably lose the nomination to disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Then, on Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old New York state assemblyman, stunningly defeated Cuomo, by 43 percent to 36 percent. The margin was so high that Mamdani did not have to rely, as was widely predicted, on the city’s bizarre ranked-choice voting system, introduced in 2021, which allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference and thus amalgamate support for underperforming candidates.

Cuomo was long favored to win the primary despite his scandal-plagued record. He racked up high-profile endorsements, secured millions in campaign contributions, and pledged a law-and-order approach to city governance. It was not enough.

Mamdani swept the former governor aside through a grass-roots campaign that promised affordable housing, free bus transportation, and other attention-grabbing socioeconomic pledges that appealed to dissatisfied younger voters, struggling immigrants, and guilty progressive elites. Mamdani was also perfectly situated to benefit from the Democrats’ increasingly vituperative intergenerational civil war, which has pitched the party’s younger and more racially diverse progressive faction against its more moderate gerontocratic and almost entirely white leadership.

Mamdani’s campaign thus became an issue of national importance, scoring endorsements from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the two most important national progressive leaders, while Cuomo, 67, looked like the corrupt creature of a decrepit old guard.

The race between Mamdani and Cuomo was bitter enough that both said that they, too, would run as independents if they lost the Democratic primary, mainly to deny each other ultimate victory. Cuomo has confirmed to The New York Times that he is still considering an independent run.

If he follows through, New York City’s leftist voters will be divided into three rival groups supporting Mamdani as the official Democratic candidate, Adams as the incumbent mayor, and Cuomo as an unreconciled challenger to both.

All three camps have weaknesses that will alienate broad blocks of Democratic voters. Mamdani, a self-professed “anti-Zionist” and “democratic socialist,” is widely perceived as an anti-Semite and political radical whose policies would be prejudiced and economically ruinous.

Cuomo would presumably retain support from the powerful but unpopular Democratic establishment while still trying to live down his bail reform policies, which led to New York City’s recent massive crime surge, his pandemic-era public health directives that are widely believed to have caused mass death among New York’s elderly, his humiliating 2021 resignation as governor following numerous sexual harassment claims, and other scandals.

Adams, rated the least popular mayor in city history, has been mired in corruption allegations that led to his criminal indictment—the first of a sitting New York mayor—by Joe Biden’s Justice Department, and then to allegations of a quid pro quo in which Donald Trump’s Justice Department dropped the charges, possibly in exchange for responsible law and immigration policy enforcement by Adams.

These three deeply flawed candidates could easily cancel each other out. Progressives loathe both Adams and Cuomo as enforcers of a corrupt status quo and will certainly stick with Mamdani.

Adams and Cuomo supporters regard Mamdani as a dangerous and inexperienced radical, and would split centrist Democrats, whose main issues are crime and business growth. Adams remains popular among blacks, Hispanics, and an important segment of city businessowners, while Cuomo would retain blue-collar Democrats, older voters, and Catholics. Mamdani will continue to win immigrants and younger voters but lose many Jews and most, if not all, moderates. Despite Mamdani’s surprise victory, his primary win rests on a mere 43 percent plurality, meaning that 57 percent of New York Democrats voted for someone else in a contest where voters already tend to skew further to the activist left than they do in general elections.

The Republicans have the discreet advantage of unity. Unlike the Democrats, they have one uncontested candidate, Curtis Sliwa, a radio talk show host who in the 1970s famously founded the Guardian Angels, a civic organization to fight crime. Sliwa was the GOP candidate in 2021, when he lost to Adams by nearly 40 points. Adams, however, was then running unchallenged on the left, on what many believed to be a promising professional record as a former transit cop and New York City police captain, and as a black man on the heels of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.

Sliwa was an anti-Trump Republican who had just disaffiliated from New York’s small centrist Reform party. In the years since, the electorate largely soured on Adams and Sliwa reentered the Republican fold with strong and dramatically more relevant anti-crime credentials. Meanwhile, Trump doubled his voting base in New York City from 15 percent in 2020 to 30 percent in 2024, with his greatest advances among minorities and in the outer boroughs, where Sliwa was strongest in the 2021 mayoral race.

Sliwa has some foibles and eccentricities, but they pale in comparison to the massive deficiencies present in the Democratic field. In any case, it is inconceivable that Trump’s 2024 voters would now drift back to uninspiring Democratic candidates.

If Sliwa can match Trump’s numbers from 2024 and win over even a small percentage of anti-crime Democrats, it is entirely conceivable that he could win the mayor’s office by a plurality that beats out a non-Republican bloc divided among Mamdani, Adams, and Cuomo. It would be the first mayoral victory by plurality since John Lindsay prevailed in a three-way race in 1969, but a low bar above the three Democrats is all Sliwa would have to 

Sliwa was an anti-Trump Republican who had just disaffiliated from New York’s small centrist Reform party. In the years since, the electorate largely soured on Adams and Sliwa reentered the Republican fold with strong and dramatically more relevant anti-crime credentials. Meanwhile, Trump doubled his voting base in New York City from 15 percent in 2020 to 30 percent in 2024, with his greatest advances among minorities and in the outer boroughs, where Sliwa was strongest in the 2021 mayoral race.

Sliwa has some foibles and eccentricities, but they pale in comparison to the massive deficiencies present in the Democratic field. In any case, it is inconceivable that Trump’s 2024 voters would now drift back to uninspiring Democratic candidates.

If Sliwa can match Trump’s numbers from 2024 and win over even a small percentage of anti-crime Democrats, it is entirely conceivable that he could win the mayor’s office by a plurality that beats out a non-Republican bloc divided among Mamdani, Adams, and Cuomo. It would be the first mayoral victory by plurality since John Lindsay prevailed in a three-way race in 1969, but a low bar above the three Democrats is all Sliwa would have to reach.

Some Republicans already see it. Even before the primary, former New York Governor George Pataki, the last Republican to hold statewide office, spoke strongly in favor of Sliwa and is the headliner of a New York state GOP fundraiser for the mayoral candidate scheduled for Thursday, just two days after the Democratic decision. Hours after the primary, New York Republican Congressman Mike Lawler posted in Sliwa’s favor.

Nothing is guaranteed, of course. Some observers have advocated for Republican voters to back Cuomo or the seemingly reformed Adams as a firewall to stop Mamdani. New York City’s often abashed and self-effacing GOP will have to get behind Sliwa full-steam, and apathetic city Republican voters will have to turn out in greater numbers than usual. But the path to victory is there, if they have the guts to take it.

In addition to fighting Israel, Iranian authorities are also waging war against suspected spies and infiltrators, asking citizens to report anyone they consider suspicious. 

This includes alerting authorities if they see people wearing sunglasses at night, wearing hats, reporting stolen license plates, seeing pick-up trucks with covered beds, or observing vans being driven about during odd hours, which the regime says could be signs of undercover enemies to the nation, reported The New York Times. 

In the weeks since Israel launched its attacks on Iran earlier this month, Iran has arrested hundreds of people, who are quickly tried and often executed. The regime has also pushed forward a law that broadens the use of the death penalty for anyone who is convicted of espionage. 

The crackdowns are leading some in Iran to believe the government’s efforts will lead to attacks on political opponents as well. 

Still, Iranian officials may well have a point, considering Israel’s history of infiltrating Iran to gather intelligence while carrying out assassinations and other sabotage. 

Even in the recent conflict, Israel has boasted of its ability to launch attacks from within Iran, and Iranian officials have reported clues that they say point to the Mossad being helped by operatives within the nation. 

“It’s clear the Mossad has a very wide network inside Iran — and probably 90 percent of them are locals,” Iran analyst Mohammad Ali Shabani, who edits the independent regional news site Amwaj.media, commented. “The big question is: Who are they? Fingers are being pointed all over the place.”

The Israeli intelligence abilities were on display within hours after the beginning of the June 13 strike, when several top generals and nuclear scientists were killed in their homes. 

But Iranian officials are not admitting the intelligence failures, and rights groups say that many of the people who were arrested over the past two weeks were not given access to lawyers or had been presented with warrants. 

According to Amnesty International, the regime has engaged in “grossly unfair trials” and executions, because of “a misguided attempt to project strength.”

Mohammed Reza, a 40-year-old resident of the city of Tabriz, commented that it is only a matter of time before political opponents come under attack. 

“Right now, they want to make sure no one mocks the regime or has hope for regime change,” he said in a text. “The regime’s main fear is that people will perceive it as weak. Because if people know it lacks power, they will revolt.” 

Sandy Fitzgerald ✉

Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics. 

From New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the big cities that are led by Democrats are dying. And the Democrats who lived there know this. It presses down upon them.

And the recent ascent of the surging wild-eyed communist Zohran Mamdani over the tired and listless female groper and grandma killer Andrew Cuomo in the New York Democrat mayoral primary? It’s a gateway into the anguish of the Democrats.

“People go to cities and states where they can invest money and get a return on their investment,” billionaire grocer John Catsimatidis told Fox News after Mamdani’s stunning victory. “That’s what capitalism is all about. They’ll take a vibrant city and kill it.”

The left has already killed Chicago. Los Angeles was burned by fire and riots. New York still has a pulse, but the communist will squeeze the vibrancy of the city that never sleeps. And if things don’t go his way, his army will tear the city apart. Some of us have seen this movie before. It ends with illiterate cave dwellers wandering past the broken Statue of Liberty, unaware of what it once meant.

Those who remain in the dying cities are left with the festering Democrat trinity: decaying civic infrastructure, high violent crime, crushing high taxes. And public schools controlled by the Democrat storm troops of the teachers’ unions that can’t even teach children to read and write as the AI revolution sweeps down on the globe while raking away the illiterate chaff.

Others who loved their towns and urban life are desperate to get out, left to feed on anguish as they flee. Only those who can’t leave remain. It is the dystopian nightmare.

If you get your news from corrupt left wing legacy media, you might not know this, but the big cities have never recovered from the do-nothing George Soros prosecutors who refused to prosecute violent repeat offenders, the prosecutors playing the race card again and again to win elections and re-elections.

Likewise, the cities never recovered from the destruction and looting of the Black Lives Matter riots in the 2020 “Summer of Love.”

The three major cities are led by hard leftist socialists if not outright communists, and their goals are to defund the police, reduce or abolish the jails and prisons, promote universal healthcare, end cash bail, decriminalize drug possession and fight federal immigration enforcement targeting illegal migrant aliens.

And the decay spreads, as the great cities circle the drain. Those who love those great cities are left with an increasing sense of dread.

That’s why I selected August Friedrich Schenck’s painting titled “Anguish” as the opening image for this column. It depicts a mother sheep, a ewe, mourning the body of her lifeless lamb. They are surrounded by a murder of crows. They edge closer to feed on the carcass. They are pitiless.

What feeling does it give us?

Grief and despair. And helplessness.

The same emotions I feel after loving the dying city where I was born.

All this should be no surprise. It was written. After America spent decades embracing illegal immigration as Democrats hunted voters and corporate Republicans hunted cheap labor. Sentimental leftists embraced illegal immigrants who did not have the slightest affinity with the United States—except appetites for federal welfare—the end should have been apparent. And corporate media whipped them on.

Unchecked migration has fundamentally remade the electorate in the major cities. And Democrats change politics by changing voters. That is what the Democrat open borders policy was all about. Replacement.

Add to that decades upon decades of leftist indoctrination in the schools of education, and teachers cleaving to the communist Howard Zinn for “A People’s History of the United States.” Even sitting in the lap of Satan, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, founder of the Soviet state, must be laughing at us all.

The always insightful Orthodox Christian conservative moralist Rod Dreher sees what happened in New York as a referendum on the left on the Democrats. In “Mamdani’s Big Apple Intifada” in his Substack, Dreher writes:

“Left-wing voters in New York City, like their MAGA peers nationally nine years ago, lashed out against what they regard as a failed liberal establishment, electing a charismatic populist who promised a clear break with the past. We on the Right can shake our heads and laugh at how dumb New York liberals and progressives were to choose a candidate as politically inexperienced and radical as Mamdani, but don’t miss that this was also a referendum on the Democratic Party itself, and the party’s style of politics.”

New York flirts with disaster, nominating a hard leftist zealot to be mayor. Los Angeles is still in spasm after the leftist violence there. And my hometown, Chicago, is dying.

Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson is a confused communist completely out of his depth. His opponent, the educator Paul Vallas understood management and budgets, but Vallas was a white man, and therefore unacceptable to the Chicago media and the left wing shock troops of the Chicago Teachers Union. They installed Johnson as their useful idiot. And Johnson’s old boss, the racist leftist known as Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle joined with the destructive element that we call AWFLs (Angry White Female Leftists). And Johnson was installed.

You want to open up a restaurant? There is an overabundance of empty commercial space in the city that used to work, courtesy of the BLM riots. And now Johnson has vetoed a teen curfew ordinance that would have let Chicago police shut down violent “teen takeovers” that get out of hand, sending a message that Chicago has given into anarchy.

Who wants to invest in Chicago businesses now? Nobody.

Adding even more gall to the cup of taxpayers, consider that after decades and decades of Democrat control of the legislature and State Supreme Court, the average retired state worker gets nearly $25,000 more than those who work to support them (meaning lowly taxpayers).

In Los Angeles leftist activists and aggressive muscle from SEIU are about following and harassing ICE agents. And a short car ride away, the Democrat vice mayor of Cudahy, Cynthia Gonzalez called on street gangs to attack federal immigration agents.

Not for nothing, but I want to know where all the cholos are at in Los Angeles? 18th Street, Florencia, where’s the leadership at?” said Gonzalez on video. “You guys are all about territory and this is 18th Street, and this is Florencia and you guys tag everything up claiming hood. And now that your hood is being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there ain’t a peep out of you.”

“It’s everyone else who’s not about the gang life that’s out there protesting and speaking up,” she said. “We’re out there fighting our turf, protecting our turf, protecting our people and, like, where you at?”

And U.S. Attorney Bill Essyli filed a lawsuit against Orange County for refusing to hand over records showing non-citizens illegally voting, casting ballots.

For Republican political operatives, the elevation of Mamdani is a gift. “I’d describe it as Christmas in July for the GOP,” said Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat.

But for the nation, it’s a threat.

Consider this from the communist Mamdani, who sounds like the deranged Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, channeling his do-nothing Soros prosecutor zero Kim Foxx and Boss Toni Preckwinkle:

Zohran wants to empty the jails, as Boss Toni and Mayor Panic Attacks have done in Chicago.

Mamdani and Johnson sell the fiction they’re with the working class. But Mamdani owes his victory in New York to wealthy white elites. And Johnson owes his to the AWFLs and the Chicago Teachers Union and Boss Toni. And Castro organizer and LA Mayor Karen Bass is also encouraging violence, as are the others, because the left is all about force, all about violence.

Mamdani insists–with the smug assurance of a boy of elite leftist privilege–that violence is a nothing “construction.” Is that how the hard leftists talk at their cocktail parties in Soho and the Upper East Side?

Or is that how they talk when illegal migrant street gangs like Tren de Aragua club them to the ground, their women screaming, the leftists crawling on the pavement spitting blood during a robbery.

Is it what the leftist Menshevik’s believed up until the moment the Bolsheviks devoured them in the streets? If you’ve kept your eyes open you’ve seen this playing out in our big cities.

After Johnson, Bass, Mamdani have finished preening and what will be left of their cities?

The murder of crows edge closer, And the violent bear it away.

John Kass

This nasty, intellectually dull totalitarian that puppet Biden put on the Supreme Court has actually upheld the authority of lower level federal judges over the President of the United States. Does this mean, on the same principle, that a lower court federal judge appointed by President Trump could override a Biden executive order on vaccine mandates, government censorship of social media and slave reparations? Of course not.

Even this Constitutionally illiterate imbecile understands her own radical ideology: All things leftist are upheld; all things nonleftist are struck down. It’s really as simple as that. This is the dictatorship that “progressives” seek to impose. They will not stop until they get it.

*****

In other news …

New York City’s probable next mayor is an open, unapologetic Communist and a Muslim. Communists and Muslims do not tolerate dissension or freedom of speech. The right-leaning New York Post has already been quite critical of him.

I wonder how Mamdani will respond to the New York Post’s criticisms once he’s in office? Maybe he’ll turn the NYPD into a hybrid of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the KGB. Will President Trump arrest and deport him?

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That’s Selena Zito’s take, and I fully agree with her.  

There is an old wisdom in political science that real presidential power, whether domestic or international, is the power of persuasion. In less than two weeks, Trump has shown that his impact on American history has centered on his persuasive powers and using them to execute leadership.

While elites struggle to understand the appeal of Trump and conservative populism, what they miss, what they have always missed, is the nuance of what “Make America Great Again” meant to voters. The media saw it as a vulgar attempt at nationalism, often brazenly calling it so. But it never was. For most Trump supporters, it meant the connective tissue not with him, but with each other, that they were all part of something bigger than self.

To date, President Franklin Roosevelt has had the longest impact on American politics in our short history. Trump will exceed that, especially if he continues to have two-week stretches such as these.

So much has happened in the past two weeks to confirm her view that I cannot cover all of it — especially all the successes in the economy, tariff negotiations, peace deals around the world, lowering the rate of inflation, closing the border and deporting illegals, included. All of these are greatly consequential but this week I concentrate on the amazing successes in Iran and the Supreme Court. I picked these to clarify what the legacy media distorts. 

Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

Despite CNN and much of the legacy media misusing a leaked preliminary assessment (of “low confidence”) the bombing was of great value to both Israel and the United States. 

Israel’s use of the F-35 was an absolute success for the U.S. for the following reasons:

1. Combat-Proven Validation — Israeli F-35s successfully struck deep into Iranian territory without losses, proving the jet’s stealth and precision in real-world combat.

2. Global Surge in Demand — The success triggered a wave of interest, with countries like Romania, Greece, and Germany accelerating purchases, boosting U.S. defense exports.

3. Massive Economic Benefit — Lockheed Martin gains billions in new deals, creating thousands of American jobs and expanding the U.S. defense industrial base.

4. R&D and System Improvements — Israeli combat experience helped identify and fix performance issues, saving the U.S. billions in research and development.

5. Strategic and Tactical Edge — Insights from Israeli operations now inform U.S. Air Force tactics, improving readiness and increasing pilot survivability.

In short, this wasn’t just a success for Israel. It was also a major win for Lockheed Martin and the U.S. economy.

Catherine Herridge posts the Pentagon Assessment, which should put paid to media liars:

Pentagon Assessment Operation Midnight Hammer : Planned Over 15 Years #Iran

Chairman Joint Chiefs GEN Dan Caine @thejointstaff

 Strike at Fordow exploited two ventilation shafts

Days before, Iran tried to cover shafts with concrete cap

First US weapon removed concrete cap

Weapons 2, 3, 4, and 5 entered main shaft, traveling at 1000 feet per second  to Iran’s underground mission center

Weapon 6 “flex” capability

The “kill” mechanism was the combination of blast and overpressure on the target

Officer from DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) began the mission 15 years ago when the underground target was identified and the officer recognized the US did not have a weapon to counter it. 

Years of highly classified (likely special access program) development and testing followed.

Caine said he talked with the two DTRA officers who “lived this single target” for years. 

Post mission, they described hearts “ filled with pride to be a part of this.”

@SecDef  HEGSETH

Leaked DIA record was preliminary assessment and low confidence.     He accused some media of amplifying the report to create doubt, search for scandal, division and to “cheer against Trump”

NOTE: In the hierarchy of intel reports, a preliminary assessment with low confidence would not carry much weight.  It’s an early snapshot that concedes the picture will likely change as more intelligence is developed. 

IRAN RETALIATION

44 service members defended the Al Udeid base from Iran retaliatory strikes

Ranged in age from 28 year old captain to 21 year old private

Had “2 minutes to succeed or fail”

Single largest Patriot engagement in US history

GEN Caine “they absolutely crushed it”

BOMBER CREWS

Active Duty Air Force and Guard

said goodbye to their families Friday, not knowing the outcome, when they would return.

On Sunday, teams returned, tears flowed with families,  said it “felt like the Super Bowl”

You can bet that surveillance of Iranian efforts — if any — to reconstitute nuclear weapons is and will continue to be extensive, and the President has made clear that any such construction will be bombed again.

It was days after the ceasefire agreement before Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei was seen, and then he gave an utterly delusional account of events in which Iran was victorious, following which President Trump canceled all sanction relief for Iran. Reasonable analysis indicates the reins of power have shifted elsewhere to more rational Iranian actors (likely the military commanders) away from this lunatic.

Implications of this success — besides the world understanding that we have a leader whose words have meaning and consequences — are substantial for the entire Middle East, a focal point for decades of mushy-mouthed “foreign policy” gurus — John F. Kerry comes to mind and, like Khamenei, he made a televised appearance this week, deserving the same back of the hand dismissal the Ayatollah now gets.

Immediately after the American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, there was a quadruple phone call between US President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer.

President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu intend to quickly break into new peace agreements with Arab countries, as part of the expansion of the Abraham Accords.

The following principles were agreed upon in general lines:

The war in Gaza will end in two weeks. The termination conditions will include the entry of four Arab countries (including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates) that will manage the Gaza Strip in place of the murderous Hams terror organization. What is left of the Hams leadership will be exiled to other countries, and of course, the hostages will be released.

Several countries around the world are expected to absorb many residents of Gaza who wish to emigrate.

The Abraham Accords will be expanded: Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Arab and Muslim countries will recognize Israel and establish official relations with it.

Israel will express its willingness to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians in the future under the concept of “two states,” and this is conditional on reforms in the Palestinian Authority.

The United States will recognize the application of some Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

The Supreme Court

The Court issued three significant opinions this week: The first in a case involving birthright citizenship obliterated the Left’s obvious plan of hogtying the President through a series of nationwide injunctions in a few Democratic districts. The second enforced parental rights over the public school board’s insistence that parents could not exempt their kids from clearly pornographic and pro LGBT+ lessons. The third found constitutional a Texas law requiring porn sites to confirm the age (adulthood) of viewers.

All three cases are important, but the ruling against district court nationwide injunctions frees up the carrying out of the Trump agenda and rightfully has garnered the most attention.  Jeff Childers explains for those who are non-lawyers or who went to one of those There-Ought-to-be-a Law schools, which have in recent years replaced real ones: 

Let’s discuss what this decision is and what it isn’t.

It isn’t a ban on injunctions, per se. Activist lawyers can still haul their wife-beating illegal aliens into court and get temporary deportation relief for that criminal. But they can no longer get midnight orders on behalf of all the other illegal aliens around the country who aren’t parties to their lawsuits. One wonders whether it will be worth the effort in most cases.

They can still litigate the merits of their cases, seeking final decisions that a particular executive order or statute is unconstitutional — but they can’t get it frozen nationwide while the case unfolds. Just frozen as to the specifically named parties.

Activists can also still seek to certify class actions. If they can certify a class — and a slew of those types of emergency motions were filed yesterday in the wake of SCOTUS’s decision — then they can still get a national injunction for their certified class, which in many ways is similar to a regular nationwide injunction.

The problem — and the reason why they haven’t tried it so far — is that class certification is much harder and more demanding even than getting a straight injunction.

In other words, certifying a class is more than double the effort. Now, the activist lawyers must both prove entitlement to an injunction and meet strict requirements for class certification. It almost certainly rules out after-hours temporary injunctions, since there’s no class yet at that early stage of the proceedings.

Naturally, efforts are underway by the Left immediately to fill friendly courts with class-action suits. Maybe the now chastised judges will be less amenable to ignoring the law.

A lot of attention has been focused on the unique, sharp criticism by Justice Amy Coney Barrett (Notre Dame) of the outrageously political and unreasoned dissenting opinion of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (Harvard). This is not a “cat fight” as some idiots have claimed. All six of the justices who signed on to the majority opinion signed on to this rebuke, something that Jonathan Turley summarized for those who do not want to read the whole opinion:

Liberals who claim “democracy is dying” seem to view democracy as getting what you want when you want it.

It was, therefore, distressing to see Jackson picking up on the “No Kings” theme, warning about drifting toward “a rule-of-kings governing system”

She said that limiting the power of individual judges to freeze the entire federal government was “enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.”

The “minutiae” dismissed by Jackson happen to be the statutory and constitutional authority of federal courts. It is the minutiae that distinguish the rule of law from mere judicial impulse.

Justice Barrett clearly had had enough with the self-aggrandizing rhetoric. She delivered a haymaker in writing that “JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.”

She added, “We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

In other words, the danger to democracy is found in judges acting like kings. Barrett explained to her three liberal colleagues that “when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

The last term has laid bare some of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a certain exasperation with having to closely follow the text of laws.  (In an earlier dissent this term, Jackson lashed out against the limits of textualism and argued for courts to free themselves from the confines — or shall we say the “minutiae” — of statutory language). In this opinion, Barrett slams Jackson for pursuing other diversions “because analyzing the governing statute involves boring ‘legalese.’” Again, what Jackson refers to as “legalese” is the heart of the judicial function in constraining courts under Article III.

Untethered by statutory or constitutional text, it allows the courts to float free from the limits of the Constitution.

For many, that is not an escape into minutiae but madness without clear lines for judicial power.

Any week in which good sense and rational, effective government prevails is a rare, much to be wished for one. And we just had two of them.

Clarice Feldman, American Thinker

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Well, CNN is at the center of yet another fake news hoax. What number is this now? Honestly, too many to count. But this latest stunt is especially egregious because it involves our national security.

So what happened?

CNN ran a bogus story claiming that President Trump’s highly successful military strikes barely dented Iran’s nuclear program and only set them back “a few months.” The goal was obvious: downplay the operation and spin it as a failure.

READ MORE: Cutthroat war between Bannon and Levin erupts… But here’s the problem: that claim completely contradicted the official military assessment, which stated the strikes were a resounding success. Senator Rubio and Pete Hegseth shredded the media and the likely leakers for pushing a false narrative that not only undermines President Trump but also puts US national security at risk.

Watch these two powerful clips:

The FBI launched a probe into the fake news leak.

Daily Caller:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is launching a probe into a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report leaked to CNN assessing damage from President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday.

Hegseth announced the probe during the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, saying that the media’s reporting on the leak was spun “to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.” The report was first leaked to CNN, which reported that the preliminary findings suggested that the strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan nuclear facilities on June 21 did not completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program as Trump claimed.

Now here’s where the story takes a turn. Enter Natasha Bertrand… CNN’s Pentagon and national security correspondent. But she’s a lot more than that.

READ MORE: It only took 5 days for CNN’s Erin Burnett to accidentally expose the anti-Trump Iran war plot… Bertrand has been called a Deep State mouthpiece and a key player in pushing the Russia hoax, the infamous “pee tape” lie, and a long list of other intelligence-backed psy-ops, like the Hunter Biden laptop coverup and the “51 spies who lied.” But now, she’s got a new gig. Ms. Bertrand is the alleged leaker.

Press Secretary Levitt called her out by name.

Rapid Response:

@PressSec: “We have seen this playbook run before… leaked bits and pieces of an intel assessment to push a false narrative. And it’s to the same reporter, I will add —

@NatashaBertrand

of@CNN— who has done this in the past. In 2020, it was Natasha Bertrand who had 51 intelligence analysts falsely lie to her… that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.”

Dem leaders quickly fell in line, backing up the bogus story:

Now, President Trump is rightfully calling for Ms. Bertrand to be fired.

Of course, CNN doubled down on their shaky story and on their so-called star reporter, Natasha Bertrand.

So what happened? Why was it leaked?

Well, now we know.

The so-called “assessment” being passed around was junk—completely lacking in credibility. It was never going to be officially published because it wouldn’t hold up under real scrutiny.

Which means the only way this fake narrative could see the light of day was to leak it straight to the regime’s favorite cable news source: CNN. READ MORE: Riley Gaines DUNKS on Newsom after his pro-trans agenda gets smacked down…

That’s exactly why it landed in Natasha Bertrand’s lap. No ethical journalist would touch it. But she would, and that’s what makes Natasha the Deep State Darling that she is.

Journalist Molly Hemingway called out just how flimsy this so-called report really was.

https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1937954328423370964 But again, this shouldn’t surprise anybody, since Natasha is the Deep State’s go-to girl. And speaking of that, take a look at this reel, highlighting Natasha’s biggest fake news hits:

And who can forget this oldie-but-goodie that reminds us how Natasha flung fake news and intel psyops like a monkey with a fistful of propaganda grenades? But hey, it paid off—she went from peddling fake dossiers to MSNBC starlet in record time.

But don’t be fooled; it’s not just CNN and MSNBC beating the war drums and meddling with national security. Fox News has been joining in on the warmongering fun too.

Watch:

And speaking of Fox News, their chief Pentagon reporter, Jennifer Griffin, a known Deep State diva, is now flailing. She was recently nuked by Pete Hegseth.

Now she’s been exposed yet again as just another TDS shill. https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1938225304176128379

And right on cue, the rats are scurrying. Bertrand is already trying to backpedal on her big “leak” story, hoping to save her own skin before it blows up anymore.

Richard Grenell:

On CNN International, @natashabertrand is walking back her story saying – now saying “it was an early assessment” but we didn’t really know. Not surprisingly, @biannagolodryga says “it proves Natasha was right”. lol. It only proves that Natasha makes stuff up (Hunter Biden’s laptop). And Bianna is a Democrat activist.

And the media wonders why Americans don’t trust them, and CNN’s ratings are in the toilet…

READ MORE: Tucker just dropped a bombshell about his final days at Fox

News…

None of this is journalism; it’s sabotage. The left and their media lackeys will stop at nothing to undermine President Trump, even if it means dragging our military through the mud. Their mission isn’t truth. It’s to take down Trump. Period, and end of story.

Revolver

Bread lines coming to NYC. The leading candidate for mayor is an open Communist, Zohran Mamdani. He’s seeking a $30/hr minimum wage, which will essentially shut down all businesses requiring humans to work. As if in acknowledgement of the catastrophic situation he plans to impose on what was once mankind’s greatest city, Mamdani wants the city government to take over all grocery stores and run them with bureaucrats out of city offices. Command-and-control — Soviet-style. Just like Venezuela. And Cuba. Lovely! Starvation, despair and black market — here we come! Will this sinister looking totalitarian psychopath allow NYC residents to order from Amazon? Or only from the city government? Maybe build a wall around the city? So citizens may not escape. And we thought this all ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

You said Communism never could reach America. It’s months away from New York City. The Democratic Party is radicalized, since Obama. Nationally, not just in New York. Communism is coming for you unless you arm yourself intellectually and literally. Check out even red state cities like Nashville and Louisville, where wokeism is spreading like an early stage malignancy.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The New York City mayoral Democrat primary race results have shaken the political world.

Candidate Zohran Mamdani, described as a Marxist Muslim, was five months ago languishing in also-ran territory at one percent in the polls. A most recent poll then showed him, to pundits’ surprise, beating erstwhile-front-runner (a whole week ago) Andrew Cuomo after the eighth round of ranked-choice calculations. But it was wrong.

Mamdani won the first-round tally by more than seven points and will assuredly be the Democrat nominee.

How did this happen? There are many reasons, but the overriding one is something overlooked, something indispensable, something that is a gift: charisma.

This is where those who dislike Mamdani — and I’m one of them (I actually consider him immoral) — must be careful. People are generally loath to give those they dislike credit; they view them through tinted glasses. But studies have shown what the Throughline media-training blog stated years ago in no uncertain terms: “The Most Charismatic Candidate Always Wins.”

I suspect the hard-Left has discovered this truth, too. Why do you think suburban girl Sandy Cortez (a.k.a. AOC) was chosen to be the Justice Democrats’ candidate in 2017 via what essentially was an audition? Yes, she really was.

Style Over Substance

Now, again, multiple factors contributed to Mamdani’s victory. He went the Full Monty on socialism, promising everything from freezing rent to defunding the police to free mass transit to a $30 minimum wage to city-owned grocery stores (yeah, the Soviets had those, too). He captured fellow Asian-descent residents, left-wing whites and (mis)educated voters, and the latter two groups do just love the latest shiny “progressive” thing.

It’s also true that only about 20 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. This means that the ones who did were, inordinately, those passionate about politics — and few were passionate about traditionally corrupt Andrew Cuomo. Many, however, were passionate about ideologically corrupt Mamdani. (Yes, embracing evil ideology is a form of corruption).

Nonetheless, even all these factors taken together can’t explain his meteoric rise.

Charisma does, though.

In 2011, I wrote “That Presidential Look: The Bad, the Beautiful and Voting-booth Realities,” which explained the importance of candidates’ appearance in our T.V. age.

Charisma goes along with that. As Throughline pointed out (in 2012), the more charismatic candidate had prevailed in every presidential election since 1980.

Just consider:

• 1980 and ’84—Ronald Reagan defeated, respectively, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.
• 1988—George H.W. Bush bested the even less charismatic Michael Dukakis.
• 1992 and ’96—Bill Clinton won over, respectively, G.H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, the latter of whom was, as pundit Pat Buchanan put it, “like Richard Nixon — without the charm.”
• 2000 and ’04: George W. Bush defeated, respectively, Al Gore and John Kerry.
• 2008 and ’12: Barack Obama bested, respectively, cranky John McCain and stately-looking but somewhat stiff Mitt Romney.
• 2016: In a historic upset, Donald Trump toppled Hillary Clinton, the antithesis of charisma.

This brings us to 2020 and ’24, where Trump and Joe Biden each captured one contest. Biden did have some charisma in his prime, but in 2020 was a mere shell of his former self. But I’m convinced that year’s election was stolen, so I don’t consider it an exception to the rule. (If you do, fine; call it an anomaly.)

Now, again, this is where I must caution partisans against reacting emotionally. The TDS types will recoil at associating Trump with charisma. And, yes, he does get testy sometimes. Watch one of his rallies, however, and you’ll see how he masterfully works a crowd. I’ve never seen anyone do it better.

On the other side, many may, as I do, find Obama and Bill Clinton (and any other left-wing demagogue) nauseating. But this is because such observers are looking beneath the surface and/or are conceiving of the person based on his policies. This is a mistake professional pundits often make, too. They’re politics wonks and project their own mindset, as humans will do, onto others.

Yet most voters aren’t conversant with politics; they make decisions on emotional bases. For example, if you knew little about Obama’s background or policies in 2008 and merely looked at and listened to him, you saw this: a decent-looking guy with a nice, resonant voice — and some charisma. Note when assessing this, too, that it’s as with what’s said about when you and a companion are fleeing from a vicious grizzly. You don’t have to outrun the bear.

You just have to outrun your companion.

(I.e., Obama’s competitors weren’t exactly charm school valedictorians.)

As for Mamdani, he not only could outrun Cuomo; he may leave the bear eating dust. Just consider, for instance, the first few minutes of the below interview with him. And imagine watching it as, let’s say, a kindly, apolitical grandmother who doesn’t know his positions or background.

Grandma’s first thought likely would be, “What a nice young man! He’d be perfect for my granddaughter!” Mamdani is photogenic enough, has an easy, contagious smile—and loads of charisma. As one commenter under the video put it, “I see how he beat Cuomo now. Wow[,] is he smooth!”

My point, again, is not to sing his praises, but to sound an alarm and send a message.

Mamdani is dangerous not just because his policies and attitudes are toxic, but because he’s a quintessential wolf in sheep’s clothing. It also occurs to me that just as sports competition is tougher than ever with today’s deep talent pools, so may competition in the political arena be because of high-tech media. The T.V. age made appearance and personality important; now the internet and social media age, with video exposure ad infinitum, have made those qualities imperative.

So the message is this: If Republicans want to win elections, ideological soundness is not enough (though it’s a prerequisite for governing). They also should choose candidates possessing that star quality, that special something, that charisma. If the person couldn’t conceivably carry a podcast, he perhaps can’t carry an election.

This said, I certainly wish the above weren’t so. I wish people would vote based on knowledge and wisdom and not fancies and fandom. But too many don’t. Consequently, nominating a candidate competent but as exciting as watching paint dry just won’t cut it.

Charisma is the one thing Trump, Mamdani and Cortez all have in common. Never underestimate such a person, either. Because in politics, charisma is king.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on X (formerly Twitter), MeWe, Gettr, Tumblr, Instagram or Substack or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

In an address to Iranian citizens Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told them that “we have repelled the aggressors who treacherously tried to take our land from us. Though many of our heroic military leaders lost their lives in the conflict the nation as a whole has survived the bombings. I have successfully eluded assassination.”

“Our victory was achieved in only 12 days,” he added. “The Zionist little Satan hit us with everything they had, but was forced to retreat without accomplishing their goal of dislodging me from my post or causing our people to lose faith in the eventual triumph of Islam. The Great Satan was too frightened to do more than one tiny sortie to bomb three targets–all of which they failed to destroy. Our retaliatory strike on the US air base in Qatar was enough to convince Trump to request a ceasefire, which we mercifully granted.”

“As further punishment to our enemies, our Guardian Council has suspended all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Khamenei boasted. “Now we will be completely free from impediments to our nuclear armament program. Within the next year we will have tens of thousands of bombs and the missiles needed to deliver them against all who would ever dare to attack us again. Meanwhile, the brave jihadis we have infiltrated into the homeland of the Great Satan will carry out their continuing mission to win elections and implement the policies and assassinations needed to convert city-by-city and state-by-state into Islamic caliphates until all the world is for Allah.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) cited Khamenei’s speech as “proof that President Trump’s claim to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program is false. His decision to bomb Iran without prior authorization from Congress will now lead to a disastrous catastrophe for America. He has made us the aggressors and Iranian terrorists will have just cause for taking revenge on innocent men, women, and children. Only if we atone for Trump’s murderous attack on Iran by impeaching him could we hope to mitigate the horrors to come.”

John Semmens

This is who the Democrats are..

To paraphrase the late Freedom Center founder David Horowitz: scratch a tolerant, inclusive, compassionate “liberal” and just underneath the surface you’ll find a raging, totalitarian racist and antisemite. Wisconsin Democrat Congressman Marc Pocan is the latest example of this ugly truth.

On Wednesday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tweeted in regard to New York City Democrats embracing Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan immigrant, as the city’s mayoral candidate: “NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.”

In response to Miller’s suggestion that America needs to quit importing people who are actively seeking to undermine our nation and civilization, Rep. Pocan, 60, tweeted this intemperate message: “Racist fuck. Go back to 1930’s Germany.”

…

This is how far our political discourse has degenerated in these politically polarized times. A sitting congressman now has no compunction about abandoning civil, rational debate in favor of hurling vile obscenities and wishing a Jewish political opponent to be thrown to the Nazi wolves.

Needless to say, condemnations of this grotesque outburst – which as of this writing an unrepentant Pocan has left online – flew fast and furious. One commentator wrote, “This is appalling. It blows my mind that you’d even consider speaking like this to someone. Doesn’t matter who it is or what they’ve said, you’d be immediately terminated within the private sector. You’re obviously mentally unfit for your role in congress.”

Another wrote, “Congressman tells Jewish American to go back to a place and time when Jews were sent to ovens and gas chambers. @SpeakerJohnson if this doesn’t merit censure, what does?”

Republican lawmakers were rightly outraged. “What an absolutely disgusting comment from a Congressman to a Jewish WH official,” Anna Kelly, White House Deputy Press Secretary, wrote on X. “@MarkPocan must apologize — not just to Stephen, but to his constituents — and then seek professional help.”

“Wisconsin Democrats must denounce Pocan’s vile rhetoric or be complicit,” the National Republican Congressional Committee posted on X.

But Pocan dismissed his critics on Thursday, declaring that “only people who support Miller’s ultra-extremist views are jumping on” his comment. He stated he was “confident normal people are as troubled by [Miller’s] views as I am.” Claiming that Miller’s commonsense view that a nation has the right to enforce its immigration laws is “ultra-extremist” is as amusing as declaring that Pocan’s fellow Democrats are “normal people.”

“They rounded up people in the ‘30s, just as they are today with zero due process,” Pocan blathered. This is boilerplate Democrat propaganda. The only people being “rounded up” are ones in the country illegally, starting with illegal alien felons, including international gang members, sex and human traffickers, murderers, rapists, and other reprobates whom Democrats are typically passionate about defending. The far-Left, Pocan included, may not like it, but “rounding up” criminals whom they depend on to win elections is part of “due process.” And the vast majority of Americans want immigration laws enforced, the borders secured, and felons deported, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey,.

Who is Marc Pocan, you ask? As noted at Discover the Networks, the Freedom Center’s online encyclopedia of the Left, Pocan is a gay, alphabet activist, co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, serving as the U.S. representative from Wisconsin’s very blue 2nd congressional district in Madison since 2013. He:

spoke several times at RadFest, an annual gathering of communists, socialists, and progressive activists in Madison, Wisconsin;

supports illegal immigration and a path to citizenship;

strongly opposes Voter ID laws;

supports affirmative action, the DREAM Act, Head Start, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, ban on offshore oil drilling, destruction of all American nuclear weapons, reduction in the U.S. defense budget, closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center and tax hikes on high-income households;

is a strong supporter of “Palestine”;

introduced legislation to abolish ICE;

defends the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel;

voted for multimillionaire lifelong communist Bernie Sanders in 2020, and

walked out of President Trump’s address to Congress in March, 2025 while Trump was speaking.

While it’s regrettably common for people (myself included) today to let slip a public profanity here and there – an angry President Trump himself told a reporter the other day that neither side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “knows what the fuck they’re doing” – Democrats have turned degrading public discourse into an art form, and I’ve written about the reasons for that. In short,

Swearing sends a thrill up the left’s collective leg because Marxists and their inheritors, Progressives, consider decency to be a contemptable bourgeois value. Even though leftists control the culture, they still think of themselves as counterculture revolutionaries bucking the Establishment, like teenagers rebelling against their parents.

[…]

And that is the crux of the phenomenon: emotion. Leftists cannot win against the right on the playing field of reasoned debate, because they are animated not by logic and evidence but by feelings. They don’t let facts get in the way of their passionate conviction that they are right and the other side is not merely wrong but evil. And nothing displays passionate conviction quite like cursing. The right believes that public profanity is not just uncivil but unprofessional, and that it delegitimizes one’s argument, whereas Progressives feel that it legitimizes their passion.

A statement as despicable as Marc Pocan’s attack on Stephen Miller not only should be grounds for censure, but for dismissal from public office as well. There should be zero tolerance in Congress for the spewing of ugly, antisemitic obscenities. It’s long past time for America to demand that our political and cultural elites take the lead in establishing a public culture of decency, civility, and respectful dialogue.

Mark Tapson, Frontpage Mag