Greetings and settle in, readers: It’s time for yet another week of the Carnival of Fools! The war in Iran continues, and, as a warning, know that I have no new thoughts about it to add to what I already said last week. If we are now committed to full-scale regime change, I would like to see us succeed. The Iranian regime is undeniably evil, and I would enjoy watching its death throes.
But we haven’t seen these yet, and the American people were never given any sort of say in the matter, in any event. I cannot possibly be satisfied with the Trump administration’s apparent desire to wage a world-altering war of regime change with a rhetorical public strategy that suggests it’s playing it largely by ear. To quote a noted scholar of revolution: “You say you’ve got a real solution? We’d all love to see the plan.”
Since other, better writers are tackling the real issues of the moment, I’m here to gruffly ladle out some more domestic slop — we do love our “comfort food” here at the Carnival of Fools, after all. But before we break bread, it’s time to weep tiny sick tears as we watch an old friend get taken out behind the gravel pit and put down.
Justice for Cricket
Kristi Noem is out, fired on Thursday from the position of secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, in favor of Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin. (Technically, Noem was merely reassigned, as special envoy to the “Shield of the Americas” — which sounds like a demotion, unless that’s where we’re housing our Marvel/DC superhero squad.)
And the news — which broke while I was flying on assignment for National Review, no less — hit me harder than most. Do you readers have any idea how emotionally difficult it is to keep having to bury your best friends? My God, we lost Jasmine Crockett just last week. It’s just all too much, too fast, too soon. I feel as though I didn’t even get a decent interval to mourn Marjorie Taylor Greene, for pity’s sake. How can a Carnival of Fools function without fools? What is a writer to do when all his best creative foils are dropping like flies?
So now, I guess we won’t have Noem to kick around anymore. And as much as I secretly wish that I was the reason why — I had advised Trump to fire her out of a rocket into the sun as far back as January — I’m pretty sure the final straw was her recent testimony before Congress, during which she flailed when put on the spot about her rumored affair with ex–Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski (both are married, to other people, and have children). She also claimed that the president had preapproved a $220 million DHS ad campaign that, while nominally about discouraging illegal immigration, consisted mostly of images of Noem perched on a horse in front of Mount Rushmore, preening like a future presidential candidate.
Weep not. Noem was truly useless, a pure “front”: a hand puppet whose public words and appearance have long been programmed by her Svengali, Corey Lewandowski. She made a corrupt hash out of a mission-critical position for the Trump administration; what’s most damning is that it was obvious that she would do so from the moment she was nominated for the position despite her complete lack of experience.
I suspect that the real story about Noem’s tenure at DHS will eventually center on Lewandowski’s dealings. (This story is not over yet — Lewandowski apparently labors under the delusion that his unofficial position is secure even as his frontwoman’s has been eliminated. We will see.) But Noem was plenty incompetent in her own right. After taking office, she hired her local state political director, Madison Sheahan, as deputy director of DHS and watched her waste millions of dollars on flashy “branded” DHS vehicles that immigration officers — for obvious tactical reasons — refused to use in public under any circumstances. Maybe she was relying on Corey to do the decision-making for her. In which case, it’s a bit too late.
You can call it the end of a political scandal, or merely the beginning of a much larger one yet to be unearthed. I just like to think of it as justice for Cricket, at long last.
Muslims Try to Blow Up Gracie Mansion; Muslims Hardest Hit
On Saturday afternoon, a far-right “influencer” and former January 6 pardonee named Jake Lang staged a scheduled anti-Muslim protest in front of Gracie Mansion, the residence of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The nominal purpose? To “stop the Islamic takeover of New York City.” The real purpose? The same as those of either side who are now driven by the political “attention economy”: Stage an inflammatory provocation full of headline-grabbing bigotry — a “pig roast” in this instance — and reap the coverage and clicks.
Only Lang reaped far more than mere disdain this time. As he was remonstrating with counterprotesters, two men emerged from the crowd and tossed an improvised explosive device into the crowd. Because of faulty wiring, it failed to detonate. Had it gone off, who knows how many might have been injured.
The media immediately rushed to explain the incident. NBC led with the headline, “Multiple arrests made after ‘suspicious devices’ found outside Gracie Mansion, home of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, during anti-Islam rally and counterprotest.” TMZ said, “Suspicious Devices found outside Mayor’s House.” The husk of the New York Daily News reported, “Protestors throw smoking improvised device clash over Jake Lang pig roast at ‘anti-Islamification’ rally a at Gracie Mansion.”
Former Comptroller Brad Lander then chimed in with an official response: “Happy to know that our Mayor and First Lady are safe, but horrified that there was such a disturbing threat of violence outside their residence. Vile displays of Islamophobia will never be tolerated in our city.” Finally, on Monday, Mayor Mamdani — at this point fully aware that the media fix was in for him — summarized the situation with this spectacular capper:
Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are.
What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.
Before we proceed, I want you go back and reread every one of the above quotes carefully. And then ask yourself: If all you knew about this story came from these tweets, would you even know that this attack was carried out by ISIS-inspired jihadis and not anti-Muslim bigots?
Yes, the New York Times — which itself led with the amazingly noncommittal headline, “Smoking Jars of Metal and Fuses Thrown at Protest Near Mayor’s House” — has reported that the attempted bombers were named Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi and that they shouted “Allahu akbar!” as they attempted to drop a homemade nail bomb into the crowd, irrespective of who was on whose side. Their intent, according to Balat’s admission under police questioning, was for the bombing to be “bigger than Boston.” Only their own incompetence saved New York from a terrorist tragedy.
And the response of not only the media but also the mayor’s office was to seek to obscure the truth and imply that the protesters themselves were responsible — if not for throwing the bombs then for creating circumstances under which others might wish to throw bombs. We all know where this logic leads: to a U.K.-like approach to free speech and the need to “manage” it to placate the radical whims of people whose religious values are proudly inimical to Western society. However crude this internet parasite’s provocation may have been, the reaction of the media and the Mamdani administration suggests that the process is already underway, at least on the progressive left.
Until next week.