Dear Weekend Jolter,
We can leave it to more credentialed professionals to determine whether President Trump’s evolving characterizations and goalposts for the Iran war are meant to confuse the enemy or simply reflect his own uncertainty and/or desire to stay flexible. But if you’ve had trouble keeping up with the protean assessments emanating from Washington, you are not alone.
Andy McCarthy sums up the status reports:
We’ll demand regime change . . . or not. Unconditional surrender . . . or not. Ground troops not off the table . . . and not on the table. Reinstatement of the draft . . . or no such plans . . . or no plans for now.
Axios reported Friday that Trump told G-7 leaders Iran is “about to surrender,” but because so many leaders have been killed, nobody is around to announce it. Sources said Trump was “ambiguous” on his objectives and timeline: “Some participants left the call believing he wants to wind it down — others felt the complete opposite.” Adding to confusion, Energy Secretary Chris Wright (the X account version of him, anyway) initially claimed this week that the U.S. Navy had escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz, then backtracked.
“One thing that we can be absolutely certain of in this ongoing U.S. war with Iran,” Jim Geraghty writes, “is that the remaining leaders in the Iranian regime have no idea what the U.S. objectives or victory conditions are, or whether the U.S. military has just begun the fight or whether the commander in chief believes the war is just about over . . . because the messages from the president himself are contradictory and erratic.”
The messaging of the war, it can be said, has not been on par with the precision of its military strikes (with the possible exception, tragically, of the deadly strike on an elementary school, which is under investigation). This aspect of a campaign that was both long telegraphed yet sudden with regard to the making of a public case for it — only four days elapsed between Trump’s inclusion of a concise but compelling justification for action in his SOTU and the strikes themselves — creates its own problems. The war’s unpopularity threatens to put added pressure on the administration to find an end point, even as the regime holds on.
As of this writing, the signals from the White House and Pentagon are being interpreted widely, partly for cynically partisan reasons, partly because much is left to interpretation. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal claimed earlier this week, after a private briefing, that the administration seems to be gearing up to deploy ground troops. Iran’s menacing conduct in the Strait of Hormuz could pull the U.S. in deeper. At the same time, recent comments from Trump indicate that he’s at least contemplating what an off-ramp would look like.
He told CBS News that the war is “very complete, pretty much,” with Iran having “no navy, no communications, . . . no air force,” and degraded missile and drone capacity. “There’s nothing left in a military sense,” he said.
Speaking to reporters earlier this week, he did not evince the same enthusiasm about an Iranian-people-led overthrow of the regime as he did in his original (online video) declaration of hostilities: “We want a system that can lead to many years of peace, and if we can’t have that, we might as well get it over with right now.”
Senator Tom Cotton, speaking Tuesday at a symposium on antisemitism hosted by National Review and the Republican Jewish Coalition, offered a similar characterization of possible, acceptable outcomes for the United States and Israel. He said that, hopefully, the Iranian people can rise up against the regime, but, “even if that’s not the case, at least Iran will be totally neutered as a military threat to the United States, to Israel, and to the rest of the civilized world.” The implication was that even if Iran’s government survives, the regime’s being “defanged” of its navy and missile arsenal can count as a victory.
Andy argues that it would still be an embarrassment to “leave the regime in place,” albeit one “Trump could try to explain away by saying he’s left it a shell of its former self” — depending on whether the threat to trade has also been resolved.
Noah Rothman, who lists here what is going right in the war even amid media pessimism about its trajectory, notes that the White House has simply “not communicated what victory looks like, how it will be achieved, or what is expected of the American public.”
Anticipating the need for the forbearance of the American people in the days ahead, he advises: “It’s never too late to correct that oversight.”
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On the string of terror attacks: The American Islamist Threat Never Left Us
A closer look at this cycle’s hyped-up Dem in Texas: Talarico the Texas Trickster
Talk about short-sighted: Senate Republicans Should Not Unilaterally Disarm by Abandoning the Filibuster
Not the media’s best moment: Media Can’t Hide the Truth About Gracie Mansion Bomb Attempt
Making the problem worse, not better: The Senate Housing Bill Mess
ARTICLES
Rich Lowry: Terror in Mamdani’s New York
Jeffrey Blehar: What on Earth Is Going on at CNN?
Audrey Fahlberg: Exclusive: DHS Weighs Nixing Luxury Jet Acquisition amid Widening Fallout from Noem Tenure
Thérèse Shaheen: The Realist Case for the Iran War
Jianli Yang: Don’t Assume the Iran War Is a Blow to China
Natalie Ecanow: Washington’s Chance to Force Qatar and Iran’s Breakup
Jim Geraghty: Democrats Blame Gun Owners for Islamist Terrorism and Their Own Bad Decisions
Luther Ray Abel: The Ignorant Pundits Roasting Hegseth over Steak and Lobster for the Troops
James Lynch: Ted Cruz Labels Tucker Carlson ‘Single Most Dangerous Demagogue’ in Speech Confronting Right-Wing Antisemitism
Caroline Downey: It’s Not Too Late for Influencers to End the Groyper Grift
Andrew McCarthy: Anthropic Sues Trump Administration over ‘Supply Chain Risk’ Designation
Stanley Kurtz: GOP, Dems Split over School Walkouts
Charles C. W. Cooke: Britain’s Decision to Remove Churchill from Its Banknotes Suggests That It’s All but Given Up
Christian Schneider: White Progressives Still Don’t Get Black Voters
Andrew T. Walker: Machines Should Not Decide Who Dies in War
Daniel J. Flynn: The Long Afterlife of Hiss–Chambers Smears
Grover Norquist: Remembering David Keene
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White, on a comeback album: Morrissey Unmasks the Big Lie
Brian Allen continues his tour of our much-beloved Swamp: The National Portrait Gallery’s Weak, Blinkered Curatorial Vision
EXCERPTS IN BLOOM
In case you didn’t have a chance to tune into this week’s symposium on antisemitism, hosted by National Review and the Republican Jewish Coalition, James Lynch has a wrap on Ted Cruz’s fiery address (you can read more here and here, and watch the whole event here):
While addressing an antisemitism symposium hosted by National Review and the Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) blasted former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as “the single most dangerous demagogue in this country.”
Cruz was unvarnished in his contempt for Carlson, the loudest critic of Israel on the right-wing internet. The senator lamented his “descent” into antisemitism during a fiery speech at the NR-RJC event at the Museum of the Bible.
“I will say, on the right, I have seen more antisemitism in the last 18 months on the right than at any point in my lifetime,” Cruz said. “A year-and-a-half ago, I could not have imagined we would be here having this conversation. And it is growing and it is gaining real purchase especially with young people.”
“And it is being spread by loud voices, the most consequential of whom is Tucker Carlson,” Cruz added. “I’ve made the decision that I’m going to take him on directly.” . . .
Cruz repeatedly criticized Carlson’s outlandish statements and specifically attacked the podcaster’s recent insinuation that American troops would rape Iranian women if the Iranians surrendered unconditionally. He mocked Carlson for praising ousted socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s opposition to gay marriage. Cruz also ridiculed the idea that U.S. regime change in Venezuela could be a vehicle for promoting gay marriage in the oil-rich nation.
Furthermore, Cruz accused Carlson of being a “vocal proponent” of Islamists and cited Carlson’s ownership of real estate in Qatar. Cruz also pointed out Carlson’s prominence on Muslim Brotherhood social media accounts and said it was reflective of Carlson’s anti-American messaging.
Jeff Blehar documents CNN’s real-time factual implosion in its coverage of the NYC bombing attempt:
Everybody makes mistakes in this business of journalism and commentary. . . . But there is a difference between that and whatever the hell is currently going on at CNN with their coverage of the Gracie Mansion attack. Hopefully you have already familiarized yourself with the media’s scandalous initial reluctance to address the Islamist terrorist elephant in the room in its reporting and headlines — every rhetorical contortion and creative writing technique available to J-schoolers was employed over the weekend to obscure the ugly truth that Islamic terrorists nearly blew up scores of New Yorkers.
But that was over the weekend. By Monday, most media outlets seemed to “right the ship” in terms of their coverage of the Gracie Mansion attack. Except for CNN that is, which has continued to embarrass itself like a drunk lunging from one lamppost to the next, stumbling through a series of shambolic blows to its dignity and credibility. Did someone spike the water cooler over there? I ask only because their botching of this story is not limited to any one employee or even platform.
On Tuesday, CNN published its now-legendary (and since heavily revised) “human interest” story about jihadist bombers Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, which began ever-so-wistfully: “Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change . . .” (I read this line and thought to myself “that could only come from a J-schooler,” and wouldn’t you know it, the author is a recent Columbia Journalism grad.)
Given how widely mocked that story was around the internet — CNN deleted the tweet associated with it and hastily rewrote the piece — you might have thought that would be the end of it. Buddy, it wasn’t even the end of it at their own network. Later that afternoon CNN anchor Abby Phillip casually referred to the Gracie Mansion attack as an “attempted terror attack against New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani,” explicitly peddling the line that other, subtler headlines tried to merely imply. (Maybe she was only reading off a teleprompter, you say? Fine, then — so who wrote the script?)
But we weren’t done yet at CNN!
From NR’s editorial on James Talarico:
It has come time, once again, for the political press to work itself into a tizzy over a political candidate in the Lone Star State. There was Wendy Davis. There was Beto O’Rourke. And now it is the turn of James Talarico, of Round Rock, Texas, to become the Could-he-really-do-it? candidate for the latest slate of elections. Talarico, we are informed by the bien-pensant class, is set to overperform in November, because, as a white, polite Christian man, he is precisely what Texas’s long-suffering voters have been waiting for lo these many years.
Factually, there are a number of problems with this narrative, and chief among them is that Talarico is not, in fact, a moderate, unless “moderate” is now a synonym for “white man.” Certainly, Talarico is that. But, unlike most white men — indeed, unlike most people of both sexes and all colors — he is one of those peculiar self-loathing types that one meets only on college campuses, in television greenrooms, and within the unsecured political asylum that is social media. In 2020 — prior even to the death of George Floyd — Talarico was insisting:
White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus. But we spread it wherever we go—through our words, our actions, and our systems. We don’t have to be showing symptoms—like a white hood or a Confederate flag—to be contagious.
Mercifully, there is not one American in ten thousand who talks like this, or who has ever talked like this. In Texas, that number is lower still. Such sentiments are bizarre and indicative of a polluted mind. The sorts of figures who say such things are also the sorts of figures who used the term “Latinx” (Talarico does, naturally), who elevated Anthony Fauci into the role of secular saint (Talarico did), and who got so sucked into the trans mania that, when asked to name something they loved “that’s not family or friends,” they reflexively replied “trans children” (yes, you’ve guessed it: that’s Talarico again). Our Founding Fathers regarded the Senate as a check against “the impulse of sudden and violent passions.” Alas, James Talarico is yet to discover a passion that he can resist. He is a follower, a maniac, a votary — and nothing is too extreme for him to glom onto.
CODA
We never drop the Stones in this space, I realized. Something to remedy, yes? So, do head into your weekend with this gem off Exile on Main St.
Thanks for reading.