When I met you in the restaurant, you could tell I was no tabutante …
Donald Trump: I have been asked by the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow, in that serious negotiations are now taking place, and that, in their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America, as well as all Countries in the Middle East, and beyond. This Deal will include, importantly, NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR IRAN! Based on my respect for the above mentioned Leaders, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, The Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Daniel Caine, and The United States Military, that we will NOT be doing the scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow, but have further instructed them to be prepared to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice, in the event that an acceptable Deal is not reached. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Ed; David wrote about this earlier, but here’s my two cents: This is a huge mistake. The IRGC is not a governing entity – it is a terrorist organization, and formally listed as such by several nations, including the US. It is not going to disarm itself in any way, shape, or form. The Qataris are not our friends in this matter. The reluctance of the Saudis and the Emirates is understandable, but it’s sending a message of weakness, not “restraint,” and in this case reinforcing that assessment in Tehran. Furthermore, it’s confusing the Iranians, who can’t count on American support for a revolt while we’re trying to cut deals with their oppressors.
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Andrew C. McCarhy at NRO: I am an ardent admirer of Elliott Abrams, but I find his column today, lamenting that Iran has been taken over by terrorists, as if that just happened, confusing.
There has been no regime change in Iran. Since its inception after, and spurred by, the Khomeini revolution in 1979, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been a component of the regime. As recounted in 2022 by Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., “mere months” after Khomeini came to power he established the IRGC to (per the McIntyre Report) “‘ensure there would be no backsliding in implementing [his] vision for an Islamic theocratic government in Iran.’”
The IRGC is not and has never been an independent actor separate from the Iranian regime. Consequently, terrorists have not suddenly taken over Iran. The Iranian regime is the same jihadist terrorist regime it has been for the past 47 years.
Ed: Andy is 100 percent correct. All that has changed is that the mullah class has been sidelined. The Islamic revolution has imposed terror internally and externally since its inception in February 1979. It has never been a governing state; it has only been a terror state. The failure to grasp that is the category error that the West has made at every turn since Khomeini took American diplomats hostage in November 1979.
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“I’m saying fuck Brian Thompson. I don’t give a flying fuck he died,” says Ashley Rojas, wearing her press badge provided by @NYCMayorsOffice. Lena Weissbrot adds that Thompson’s teenage sons “are better off without him” and should “enjoy the blood money.” pic.twitter.com/uQnHIHoC0x
— Molly Crane-Newman (@molcranenewman) May 18, 2026
Ed: Speaking of terrorists, why did these ghouls get press passes from Mamdani’s office? Why question the obvious? This is noteworthy for another reason, though. One of these mouthbreathers claims the murder of a health-insurance CEO was justified because democracy has failed. What she ACTUALLY means is that she and her ilk keep failing to win elections and pass their agenda legitimately because that agenda is extreme and unpopular. She’s not defending democracy – she’s arguing for an armed revolution to overthrow democracy, and Mamdani is platforming it.
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Reuters: Trump was asked this week if people’s economic woes were motivating him to reach a deal with Tehran. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” he responded. “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Democrats seized on the comments as evidence of an administration losing touch with an anxious public. Only 30% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy as of a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, an issue that had long been one of his political strengths.
But in two dozen recent interviews along Colorado’s Highway 52 — a two-lane blacktop road punctuated by grain elevators, feedlots and oil pumpjacks — Trump voters echoed the president’s logic.
Across Morgan and Weld counties, which haven’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1964, voters were willing to pay more for gas if it meant eliminating a possible Iranian nuclear threat. Energy prices had also spiked under President Joe Biden, many said.
Ed: Trump has his base behind him on this, but that won’t last forever if Trump won’t commit to finishing off the threat of the IRGC in all its forms. Trump’s correct that the temporary cost is worth ending the threat, but voters are not going to support dragging out the costs for months while ending up gaining nothing from it.
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The @JusticeDept announced TODAY that Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong has agreed to a plea deal, admitting she paid homeless people in Los Angeles to register to vote in Federal elections to support her paid signature gathering business. @USAttyEssayli Election integrity matters!… pic.twitter.com/0zF2RRkBJB
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) May 18, 2026
Ed: Oh look, the thing that never happens has happened again. I wonder what AAG Dhillon would find if her division starts investigating Minnesota’s “vouching” practices. Hint hint.
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Associated Press: A Minnesota prosecutor on Monday announced charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s crackdown in Minnesota.
The officer, Christian Castro, is charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at a news conference. A warrant was issued for his arrest. …
A federal officer shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after he and another officer chased a different man to the apartment duplex where the man and Sosa-Celis lived. Moriarty said both Sosa-Celis and the other man were legally in the U.S.
Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the incident, but a federal judge later dismissed the charges and federal officials opened an investigation into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about what happened.
Ed: This is a stunt. The defendants are charged with crimes while exercising their authority under federal law, which means that the proper jurisdiction is federal court, not state court. Castro’s attorney will file a motion for removal with the federal court, which will grant it and refer the case to the DoJ, which may or may not choose to prosecute. This is well-established law under the Supremacy Clause. Moriarty is a political hack rather than a legitimate DA.
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The comments by reporters endorsing the cold-blooded murder of a husband and father are absolutely reprehensible. No decent human being should be celebrating or justifying the execution of another person because they disagree with his business practices or politics. The… https://t.co/OGl8zfwakM
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) May 18, 2026
The normalization of this kind of rhetoric is dangerous and morally bankrupt.
What makes this even more disturbing is that some of the individuals making these statements hold official NYC press credentials. Press passes exist to provide legitimate journalists access to scenes, events, and restricted areas so they can inform the public, not so radical activists can masquerade as members of the media while promoting extremism and political violence.
Ed: The big issue here is not the press credential. We have pushed across the board to democratize reporting and journalism to compete against the Protection Racket Media. Let’s not push back into credentialism. Rather, the big problem here is the formation of young people in our education systems, where radicals indoctrine their captive charges rather than educate them and produce moral morons and flat-out idiots.
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Axios: Antisemitism is so resurgent in U.S. politics that some of the worst hate speech you’ve ever heard has become a part of day-to-day life for Jewish politicians.
The big picture: Gone are the days of veiled insinuations and dog whistles. The hate is direct, explicit and shockingly casual, two dozen members of Congress and candidates told Axios. …
Axios reviewed dozens of voicemails, letters and emails sent to the offices of Jewish House members — Democrats and Republicans.
Ed: This sickness has the same source as the story above it. And while it exists in both parties, as Axios’ attempts at a both-sides take attempts to make the focus, only one party is about to nominate a candidate with a Nazi death camp tattoo … and has its mainstream attempting to pass it off as benign.
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The Spencer Pratt campaign is on fire. I don’t know who does all of these, it’s several people, but they’re profoundly impactful. This one is so LA it hits hard! pic.twitter.com/mURcjRqKAT
— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) May 17, 2026
Ed: What makes this even better is that it essentially flips the Julia Roberts ad from 2024 on its head. Remember that spot, which suggested that Republican women secretly supported Kamala Harris but couldn’t admit it out of fear of their husbands? This ad suggests that women have to hide their support for Pratt not from their husbands but from other potential Karens…and they may be right.
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Jonathan Turley: The strongest claim for Israel would be to focus on individuals associated with the underlying claims in Israel from settlers to soldiers.
The commission of a war crime would constitute a “per se” category of common law defamation. Even if the case had to be proven “per quod” (or with reliance on extrinsic facts), it would be easier than a group libel claim.
The Times clearly has the advantage in such litigation in New York. The driving force behind the lawsuit may not be a verdict but discovery. Israel wants to put the Times under a spotlight and expose its methods and sources.
The Times stressed that it has “on-the-record accounts,” but the constitutional standard is not satisfied with “sources” but credible sources. A publication can show reckless disregard in ignoring the malice or bias of its sources.
Ed: Mark Goldfeder thinks that the strategy here is to force the NYT into discovery via an obscure statute regardless of whether the court finds standing. I’m with Turley; the Israelis could make this work by having actual prison guards join the lawsuit. Either way, though, the point here is to impose costs for amplifying terrorist propaganda, and that’s long overdue.
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NYT “didn’t respond to a request for comment as to whether Kristof reviewed any of al-Sai’s judicial records…How Kristof could report reliably on al-Sai’s condition while in prison in the absence of any of these legal documents is a question worth pondering.”…
— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) May 18, 2026
Ed: Indeed. Here’s more on that.
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Judge Roy K. Altman at The Free Press: The timing of the essay is itself troubling. Weeks ago, the independent commission charged with investigating, and reporting on, Hamas’s widespread use of sexual violence against Israelis on October 7 informed the Times that it would be releasing its report on Hamas’s egregious sex-crimes violations on or around May 12. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, when the commission offered to provide the Times with its findings, the Times said it was not interested. But then, on May 11, one day before the commission’s report was set to be published, the Times ran Kristof’s piece, which flips the script by portraying the victims of mass sexual violence as the perpetrators. (The Times denies the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s version of events and insists that there is no relationship between the timing of the commission’s report and Kristof’s column.)
But we should recognize that this preemptive co-opting of the real story here—the systemic victimization of Israeli women and girls—is no innocuous question of timing. As any experienced trial advocate or jury consultant can attest, the psychological doctrine of primacy—which explains why a fact finder is often most persuaded by the story he hears first—dictates the order in which evidence is produced, and witnesses are called, in many American trials. The Times later ran a shorter story about the Israeli commission’s report, but by then, as the doctrine of primacy teaches us, it was too late.
In law as in logic, we can and should use a party’s conduct in deciding whether we believe what the party has to say—principally because that conduct may help us understand the party’s incentives, its biases. And the Times’s conduct as it relates to a story about Hamas’s sex crimes—followed in quick succession by its decision to publish an inflammatory opinion piece about supposed Israeli sex crimes—tells us a lot about the Times’s biases.
Ed: True enough, but probably not much more than we learned from the NYT’s repeated use of Hamas propaganda for the basis of reports critical of the IDF and Israel. Remember the total destruction of the Al-Ahli Hospital, rushed to print by the NYT and others before the sunrise showed the hospital still standing, with only its windows damaged?
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Hunter Biden is set to appear on Candace Owens’ show Thursday.
The interview has already been taped. pic.twitter.com/xSC4s5EnzW
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 18, 2026
Ed: Political satire is dead. Frankly, it’s tough to choose which of these two will suffer the most credibility damage from participating in this freak show.
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