Commentary Culture Investigations

“Dolly Parton,” editorial cartoon by Tom Stiglich for The American Spectator on Aug. 26, 2026.

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American Thinker AIBy Allan J. FeiferPeople need meaning in their lives, and the decline in faith and uptick in socialism mark a very dangerous shift in that search. 

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ChatGPT for American ThinkerBy Arthur SchaperThe group is reducing their speed, but they still pursue an anti-family agenda which harms children, undermines families, and hurts society as a whole.

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Public Domain PicturesBy Thomas KolbeThe U.S. government is working at full speed to reindustrialize the country.

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U.S. Department of AgricultureBy Luis GonzalezA cattle industry cannot rebuild indefinitely on the assumption that consumers will keep paying whatever price scarcity produces. 

More than a dozen donors to the Hitler-praising, neo-Nazi congressional campaign of Dan Bilzerian have also contributed to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed—in many cases spreading thousands of dollars between the two candidates, the Washington Free Beacon found.
Bilzerian, a far-right social media influencer with a trust fund, and El-Sayed, a far-left epidemiologist, have no policy overlap except strong opposition to AIPAC and Israel, but their donors include a man who has equated Zionism to Nazism and a Texas subprime auto loan entrepreneur who also threw his weight behind Israel-bashing Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie.
The overlapping donor list suggests that El-Sayed’s virulently anti-Israel rhetoric appeals to the kind of Muslim-American donors who also buy into Bilzerian’s hateful Jew-baiting and offensive trolling.
The most significant Bilzerian and El-Sayed donor is Ibrahim Awad, who has given more than $19,500 between both candidates, Federal Election Commission records show. That haul included a $12,651.88 jumbo gift to the Bilzerian Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee. The figure is above the legal limit and potentially a campaign finance violation if passed along to Bilzerian’s campaign committee.
Awad is a Georgia-based personal injury attorney—with a mixed record.
“I don’t think he cares about anything but being paid. I actually ran into the judge in the street, and he told me I had poor representation and that was the only reason I lost my case!” one aggrieved former client on a Yelp review.
The Palestinian cause is also central to Awad’s worldview. He is the cofounder of Palistory, an anti-Israel nonprofit, and in YouTube videos has boasted about his cooperation with the terrorist-aligned Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Zionism is Nazism. And history will remember every single person who calls themselves a ‘Proud Zionist’ as a Proud Racist, Genocide Enabler,” Awad said in an X post from March 2025.
The Texas subprime auto loan entrepreneur Hussein “Sam” Mahrouq is also a donor to both the El-Sayed and Bilzerian campaigns. Mahrouq has ponied up more than $150,000 to support anti-Israel candidates around the country. Other beneficiaries of his cash have included Reps. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Summer Lee (D., Pa.), as well as former Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.).
Mahrouq also gave $1,000 to the Anti-Zionist America PAC. The committee is run by Michael Rectenwald, a former NYU professor, who has accused Jews of being behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and supports “the elimination of Zionists from the U.S. government.”
Mahrouq did not respond to a request for comment.
During his primary campaign against Rep. Randy Fine (R.) in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, Bilzerian, a notorious antisemite, leaned into open Nazism on the trail.
“Jewish supremacists, Satan’s creepy little minions, should we revisit that Austrian painter’s opinions?” a Bilzerian ad asked, featuring an image of Hitler.
The spot, which took the form of a nightclub song, attacked Fine, a Jewish supporter of Israel, as a “Shylock” and featured him with horns. “The fat Jew has poison to sell,” an AI-generated nightclub singer croons. Child victims of the Gaza war, the AI animation sings, “are just goyim cattle to him.”
When asked on a recent podcast to name a problem not caused by Jews, Bilzerian—whose attacks on Jews go well beyond the Israel-Palestinian conflict—was unable to do so.
Bilzerian ultimately lost to Fine by about 40 points, after blowing more than a million dollars of his own cash on the effort, FEC records show.
Bilzerian, who reported well over $100 million in net worth on his financial disclosures, is the son of the corporate raider and convicted fraudster Paul Bilzerian.
The younger Bilzerian—an early fixture of the so-called manosphere who promotes his playboy, gun-toting lifestyle to his many followers—has a history of alleged violence against women and other criminal mischief. In December 2014, he was sued by Miami-based model Vanessa Castano, who accused him of kicking her in the face. Just days after that, he was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of bomb-making. Porn star Janice Griffith also accused him of throwing her off a roof, resulting in a broken foot as part of a botched stunt for Hustler magazine.
Joint El-Sayed and Bilzerian donors are mostly people with names that appear to be of Arabic or Muslim origin.
In contrast to Bilzerian, El-Sayed claims his problem is with Israel, not Jews per se. But the liberal Democrat has long been accused of trafficking in antisemitic tropes and has refused to renounce one of his key campaign surrogates, the virulently anti-Israel, Hamas-supporting Hasan Piker. On Monday evening, El-Sayed bizarrely asked the Fox News host Jesse Watters if Watters was circumcised.
Awad, the Muslim-American Bilzerian and El-Sayed donor, said in a May 2024 social media post that “you can’t be Jewish and Zionist.” After former senator Lindsay Graham’s (R., S.C.) unexpected death, Awad posted a statement declaring, “I am relieved that we’re granted a reprieve from his evil.”
Awad has also offered effusive praise to Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa, who regularly denounces Jews as roaches, demons, and ghouls, among other epithets. He has also offered support for New York City’s socialist, Israel-hating mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and promoted Candace Owens, the podcaster notorious for spreading antisemitism.
“She’s showing more courage than the sick men in our own Congress,” Awad said of an Owens monologue downplaying the Holocaust.
During a TED Talk he gave in 2025, he demonstrated Islamic prostration on stage, getting down on his hands and knees with his face pressed onto the stage and his posterior pointing upwards at a 45-degree angle.
Reached for comment, Awad texted that it would be “much appreciated” if the Free Beacon would note his Instagram handle, @karateattorney. He signed his note “Ibrahim aka AIPAC Slayer.”
Osama Albibi cut El-Sayed a $4,000 check while throwing Bilzerian an additional $1,000, FEC Records show.
Albibi, who lives in Panama City Beach, Fla., has been a financial adviser with Wells Fargo since July 2020, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority records show.
“I can help you make informed investment decisions,” Albibi promises on the company website.
At least three physicians were also among the donors to both candidates—including Dr. Ishtiaq Habib, a hospitalist at Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers in Morris, Ill.
Habib donated $526.68 in total to the two men, FEC records show.
Dr. Yusuf Salah, a psychiatrist, gave about $514 between Bilzerian and El-Sayed, records show.
Salah is affiliated with Insight Hospital and Medical Center and UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital, according to U.S. News and World Report and his LinkedIn.
Another physician, Dr. Akram Shhadeh, donated at least $1,527 between the two candidates, records show. Shhadeh, a neurologist, is the co-president of Arubah Neuroscience Innovation Institute.
Other large donors included Florida-based real estate gadfly Tony Bushala and Muhammad Harb, the owner of Moe’s Deli and Grill in Deerfield, Fla.
None of these dual donors other than Awad responded to requests for comment.
While Bilzerian’s political career is over for now, El-Sayed is ascendant. The progressive will face Republican Mike Rogers in the November general election, with polls showing a tight race.
Neither El-Sayed nor Bilzerian responded to requests for comment.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Multiple Abdul El-Sayed Donors Also Gave Thousands to Hitler-Praising, Jew-Hating Dan Bilzerian’s Congressional Run appeared first on .

On July 1, 2020, then-North Carolina governor Roy Cooper (D.) was supposed to announce a COVID-19 reopening plan for the state’s schools. Instead, he announced he was taking an additional two weeks to decide on a plan, a move that prompted criticism from state and local officials.
While Cooper did not explain the delay, documents released years later provide insight. They show that Cooper sought the guidance of Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who urged Cooper to delay the decision.
Fauci wrote about his June 29, 2020, conversation with Cooper in the private diary he kept during the pandemic, the contents of which were recently released by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
“Gov Ray [sic] Cooper (D-NC) called me and spoke for 45 minutes on his dilemma,” Fauci wrote. “He was agonizing since he wanted to do the right thing. Since this is the first decision among Governors regarding opening for the Fall term, he feels that he will be the example … I recommended that he delay decision for 2 weeks.”
Two days later, on July 1, Cooper did just that, announcing at a press conference he would delay his school reopening decision for several weeks “without saying why,” the Carolina Journal reported. Some school officials criticized the move, arguing that Cooper was not giving school districts enough time to prepare for the plan.
“I’m glad that the governor didn’t issue a mandate regarding the reopening of schools that fails to recognize the diversity of our students, communities, and schools,” Western Governors University chancellor Catherine Truitt said at the time. “But he needs to go one step further and let our schools know ASAP that it will be up to district leaders to decide how schools reopen. Parents, teachers, and school administrators need clarity so they can plan accordingly.” “We are about six weeks away from the traditional start of the school year, and instead of bringing clarity to the reopening process Gov. Cooper punted,” state senator Deanna Ballard (R.) added.
Cooper is now running for Senate on the back of his tenure as governor, which he says consisted of “decisive action and steady leadership” during COVID. When it came to his school reopening plan, however, he deferred to Fauci, a decision that education experts in the state said made it harder for students to return to the classroom in person.
Though Cooper said during his July 1 press conference that his “number one opening priority is classroom doors,” he went on to announce a “hybrid plan” allowing schools to open at half capacity while also offering remote learning. Schools were not allowed to open full time under the plan, but they were allowed to offer remote learning only, as many North Carolina schools did at the start of the 2020-21 school year. More than 70 percent of North Carolina’s 1.5 million public school students began the 2020-21 school year fully remote, and the lucky few who were provided the hybrid option, such as students in the Charlotte suburb of Union County, were only allowed to attend school in-person one day a week.
“Given the difficulty of implementing social-distancing plans that adhere to DHHS guidelines, districts will have no choice but to employ full-time remote learning in the fall,” John Locke Foundation director of education Terry Stoops said in August 2020. “Gov. Cooper’s decision to delay his school reopening announcement is the primary reason why many schools are ill-prepared to begin the school year, consistent with his administration’s restrictive guidelines.”
Cooper, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, flinched on his school reopening decision even as evidence showed school closures in the spring of 2020 had a detrimental impact on students, a fact the American Academy of Pediatrics noted in late June when it released guidance urging local and state governments to develop school reopening plans that centered around having students physically present in school.
As predicted by the Academy of Pediatrics, remote learning had a lasting and devastating impact on North Carolina’s students. In 2025, North Carolina’s reading and math scores remained below 2019 levels, and the state ranked 26th in math recovery and 43rd in reading, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard.
Cooper’s hesitation on reopening schools at Fauci’s recommendation could come back to haunt him as Fauci’s record as the federal government’s leading authority during the pandemic is being seen in a new light.
Fauci, who once declared that his detractors “are really criticizing science because I represent science,” reveled in his newfound fame during the early months of the pandemic as he urged Cooper and other prominent state leaders to close schools, according to his diary entries. Despite the clear science showing students suffered learning loss due to pandemic-era school closures, Fauci maintains the opposite, telling House lawmakers in 2024 that he was “not convinced” students were negatively impacted by the school closures he recommended.
Former president Joe Biden granted Fauci a sweeping pardon in one of his last moves in office. Fauci nonetheless pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times during a July 29 hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs about his actions during the pandemic. The committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress following that hearing.
The post Roy Cooper Secretly Consulted With Dr. Fauci Days Before Delaying North Carolina School Reopening Decision, Diary Shows appeared first on .

The Democratic nominee for Senate in Arkansas, Hallie Shoffner, has cast herself as a fighter for “working families” who was forced to close her family’s farm after “rising costs, bad markets, [and] new tariffs” made it too expensive to operate. But financial records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show that Shoffner is worth up to $3.1 million, holds a position in a family trust, and lives nearly 90 miles away from her family’s farm in a nationally recognized historic home in Little Rock.
Shoffner’s most recent financial disclosure, filed in May, reveals that she holds up to $1,547,000 in individual stocks, up to $668,000 in retirement, savings, and education accounts, and up to $1,100,000 in business entities, a total of as much as $3.3 million in assets. She is also a trustee of the Michael Sullivan and Hallie Shoffner Joint Revocable Trust, according to the disclosure, which does not state its value. Shoffner’s only liability is a line of credit from Merrill Lynch worth between $250,001 and $500,000, meaning Shoffner is worth as much as $3,065,000 when her assets and liabilities are balanced. Her precise net worth is unknown given that federal candidates are only required to report their financial holdings in ranges.
The figures revealed in Shoffner’s financial disclosure contradict her campaign messaging as a struggling farmer. They also stand in contrast to the average Arkansas family—the state has the lowest median household net worth in the country at $62,500.
Shoffner describes herself as a “6th-generation farmer” who made the “hardest decision of her life” to close her family’s farm in 2025 due to “rising costs, bad markets, new tariffs and no meaningful Farm Bill relief.” Shoffner has made similar claims in interviews and at events over the course of her campaign against Republican senator Tom Cotton. A 2025 feature in the Arkansas outlet Talk Business & Politics states that “factors including low commodity prices, high input costs, tariffs, policies at the federal level and other factors” compelled Shoffner to “shut down the farm earlier this spring.” Shoffner also said in a November campaign video that she and her family “had to shut things down because we knew 2025 would be unprofitable before we ever put a seed in the ground.”
“I am not just sympathizing with this crisis. I am living it,” Shoffner said in a second video released in October. “I was actually a farmer of soybeans, corn, rice, and wheat for my entire life, and as primary operator of my family farm for the last nine years, and we had to shut it down because of the farm crisis. I have felt the loss, the fear, and the heartbreak, and I understand this crisis in a way that no other candidate does.”
But Shoffner was not a farmer for her “entire life.” She grew up on her family’s farm in eastern Arkansas, but rather than follow in her parents’ farming footsteps, she spent years working as a left-wing activist, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Shoffner openly discussed her decision to leave the farm in local media interviews published before her Senate campaign.
“My parents were very intentional about making me leave the farm. They wanted me to experience other things, and so did I,” Shoffner said in a 2024 interview with AgWeb. An Arkansas Business report, meanwhile, notes that “Shoffner ‘really enjoyed being a farm kid'” but “had no plans to come back to the enterprise her parents founded.”
Shoffner nonetheless stated on her campaign site that she’s “not a politician, she’s not much for political parties, and she’s never run for office in her life—the only thing Hallie ever wanted to do was farm.” The section was later changed to say, “She didn’t plan to run for office. She wanted to farm.”

Shoffner’s parents, meanwhile, still own the land that made up Shoffner Farms, which is held by a second trust, the John L. and Wendy A. Shoffner Revocable Trust, according to property records reviewed by the Free Beacon. Shoffner does not live on that property: She and her husband, Michael Sullivan, purchased a historic home in Little Rock in 2020. Records show that Shoffner is registered to vote at the house, which is a roughly 90-minute drive from her parents’ farm. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2023, according to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which described it as “a large house that shows influences of the Italianate and Colonial Revival styles.”
Shoffner’s campaign manager, Anna-Lee Pittman, told the Free Beacon in a statement that “Hallie filed the required financial disclosure, and it speaks for itself,” adding that “Hallie and her husband own their own successful business.”
“Hallie is an Arkansas farmer who was forced to close her family’s farming operation amid the economic crisis squeezing farmers and working families across our state,” Pittman continued. “She is raising her family here, helping care for aging parents, and traveling the state listening to Arkansans who are working harder and paying more while Tom Cotton has spent the last 12 years in Washington. Those experiences are exactly why she is running.”
Shoffner’s LinkedIn profile states that she graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2009. While a student there, Shoffner went to India, an experience she said “totally changed [her] life” and  “made her want to commit herself to public service.”
Shoffner then attended the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, where she completed a project with Minga Peru, “an organization that works to create social change by empowering women who live in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest,” according to the Clinton School’s website. The group “creates radio broadcasts and hosts workshops to engage women on topics such as sexual and reproductive health, family violence and women’s rights.” Also at the Clinton School, the Free Beacon reported, Shoffner worked on fundraising for PROMSEX, a Soros-funded organization that funded Lima’s pride parade. Shoffner bragged in a since-deleted 2010 blog post about “celebrating being gay, lesbian, transexual, bisexual.”
Shoffner returned to Peru in the summer of 2011 before becoming executive director of Seis Puentes, an Arkansas nonprofit that helps “engage [illegal aliens] in the process” of navigating U.S. government systems, she said in a 2012 interview. Shoffner then worked as deputy campaign manager for then-state Rep. Tracy Steele’s (D.) unsuccessful mayoral campaign before joining Advantage Communications Inc., “a full-service, marketing, advertising and public relations agency located in Little Rock, Arkansas” and owned by Steele’s brother, Michael.
Shoffner did not return to farming until 2016, when she was 29 years old. Her campaign posturing as a lifelong farmer came after she hired a marketing firm to build her a “new brand” as “FarmHerHallie,” the Free Beacon reported in January. She spent several years publishing blog posts on the website FarmHerHallie.com. Headlines included “What to do about climate anxiety” and “I’m a ‘big ag’ farmer and I advocate for climate action.”
The post Arkansas Senate Candidate Running as Working-Class Farmer Is Worth Up to $3.1 Million and Holds Position in Family Trust, Records Show appeared first on .

So committed is MS NOW to the parroting of Trump-deranged talking points that the network is now enthusiastically promoting Iranian propaganda. On some shows, they’ll even “analyze” Iranian propaganda. Watch as resident MS NOW bloviator Lawrence O’Donnell fawns over the knowledge of American culture contained within a tweet published on the account of Iran’s Speaker Ghalibaf: WATCH: Noted MSNOW blowhard @Lawrence fawns over the American cultural fluency of a tweet published on the account of Iran’s Speaker Ghalibaf, blissfully unaware that it was ghostwritten in California. Great job, everyone!LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: The most striking response to Scott… pic.twitter.com/O7xWPfgLsh— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) August 26, 2026 LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: The most striking response to Scott Bessent’s childish threat came from the Speaker of Iran’s parliament who taught Natalie Harp and Donald Trump a thing or two today about devastatingly effective social media posting, exhibiting a fluency in American culture that no one in the Trump White House has with Iranian culture.The speaker of Iran’s parliament actually tweeted this: “Him: ‘Economic D-Day.’ Also him, five seconds later, LOL. ‘Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?’ Sir, this ain’t Normandy, this is improv night and you forgot your own script.”Leading off our discussions tonight is Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama and an MS NOW political and national security analyst. He is the author of All We Say, The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches.Ben, please help me with this. Who are these people? Who in Iran could possibly have written that tweet? “Improv night, uh, LOL”, these, these, this is presumably someone who’s never been to the United States. I mean, most, most people in the Iranian regime in their lifetimes have never been to the United States. How do they get this kind of fluency in our culture?BEN RHODES No, because they actually spend time trying to understand their adversary, which is something that Trump clearly didn’t. First, there is the issue of O’Donnell, self-appointed expert on “devastatingly effective social media posting”, fangirling over a tweet allegedly posted by the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament. For all of O’Donnell’s gushing, this is a cringe tweet. Who brings a script to improv night? Perhaps the poster’s command of American culture isn’t as exquisite as O’Donnell would like his viewers to believe.It also seems evident that there is no one at MS NOW conducting such things as fact checks or basic research. Had they done so, they would have discovered that the aforementioned tweet was NOT crafted in Iran, per O’Donnell’s assertions, but in California. Per Iran Watch:Since the onset of the U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran, Ghalibaf’s name has trended as a key decision-maker within the regime. Before the war, during a government rally on January 12, he echoed the rhetoric of the late Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, taunting Trump: “Come on, gambler Trump! I am your opponent. Come and see all your assets in the region destroyed.” Once the actual fighting began, however, he vanished from public view.Yet, throughout the 39-day war, written messages on Telegram and specific tweets with a distinct tone appeared daily on his “X” account. These tweets, sometimes in English and sometimes peppered with emojis or Gen Z “memes,” addressed the American public directly, warning of economic fallout and risks to American soldiers.Observers noted that the sophisticated English, the grasp of American societal anxieties, and the use of internet subculture suggested the work of an advisor who is fluent in English, understands the American psyche, and belongs to Iran’s “Third Generation.”The report goes on to identify the advisor, noting his extensive background in such things as “digital media, social dynamics in the modern era, and the psychological impacts of contemporary communications on the new generation at U.S. institutions.” O’Donnell is over here glazing Ghalibaf as if he’d fired the tweet off himself, before proceeding to go to Ben Rhodes, a propagandist in his own right who once said of the media: “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” The interview devolves into whining about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s economic actions against the Iranian regime. Rhodes, AKA “Hamas”, should’ve sat this one out given his role in propping up the mad mullahs.O’Donnell would eventually repeat his praise of Ghalibaf’s tweetmaking abilities. When it comes to performing Resistance™, any narrative will work over at MS NOW- no matter if it is unproven, disproven or in this case very easily debunked.Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as aired on MS NOW’s The Last Word, on Tuesday, August 25th, 2026:LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: The most striking response to Scott Bessent’s childish threat came from the Speaker of Iran’s parliament who taught Natalie Harp and Donald Trump a thing or two today about devastatingly effective social media posting, exhibiting a fluency in American culture that no one in the Trump White House has with Iranian culture.The speaker of Iran’s parliament actually tweeted this: “Him: ‘Economic D-Day.’ Also him, five seconds later, LOL. ‘Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?’ Sir, this ain’t Normandy, this is improv night and you forgot your own script.”Leading off our discussions tonight is Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama and an MS NOW political and national security analyst. He is the author of All We Say, The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches.Ben, please help me with this. Who are these people? Who in Iran could possibly have written that tweet? “Improv night, uh, LOL”, these, these, this is presumably someone who’s never been to the United States. I mean, most, most people in the Iranian regime in their lifetimes have never been to the United States. How do they get this kind of fluency in our culture?BEN RHODES No, because they actually spend time trying to understand their adversary, which is something that Trump clearly didn’t. I mean, if you connect the different pieces of what you just went through, Lawrence, it’s clear that Donald Trump never spent any time speculating about what Iran might do in response to his war. I’ve been in war games, in part because Bibi Netanyahu made the same presentation to us as he made to Donald Trump about a war in Iran. And as Tulsi Gabbard and her intelligence community suggested to Trump, what we found in those war games is they would close the Strait of Hormuz. They would have a more radical regime after a U.S. attack than before it. it. The Iranians study us. Trump did not spend the time studying them. And that is why- and that is why, in part, we are in the predicament we’re in, in which he cannot get himself out of the crisis that he’s created. I mean, the only thing that we’re trying to accomplish that I can tell in the war right now is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that was open before the war began. If ever there was a sign of failure in war, it’s that. There’s no other objective that is even in reach for Donald Trump. And he’s getting mocked by the officials in the Iranian government because of it.O’DONNELL: So the Treasury Secretary, in an attempt to defeat one country, Iran, says that his threat is to blow up the worldwide financial system. That includes the United States, that includes Europe, that includes South America, that includes Asia. It’s the world he’s talking about blowing up. And one of the things that’s so ridiculous about that is as he describes it, he’s issuing the threat and as he describes it, you can just tell they’re never going to do that. Isn’t he describing a threat that he cannot possibly follow through on?RHODES: Yes, and a couple of things about this, Lawrence. First of all, the sanctions they did announce on Iran are like the sanctions that would be issued on Iran on a normal Tuesday for the last 10 years. They designated a few ships and individuals. I mean, this was not in any way some new front in the economic warfare against Iran. I want to say something else, though. This is defensive because think about what D-Day represents. tens of thousands of Americans getting on small boats and going across the English Channel and storming beaches into Nazi gunfire to rest back control the European continent from fascism. Scott Bessent is associating himself with those men because he announced some poultry sanctions on Iran and made threats that he can’t keep. I mean, so first of all, we should reclaim D-Day from people like Scott Bessent who clearly don’t understand the scale of the sacrifice that went into it. But second of all, Yes, if he were to actually go through with these threats and sanction Chinese banks for their purchases of Iranian oil, the entire global economy would collapse because you can’t cut off China or in India and several other countries, Turkey, from the entire global economy without setting off a chain reaction that would devastate the American and global economy. Scott Bessent knows that. So he knows that all he’s engaged in is a pretty weak public relations exercise to make the Trump administration look tough at a time in which they’re being humiliated. And that’s all that’s happening.O’DONNELL: And that’s what makes the Iranian response on social media so effective, completely cutting the thing down in a couple of comic lines written in Iran. This- didn’t Bessent just walk, in effect, walk right into that Iranian tweet?RHODES: He did. And the rest of the world sees it that way. And this is what the Iranian regime is repugnant. They do horrible things. They also know that Scott Bessent has no cards to play. And they know that, frankly, the rest of the world doesn’t really support what the United States is doing. And so what’s very strange about watching this, Lawrence, is that all that talk about economic D-Day and all these things, that’s designed for kind of Trump’s right-wing media and his base. Nobody else in the world buys it anymore. I mean, part of what we’re living through with the Iran war and a lot of things are happening in the Trump administration right now is that nobody beyond his most diehard supporters, the 30% of the people that will stick with him, actually pay any attention to this anymore. The Iranians are shrugging it off. The rest of the world doesn’t believe it. Most Americans think this is a disaster. They’re only talking to themselves. And that’s dangerous when you’re talking about things like a war that is actually causing great disruptions to the global economy and risks to American service members. And they don’t seem to care about that. They only seem to care about the next talking point that will get them through the next week.O’DONNELL: And they’re losing Trump voters. We’re going to hear from a Trump voter in the next segment, uh, who is off the Trump wagon as he puts it because of this kind of thing. Ben Rhodes, thank you very much for starting us off tonight.RHODES: Thanks, Lawrence.