Commentary Culture Investigations

A new masterwork by Robert Spencer.
The post Islam’s Tragedy appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

Meet Cali’s First Lady of optics and fairy tales, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
The post California’s Barbie Bigot appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

Another Conservative crosses the floor.
The post Canada: Carney on Cusp of Majority Government appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

The fates of the Jewish state and of Western civilization are intertwined.
The post After The Saturday People, The Sunday People appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

Did “lockdowns” kill the world?
The post Is Nothing Actually Real? appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

The elitist media are wildly inconsistent on President Trump, except for one thing: the coverage has to be negative. So this week, it swung from “Trump’s about to destroy Iranian civilization” to “Trump chickened out again” when they announced a ceasefire. Whichever direction Trump takes — left or right, backward or forward — it’s always wrong. 

CNN host Erin Burnett reflected the tone of Democrats in social media by flipping from outrage at Trump’s threats to destroy Iranian infrastructure to claiming he’s a coward when they announce a temporary ceasefire: “Trump has backed off. And there will be some who will call it, you know — ‘TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out’ — which is making way too light of it. But it is also a truth, which is that he makes giant threats that he does not follow through on.”

MRC Video Senior Director Eric Scheiner and MRC Video lead content creator Brittany Hughes joined the show to discuss all things anti-Trump. Brittany focused this week (as she often does) on misreported narratives on mass deportation, for example a Mexican man who “died in ICE custody.” It was ruled a suicide, but the media accounts make ICE sound responsible. There’s also a horrific story of a Haitian immigrant in Florida who killed a woman by repeatedly using a hammer on her skull. That’s the kind of story they skip. 

The president put out a outrage-inducing Easter message on social media about Iran that had the F-bomb in it. Add to that a sarcastic use of “praise Allah” on Easter. But guess how many times Jake Tapper repeated Trump’s F-bomb quote on Easter? FIVE times…it’s the same way CNN said “s***-hole” 195 times in a 24-hour period when it was reported by Democrats that Trump described Third World countries that way.

But also in the first minutes of Easter Sunday, we had the “Weekend Update” segment on Saturday Night Live, where fake anchor Michael Che was joking about how Trump went to the Kennedy Center to see a play, and made the joke what’s the worst thing that could happen? That’s an obvious reference to the Abe Lincoln assassination. CNN had no outrage for that. 

Che ended up on our “Worst of the Week” ballot, in addition to Chuck Todd claiming that while some worry Iran is radical enough to use a nuclear weapon on us, we should be afraid of Trump, who might drop a nuclear bomb: “I could see him being that crazy.” Then there was Bruce Springsteen on stage in Minneapolis saying America used to be “a beacon for hope and liberty,” but it’s now ruined by this “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration.” He suggested his side favored “the rule of law over lawlessness.” That’s just upside down, where the illegal aliens are following the rule of law and ICE agents are the “lawless” ones. 

Enjoy the video podcast below, or the audio version is here. 

 

 

Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz, and there appears to be nothing America can do about it.

The left-wing candidate for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, campaigned this week with a man running for the University of Michigan’s board of regents who shared since-deleted X posts that celebrated late Hezbollah leaders as “martyr[s]” and called on the Iranian regime to “show no laxity” against Israel.
Amir Makled, a candidate for regent who introduced El-Sayed during a Senate campaign rally with pro-terrorist influencer Hasan Piker on Tuesday night, reposted a message from a Hezbollah fan account that called the terrorist group’s slain former leader Hassan Nasrallah a “martyr” and mourned the death of Nasrallah’s security chief, Abu al-Khalil, in an Israeli airstrike.
The Hezbollah fan account’s post, which included an emoji of a broken heart, laments that “‘Abu Ali Khalil,’ the former aide to Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, was martyred in an ‘Israeli’ strike in Tehran.”
“May His Ascension rise High,” the post, from last June, adds.

Makled reposted another post calling Khalil “a martyr on the road to Jerusalem” and referring to Nasrallah by the honorific “Sayed,” which translates to “Master.”
“Give our greetings to the Sayed,” says the post. “A martyr on the road to Jerusalem, the armor of the Sayed. May god have mercy on your soul ya Abu Ali.”

On the day Israel began its operation against the Islamic Republic last June, Makled retweeted a post from @IRIran_Military, a regime fan account, that called for Iran to “show no laxity in sacred war against the enemy.”
“Never be the one to invite someone to fight (do not be the aggressor in war),” says the post, “but if someone calls you to battle, answer the call (and show no laxity in sacred war against the enemy), for the one who invites to fight is a tyrant—and a tyrant is always defeated.”

In a deleted post from last July, Makled retweeted a meme that referred to Syrian president Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa as “Jewlani”—a play on his nickname “al-Julani”—and claimed he was controlled by Israel.

Makled has also reposted—and deleted—posts from podcaster and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, including one in which Owens called Israelis “demons.”
“These are not our friends or allies,” Owens wrote. “These are demons and they are our enemies. They lie, steal, cheat, murder and blackmail.”

Last June, he reposted another comment from Owens in which she claimed Israel had a “bloodlust like no other” and was “demonic.”

Neither El-Sayed nor Makled responded to requests for comment.
Makled is seeking to unseat longtime regent Jordan Acker as the Democratic nominee for a seat on the University of Michigan board at the state party’s convention on April 19. The university’s board of regents consists of eight members elected to serve eight-year terms by the entire state, and the winner of the nomination for Acker’s seat will face the Michigan Republican Party’s nominee on Election Day.
Anti-Israel activists have been fighting to oust Acker, a supporter of Israel whose home was the target of anti-Semitic vandalism in 2024. Makled is best known in the university community for representing Michigan students who faced criminal charges after participating in the university’s illegal anti-Israel encampment in spring 2024.
The Tuesday night campaign event—where El-Sayed spoke alongside Piker, who has said that “America deserved 9/11” and that it “doesn’t matter if rape happened on October 7″—came after a Washington Free Beacon report on a private campaign call the Senate candidate held one day after the death of former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. El-Sayed said he wanted to avoid making a statement on Khamenei’s assassination because many voters in Dearborn, Mich., were “sad.”
El-Sayed has expressed radical views on other U.S. military engagements. He drew an equivalence between 9/11 and the U.S. response in since-deleted posts on X and in a 2021 op-ed, arguing that both were “perpetrated ignorantly” and driven by “tribalistic grievance,” the Free Beacon reported in December. He also boasted in his 2020 memoir that, as a college athlete, he refused to face the American flag during the national anthem over his opposition to the Iraq war.
The post El-Sayed Campaigns With UMich Board of Regents Candidate Who Shared Since-Deleted Posts Praising Hezbollah and Iranian Regime appeared first on .

How about trying to prevent these deaths instead of facilitating them?

On Wednesday Night’s The 11th Hour on MS NOW, host Stephanie Ruhle and her panel bizarrely praised the Iranian regime for how they held “deep beliefs” “that they will die for,” and chided President Trump for not holding America in a similar regard.

Former Under Secretary of State Rick Stengel also claimed that the president was wrong to think those forming human chains were paid protestors, and compared them to those with American patriotism, as he said Trump had no “ideological belief” or “patriotism” for America.

Amid a now-constant media news cycle built with fear and belief of the ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. had faltered, the panel discussion went from talk about the Strait of Hormuz to Trump’s apparent failure to understand Iran, since he has no ideological beliefs of his own.

 

Under no circumstances do you ‘have to hand it to them.’
MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle commends Iran for “the fact that they have a deep belief in something. That’s unfathomable to [Trump]. That they will die for.” pic.twitter.com/I9aJhtWwrs
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 9, 2026
 

A member of the Financial Times editorial board, Gillian Tett, started the ‘you have to hand it to them’ commentary towards Iran with a reference to Trump’s love of money:

So, the fact that the Iranian regime has a really strong conviction, which frankly, at this point has doesn’t have much to do with money, it’s to do with survival and their vision of what the nation is –

Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor, Tim O’Brien, described by program graphics as a “Trump biographer,” mentioned their religion drove them. Tett continued, “You know, and we might hate it. We might like it, whatever. But it’s a very different mentality that President Trump is the very worst person to try and empathize with and understand. And if you don’t empathize with your opponent and understand what’s driving them, it’s very hard to make a deal.”

After Stengal said Trump “doesn’t understand anybody who believes in anything,” Ruhle implied one might disagree with Iran, but you do have to commend them on one thing:

RUHLE: I mean this is a phenomenal point because you could disagree with Iran and what their point of view is, but it’s – the fact that they have a deep belief in something. That’s unfathomable to him.

STENGEL: That they will die for.

RUHLE: That they will die for. That they’ll destroy their country for.

Yeah, let’s just hand that to them, at least they have a radical Islamist religious ideology that they believe in that has made them the lead source of terror in the Middle East, and has killed many American troops. No issues here.

Moving on from whatever that was, Stengel said Trump didn’t understand Iranian “patriotism” since he held not ideological patriotic beliefs about America. He then said all the human chains around power plants, a war crime, were organic:

Yes. I mean, he has no ideological belief or patriotism about America, and he doesn’t think anybody else does. So, when he sees Iranians lining up around power grids, he can’t understand that. He thinks they’re being paid to do it.

It does not seem organic for women and children to form chains around power plants dressed in the same all black garb while they wave Islamic Republic flags.

For a regime that used their civilians as shields on bridges and powers plants, you probably should not praise their ideology just to get back at your disliked politicians. Or, it is better put this way:

 

issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to them”
— wint (@dril) February 15, 2017
 

The transcript is below. Click “expand”:

MS NOW’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle

April 8, 2026

11:08:30 PM Eastern

(…)

GILLIAN TETT: The other thing is what this reveals is that President Trump comes from a background where he assumes that money can buy everything and money drives everything, and he wants to cut a deal with everyone using money. And he assumes that other people will basically fall in line on the back of that. 

So, the fact that the Iranian regime has a really strong conviction, which frankly, at this point has doesn’t have much to do with money, it’s to do with survival and their vision of what the nation is –

TIM O’BRIEN: And religion

TETT: – a religion. You know, and we might hate that. We might like it, whatever. But it’s a very different mentality that President Trump is the very worst person to try and empathize with and understand. And if you don’t empathize with your opponent and understand what’s driving them, it’s very hard to make a deal.

RICK STENGEL: He doesn’t understand anybody who believes in anything. And by the way, the people who are really – 

STEPHANIE RUHLE: I mean this is a phenomenal point because you could disagree with Iran and what their point of view is, but it’s – the fact that they have a deep belief in something. That’s unfathomable to him.

STENGEL: That they will die for.

RUHLE: That they will die for. That they’ll destroy their country for.

STENGEL: Yes. I mean, he has no ideological belief or patriotism about America, and he doesn’t think anybody else does. So, when he sees Iranians lining up around power grids, he can’t understand that. He thinks they’re being paid to do it. But the people who can identify with this, who are very, very unhappy about this are the Gulf States.

The Gulf States were – America is protecting them. They signed the Abraham accords. They always were against Iran. They worried about Iran. When I was in the State Department and visited all the Gulf States to talk about ISIS, they would go “ISIS-[schismus],” were much more concerned about Iran. 

And now big brother, big daddy that was supposed to deal with Iran has not. Iran is more empowered over the straits. All of their oil goes through the straits. I mean, they feel like now they’re out there on a limb with nothing.

(…)