Commentary Culture Investigations

Ryan et al, Atlantic

Liberal journalist Geraldo Rivera sprung to support the First Lady’s condemnation of Jimmy Kimmel’s ominous, hateful comments regarding her and her family on his late-night television show prior to the assassination attempt on her husband’s life Saturday at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Thursday, in a foreboding “comedy” skit about the upcoming dinner, Kimmel joked about assassination of President Donald Trump, saying:

“Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country” and feeds the nation’s violent “political sickness,” Melania Trump responded Monday on X.com:

“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.”

“A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him,” the First Lady added.

In his post, Rivera defended the First Lady’s comments and expressed sympathy for the pain Kimmel caused her:

“Regarding the First Lady’s condemnation of Kimmel’s latest incitement, think what it must be like to have total strangers wishing you and your family dead.”

But, Rivera went further than labeling Kimmel a merely coward – by branding him “a sadist” in disguise:

“Trump can be a rude provocateur. Kimmel is a sadist masquerading as a comedian.”

Photo Credit:Bernie Sanders

mark nozell wikim cc2Watch the Democrats stiff their own voters, who dearly long for a radical socialist as their presidential candidate.

Photo Credit:ChatGPT

ChatGPTThe term carries rhetorical force, but its analytical content is far less clear, resting on a set of logical and structural problems that make it more evocative than explanatory.

Photo Credit:

XEverything Barack Obama interjects into public discourse always appears neutral on its face, but in truth is delivered within a systemic context or tone.

Photo Credit:

White HouseTo relatively little fanfare, when one considers the economic, political, and geopolitical implications, Pres. Trump withdrew the United States from 66 international organizations, agreements, and/or treaties covering a vast array of public policies.

On February 28, the United States and Israel unleashed Operation Epic Fury, a coordinated combat operation against a radical Iranian regime which has threatened America for decades, terrorizing its neighbors and even massacring its own people. President Donald Trump explained his war reasoning in a Truth Social post, citing the historical context of the dangerous regime and insisting “this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.”

As the war progressed, the three major broadcast networks insisted the Trump administration was on the backfoot, both at home and over the battlefield, mired in muddled messaging (despite Trump’s consistent emphasis on denying Iran nuclear weapons) and rising prices, while severely underplaying U.S. military success and barely noting the danger the Iranian regime posed to its neighbors and the world.

MRC analysts reviewed all evening news discussions of the Iran War, including domestic economic knock-on effects like “soaring” gas prices — much of it caused by Iran disrupting oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz — that aired on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts from March 16 through April 15, including weekends. Over that one-month period, the networks gave the war 88% negative coverage. The breakdown, by network:

■ ABC: 93% negative

■ CBS: 92% negative

■ NBC: 79% negative

Total war coverage on the evening news shows added up to 6 hours, 26 minutes: 125 minutes on ABC; 142 minutes on CBS; and 119 minutes on NBC.

Network evening news coverage was decidedly non-triumphal, with little emphasis on the global danger Iran’s nuclear program posed. Instead, the rise in U.S. gas prices was rendered in forensic detail in a nightly drumbeat. Prices were not just high, but “sky high,” which translated into “pain at the pump” and “economic turmoil,” directly linked to when “Trump started the war.” Details:

 

 

■ ABC: 93% Negative

ABC eked out a win as the most negative-leaning network, led by Trump-hostile White House correspondent Mary Bruce, who provided this negative take on ABC’s March 19 World News Tonight in response to the Pentagon’s request for more defense spending:

“On Capitol Hill, the $200 billion request catching many members of Congress off guard. The president launched this war without seeking their approval. Now lawmakers from both parties demanding details before they write that check….The president didn’t consult American allies before going to war, either.”

Reporter Patrick Reevell on March 21 tried to discourage the president from seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export site: “Speculation grows President Trump might use ground troops to reopen the Strait or even seize Iran’s Kharg Island.” After a clip of Col. Mark Cancian, USMCR (Ret.) warning that getting there would pose a challenge to troops, Reevell warned bleakly: “It could also risk more U.S. casualties. At least 13 Americans have been killed. The Pentagon says 232 have been wounded. Back in the U.S., funeral services today for two Iowa soldiers killed in the attack on an American base in Kuwait at the start of the war.”

On March 27, the anti-Trump blame game from ABC reporter Matt Rivers was particularly blunt: “Global oil prices tonight above $100 a barrel. Gas prices in the U.S. closing in on $4 per gallon. Drivers in many parts of the country already paying more than that to fill up. Prices up more than $1 since President Trump started the war.”

Occasionally Iran was properly fingered for blame, as ABC’s Jonathan Karl did on March 31: “…Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz causing oil prices to soar around the world….”

Sometimes the network’s coverage descended into anti-war pathos. ABC weekend anchor Linsey Davis on March 29 engaged in emotive rhetoric: “And a sobering reminder of the cost of this war: More than 3,000 people have been killed across the region, including 13 American service members.” Later in the broadcast, Davis reacted to Rivers’s report of the death of a soldier by lamenting “so many lives cut short by this war.”

Mary Bruce provided this pungent parade of economic statistics on April 6: “The war, now in its sixth week, taking a toll on American families. The average price of gas now $4.11 a gallon, up $1.17 since the war began. Crude rising to nearly $113 a barrel. Airlines including JetBlue and United raising fees for checked baggage, $10 a bag for United. Amazon adding a 3.5% fuel surcharge for businesses whose products they sell.”

Bruce’s most opinionated report appeared April 7, based on Trump’s Truth Social post warning Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if the country didn’t make a deal. Bruce showed sudden respect for religion in the form of Pope Leo’s anti-war pieties, and also for formerly persona non grata figures like Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Mary Bruce: The president’s extraordinary threat that a whole civilization will die tonight, condemned in Rome by the first American pope.

Pope Leo [clip]: Attacks on civilian infrastructure is against international law, but that it is also a sign of the hatred, the division, the destruction, the human being is capable of.

Bruce kept going, showing rare media appreciation for the opinions of certain formerly Trump-supporting personalities.

Bruce: Trump’s one-time close ally, Tucker Carlson, disgusted.

Tucker Carlson [clip]: On every level, it is vile, on every level.

Bruce: Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posting ‘25th Amendment!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.’

Bruce even recycled the same Pope Leo clip six days later, on April 13, and added a new condemnation from a prominent religious Trump supporter: “Today, American Catholic leaders condemning Trump’s attacks. Bishop Robert Barron, who sits on the president’s Religious Liberty Commission, calling his words entirely inappropriate and disrespectful, saying he owes Pope Leo an apology.”

 

■ CBS: 92% Negative

Despite the supposed culture change at CBS under the new leadership of Bari Weiss, CBS News was almost as negative as ABC. Alone among the networks, CBS uncovered a war angle to the story of two Apache helicopters filmed hovering outside the Nashville home of singer Kid Rock, with Weiss-recruited reporter Matt Gutman delivering a lecture after his March 30 report:

Tony Dokoupil: I don’t know the exact price tag of those helicopters, but they are valuable pieces of military equipment. We are at war at the moment. What’s the reaction been like?

Matt Gutman: It’s been somewhat critical. Online military officials I’ve spoken with say that there’s head shaking, there’s criticism that the U.S. is in the midst of a controversial war, service members have been killed and wounded abroad, and military analysts say this seems like an unnecessary risk and possibly a frivolous use of U.S. military resources at such a sensitive time, Tony.

Meanwhile, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was popular on CBS, appearing in three clips over the study’s range, including his statement that aired on the April 4 CBS Evening News that “this is not our war, we’re not going to get dragged into it.” His anti-Trump, anti-war rhetoric was perhaps considered particularly influential, coming from an ostensible American ally and fellow NATO member.

CBS also hammered Trump the hardest on the economic impact of the war at home, expending 18% of its total war coverage on economic news, usually bad, compared to 13% for NBC and 11% for ABC.

Dokoupil made the link explicit: “The war and your money” was his oft-used slogan before introducing yet another story on economic turmoil.

Not to be outdone, CBS’s Nancy Cordes on April 1 engaged in a little parallelism, “with gas prices rising and his poll numbers sinking.” Taurean Small reported on April 12 poll results which “found most Americans think gas prices have been a financial hardship since the start of the war.”

CBS White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe continued the price drumbeat and brought the midterms into the Iran War discussion March 25, over the chyron “Midterm Elections Warning for Republicans,” intoning “Worries from Republicans, who see continued signs voters are rejecting the war and the president’s handling of the economy. Asked about rising gas prices, now up for a 25th consecutive day, the White House says voters should sit tight.”

 

■ NBC: 79% Negative

NBC’s coverage was a little less negative than its competitors, although it certainly had negative moments, as when it aired a disgruntled Trump voter’s bleeped-out anti-Trump vulgarity on March 19, and when anchor Tom Llamas lamented over a “market meltdown milestone” March 27. NBC even showcased a poll from a competing network April 12, with reporter Julie Tsirkin citing CBS News/YouGov: “A new poll finds most Americans say they feel worried, stressed, or angry about the escalating war.”

Yet NBC carried the most analysis of the actual military progress of the war, albeit against shallow competition. NBC uniquely noted on the March 31 Nightly News that Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) wanted Trump to keep the war going, citing the danger Iran posed to the region. Reporter Garrett Haake relayed: “Some allies, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have encouraged the White House to keep up the strikes to make sure Iran can no longer threaten the region with ballistic missiles or drones. Their message to the White House? Finish the job.”

NBC issued rare reporting on the war’s military successes, while noting the danger the Iranian regime posed to its neighbors and the world, as NBC’s Keir Simmons did on the March 19 Nightly News from Saudi Arabia: “All as the Pentagon saying it is decimating Iran’s ability to attack, with Iranian missile and drone strikes down 90%.” Simmons went on to cite U.S. war ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “So Prime Minister Netanyahu saying Iran can no longer enrich uranium or manufacture ballistic missiles.”

As noted, NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez indulged in an anti-Trump vulgarity on March 19: “Polls show most Republicans support the president’s decision to attack Iran. But clearly, some don’t. As this voter in Pennsylvania told NBC’s Jon Allen.” A clip followed:

Jon Allen [clip]: If you could say something to President Trump, and he was going to hear you right now, what would it be?

Female PA Voter: You are a worthless pile of [bleep].

Allen: And you voted for him — how many times?

Female PA Voter: Three times. That was my bad. Apparently I’m an idiot.

On March 28, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was interviewed by NBC’s Raf Sanchez in Qatar, and the NBC journalist nudged him into suggesting the Iran War benefited Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “The U.S. has lifted some sanctions on Russian oil. The Kremlin is benefiting from higher oil prices. Is Vladimir Putin the big winner from this war?.…You think it’s in Vladimir Putin’s interest for this war to drag on?” Zelenskyy agreed: “100%.”

NBC’s Gutierrez matched ABC on April 13, also using Bishop Barron to demand the president apologize to the pope: “Bishop Robert Barron, a Catholic and a member of President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, posting he thinks the president owes the Pope an apology.”

 

■ Even the bright side of the coverage had a touch of gray. While the networks paid proper due to the U.S. military’s “dangerous,” “daring” rescue of a weapons systems officer who had to eject from his F-15 fighter jet deep over Iranian territory, and gave Trump airtime to delight in the details of the rescue, no network could resist faulting Trump multiple times for his previous comments insisting Iran was no longer capable of shooting down U.S. aircraft.

ABC did so twice on the April 3 World News Tonight, after a previous incident with an A-10 “Warthog” that was shot down. ABC also mentioned Trump’s comments three times on April 4 after the shooting down of the F-15 — before the airman’s successful rescue.

CBS cited Trump’s previous comments once each on April 3 and 4, and on April 3 attributed similar comments to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

NBC mentioned Trump’s dismissive comments twice on April 3.

+++++

METHODOLOGY: To determine the spin of evening news coverage, our analysts tallied all explicitly evaluative statements about the war from either reporters, anchors or non-partisan sources such as foreign affairs analysts, retired military officers, and individual citizens. In order to isolate the networks’ own slant, not the back-and-forth of partisan politics, evaluations from partisan sources (Republican officials supporting Trump and the war, Democratic officials criticizing him or the war) were not included.
Using these criteria, MRC analysts tallied 194 evaluative statements about the war — on ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News or NBC Nightly News — of which 171 (88%) were negative vs. a mere 23 (12%) which were positive.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel tried to defend himself on Monday after receiving “another Twitter vomit storm” over the weekend after his Friday joke about First Lady glowing like an expectant widow aged like unrefrigerated cheese after a California man tried to assassinate President Trump at Saturday’s White House Correspondents Dinner. Kimmel tried to say the joke was merely about Donald and Melania’s age differences, but that would be hard to square with Kimmel’s history of Melania jokes.

Kimmel began by recapping how, since the WHCD would not feature a comedian, he did his own roast routine, “And there was no big reaction to it until this morning when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm. And a call to fire me from our First Lady Melania Trump saying I should be fired because of a joke I made, again, five nights ago. It was a pretend roast. I said, ‘Our First Lady Melania’s here, look at her, so beautiful, Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.’”

 

Jimmy Kimmel says his Melania/widow joke was “obviously was a joke about their age difference. And the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together.”
(1/3)pic.twitter.com/RZNgAarJB2
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 28, 2026
 

He added, “Which obviously was a joke about their age difference. And the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular.”

The second sentence is Kimmel unwittingly telling on himself. A good amount of late night’s jokes about Melania—of which Kimmel is by the leader—are based around the idea that Donald and Melania do not actually love each other and that she actually finds him repulsive. Even if one grants that Kimmel wasn’t talking about violence or assassination, it is not outrageous to say he was alluding to Trump’s death, especially given all the jokes Kimmel likes to tell about Trump’s diet. Even in that spoof WHCD routine, Kimmel gave Trump the Burger King award, a reference to both his like of fast food and alleged monarchial tendencies. From being a “very light roast,” that routine also featured gay rape jokes about FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Senator Lindsey Graham.

As it was, Kimmel continued:

But I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend. And probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it. Because—By the way, I also should point out Donald Trump is allowed to say what he wants to say, as you are you, as am I, as are all of us because under the First Amendment we have a right as Americans to free speech, but with that said, I am sorry that you, and the president, and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that.

After defending himself, Kimmel attacked Trump for defending himself. During a mashup of clips from Trump’s recent 60 Minutes battle, Kimmel quipped, “General rule of thumb, you know an interview isn’t going great when you have to say ‘I’m not a rapist’ and ‘I’m not a pedophile.’”

 

After defending himself, Kimmel attacks Trump for defending himself during a “60 Minutes” interview, “General rule of thumb, you know an interview isn’t going great when you have to say ‘I’m not a rapist’ and ‘I’m not a pedophile.'”
(2/3) pic.twitter.com/3SqdJOz21y
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 28, 2026
 

Following another clip of Trump battling Norah O’Donnell, where he called her a “disgrace,” Kimmel retorted, “I guess the honeymoon with the press didn’t last. It was fun for 11 hours.”

Kimmel was supposed to have Oz Pearlman on his show on Monday after he was scheduled to perform at the WHCD, but for one reason or another, that ended up not happening, and he was replaced by Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett.

Contrary to what many lefties have been saying, Lovett defended the idea of the administration sharing a few drinks with the administration, which led Kimmel to clarify, “So, you think—which is different, I think, from what a lot of people think—you think it is actually more appropriate now to be in a room for an event that supports the First Amendment with somebody who doesn’t believe in the First Amendment.”

Lovett insisted, “No, I wouldn’t be caught dead at the dinner. But, yeah. But, it’s nice to be around people in real life as opposed to just fighting on the internet.”

 

Later, Jon Lovett of Pod Save America told Kimmel that the WHCD “is supposed to be a chance to poke fun at people in power. That’s what you were doing. That’s what you were doing. You were using your First Amendment right to poke fun at people in power. And that’s what that whole… pic.twitter.com/ZSUedDcgLp
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 28, 2026
 

He then lamented the ditching of the comedian by recalling Kimmel’s routine that got him in trouble, “Because ultimately it is supposed to be a chance to poke fun at people in power. That’s what you were doing. That’s what you were doing. You were using your First Amendment right to poke fun at people in power. And that’s what that whole weekend used to be about before they changed comedian to mentalist.”

On an average night, Kimmel tells between 20 and 30 jokes about conservatives. On Friday, his fake WHCD routine led him to tell 57 total jokes—the second most in any single show since NewsBusters started keeping track—and not a single one was about a Democrat because poking fun at the “people in power” really means “Republicans in power.”

Here is a transcript for the April 27 show:

ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!

4/27/2026

11:37 PM ET
JIMMY KIMMEL: So, on Thursday, three days before the event, in order to keep that cherished tradition alive, I did my own version of the correspondents’ dinner on my show. I put on a tuxedo. We pretended we had an audience of luminaries. We used old footage of the Trumps, of Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, Kid Rock, Vanilla Ice, all the members of his cabinet.

And we made it seem like they were all together in a room. We had a little roast. Again, this was Thursday. And there was no big reaction to it until this morning when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm. And a call to fire me from our First Lady Melania Trump saying I should be fired because of a joke I made, again, five nights ago. It was a pretend roast. I said, “Our First Lady Melania’s here, look at her, so beautiful, Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

Which obviously was a joke about their age difference. And the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular.

But I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend. And probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it. Because—By the way, I also should point out Donald Trump is allowed to say what he wants to say, as you are you, as am I, as are all of us because under the First Amendment we have a right as Americans to free speech, but with that said, I am sorry that you, and the president, and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that.

…

KIMMEL: General rule of thumb, you know an interview isn’t going great when you have to say “I’m not a rapist” and “I’m not a pedophile.”

DONALD TRUMP: You should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Mr. President, these are –

TRUMP: Excuse me. Excuse me. You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes. You’re a disgrace. But go ahead. Let’s finish the interview.

O’DONNELL: The other thing that he wrote –

TRUMP: You’re disgraceful.

KIMMEL: I guess the honeymoon with the press didn’t last. It was fun for 11 hours.

…

12:29 AM ET

KIMMEL: So, you think—which is different, I think, from what a lot of people think—you think it is actually more appropriate now to be in a room for an event that supports the First Amendment with somebody who doesn’t believe in the First Amendment.

JON LOVETT: No, I wouldn’t be caught dead at the dinner.

KIMMEL: Oh. The parties you mean.

LOVETT: But, yeah. But, it’s nice to be around people in real life as opposed to just fighting on the internet.

KIMMEL: Yeah.

LOVETT: Because ultimately it is supposed to be a chance to poke fun at people in power. That’s what you were doing. That’s what you were doing. You were using your First Amendment right to poke fun at people in power. And that’s what that whole weekend used to be about before they changed comedian to mentalist.

An Obama and Biden State Department administration official who participated in the negotiations that led to the 2015 deal that gave Iran $700 billion in sanctions relief in exchange for promises of an unverifiable temporary pause in its nuclear weapons program is now complaining that President Trump doesn’t have enough expert advice.
Wendy Sherman, who was deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration and under secretary of state for political affairs in the Obama administration with a stint in between as a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, also criticized the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, he “has led us down a road—and we have been part of it—that has, in essence, created a genocide in Gaza that has destabilized the Middle East.” Sherman made her comments in an interview with Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain, a British Muslim veteran of the BBC who spoke at Oxford in October 2025 about what she called “acute mass harm to civilians in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine.” Husain also used the Oxford speech to denounce Israel for deliberately killing Palestinian journalists, without acknowledging that many of the so-called journalists were terrorists.
It’s a closer race between what’s more repugnant—Sherman, with her track record, crapping all over President Trump’s Iran policy and falsely accusing Israel and the U.S. of genocide, or former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hiring Husain and providing her and Sherman with a platform to promote these falsehoods.
The Sherman interview is titled, apparently without irony or comic intent, “How to negotiate with Iran,” as if the person who negotiated the horrible 2015 deal that enriched Iran to support regional terrorist proxies were in a position to provide authoritative advice about anything other than mistakes to avoid repeating.
The Sherman interview is labeled “weekend interview” and elaborately presented similarly to the ones the New York Times magazine has been running—a video podcast along with a print transcript annotated with footnotes. When Husain launched it, Bloomberg issued a press release touting what it described as “a new flagship global podcast,” that “will launch the same week Husain delivers the prestigious annual public lecture of the University of Oxford. Previous Romanes Lecturers have included British Prime Ministers William Gladstone, Winston Churchill and Tony Blair.”
In the hands of an editor with more brains and background knowledge, footnotes might have offered an opportunity to fact check, or provide context for, some of Sherman’s more fantastic claims. Sherman says, “When the 1979 Iranian Revolution happened, it was really a reaction to what we and the British had done in 1953, when we knocked off a prime minister [Mohammad Mossadegh] because we were afraid that Iran was going to nationalize the oil industry, and we thought that would hurt us.” That is inaccurate on several levels. The prime minister wasn’t ousted by America but by clerics, and they and America were both less concerned about the oil than about Communist influence, as Ray Takeyh has explained in at least three fine articles, “What Really Happened in Iran,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2014; “The Coup Against Democracy That Wasn’t,” Commentary, December 2021, and “The Real Story of the 1953 Iranian Coup,” the Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2023.
Proving causation in history and in social science generally is complex, but the idea that an American action taken in 1953 is “really” to blame for the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran is such a blame-America-first oversimplification that undercuts Sherman’s credibility. Husain lets it go unchallenged. What’s the point of having footnotes to give context if they aren’t going to be used in a situation like this?
Sherman complains that Trump “has cost our alliances, American taxpayers, 13 American lives, our inventory of weapons, our ability to project power abroad.” Yet Iran’s decision to attack the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan has only pushed those countries further into the U.S.-Israel alliance. The net gain to U.S. military strength of the warfighting experience may yet outweigh the expended weapons. If, after the war, Iran ends up in the U.S. camp, with its oil and gas flowing in U.S. dollars, then our ability to project power will be significantly enhanced in comparison to the status quo of Iran aligned with Russia and China against America.
Sherman says Trump will be “in a weakened position” when he goes to meet Xi Jinping in China in May, but in fact the weakened party is China, an unfree country that is reliant on smuggled Iranian petroleum. Even the New York Times appears finally to be adjusting its view on this; back in March it was writing “How the war in Iran could help China,” but now the reality is setting in and the Times headlines are changing to, “The Iran War Is Starting to Expose Cracks in China’s Economy.” The Times reports, “Thousands of workers who lost their jobs took to the streets last week in southern China, staging daily protests to demand back pay and compensation from several toy factories that abruptly closed on April 20. The closures came as costs for plastic, which is made from oil and natural gas, surged after traffic slowed through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to energy buyers around the world. … The shuttered factories are in Yulin City, a low-wage toy manufacturing hub about 260 miles west of Hong Kong. Workers draped banners across factory gates with slogans like, ‘Give me back my blood and sweat money.’” Imagine how the Chinese Communist tyrants will feel if the Iranian protesters for freedom succeed in toppling the dictatorial regime in Tehran, with American help?
Sherman says, “Some of our best allies — Canada, the UK — have said they can’t rely on us and have beaten a path to China.” She doesn’t mention, and Husain doesn’t either, that this raises questions about how reliable Canada and the U.K. are as allies. Where are they when we ask for help, and what capabilities do they have to bring to bear? Do they really want to be satellites of Communist China, with all that entails for political and religious freedom, for property rights, for rule of law, for freedom of the press?
Sherman lectures about humility: “yes, the US has unequal power, but we have to be humble about it.” Where is Sherman’s own humility when it comes to her responsibility and that of Presidents Obama and Biden for a deal that resulted in enriching and empowering Iran with sanctions relief money?
Sherman makes a prediction: “My guess is that Iran will still have some measure of control over the Strait.” Why would Trump leave Iran in a position to close the strait again, basically giving it the power to push gas prices to $4 a gallon, and thus interfere in American politics, at will? It’d be an American unconditional surrender after a war in which Iran has been militarily defeated.
Sherman complains that the Trump administration doesn’t have enough experts. “I was glad to see that Vice President [JD] Vance brought some experts with him [to talks in Pakistan], but I’m not sure any of them were in the rooms. I had nuclear physicists, sanctions experts, lawyers and Treasury folks on my team. I had people who spoke fluent Farsi. I had literally hundreds in the US government who were engaged in this. I don’t see any of that infrastructure here,” she says. I’m all for experts on Iranian culture and nuclear concealment, yet all of Sherman’s “experts” left in power and enriched a regime that killed between 32,000 and 45,000 protesters and that funded Hamas and Hezbollah. All the “experts” in the world are no substitute for a president or a prime minister with determination and values who see the issues with clarity.
As for Sherman’s preening about the supposed “genocide” in Gaza, even the Hamas-controlled health ministry’s estimates put the Gaza death toll at about 71,000. Some significant portion of those were terrorist combatants. The Syrian Civil War killed as many as 620,000. That war began in 2011 on Obama and Sherman’s watch and accelerated when Obama declined to enforce a red line against Syrian chemical weapons use, a decision that Obama later described by saying, “I’m very proud of this moment.” No one cares about the half-million dead Syrians because the Jews can’t be blamed for them.
Sherman declares herself “angrier and angrier.” The same could be said of readers who have the context and are fuming to see these emotional pronouncements go unchallenged.
Husain made news in May 2025 when she clashed with Elon Musk in an appearance at the “Qatar Economic Forum, Powered by Bloomberg,” an event that is “held in collaboration with Qatar’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry” and “Editorially curated by Bloomberg News.” Bloomberg is not registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent. Musk said, “it’s difficult when I’m conversing with someone who is trapped in the dialogue tree of a conventional journalist because it’s like talking to a computer.”
Husain’s Oxford lecture reads like a Saturday Night Live parody of Muslim self-aggrandizement. She faulted the British media for anti-Muslim bias and credited Islam with operating the world’s oldest university, inventing algebra and the concept of an endowed chair in a university, providing the intellectual foundation for the European renaissance, and serving as the architectural inspiration for Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame, including stained glass, the pointed arch, and the rose window.
According to Wikipedia, Husain’s maternal grandfather was the first director general of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Another interview Husain did earlier this month was with a former ambassador of Pakistan, Maleeha Lodhi. It was headlined “US Dominance in the Middle East Is ‘Basically Over.’” Lodhi claimed, “US dominance has been fading … the era of America’s dominance in the region is basically over.” Interviewer Husain mostly played along: “If there is one winner in all of this, would you say it’s China?”
As for Sherman’s “genocide” accusation, it was seized on by a former foreign policy aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, Matt Duss, who used it to attack President Biden and Sherman. Said Duss: “It’s a dodge to say that Netanyahu ‘led’ the US. Yes, he’s a liar and a manipulator, but Biden made his choice, as did Trump. Still quite notable coming from the US’s former second highest-ranking diplomat and longtime proponent of the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel orthodoxy.”
For Duss and others in the Sanders-Zohran Mamdani socialist wing of American politics, even accusing Israel of genocide is insufficient. Sherman also says in the interview, “It is critical that Israel remains an ally of the US and we protect the right of a Jewish state. … Israel absolutely deserves security and peace. I’m a strong supporter of Israel and the right of a Jewish state.” It’s an open question whether someone with Sherman’s professed views could get nominated to a job in an Ocasio-Cortez presidential administration, or get confirmed in a hypothetical Senate with Chris Van Hollen as the Democratic leader. As exasperating as Sherman and Bloomberg and Obama were and are, there’s a real risk—not a certainty, but a risk—that the next Democratic administration, if there is one, would be even worse.
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