Wednesday's Final Word

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Yeah, it's big and dumb as a tab can come, but it's stronger than a media gloss ...

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Ed: David Burge once wrote that the media's role was to cover stories, with a blanket until it stopped moving. Twitter under Jack Dorsey collaborated in that definition. No matter what else Musk has or hasn't done, he has kept X/Twitter open for actual public debate and as a conduit around the Journ-O-List progressive narrative defenses. After that, it's up to the rest of us. David has his own post on this story tomorrow morning; mine is here. 

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Sky News: The first batch of grooming gang cases, among a national review of previously closed files, has been referred back to police forces where lines of inquiry may have been missed.

Operation Beaconport is examining cases between January 2010 and March 2025 where there are two or more suspects accused of sexual abuse and they are still alive; there is a victim of a sexual offence with physical contact; cases have not already been reviewed; and no further action had been taken.

In November, 1,273 such investigations from 23 police forces had already been referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA), 236 of which were prioritised because they involved allegations of rape.

On Tuesday, the NCA said: "At this early stage, the reviews have identified closed cases from eight force areas that may have viable lines of inquiry.["]

Ed: I had forgotten about the Baroness Casey report, which came out a year ago. It had a more limited scope than the Lowe Report. They're going to need a lot more investigators and prosecutors, assuming they will take this seriously now and not just sweep it under the politically correct carpet. Again. 

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Ed: The Independent does not have a single story as of this evening on Lowe's rape-gang report. Not. One. 

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NY Post: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called the Washington Post his worst investment in a conversation with President Trump months before gutting the newsroom, according to a new book by New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman.

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“The people there are terrible,” Bezos told Trump over dinner in December 2024, according to an excerpt obtained by The Post ahead of the June 23 release of “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.“

“They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen,” Bezos said, focusing his ire at the business side of the publication after losing more than $100 million that year. ...

Bezos’ candor with Trump was described by Swan and Haberman as part of a larger effort by Big Tech titans to cozy up with the incoming president, who had spent his four years in political exile railing against what he viewed as bias by news outlets and major internet platforms.

Ed: Or,  perhaps, it's just the truth. Bezos and Will Lewis tried to warn WaPo staffers that no one trusted them and that their work justified the lack of trust. Instead of heeding reality, staffers staged a series of revolts, and Bezos had to keep downsizing to minimize losses. Also: as of 5:45 pm ET, there's still not a single mention of the Lowe Report at the WaPo. 

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Ed: How many of those came from X/Twitter? I would bet most of them, especially with most news outlets ignoring the story. 

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Axios: The U.S. and Iran have remotely signed their memorandum of understanding to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz, and the agreement is now in effect, two U.S. officials told Axios.

  • President Trump himself signed, one official said.

    • Why it matters: The signing was supposed to happen in Switzerland on Friday, but a diplomat from a mediating country and a second source familiar told Axios earlier on Wednesday that there had been discussions about signing and implementing it earlier. ...

    Another factor may have been the political pressure on the White House to release the text of the MOU. The source familiar with the discussions claimed it was Iran that demanded the text not be published until the formal signing, and denied the White House was responding to political pressure.

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    Ed: I suspect that the language was still being workshopped in the margins until today. The White House's attempts to promote the deal while hiding the MOU were clearly not working to build support, so they accelerated the signing to release the document. No one's happy with the result at the moment, so maybe Trump and his team decided to rip the bandage off rather than peel it back one pore at a time. 

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    They're not stupid. They're also targets, like Israel is. Less, but a lot, and the IRGC are crazy bastards. Makes me think Trump made it for them. ...

    If we remember Trump's goals and work backwards, it's actually a little easier to see how this makes sense, even the MOU with it's big carrot/big stick arrangement that basically nobody believes will stick (thus terrifying Israel but, I'll bet, also those Gulf States). So what are Trump's goals?

    1) Expand Abraham Accords;

    2) KSA allying formally with Israel, which was happening until October 7 disrupted it, thus restoring a pre-10/7 peace agenda;

    3) Increase their overall security dependency on US and Israel, thus shifting some of their "hand" in the region to us;

    4) Standard Trumpism 101: Make them active participants in their own security arrangements, just like what he's doing with the EU and Pacific countries (no more America carrying all the weight).

    Ed: There's more in this essay, so click through to Lindsay's full argument, which is interesting but not convincing. Part of the problem is the "working backward" aspect, trying to fit what looks like a cave into some sort of strategic long-term win. It's possible, but sometimes Occam's Razor fits best. The most convincing part of the argument is that the 'deal' is almost certain to fall apart sooner or later, and much more likely sooner. Also, points 3 and 4 actually conflict with each other. 

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    Ed: This is a more defensible argument, and Kurt's correct that this should be factored into the calculations. 

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    Niall Ferguson at The Free Press: It would take a very committed partisan to say that the carrots for Iran here are not more enticing, and the sticks less intimidating, than those of the JCPOA.

    Yet before I join in the swelling chorus of former Obama and Biden officials rushing to write op-eds denouncing the MOU, or the Middle East hawks decrying it as an instrument of U.S. surrender, it is important to remember that a piece of paper by itself is not a peace. For peace is made as much by actions as by words—and as much by the unforeseen consequences of diplomacy as by the intended ones. ...

    Right now, Trump’s 14 Points look as wretched as Wilson’s 14 Points looked splendid in 1918. But who can be sure what lies ahead? What if the most perilous time for Iran’s horrible regime is not when it is under intense bombardment, but when it makes peace and smells the approach of boatloads of money? What if, at the same time, it turns out that the IRGC’s equally blood-soaked confederate, Vladimir Putin, is in deeper trouble than we realize with his war in Ukraine? And what if the reason oil prices didn’t go even higher than they did in the past four months is that China’s domestic economy is in free fall, as some numbers indicate?

    What if, in short, President Trump’s luck holds—as it has held so often throughout his 80 years of often reckless risk-taking?

    Ed: Well, to quote Charles Barkley, if ifs and buts were beer and nuts, we'd all have a hell of a party. We can only see reality in the moment and judge it on long experience. But Ferguson makes a very good point about how much of the present we can see, and that Trump and his team may have a better sense of reality in the moment, or at least a more comprehensive view. Ferguson's point about the existential risks of peace for the IRGC has been raised by others, including Iranian opposition organizer and NCRI president Maryam Rajavi, who supports the MOU. Also, Ferguson is always worth reading, and his parallel to Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points is brilliant. 

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    Ed: Two years from now, Hillary will claim that Platner did real damage to the Democrats. Isn't that her pattern? She hardly showed any courage on the Biden Regency. As for her dodge about not being a Mainer, did Hillary always refuse to endorse or renounce candidates in states in which she didn't live? Or does that policy apply only violent Nazi-tatted creeps promoted by the DSA?

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    Peter Hasson at the Free Beacon: Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, 37, has a single checking account that holds up to $50,000—and he shares it with his mother, a frequent contributor to his political campaigns who pitched in to cover Talarico’s moving expenses when he was 32, records show.

    Talarico's personal financial disclosure lists a single Wells Fargo checking account with a balance between $15,000 and $50,000. Though Talarico is unmarried, the disclosure indicates that the account is owned jointly. A "filer comment" provides clarity: "The account is jointly held by the filer and the filer's mother." Talarico did not disclose any other checking accounts.

    It's unclear exactly why Talarico—whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment—shares the account with his mother, but she appears to be helping him, not vice versa.

    Tamara Talarico is in her early 60s and appears to be in good health. She marched in a "No Kings" protest in October 2025 and joined Talarico on the campaign trail in subsequent months, including for his appearance on the View in February. Tamara Talarico has donated more than $2,000 to Democrats since 2023, Federal Election Commission records show, including more than $450 to Talarico's Senate campaign. She is married to Talarico's adoptive father, Mark Talarico, who holds a degree in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M and worked for nearly 30 years—until his retirement in 2021—as a senior sales engineer for a Texas-based company that sells advanced laboratory instruments, according to his LinkedIn.

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    Ed: I almost wrote about this today, but it sort of speaks for itself. Until now, I've argued that Talarico and Platner occupy extremes on the Left's conception of masculinity, but they have one thing in common – they're both mooching off their parents. Perhaps I'll dive into this later, but be sure to read it all. 

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    Ed: This is absolutely hilarious. And it's a reminder that while the New York Times still hasn't written a single story about the heavily documented Lowe Report on Britain's Muslim rape gangs, it had room to publish Nick Kristof's absurd hoax about Israeli rape dogs. 

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    Jonathan Turley: Internal emails were uncovered recently that cast a new, negative light on Attorney General Merrick Garland’s record in targeting parents over school board controversies. The communications show that various Justice officials raised alarms over the effort pushed by Democratic allies and the National Association for School Boards. Career officials condemned the Biden Administration proposal by objecting that “If they do this, they might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force.” ...

    The Public Integrity section chief agreed, saying the memo could turn the Justice Department and the FBI into the “threat police” and that it contained “no limiting principle at all.”

    The question is how such an ill-considered, excessive memo could be issued in light of such internal opposition. The answer focuses new attention on the record of Garland, who seemed at times to be a virtual pedestrian in decisions at his own department.

    Ed: The answer IS 'Merrick Garland.' I don't think he was a pedestrian at all. I think he took a very active role in using the DoJ as a weapon against Democrats' political opponents. If not, Garland could have resigned in protest at the warping of the DoJ. He not only chose to stay, he chose not to oppose any of these efforts, including using the FACE Act to punish pro-life activists after Dobbs, and refusing to prosecute people who violated federal law by harassing Supreme Court justices at their residences. Garland turned out to be a despicable character. 

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    Ed: Not just the UK media, either. 

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    Last night's lyric: "Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top.

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