Tuesday's Final Word

hotair.com

Ceasing fire on the tabs ...

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Ed: Trump just eliminated the nuclear threat from Iran. Democrats are responding by ... attempting to impeach him for it. Much Serious! Very Focus!

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And how have Trump’s living predecessors and his 2024 rival reacted to Operation Midnight Hammer?

Crickets.

Not one has issued a statement, at this writing, on the most significant foreign-policy action in a generation. Why? Too busy at Huma’s wedding?

Ed: This includes the only other living Republican president, George W. Bush. However, his brother Jeb -- who Trump reamed out in the 2015 primary debates -- offered a gracious congratulations to Trump and support for his actions, which prompted an equally gracious response ...

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Ed: This is one poll, but ... a GOP +8 would be a disaster next year at the midterms. FWIW, though, the RCP aggregate average on the generic ballot is D+2.4 ... which still is not very promising for Democrats. 

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So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.

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I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.

If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered.

Ed: As Jeffrey Blehar goes on to argue, this shows that elections matter. A lot. 

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Ed: Trump reposted this on Truth Social without comment. Res ipsa loquitur. 

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Turnout for the mayoral primary in Chicago was abysmally low — just 36% of registered voters cast a ballot in the 2023 primary. We blame that, in part, on the city’s decision to hold these primary elections during the harshest weather we face all year, in the heart of February, though vote by mail exists as a remedy for folks who don’t wish to brave the cold on their way to the polls.

Low turnout makes it easier for radicals to capture public office. And that’s a mistake we hope New Yorkers don’t make. If New Yorkers are frustrated with Mayor Eric Adams, they should be careful not to trade him for someone who might preside over a city that is less competitive and less financially secure.

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Trust us — we’ve living that reality.

Ed: Trust us, the rest of us know that, too. In fact, we tried to warn Chicago voters about Lori Lightfoot too, but y'all decided that she wasn't incompetently Marxist enough and elected Brandon Johnson to succeed her. I appreciate your warning to New Yorkers, but I don't recall the ChiTrib's editors speaking out about either Lightfoot or Johnson to this extent when it mattered to its own city. Speaking of incompetent Marxists in Chi-Town ... 

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Ed: Maybe the ChiTrib can offer some wisdom to New York City about allowing teachers unions to run cities, too. Just a thought. 

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CNN walked back a key claim in its Sunday coverage of President Donald Trump’s strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, admitting that Trump did, in fact, notify Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in advance. Initially, CNN’s Sarah Ferris and Morgan Rimmer wrongly reported, “Trump briefed top Republicans before Iran strikes, but not Democrats.” Now the same article states that Trump did not brief some Democrats — only after 10 hours of the original headline imprinting in the American psyche. 

“Correction: This story has been updated to make clear Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was called before the strike, not after as initially reported,” an italicized note at the beginning of the CNN story reads. 

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The correction dramatically undermines the media’s preferred narrative that Trump acted unilaterally and recklessly, ignoring congressional consultation. In reality, the president followed standard protocol, reportedly looping in Schumer. But CNN only updated its story after the false claim had already gone viral, gaining traction across social media and among cable pundits eager to paint Trump as a threat to global stability.

Ed: The saying "a lie flies halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on" is supposed to be a cautionary axiom. It's CNN's business model these days.  

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["]And they were happy to speak to me, so — so those two sort of jarring realities of the chant and yet, the — the friendliness have existed together.”

Ed: The jarring point here is that Burnett couldn't see reality when it appeared in front of her eyes. The radicals might have been hospitable, but they would have no problem causing your death to fulfill their radical genocidal goals. 

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The Washington Post just quietly pulled the plug on its police shooting database, “Fatal Force.” Don’t expect an apology or a reckoning. Don’t even expect an explanation. Because to acknowledge the full impact of that project would be to admit this: that for nearly a decade, the nation’s premier legacy newsroom helped manufacture and perpetuate a toxic narrative – that police officers are hunting black men in the streets with impunity.

Let’s be clear, the “Fatal Force” database didn’t just compile data; it crafted a storyline. It presented fatal police shootings in isolation, stripped of context and devoid of nuance. No breakdown of the circumstances. No mention of weapons. No differentiation between justified use of force and actual misconduct. Just names, faces and the unspoken suggestion that racism was always the root cause.

This is what passes for journalism in our elite institutions: insinuation over evidence, narrative over nuance.

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Ed: It's more basic than that. What passes for journalism in our elite institutions is narrative control for the elites, propaganda amplification to benight the masses rather than enlighten and inform them, and a weapon to use against one's political and cultural enemies. 

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Ed: What. The. Actual. Hell. When I was a baby, my family lived in Cudahy; my cousins lived there for a few years later. Back then, it was a working-class area for up-and-coming families. Now its political leadership has sold it out to gangbangers and want them to obstruct law enforcement. California is in a doom loop. 

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