After two consecutive columns full of good news, I’ve got a mix of good and bad today. And as always, I prefer taking the medicine before the honey.
I’ve spoken disparagingly (and frequently) of RINOs and other spineless GOP congress-weasels in the past, but it pains me to see the way some formerly conservative commentators and podcasters have left the reservation, and gravitated toward a combination of leftism, anti-American sentiment, and anti-Semitism.
And yes, a Venn Diagram of those three issues (settle down, Que Mala) would contain a lot of overlap.
I’m thinking of figures ranging from Nick Fuentes – who is about as conservative as Bernie Sanders, and so hasn’t ever really fit in the mainstream right– to Candace Owens (ditto), to Tucker Carlson, whom I used to really like, but who has taken up permanent intellectual residence on Bat Guano Crazy Island. (If somebody gives you A-B choices about who was/is the good guy in the following pairings – Hitler vs. Churchill; Putin vs. Netanyahu; the Iranian Ayatollahs and Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists vs. the Israelis – and you not only hesitate, but pick the wrong one in each case, you should not be taken seriously.)
Saddest of all, for me, has been Megyn Kelly. She is still very good on a lot of issues, but she’s gone past legitimate questions (IMHO) about the Iran war and Israel and into reflexive bias that has driven out her usual common sense and fairness.
She says that when she made even slight criticisms of Israel since Charlie’s murder, many Jewish lobbyists from AIPAC and elsewhere started slamming her as anti-Semitic. That has clearly made her furious, and she now paints the Iran war as 100% unjustified and illegitimate. In recent weeks she has railed about how the wily Israelis manipulated Trump into going to war, how they want to extend the war out of bloodlust, and how they have become the main obstacle to peace because of how they are “carpet bombing” Lebanon.
I believe her about Jewish groups recklessly and aggressively hammering her, despite her previous track record for supporting Israel. But I think that those personal attacks have elicited a similarly personal and increasingly embittered reaction from her, which you can see in the uncharacteristically illogical and thinly supported arguments she’s been making against Israel and the war.
Last week she repeatedly and sarcastically sniped at “our great, close allies the Israelis,” as when she blamed them for tricking Trump into the war. She’s ignoring the widely known truth about Trump, which she has herself often acknowledged: he is a stubborn alpha – for good and ill – who often slaps around his allies, both foreign and domestic. (For example, he famously snapped that both the Israelis and the Iranians “don’t know what the f**k they’re doing” when they continued to exchange missile strikes after the 12-day war last year.) So when she claims that the Israelis manipulated Trump into war, she’s besmirching both the “wily Jews” and Trump.
She also blamed Israel for “carpet bombing” Lebanon, when they’ve done nothing of the sort. As is their consistent modus operandi, they’ve taken great pains to make targeted strikes on terrorist fighters and infrastructure, while minimizing civilian deaths, unlike their jihadist enemies. Megyn never mentions that in the six weeks of the Iran war, Hezbollah has fired between 3000-5000 rockets, missiles and drones into Israel, killing around a dozen soldiers and a handful of civilians, along with many more wounded and many buildings damaged.
So as per usual, Hezbollah (and their sponsor Iran) have continually attacked Israel, and Israel has continued to retaliate, as every nation has a right to do in that situation. But in Megyn’s telling, Israel continues to hammer Hezbollah for no good reason, other than Netanyahu’s desire to kill, and the Jews’ desire to thwart Trump’s attempt to end the war.
She even signed on to the ridiculous Iranian lie that the Trump administration had agreed with Iran’s demand that Israel stop any hostilities with Hezbollah in Lebanon as one of their 10 pre-conditions for peace talks. As a former lawyer and an experienced observer of politics, Megyn knows that countries normally exchange a list of their goals as a starting point for negotiations. In this case, Trump gave a 15-point wishlist (Iran gives up a nuclear weapons program, stops interfering with oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz, etc.), and the Iranians gave their 10-point wishlist, which was a fantasy, considering how badly they’ve been stomped since the war started.
They want to retain the right to pursue nukes, for example, as well as the right to control and tax ship traffic through the Straits, and to get reparations from the US for attacking Iran (after 47 years of Iranian attacks on us and our allies!) And, of course, they want Israel to be forced to stop striking Hezbollah in Lebanon. Which, as I noted above, really means that Israel must stand by and allow continuing Hezbollah attacks to kill and wound their citizens without responding.
There is no logical reason we should expect Israel to agree to that. If we were in their position – if, say, an ally of ours wanted to negotiate a treaty with Mexico, while Mexico was simultaneously firing missiles into our country – we wouldn’t tolerate another nation telling us we couldn’t retaliate against Mexico.
Besides, Lebanon is nowhere near the theatre of war in Iran; it is 1300 miles away! If Iran had not armed Hezbollah and doesn’t want them to continue attacking Israel, they have no reason to object when Israel gives Hezbollah some of their own medicine. And if Iran HAS armed Hezbollah and DOES want them to continue attacking Israel – which is obviously the case – we should rightly tell them to stick their demands up their impotent, comatose ayatollah’s cardboard backside!
The whole thing is ridiculous, and the Trump administration (from JD on down) has denied agreeing to such unrealistic Iranians demands. But on Wednesday, Megyn openly said that we’re lying about that, and the Iranian butchers are telling the truth!
I don’t have any faith in Candace or Tucker, but I’m hoping that Megyn will be able to get over her antipathy against Netanyahu and Israel, and come back to us from the dark side.
Having said all that, I’d like to celebrate a sweet serving of schadenfreude that Tim Miller brought down on his own head last week.
Miller is a former GOP political operative and current host of the TDS-suffused podcast The Bulwark. In the past, Miller worked on the campaigns of John McCain, Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and Jeb! Bush.
Because of course he did.
I recently had the pleasure of re-watching a video compilation of the Bulwark’s coverage of election night in 2024, and I recommend it as a pick-me-up if you’ve been watching too much depressing nonsense from Tucker or Megyn. Miller and his companions started the evening smug, gloating over Trump’s Orange Hitlerness and Que Mala’s inevitable victory. And then, over 8 hours they descended through the five stages of grief, except that instead of “acceptance,” they finally landed on “insulting American voters for daring to prefer Trump to the Cackler.”
Good times!
Anyway, last week Miller got offended by Melania’s press conference. And because he is a small man, he decided to insult her intelligence, rather than addressing the substance of her speech.
Because of course he did.
Miller tweeted, “Why can’t the first lady speak english? It’s been 10 years since her husband ran for president consider getting a tutor.”
Let me count the ways in which this small-minded tweet is a hilarious self-own:
1. Melania can speak English, as is obvious from her many interviews and speeches, and the press conference that Miller is referring to. She speaks accented but clearly understandable English; you don’t need subtitles when listening to her. And for the record, her accent is freaking adorable! (Her Slovenian accent – “give,” “it,” and “him” become “geev,” “eet” and “heem,” and her “w”s have a Germanic “v” pronunciation – makes her sound a little like a somehow sexy Lady Dracula.)
2. Miller is falsely claiming that she can’t speak English to imply that she is stupid. But Melania speaks at least two languages (Slovenian and English), and is reportedly conversational in three more (French, German and Italian). Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, Miller only speaks English. Which, if his implication that speaking more languages makes one smarter is true, that would make Melania at least twice as smart as Miller, and possibly five times as smart. Which still sounds a little low to me.
3. But even though English is Miller’s one and only language, and even though he writes in that language for a living, he doesn’t appear to be very good at it. Because in a two-sentence tweet, he makes five grammar errors! In this context, “first lady” and “english” are both proper nouns, and should be capitalized. And his second sentence is actually a run-on. There should be a period after “president,” and the imperative last sentence should start with a capital letter.
4. In addition, Miller’s own leftist catechism teaches that only a xenophobic bigot would criticize any immigrant for failing to learn English, let alone for speaking it with a slight accent. So not only is Miller a condescending xenophobe, he’s also a colossal hypocrite. Because you know that if you dared to criticize a gang-banging human smuggler who has been here illegally for 20 years and yet is still illiterate in English, Timmy would shake his tiny fist in outrage.
When Miller’s clueless, self-beclowning tweet got ratioed by many people pointing out his errors, he stupidly returned to Twitter and compounded his mistake with yet another flawed effort: “Strong move to refocus on Epstein in order to distract from the Straight of Hormuz disaster.”
Never mind the fact that Miller’s claim doesn’t make sense. (If Trump’s non-existent illicit tie to Epstein has been falsely used by Miller’s leftist co-religionists to hurt Trump, he would never try to draw attention to it as a distraction from the non-disastrous Hormuz “disaster.”) Because once again, this time in a one-sentence tweet (!), Miller makes a howler of an error.
Even though Miller only speaks English, and even though the words “straights” and “straits” are both English words, he manages to mix them up.
Now I don’t know what’s in Tim Miller’s head. (Other than tumbleweeds and the sound of a lonely, whistling wind, probably.) But he is definitely gay. (Which likely contributes to his immunity to Melania’s supermodel looks and alluring Slovenian accent.)
So you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to guess why a dishonest, small-minded dullard like Tim Miller might subconsciously associate “straights” with “disaster.”
In the words of FLOTUS hottus, “Geev me a break, Meester Meeler. You sound like an eediot.”
Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!
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Martin Simpson 