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October 2025

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump inherited a weaponized justice system The President’s vigorous effort to call to account those who waged lawfare against him is a necessary purgative Roger Kimball

By on October 18th, 2025

https://thespectator.com/topic/trump-inherited-weaponized-justice-system/

Has Donald Trump “weaponized” the justice system to go after his political enemies? The answer is no.

“What about former FBI director James Comey?” you ask. “What about New York Attorney General Letitia James?” Both went after Trump hammer and tongs. Now both have been indicted by the Trump Justice Department. Are those not textbook cases of “weaponization,” of “retribution,” of using the power of the system to punish people who have punished you?

Hold on. I write this in mid-October. By the time you read it, I suspect that the list of indictments will be much longer. Candidates for inclusion on this Ko-Ko-like “little list” include John Bolton, national security advisor during Trump’s first term; Jack Smith, the special counsel who managed to rack up 37 indictments against Trump in two criminal cases; and sundry other former intelligence officers and DoJ officials. The dragnet will be large; it will be relentless.

So haven’t I just admitted that Trump weaponized the justice system?

No. Trump didn’t weaponize the justice system. He inherited a weaponized justice system.

More on that shortly. First, here’s another little list. Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Jeffrey Clark and George Papadopoulos.

That’s a very incomplete roster of Trump aides and supporters who were indicted, prosecuted, disbarred and/or jailed. The list does not include the more than 1,200 people convicted over the January 6 protest at the Capitol. Nor does it capture a contrast that Navarro describes in a post on X: “I was dragged through Reagan Airport in leg irons, mug shot, handcuffs, jail cell, the full circus. Meanwhile, Comey faces felonies up to 10 years for the worst political conspiracy in modern history, and he slips quietly through a side door.”

Responding to demands that Comey be subjected to the humiliation of a “perp walk,” Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel said there would be “no drama.” But the FBI that Trump inherited specialized in such drama. Remember their guns-drawn, dawn raid to arrest his confidant Roger Stone? The tipped-off media were there in force to lap up and regurgitate the entertainment.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe Has Apparently Learned Nothing by Majid Rafizadeh

By on October 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21995/iran-europe-learned-nothing

Once again, Europe seems to have slipped into a dangerous fantasy: that engaging in polite diplomatic parleys with promises of sugar plums will tame Iran’s rapacious ambitions.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (E3), acting as the European Troika, declared their intention to revive the long-stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran.

At the core of the E3’s plan lies the deeply flawed assumption that Iran can be wooed into restraint through incremental “incentives.” These generally consist of easing financial pressure, lifting trade restrictions, or delaying multilateral sanctions in exchange for ephemeral commitments.

Sadly, Europe appears to be pursuing the worst lessons of appeasement: the dangerous illusion is that you can temper a ravenous aggressor by conciliation, weakness and generosity. The aggressor immediately sees that the best route for him is to demand more. The cycle becomes self-reinforcing.

By treating the Iranian regime as a legitimate negotiating partner — and by discounting the moral and strategic gulf that separates it from liberal democracies — Europe is bankrolling the terrorism industry.

President Donald J. Trump’s current posture — doubling down on sanctions, refusing immediate diplomacy until leverage is secured — should jolt Europe out of its passivity.

The European Troika’s charade must stop. Anything less just prolongs the threat.

Once again, Europe seems to have slipped into a dangerous fantasy: that engaging in polite diplomatic parleys with promises of sugar plums will tame Iran’s rapacious ambitions.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (E3), acting as the European Troika, declared their intention to revive the long-stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran. In a joint statement, they pledged to “reopen a path toward a comprehensive, lasting, and verifiable agreement.”

This is the same play we have seen before: bold headlines, carefully phrased commitments, and the faint hope that seduction can substitute for strength. Unfortunately, these gestures always carry a hidden cost. Once the diplomatic machinery is set in motion, we soon hear about sanctions relief, softening of UN mandates, and felicitous loopholes to reintegrate the Iranian regime into global markets. What begins as promise too often ends as reward for terrible behavior and a prelude to even more.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s critics pine for old-school diplomacy. But Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff triumphed where Joe Biden’s national security professionals failed. By Niall Ferguson

By on October 18th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-how-real-estateism-got-the-deal-done-in-gaza?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

t has been a tough week for the professional Donald Trump haters. Only the most unhinged of them could not share in the joy of the families of the surviving Israeli hostages as they were reunited on Monday. But there must always be liberal ghosts at any feast of which Trump is the host.

“Everyone should be glad that the hostages have been freed” and hope “that this peace process succeeds,” acknowledged the editor of The New Republic, Michael Tomasky. But? Well, “he’s still the Donald Trump who is destroying democracy and ruining lives here in America.”

“We may grimace in doing so,” wrote Kenneth Roth in The Guardian, “but Donald Trump deserves credit for finally ending the U.S. government’s funding and arming of the genocide, and arm-twisting Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting his 20-point plan for Gaza.”

This was more than Guardian columnist Owen Jones was prepared to concede. His commentary yesterday carefully avoided giving Trump any credit for the ceasefire and the return of the hostages, ranting instead that “Israel’s Western-facilitated genocide. . . . will boomerang back to the West from the killing fields of Gaza.”

At least Tomasky was prepared to entertain “the possibility that the Trump-Netanyahu worldview got it right this time.” The New Statesman went further. Freddie Hayward’s account of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal explicitly acknowledged the triumph of “the dealmakers.” But it bemoaned the new world order that this triumph signifies: “a world in which Trump rules like an emperor. . . . a world where leaders court the president’s favor to receive his patronage and avoid his wrath. Institutions such as the United Nations are ignored. Diplomacy is personal. Job titles matter less than getting things done. Raw power dominates international law. And protecting capital takes precedence over protecting human rights.”

The key roles played by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—respectively, Trump’s friend and son-in-law—were especially painful for Hayward to acknowledge. But he could not deny it: “Trump succeeded in ending the war in Gaza, where Biden and his expert class failed.”

It is excruciating for anyone on the left to admit any of this. For all these authors are in the grip of a pathetic nostalgia for a vanished age in which the United Nations mattered; job titles mattered; international law mattered; and human rights transcended mere economics. They appear not to have processed that “Biden and his expert class failed” precisely because all those things ceased to work many years ago.

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