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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

Posted 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.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe Has Apparently Learned Nothing by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted 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.

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

Posted 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.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Flotilla Falsehoods, or Lie, But Know When to Stop “They forced her to kiss the Israeli flag.” by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on October 17th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/flotilla-falsehoods-or-lie-but-know-when-to-stop/

In the play “Woe From Wit” (Gore ot uma) by the Russian playwright Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov (yes, he has the same name and patronymic as Pushkin) the character Repetilov says to the play’s protagonist Chatsky “Vri, da znaj zhe meru,” which means “Lie, but know when to stop.” That line came immediately to mind when I read the pack of lies the flotilla flotsam and jetsam have been spreading in the media about how the Israeli sailors mistreated the Gaza Sumud Flotilla’s participants when they boarded their 47 boats and then put the pro-Hamas demonstrators on dry land, to be briskly processed and deported. More on those lies can be found here: “‘They dragged little Greta by her hair,’ Turkish flotilla activist claims – report,” Jerusalem Post, October 5, 2025:

Environmental and social activist Greta Thunberg accused Israel of subjecting her to harsh treatment following Israeli forces’s interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, according to a report by The Guardian.

An official who visited Thunberg in prison said she claimed that she is being held in a cell infested with bedbugs, with little food and water, the Swedish foreign ministry said in an email.

The email, which was disclosed by The Guardian, read, “The embassy has been able to meet with Greta. She informed of dehydration. She has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She spoke of harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.”…

The Swedish author of this email simply accepts Thunberg’s charges as true, when he ought to have said “Thunberg claimed….Thunberg claimed,” and not “she informed” and “she stated,”

Really, how likely is it the Israelis would have mistreated Greta Thunberg or any of the other flotilla participants? The international media were right there to record the moments when the boats, one after the other, were boarded. They filmed the proceedings; I saw myself a video on Italian television showing a sailor doing nothing more than placing a blanket on Great’s shoulders to keep her warm. The Israelis also could be seen distributing food and water. As to the bedbugs that Greta says “she suspects” caused her rashes, this is calumny. No evidence of bedbugs were presented by her or anyone else, and no other flotilla participants complained of them. It’s a story made up out of whole cloth for the media.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

This Is Not the Time to Give Tomahawks to Ukraine As Trump’s diplomacy opens new talks with Putin, Ukraine’s push for U.S. Tomahawk missiles tests the line between deterrence and dangerous escalation. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on October 17th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/17/this-is-not-the-time-to-give-tomahawks-to-ukraine/

In response to Russian President Putin’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire in the Ukraine War and his stubborn defiance of President Trump’s peace efforts, Ukraine wants the U.S. to give it Tomahawk cruise missiles. Ukraine’s rationale is that enabling it to go on the offensive against Russia with these advanced, long-range missiles might force Putin to agree to a ceasefire.

Providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine might be dangerously escalatory. Still, this proposal, coupled with the success of President Trump’s diplomacy to end the Israel-Hamas War, may have motivated Putin to agree yesterday to new rounds of high-level diplomacy with the U.S.

Ukrainian President Zelensky likely will still request Tomahawks during his meeting with President Trump at the White House on Friday, October 18. Trump indicated on Wednesday that he was open to this idea when he told reporters, “I might say, ‘Look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send Tomahawks.’”

Trump is unlikely to agree to this when he meets with Zelensky today, as he had a positive phone call yesterday with Putin, during which the two presidents agreed to new high-level talks and a summit in Budapest.

The Tomahawk is a low-flying, difficult-to-intercept cruise missile with a range of about 1,500 miles. This would put Moscow (about 450 miles from Ukraine) and areas of Russia west of the Ural Mountains in range of Ukraine. This far exceeds the ranges of advanced U.S., French, and UK missiles provided to Ukraine, none of which exceed 350 miles. Ukraine also agreed to range limits for these missiles.

Although Ukraine has produced some long-range drones and cruise missiles with ranges of about 620 to 1,900 miles, the Tomahawk’s reliability, precision guidance, and capability to carry larger warheads would make it a much more effective and lethal missile in the Ukrainian military’s arsenal.

If the U.S. provided Tomahawks to Ukraine (probably by selling them to NATO), there likely would be an end-use agreement limiting their use to military targets and barring attacks against very sensitive targets like the Kremlin, which could cause massive Russian retaliation against Ukraine and NATO states. Moreover, Ukraine would be dependent on U.S. training and targeting intelligence to use these missiles, which would give the Trump administration control over how they could be used.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Urgently Needed for Europe: Pro-Growth Business Climate A Conversation with Drieu Godefridi by Grégoire Canlorbe

Posted By on October 17th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21984/europe-business-climate

[The Belgian N-VA Party] program systematically addresses the major ills of Belgian political life, starting with the abysmal debt that threatens our financial balance.

Next comes the issue of creeping Islamization, fueled by powerful Islamist networks, particularly in Brussels, and to a lesser extent in Antwerp.

Belgium is virtually bankrupt; its debt and budget deficit are out of control. This is mission No. 1 for the N-VA: to get public finances back on track. The success of this mission determines everything else.

Our cities, like the rest of Western Europe, are buckling under the yoke of all sorts of regulations, the source of which is the European Union. There is no longer a real business climate, and European law acts as an instrument of economic castration. Take energy: its cost is three to five times higher in Europe than in the United States — no industry can sustainably withstand such a differential.

For [Belgium’s “left wing” political parties], any criticism of Islam — which, please recall, is not a race, but a political doctrine — automatically falls into the categories of Islamophobia and racism. Islam, as a political ideology, refers to the use of the principles, values or texts of Islam… to structure a system of governance, laws and public policies.

[A] perverse form of racism, allied with a new anti-Semitism, unfortunately, [is] re-emerging on the left with a worrying severity. When a far-left “comedian”, Herman Brusselmans, writes that he wants to slit the throats of every Jew he meets in the street, what is funny? Is that humor or a call to murder?

Today the main problem of Europe appears to be the European Union, apart from the Common Market, a practical necessity. European law, sadly, has become an instrument that prevents economic development.

Paris and Brussels are dirty, saturated with aggression, and everywhere you go you encounter asylum seekers who have been denied asylum and have no right to reside in the country but remain there nonetheless because they are supposedly “undeportable”. The police try to do their job but are constantly sabotaged by left- and far-left judges who, under various pretexts, release the worst thugs, criminals and rapists.

Our challenge, of truly civilizational scope, is to restore hope — the possibility for every European family to build a better future for their children — one commensurate with Europe’s great, historical contribution to civilization.

Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. The author of The Green Reich (2020), he is a fellow traveler of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), a conservative, nationalist political party.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The book-burners have taken over the publishing house Sensitivity readers and ultra-woke staff are censoring works that deviate from ‘progressive’ dogma.Adam Szetela

Posted By on October 16th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/16/the-book-burners-have-taken-over-the-publishing-house/

In the mid-2010s, people began to notice something strange happening on college campuses. In the past, wealthy donors tried to censor professors and students. But then the demands started coming from the students themselves. More interestingly, the demands were being expressed in the language of public safety. It was ‘dangerous’ for Bret Weinstein, a professor who criticised the tactics of an anti-racist protest, to teach at Evergreen State College. It was ‘harmful’ for Erika Christakis, a professor who questioned the wisdom of banning certain types of Halloween costumes, to retain her position at Yale University. It was ‘violence’ for Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, to give a talk at Middlebury College. The Great Awokening, as it would later come to be called, had transformed America’s colleges.

Something similar has been happening inside America’s publishers. One vice-president at a Big Five publisher, who did not want to be identified in this piece, told me that there have been ‘more changes in the past five years than the previous 20 to 25’. The changes have been fuelled by the rise of Bookstagram, BookTok and Twitterature (a portmanteau of Twitter and literature) – and, of course, by the Great Awokening. Today, anyone with an internet connection can accuse a book of racism, sexism or transphobia. Across the board, American publishers have reshaped their editing policies in response to social-media outrage.

Sensitivity readers, individuals who are hired to eradicate potentially offensive material from books, were largely unknown until 2016, the same year young adult (YA) author Justina Ireland built a database of sensitivity readers. Uncoincidentally, this was the same year Donald Trump was elected to the Oval Office. In less than a decade, sensitivity readers have become a routine part of the editing process. Whether it’s picture books or adult novels, and even the pages of Science magazine, the most extreme people on the ‘progressive’ left now have an important, and frankly unprecedented, role inside American publishers. Indeed, Ireland and other sensitivity readers’ attacks actually fuel the demand for their services.

‘We’re now using sensitivity readers a great deal’, one president at a Big Five publisher explained to me:

‘The sensitivity readers that we’re employing are at the very, very, very farthest edges of the cultural police. They are over vigilant to a large degree. It’s great to have the most extreme possible reaction to a book, which catches even the most apparently neutral points and casts a severe light on them.’

As a vice-president at a different major publisher put it to me:

‘We are very interested in trying to suss out what books might cause a problem on social media, which can come back in our faces in terms of sales. Nobody wants to publish a book that social media is going to cancel. It’s unpleasant, it can be hurtful, it’s upsetting and it’s not good for business.’

While publishers are focussed on their bottom line, many literary agents are more focussed on protecting their authors from edits. If you can imagine a National Book Award winner edited against their will by a 22-year-old sensitivity reader, who just graduated from a gender-studies programme at Yale, then you can imagine the frustration of the agents I talked to, many of whom have been selling books to the Big Five for decades.

ANTI-SEMITISM, MEDIA Comments turned off

About the ‘Jews’ The protocols of DEI strangely cast Islam as a shared victim. by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 16th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/about-the-jews/

Van Jones, the CNN host and commentator, recently complained that neither the global left nor the mainstream media are covering the horrific violence against Nigerian civilians by Islamic terrorists.

True, they are not reporting the slaughter.

Truer still, they should be.

However, Van Jones went completely off the rails when he blamed “the Jews.”

Or as he put it, “No Jews, no news”–a stereotyped statement as antisemitic as it is untrue.

In truth, lots of mass violence worldwide is ignored.

Unlike President Donald Trump, neither the left nor the mainstream media cared much for the recent mass ethnic cleansing of Armenian Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh — more than 120,000 — by Azerbaijani Muslims.

Nor did they report much on the dangerous May 2025 “mini” war between nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India, prompted by a mass killing by Pakistani terrorists.

They mostly ignored mass evacuations, terrorist acts, and ethnic cleansings had nothing to do with Jones’s absurd idea of “no Jews, no news.”

Nor were they neglected because of the color of the dead.

The West snored all through the 1990s when Russia obliterated Chechnya and left Grozny completely flattened.

Why then so much more attention to the Middle East conflicts, and for that matter, the Ukraine War?

The Middle East is the historic and volatile nexus of three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How Biden and Obama Failed in the Middle East Obama and Biden appeased America’s enemies and alienated its allies—while Trump deterred Iran, united Israel’s neighbors, and brought the Middle East closer to peace. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 16th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/16/how-biden-and-obama-failed-in-the-middle-east/

The short answer to why both the Biden and Obama administrations failed to achieve peace in the Middle East is that they took actions opposite to Trump’s current efforts, which have led to a ceasefire.

First, consider Iran.

Iran was flush with cash, on a trajectory toward a nuclear weapon, and arming Israel’s “ring of fire” enemies: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The radical Islamic world of the Middle East was convinced that Israel would be doomed eventually.

Yet both Democratic administrations let Iran profit from oil sales.

They talked of delaying, but not ending, Iran’s nuclear program. And they feared that Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis were indomitable terrorist threats.

Thus, the disruptors of peace were appeased rather than deterred.

Two, both Obama and Biden pressured Israel in general and Netanyahu in particular to make constant concessions.

But neither offered any plan for how Israel was to survive when Iran sought its destruction, and Tehran’s terrorist triad aimed to bombard it with missiles, rockets, and drones.

Worse, once the larger Middle East saw Democratic presidents appeasing Iran and its terrorist appendages, they concluded it was unsafe to take risks by allying with a delusional United States.

Three, both Obama and Biden despised and personally insulted Benjamin Netanyahu, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the Saudi royal family.

Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah state”—at least until he needed it to pump more oil to lower gas prices before the 2022 midterms.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Qatar and Turkey Want to Rebuild Hamas, Not Reconstruct Gaza by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on October 16th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21992/qatar-turkey-rebuild-hamas

Inviting Qatar and Turkey to play a role in the Gaza Strip means again bringing Iran in through the back door. Both countries have strong relations and shared interests with Iran.

In the time-honored tradition of Arab politeness, these countries may well be telling Trump what he would like to hear — secure in the knowledge that in three years, he will be off their backs, unable to pressure them anymore. Meanwhile, they will have positioned themselves comfortably in Gaza, learned more about Israeli technology, and be free to do as they like.

“Qatar and certainly Turkey must not have a foothold in Gaza again. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Jordan hate Hamas and are more concerned about the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Qatar is the one that funded Hamas in the years leading up to October 7…” — Unnamed senior Israel Defense Forces officer, YNET, October 12, 2025.

It is laughable — and dangerous — to assume that under their current rulers, Qatar and Turkey, as well as Iran, would ever play a positive and constructive role in ensuring peace and stability in the Middle East. These three regimes have always been on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood organization and several Islamist terror groups, including Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah.

Qatar and Turkey are not interested in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Instead, they are interested, with the backing of Iran, in rebuilding Hamas’s military and civilian capabilities and ensuring that the terror group, perhaps in some rebranded form, remains in power.

If Qatar and Turkey are permitted to play a major role in the governance and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip after the Israel-Hamas war, it would mean a return to the pre-October 7, 2023 era, which saw the Iran-backed terror group fully controlling the coastal territory. In addition to Iran, Qatar and Turkey have long been sponsoring and funding Hamas and providing the terror group’s leaders with shelter.

Inviting Qatar and Turkey to play a role in the Gaza Strip means again bringing Iran in through the back door. Both countries have strong relations and shared interests with Iran, which, according to reports, worked with Hamas to plan its October 7 invasion of Israel. Iran also reportedly gave the green light for the terror group to launch the assault during a meeting in Lebanon on October 2.