Archive for 2026

JOSH SHAPIRO: Team Kamala Asked If I Was an Israeli Double Agent.

“Had I been a double agent for Israel?” wrote Mr. Shapiro, describing his incredulous response to a last-minute question from the vetting team. He responded that the question was offensive, he wrote, and was told, “Well, we have to ask.”

“Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?” the questioner, Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, continued, according to Mr. Shapiro, who recounted, “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?”

Mr. Shapiro wrote that he understood that Ms. Remus was “just doing her job.” But the fact that he was asked such questions, he wrote, “said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”

It certainly says something about Dana Remus. It also speaks volumes about former Attorney General Eric Holder, who ran the search committee to vet potential running mates for Kamala Harris. And that in turn speaks volumes about Holder’s former boss Barack Obama, who kept trying to cut deals with Iran and repeatedly involved Rob Malley in those efforts, who had to quit Obama’s initial campaign when his contacts with Hamas got exposed in early 2008.

It also has something to say about the progressives that control the Democrat Party of today. This query relies on an old and bigoted trope about Jews being inherently disloyal to their own countries, a claim that long predates the establishment of the state of Israel. In Germany, political leaders blamed Jews for the collapse in World War I that led to their defeat, using the same ugly claim, which got amplified and then industrialized by the Nazis. No one asks that question about being an Israeli double-agent out of the blue without having bought into that anti-Semitic mindset.

Jim Geraghty adds:

Occam’s razor would suggest that either A) the Harris campaign foresaw insurmountable obstacles from having a Jewish, pro-Israel running mate at a time when the Democratic grassroots were growing vehemently anti-Israel, and needed an excuse to conclude Shapiro had flunked the vetting process or B) the Harris campaign was full of paranoid antisemites who believed that every American Jew they encountered was secretly working for the Mossad.

Shapiro writes, “The fact that she asked, or was told to ask that question by someone else, said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”

Our Audrey Fahlberg asked the very good question of how Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, up to his eyeballs in fraud scandals involving state spending, managed to come through the Harris campaign’s vetting with no red flags. The paranoia about Shapiro’s alleged dual loyalties are even more absurd in light of Walz’s 30 visits to China, one funded by the Chinese government, status as a visiting fellow at the Macao Polytechnic University, a Chinese state-run institution of higher education, and so on. And one of the few decisions of the Harris campaign that we can be 100 percent certain was made by the candidate was the selection of Walz over Shapiro. (Selecting Shapiro wouldn’t have won the race for Harris, but she might have at least kept Pennsylvania in the Democratic column.)

Geraghty’s post is aptly titled, “Kamala Harris’s Presidential Campaign Was Run by a Bunch of Lunatics.”

Agreed. Why is the Democratic Party such a cesspit of antisemitism?

Exit question:

Of course, perhaps Walz was similarly vetted, with the goal of taking the “Quality Learing Center” nationwide:

 

BIG MONEY: Elon Musk is looking for a $134 billion payout from OpenAI and Microsoft. “Musk claimed in the filing that he’s entitled to a portion of OpenAI’s recent valuation at $500 billion, after contributing $38 million in ‘seed funding’ during the AI company’s startup years. Along with providing ‘roughly 60 percent of the nonprofit’s seed funding,’ Musk offered recruiting of key employees, introductions with business contacts and startup advice, according to the filing. The monetary estimate comes from C. Paul Wazzan, a financial economist who’s serving as Musk’s expert in the case. According to Wazzan’s calculations, OpenAI earned between $65.5 billion and $109.43 billion in wrongful gains, while Microsoft saw between $13.3 billion and $25.06 billion.”

2026 PREVIEW: Trump endorses possible primary challenger to Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana. “Cassidy, who’s seeking a third term in the Senate, was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021. A medical doctor, Cassidy has also been at odds with the administration in recent months over HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership.”

COME SEE THE RACISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Mamdani’s equity czar faces backlash over deleted anti-white X posts: ‘Tax them to the white meat!’

According to the New York Post, Atta-Mensah, who Mamdani praised as his most trusted pick to advance racial equity in City Hall, shared and amplified a series of inflammatory political statements, and her account was deleted within about a week of her appointment on Thursday.

Among the posts flagged by the New York Young Republicans Club critics were multiple comments disparaging liberal white women. In one exchange, Atta-Mensah replied approvingly to a tweet claiming, “we don’t talk about white liberal racism enough,” writing: “Facts! It would need to be a series of loooooonnnnnnnggggg conversations.”

She also reposted part of a thread asking, “Who’s not police but FEELS like police to you?” A reply she boosted called out “white women at nonprofit organizations.” In another post, she reacted enthusiastically to a tweet comparing some white women in nonprofit spaces to Amy Cooper, the woman who became known as “Central Park Karen” after calling police on a Black birdwatcher in 2020, responding: “THIS IS A WHOLE WORD!!!!”

Atta-Mensah also frequently used the term “comrade,” and amplified a statement declaring there is “NO moderate way to black liberation.”

New York is about to learn just how immoderate, good and hard.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Climate Loons — the Wrongest Wrong People in the History of Wrong. “That’s the most irritating thing about the climate change panic-mongers: they’ve never gotten anything right. A couple of years ago, someone referred to my beliefs on climate change as being different because it’s a ‘generational thing,’ which is true. I’m from the generation that was told we were all going to freeze to death. Then we were told that overpopulation was going to make us all starve to death. Then it was the sun that was going to kill us. We’ve been told that the polar ice caps are going to melt away in five years for almost two decades now.”

2017 FLASHBACK: Trump and the crisis of the meritocracy. “As I’ve pondered this, I’ve gone back to Tyler Cowen’s statement: ‘Occasionally the real force behind a political ideology is the subconsciously held desire that a certain group of people should not be allowed to rise in relative status.’ I think that a lot of the elite hatred for Trump, and for his supporters, stems from just such a sentiment.”

Plus this; “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.”

IT’S NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT GRIFT: House, feds probe to unravel mystery of ‘Squad’ Rep. Ilhan Omar’s skyrocketing wealth: ‘It’s not possible.’

Oversight panel Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said staff lawyers are exploring the extraordinary step of subpoenaing Omar’s spouse over his allegedly shady business practices.

“We’re going to get answers, whether it’s through the Ethics Committee or the Oversight Committee, one of the two,” he told The Post.

Republicans want to know how Somali-born Omar (D-Minn.) and her politically-connected husband Tim Mynett went from nearly broke to being worth up to $30 million in just a year, according to her 2024 disclosure forms.

“There are a lot of questions as to how her husband accumulated so much wealth over the past two years,” Comer said. “It’s not possible. It’s not. I’m a money guy. It’s not possible.”

Separately, federal law enforcement is also probing.

There’s no mystery here — just details that haven’t been revealed.

TO DEMOCRATS THAT’S NOT A BUG, IT’S A FEATURE:

THIS IS JUST SPECTACULARLY BAD MANAGEMENT IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY, AND I PRESUME THE DAMAGE IS ENTIRELY ON PURPOSE: And Suddenly, About 100 Minneapolis Cops Disappeared. “Over the past several days, it appears that Minneapolis police officers have quietly kind of quit in another way.”

STUPID PEOPLE DOING STUPID THINGS:

Also vicious people doing vicious things.

YES:

Related: The Suicide of Expertise.

GOOD LORD: ‘New level of brutality’: Iran doctors put death toll in suppressed uprising at over 16,500.

The doctors said that most of the dead were people under 30 and that at least 330,000 people were injured, with much of the killing coming over a two-day period, the Sunday Times reported. Among those killed were children and pregnant women.

Though the report did not specify the dates, according to previous accounts there was a spike in killings on Friday, January 9, the day after Iran’s regime cut off access to the internet, and it continued on Saturday.

The doctors’ figures were compiled from staff in eight major eye hospitals and 16 emergency departments across Iran. Doctors were able to communicate using banned Starlink internet terminals, tens of thousands of which have reportedly been smuggled into Iran.

Some patients in hospitals died because security forces refused to allow life-saving blood transfusions. In some medical centers, staff donated blood in an effort to save patients, the report said.

“This is a whole new level of brutality,” Prof. Amir Parasta, an Iranian-German eye surgeon who helped put together the network of doctors, told the newspaper.

Never ever ever give up your guns.

Related: Iran plans ‘absolute digital isolation,’ will break permanently from global internet.

THAT’S DIFFERENT, BECAUSE SHUT UP:

HEH, INDEED: