MY MONEY IS ON THE FORMER:

Mythmaking? Or will it include the negatives in Brinkley's book? https://t.co/XWsBNBH3ec

— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) April 2, 2026

But in regards to Graham’s questions, while it’s obvious that as a fellow lefty Brinkley is a fan, his biography raised a number of questions about just how biased was Mr. “And that’s the way it is,” particularly in an era when his competition consisted of three other prime time anchors (two on commercial networks, eventually, one on PBS) with exactly the same Democrat Party talking points.

Still though, it could be fun for audiences to discover that Democrat Party operatives with a lavalier were smearing Republican presidential candidates as crypto-Nazis decades before Trump.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “Unintential Plagiarist” Princeton Historian Kevin Kruse: ” I think the reason AI propagandists are so flustered by the fact that no real writer wants to use their idiotic tools is that they themselves don’t enjoy writing.”

As Phillip Magness asked at Reason in June 2022: Is Twitter-Famous Princeton Historian Kevin Kruse a Plagiarist?

His 2000 thesis on civil-rights-era Atlanta lifts passages from other people’s work.

Known for posting Twitter threads that call out both real and imagined errors of accuracy in conservative commentaries about America’s past, Kruse earned the moniker of “History’s Attack Dog” from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Kruse parlayed his half-million Twitter followers into a recurring opinion column on American political history at MSNBC, and he will soon be taking his Twitter threads to print in a co-edited book, which purports to catalog “distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media.”

But a discovery from Kruse’s past may now put Princeton’s Twitter warrior under a microscope of his own, raising the question of whether he holds himself to the same standards that he imposes on his internet adversaries. A key passage from Kruse’s doctoral dissertation on the history of race relations in Atlanta displays uncanny similarities to a 1996 book on the same subject by Ronald H. Bayor, a now-retired historian from Georgia Tech.

A few months later, “Princeton [dismissed] Kevin Kruse plagiarism allegations as ‘careless cutting and pasting.’”

Scraping data and repurposing it — it’s not just for LLMs anymore!

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Nike Shares Now Slide to 11-Year Low.

Nike’s stock has slumped to its lowest level in more than a decade after the sportswear giant warned sales will keep falling through 2026.

Shares hit an 11-year low on April 1, capping a brutal stretch that has seen the company lose around 75 percent of its value since shares peaked in 2021.

It is now worth under $68 billion – a third of the value of TJ Maxx.

The latest sell-off was triggered by a bleak outlook, with Nike forecasting sales will slump 4 percent this quarter – a staggering $500 million fall in the value of shoes, tracksuits, and t-shirts.

The brand is being hit by a triple whammy: backlash to its more ‘woke’ image shift, a failed retreat from major retail partners in favor of direct-to-consumer selling, and a deepening slump in China.

* * * * * * * *

Nike’s recent ad campaigns have apparently featured not only Colin Kaepernick, who whines about being “oppressed” while enjoying fame and fortune, but also the woke Megan Rapinoe and a “non-binary esports player” – whatever that is – named Dominique McLean. That’s not very likely to draw a wide audience of loyal American buyers.

Why can’t these companies just advertise the virtues of their products? Why not just make the case to the buying public that Nike athletic shoes and so forth are better quality, longer-lasting, more comfortable, and explain why? Traditionally, advertising has promoted the virtues of a product. The company is looking to entice buyers to a free trade in which their buyers perceive a gain in value; that the shoes, or sportswear, or whatever, will return value to them greater than the cost of the product.

Promoting anti-American woke nutbars does nothing to that end. Nike seems to be learning that; they are learning, as other companies have before them, what it means to “get woke, go broke.”

How woke did Nike get before the plummet began? This woke:

Flashback to Nike entering into a partnership with Dylan Mulvaney *soon after* the Bud Light debacle.

"Marketing experts" assured us that doubling down was the right thing to do. https://t.co/WTFy2q6WSZ pic.twitter.com/T027EHkzIR

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) April 2, 2026

NASA VERSUS SPACEX:

100%, most people don’t understand this. NASA spends lots of time and money developing & testing components because they use various subcontractors so everything needs to work flawlessly and as designed when it comes together. They’re also more scrutinized being publicly funded…

— Nick (@GoPats15) April 2, 2026

Tweet continues:

SpaceX on the other hand can rapidly develop their rockets because most of it is built by them. If they make changes it doesn’t result in months of back and forth they can pretty much do it on the fly. And then test them on full rockets. This ultimately saves time and money but faces more public scrutiny, especially from those who are ignorant or are simply against the company/elon and are looking for any reason to be critical.

A perfect example of this was on the last couple of flights where various heat tiles and even no tiles were all tested to see what real world effects they would have.

To boldly go where Virginia Postrel has gone before. In 1997, she explored “Resilience vs. Anticipation:”

Boston’s winter is a natural disaster, but its predictability changes everything.3 As Hutchinson suggests, New Englanders know winter is coming. Bad weather is annoying but easy to plan for: You build snow days into the school year, buy a car with four-wheel drive, get used to scraping ice and shoveling snow. You make sure you have a coat, hat, and gloves. Snow, says Hutchinson, is no big deal: “You just put on boots.” Life has a regular rhythm.

Good weather plus earthquakes creates an utterly different environment. On a day-to-day basis, you can concentrate on your goals, with no need for contingency plans. Your softball game, your picnic, your wedding won’t be rained out. But everything could change in an instant. You can’t anticipate earthquakes, can’t plan for them, can’t even predict when and where they’ll strike. Instead of providing the certainty of seasons, nature promises a future of random shocks. All you can do is develop general coping skills and resources. There is nothing familiar about the aftermath of an earthquake, and no one survives it alone.

In his 1988 book, SEARCHING FOR SAFETY, the late UC-Berkeley political scientist Aaron Wildavsky laid out two alternatives for dealing with risk: anticipation, the static planning that aspires to perfect foresight, and resilience, the dynamic response that relies on having many margins of adjustment:

Anticipation is a mode of control by a central mind; efforts are made to predict and prevent potential dangers before damage is done. Forbidding the sale of certain medical drugs is an anticipatory measure. Resilience is the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back. An innovative biomedical industry that creates new drugs for new diseases is a resilient device. . . . Anticipation seeks to preserve stability: the less fluctuation, the better. Resilience accommodates variability; one may not do so well in good times but learn to persist in the bad.

Here, then, is the basic difference between the Valley and the Hub: Viewing the world as predictable and itself as the center of the universe, Boston has encouraged strategies of anticipation. People try to imagine everything that might go wrong and fix it in advance. But in Silicon Valley, there are no certainties. The future is open and subject to upheaval. Resilience is the strategy of choice. People do the best they can at the moment, deal with problems as they arise, and develop networks to help them out.

I wonder how much of Musk’s experiences in Silicon Valley impact how his team builds and tests rockets?

NASA’S RETURN TO THE MOON IS THE REBOOT WE NEED RIGHT NOW:

The mission, which launches today, even follows the playbook that governs Hollywood reboots. While not challenging Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s near-final form of ‘diversity’, with virtually no men of recognisably European extraction at all, the lunar mission will return in a gender swap for the ages: Apollo has been replaced with Artemis, the Graeco-Roman god’s girl-boss twin sister. Artemis is Rey to Apollo’s Luke, Galadriel to Apollo’s Aragorn, Nahla Ake (captain of the USS Athena, funnily enough) to Apollo’s Kirk.

In some regards, the NASA mission is not quite as eccentric as Hollywood. DEI considerations are clearly visible in the four-strong squad actually riding in the warhead, but all are well qualified in traditional terms and, on the ground, NASA is at least still staffed by top scientists and engineers. And unlike the new Lord of the Rings proposal, which will adapt scenes from the books that didn’t appear in Peter Jackson’s trilogy, Artemis is at least intended to retell the whole story, and then start layering in sequels.

Faster, please; the surviving men who walked on the moon during the Apollo program aren’t getting any younger:

The last five surviving astronauts to be anywhere this close to the moon

Buzz Aldrin (96) – Apollo 11
David Scott (93) – Apollo 9 and 15
Charles Duke (90) – Apollo 16
Harrison Schmitt (90) – Apollo 17
Fred Haise (92) – Apollo 13, never walked pic.twitter.com/S9y8ZzBPeC

— Tsar Apu II Apustayevich (@tsarlet2) April 2, 2026

HOWARD WOLOWITZ SMILES: NASA’s No. 1 priority: Artemis II toilet fixed before trip to moon. 

GAVIN NEWSOM’S EMPIRE OF FRAUD:

California is a cash machine. The state collects some of the country’s highest income, business, and fuel taxes, and now spends more than $300 billion per year. And yet, everywhere you look, California seems to be falling apart.

The roads are crumbling. Mismanaged wildfires have turned neighborhoods into ash. Drug addiction and homelessness have metastasized, turning parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco into no-go zones. And the cost-of-living crisis is pricing middle-class taxpayers out of basic necessities like groceries and gas, even as the state spends billions on welfare programs that never seem to lift anyone out of poverty.

Californians are beginning to ask: Where is all this money going? On paper, it funds hospitals, universities, schools, prisons, infrastructure, and other public services. But beneath the surface, something else is happening that California Governor Gavin Newsom does not want you to see: massive, systematic, brazen fraud.

We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.

Welcome to Gavin Newsom’s empire of fraud.

Read the whole thing.

FINALLY: Trump Trounces Tucker.

President Trump posts an article by Douglas Murray that highlights Tucker Carlson's extremism, embrace of Islamists, and America Last:

The article is titled: "Deranged Tucker Carlson backstabs Trump"

Several of the top lines in the piece include:

-"While the president has… pic.twitter.com/FffUxE491w

— Ryan Saavedra (@RyanSaavedra) April 2, 2026

Trump posted a link to Douglas Murray’s piece, which absolutely eviscerated Tucker, within about half an hour after his speech to the nation. Obviously, it was top of mind, and the two events are obviously linked directly in his mind.

Trump is at war, and Tucker is a traitor to both the President and the nation. That is the message, and I have to say that everybody I know, at least, believes it.

Murray didn’t hold back, and by extension, Trump isn’t either.

In politics, it is often the people who you think have your back who end up stabbing you there.

Nobody knows that better than Donald Trump, who has been stabbed in the back more times than Julius Caesar — yet has still survived.

This week, part of the noisy right-wing online podcast-sphere again turned on the president.

Leading the virtual charge, again, was Trump’s one-time cheerleader, Tucker Carlson.

By not addressing Tucker directly and allowing Murray to do so, Trump is sending a second message: you are dead to me.

Perhaps Trump could “award” Tucker an Iron Cross, as FDR did to a reporter with the New York Daily News in 1942 when he disapproved of his journalism.

JIM TREACHER SINGS THE GLORIOUS PRAISES OF “CHEESE VIOLENCE:” Japanese Twitter Is Awesome.

And now my Twitter feed is just full of these Japanese tweets translated into English, and I’m seeing how much we have in common with each other. There’s dozens and dozens that I could list, but I’ll just point out a few here.

Probably my favorite of all that I’ve seen… The past week, I’ve been introduced to the Japanese theory of “cheese violence.” Let me explain that.

The other day, a Japanese Twitter user named @hoshizorarock quote-tweeted a photo of a huge triple bacon cheeseburger with what appears to be about a half-pound of cheese on it.

チーズの暴力をご覧ください https://t.co/6rW6TGjvpX

— 🇯🇵星空音夢🇯🇵 (@hoshizorarock) March 30, 2026

And the caption is:

Please witness the violence of cheese.

And since then, I’ve looked around, and there’s a lot of other people talking about “cheese violence.” I was not familiar with this concept.

And at first I laughed, and then I said, “Okay, that actually fits. Putting that much cheese on a burger is cheese violence. That’s it. You nailed it.”

I am both a victim and a perpetrator of cheese violence.

So I asked Grok to explain if that was just a bad translation. But no, it’s actually a thing in Japan.

I’ll quote this from the robot:

“Cheese violence” (チーズの暴力 / chīzu no bōryoku [CHEE-zoo no BOH-ryoh-koo]) is established Japanese internet/foodie slang for ridiculously excessive, melty, gooey cheese overloads in food—hyperbolic praise for something so indulgent and rich it “violently assaults” your senses (in the best way).

So, yeah, that’s it. They nailed it. Cheese violence. I love it. I’m going to start using that. I want some cheese violence.

So say we all!

BLESS THEIR HEARTS:

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐁𝐂 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 𝐆𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐒 “𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐀𝐋 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍” 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐒

BBC Radio 4 is running a premiere of 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘔𝘢𝘻𝘦 asking whether the Artemis 2 moon mission raises “𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭… pic.twitter.com/2H2eM45dQE

— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) April 1, 2026

The Brits used to be made of sterner stuff — back when they produced two series in the 1970s about colonies on the moon:

To boldly go where Gerry Anderson has gone before! (Pardon the split infinitives and mashed-up Angelo-American sci-fi references.)

THIS KID GETS IT: One … Ahem … Outspoken Youngster Tells CNN Exactly Why Artemis II Is So Cool.

Kid just SMOKED a CNN reporter outside of Artemis II launch:

CNN: "Why do you want to be here?… Why do you love being a part of history?

Kid: "We're going back to the f*cking moon, that's why!" 🤣https://t.co/olarncM5jA

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 1, 2026

SPRINGTIME FOR KAMALA:

Team Kamala in 2024: Rehabilitate Dick Cheney and George W. Bush by seeking their endorsements, both of whom the left endlessly compared to Hitler from 2001 to 2008:

Team Kamala in 2026: Promote favorably the man who thought Winston Churchill was the baddie in WWII:

Ah, Team Kamala quoting Dave Smith and Tucker Carlson favorably now https://t.co/ueVzC6aVs2

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) April 1, 2026

BRIDGET PHETASY: Leave Me Behind.

My grandparents were Depression-era kids and survived World War II. Big deal, I thought at the time. They don’t know what I’m going through now. I was so certain their experience had nothing to teach me. And they had the grace not to argue about it. They just waited. Because they knew something I didn’t: That wisdom isn’t persuasive to people who haven’t earned it yet, and that trying to make it persuasive is a fool’s errand.

I was a fool. Now I’d give anything for their wisdom and it’s too late.

The part the platform-chasers don’t understand: You cannot reason a twenty-three-year-old out of positions they were algorithmically radicalized into. You’re not going to win them over by learning their dumb slang and nodding along with their worst impulses. All you’re going to do is lose yourself. And your audience—your actual audience, the people who showed up because you had something to say—will watch you do it in real time.

I never peaked. I say that without self-pity. I got a late start, I never had the massive Fox show or the viral Comedy Central moment, and for a while, that bothered me. But it turns out never peaking is a kind of freedom. There’s no high to chase, no glory days to recreate, no slide into irrelevance to panic about. There’s just the work. Territory, not hierarchy. You do it because it’s yours to do, and you hope the right people find it, and if the coveted demographic thinks you’re an oldhead who doesn’t understand the vision—good. I only want to do my work.

Read the whole thing.

HOLLYWOOD FOR UGLY PEOPLE: Op-ed: Let’s talk about TMZ turning its sights on DC politicians, and why that’s a good thing.

To be fair, they’ve been there before, sans the traditional Hollywood ending: Ex-DEA public affairs chief pleads guilty to brazen scam. “A former head of public affairs for the Drug Enforcement Administration who later worked as a producer for TMZ has admitted to a fraud scheme that involved posing as an undercover CIA operative in order to swindle government contractors out of over $4 million. Details of the complex scam carried out by Garrison Courtney, 44, became public Thursday morning as he pleaded guilty to a felony wire fraud charge in Alexandria, Va., before U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady.”

INSIDE EVERY “PROGRESSIVE” IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT:

This is such a perfect example of how Trump broke the brains of so many on the Left. In the name of opposing "totalitarianism" and "defending democracy," DeNiro thinks there should be a body of elites who bar people from running for office, including someone who went on to win… https://t.co/H2eKWF5rv1

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) April 1, 2026

(Classical reference in headline.)

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: ‘F*ck Him To His Face:’ Democrat Lawmaker Deletes Unhinged Late-Night Post About Trump.

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) deleted a profane X post about President Donald Trump after it drew backlash online.

Lee made the comment early Wednesday in response to reports that Trump planned to attend Supreme Court oral arguments in a high-stakes birthright citizenship case.

“So f*cking f*cked up. I’ll pray they f*ck him to his face,” Lee wrote at around 1 a.m. Eastern Time Wednesday in the replies to an Associated Press story about the visit. “Sorry, I say f*ck a lot these days.”

The post was later deleted, but she appeared to defend herself in a subsequent post on Wednesday morning.

“Clearly my language touched a nerve — my nerve was touched by the attacks on our Constitution and its separation of powers. I took an oath to protect and defend it,” Lee wrote.

The posts were both made from her personal account, where the banner touts a claim that she is “America’s #1 Most Bipartisan Member of Congress.”

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

The only thing more powerful than hate is love 💛 https://t.co/fMd1csdGJB

— Susie Lee (@SusieLeeNV) February 9, 2026

In a now deleted post, Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) said of President Trump going to SCOTUS this morning:

"So fucking fucked up. I'll pray they fuck him to his face." pic.twitter.com/tSW5jJnnlC

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) April 1, 2026

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Supergirl Adopts Insane ‘Lady Ghostbusters’ PR Push.

The finished film even included a scene where the Lady Ghostbusters deal with online trolls.

Perhaps the key players realized they had a turkey on their hands, and it was time to do some creative marketing to deflect that sad truth? Or, they figured the Victimhood Card would rally progressives to movie theaters nationwide.

Are you sure about that?

The film dramatically underperformed. Sony later re-rebooted the franchise with modest success.

The “Supergirl” rollout feels very similar. But this isn’t 2016. Movie fans smell this desperation a mile away, and it’s already building bad buzz on the project.

…and the audience just left the building. Gotta get your stars to stop talking like this. https://t.co/EH4lGxVVz5

— Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) March 31, 2026

She…expects a backlash for being a female…in “SuperGIRL”??? https://t.co/Jo2lBjXOnr

— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) March 31, 2026

This film exists in Superman’s corner of the DC universe, but Alcock’s strategy sounds awfully reminiscent of a line spoken Batman’s nemesis Bane at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises: “Crashing the plane — with no survivors!!!”

IT’S COME TO THIS: Kristi Noem’s husband seen ‘pouting in photos with fake breasts.’

Bryon Noem, the husband of former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was reported to have a secret double life as a model for adult entertainers.

Hundreds of online messages reviewed by The Daily Mail, involving three women in the “bimbofication” scene, in which performers dress as real-life Barbie dolls. The alleged messages indicate that Bryon praised the performers’ surgically-enhanced bodies and even, allegedly, confessed to how he lusted for “huge, huge ridiculous boobs.”

In one selfie shared by the insurance mogul, Bryon can be seen slipping into a flesh-colored crop top and skintight pink shorts. It also appeared that Bryon managed to stuff two balloons inside his shirt to resemble breasts and positioned the knots to resemble nipples.

• Trump grills aides on Kristi Noem’s alleged lover profiting off her $220M ad campaign

• Kristi Noem caught in awkward moment with husband as she’s questioned about alleged lover

Another photo obtained by The Daily Mail shows the father of three wearing a form-fitting pair of green leggings with a white top over two orbs. In a bizarre twist, Bryon’s face is fully visible in both photos.

Secret double life of Kristi Noem's crossdressing husband Bryon: The pouting 'busty bimbo' photos and trove of explicit messages https://t.co/4GvCcfPK9j

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) March 31, 2026

Well, now we know why Noem was fired by Trump at the beginning of the month. But perhaps her husband is angling for a job in the next Democratic administration:

Tyler Cherry is the new White House Associate Communications Director.

Although Tyler is physically incapable of defending himself, he advocates for defunding the police & abolishing ICE.

Tyler is also a pro-Hamas supporter. pic.twitter.com/pf2kST8Jfa

— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) June 23, 2024

UPDATE:

This is weird and degenerate, and also it's interesting that crossdressing has very suddenly become something we can mock again. We had a crossdressing freak running HHS for four years. https://t.co/IowOwZbMzr

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) March 31, 2026

CHANGE: Dow surges 1,100 points, S&P 500 posts best day since May as hopes grow for end of Iran war: Live updates.

DISPATCHES FROM THE GAYS OF HORMUZ:

Excuse me, that's mullahphobic

You think the Japan-America lovefest is fun, wait til the Iranian people have unfettered X access https://t.co/ZB8jUgUaS2

— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) March 31, 2026

Classical reference in headline:

💪 https://t.co/dDakXtCgkr

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2026

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Tiger Woods Awarded Honorary California CDL https://t.co/zIFK7ohrlq pic.twitter.com/pHg0JFMSgf

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 31, 2026

HMMM: Trump “is priming the the public (and world) with a new mental frame: the Strait of Hormuz is not Iranian sovereign territory anymore:”

This post by Trump is pre-framing what's to come. Read along and you'll start to see it too.

When Trump tells the UK to "go to the Strait and just TAKE IT," the surface read is that he's venting at allies who didn't show up.

But the deeper move is priming the the public (and… pic.twitter.com/wXEFOesNYy

— American Debunk (@AmericanDebunk) March 31, 2026

And at the moment, it seems to be moving again:

BREAKING: Huge uplift in vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz today.

The regime has lost control.
pic.twitter.com/TFPmDEWEF1

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 31, 2026

Related: In other aquatic news:

imagine not knowing what "heavy water is" and reading the term "heavy water production plant" then being stupid enough to deduce that it's drinking water

— n (@Panegyrick) March 30, 2026

“IT’S REALLY HARD TO OVERSTATE JUST HOW BADLY CHINA’S MILITARY INDUSTRY HAS BEEN HUMILIATED IN THE PAST YEAR:”

Over the course of my research on Israel's deeper integration with China's regional rivals post-October 7th, I discovered something absolutely wild.

Thailand – who is NOT hostile to the CCP – has pivoted to Israeli air defense systems after seeing how much better their Israeli…

— come into my tent (@boom_tentpeg) March 30, 2026

ALL THE DEMOCRATS HAVE TO DO IS NOT BE CRAZY, AND THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THAT:

Voters may not love Republicans, but increasingly, they fear Democrats.

A new @YouGov deep dive shows support for Democrats slipping across almost every demographic. 

The AOC/Mamdani takeover is driving voters away! pic.twitter.com/fzaKTW4Uhg

— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) March 31, 2026

ED MORRISSEY: Hegseth: ‘Decisive’ Days Ahead for Iran; Regime ‘Fractured?’

Trump sounds like he wants to abruptly leave; Hegseth wants to go the full Curtis LeMay; Rubio wants to talk with rational alternatives. Either this is the most incoherent winning side of a war in human history, or there’s a strategy in place.

Eli Lake argues vociferously for the latter. Trump and his team are waging “psychological warfare” against the Iranian regime, Lake declares, and it’s working:

Trump is waging psychological warfare with the remnants of a battered regime. Israel has killed 16 top regime leaders since the fighting began on February 28. These include Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, national security adviser Ali Larijani, and minister of intelligence Esmaeil Khatib. Then there are the lower-level commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij state militia who have perished in drone and missile strikes. The current supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in public since he ascended to the post held by his father.

“If you are sitting in Tehran, you are underground if you are in the leadership tier,” Joel Rayburn, former U.S. Army colonel and senior diplomat in Trump’s first term, told me. “You know if you can be located you will be killed. Your command and control is severely disrupted, and now you see the United States is a few days away from having a half a division worth of ground forces in the Gulf region and you can offer no resistance. Your leverage is waning.”

In such an environment, who wants to be the leader of a “new and more reasonable regime”? For the true believers left, like the recently promoted Ahmad Vahidi, who now heads Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps after the former chief was killed, negotiations with Trump are tantamount to capitulation. For the unlucky Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who is stuck with managing an economy that’s ground to a halt, Vahidi’s escalations are national suicide.

As Ed concludes, “Stay tuned.”