Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

October 30, 2025

COLUMBIA BROADCASTING STRUGGLE SESSION CONCLUDES: CBS Staffer Calls Layoffs a ‘Bloodbath,’ Race and Culture Unit ‘Gutted.’

Oh no, the race and culture team has been disbanded.

Flashback to October of last year: Jewish CBS anchor forced to meet with Race and Culture Unit after grilling pro-Palestinian author: Report.

CBS News reportedly forced Jewish anchor Tony Dokoupil to meet with the network’s in-house Race and Culture Unit after a group of employees complained he was too tough on a pro-Palestinian author.

The saga began last week when Dokoupil interviewed author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his book, “The Message,” which describes in part his travels “to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives.” The CBS News anchor irked liberal colleagues by bluntly stating that it read like something you would find in “the backpack of an extremist,” and pressing Coates on whether he believes Israel has the right to exist.

The New York Times reported that “a group of CBS News employees approached executives with their concerns about Mr. Dokoupil’s handling of the interview,” and Dokoupil had to meet with both the CBS News standards and practices team and the Race and Culture Unit.

“The conversation focused on Mr. Dokoupil’s tone of voice, phrasing and body language during his interview with Mr. Coates,” the Times reported.

As the editors of Weiss’s Free Press wrote last year, “In other words, Tony Dokoupil did his job. That’s when his troubles began.”

In September of last year, as the presidential race was going into overdrive, Tucker Carlson was promoting a pro-Hitler “historian.” The following month, CBS’s “Race and Culture Unit” was admonishing a Jewish journalist for doing, err, journalism. In his Commentary newsletter yesterday titled, “The ‘Woke Right’ Is on the Left,” Abe Greenwald wrote:

Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and the like are in no way conservative. But their mode of populist outrage—against Israel, corporate America, traditional values, and U.S. military dominance—doesn’t exactly align with the political or cultural right either.

In fact, the closer you look, the clearer it becomes: They simply are the woke left. They’re a faction of the woke left for those who disdain the tawdry aesthetics of campus protest. That’s it. In every other respect, they are the same. They share the left’s hatreds, heroes, and self-pitying worldview.

* * * * * * * *

So the supposed woke right hates Israel, loves Communist and fascist dictators, pals around with America’s present-day enemies, and regrets American military victory. Wrap the lot of them in keffiyehs, and they’re good to go.

Fortunately, the CBS Race and Culture Unit is good and gone, at least.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 30th, 2025

October 29, 2025

RUY TEIXEIRA: Big-Tent Politics Won’t Save the Democrats. As Teixeira writes, “voters know whose tent it is, even if a few heterodox guests are allowed inside:”

A recent New York Times conversation between columnist and “abundance” advocate Ezra Klein and progressive author Ta-Nehisi Coates illustrates the problem. Klein, a proponent of big-tent politics, tried to persuade Coates of its necessity. “[A] huge amount of the country, a majority of the country,” Klein said, “believes things about trans people. . . that we would see as fundamentally and morally wrong. . . . What politically. . . should our relationship with those people be?”

Coates, unsurprisingly, rejected the premise. As far as he was concerned, those people were on the other side of a moral line: “If you think it is okay to dehumanize people,” he said, “then conversation between you and me is probably not possible.”

Of course, Coates has no problem dehumanizing people himself: The Toxic World-View of Ta-Nehisi Coates.

His monstrous passage about 9/11 is a good summation of where he’s coming from. He writes of the police and firefighters who died running into the burning buildings in a forlorn effort to save all the people whose bodies were about to be obliterated into dust, “They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”

More from Teixeira:

But the telling detail is in Klein’s own phrasing. He described dissenters from progressive orthodoxy as “fundamentally and morally wrong.” His version of the big tent, then, is that some Democrats, particularly those in conservative areas, should be permitted to adopt wrong and immoral positions for the sake of expediency. But the positions of the party on those issues will and should remain the same. You can come into the tent, but the left will still run the show.

That won’t work. Advocates of the big tent must face the facts: The party’s many unpopular and unworkable positions—on everything from energy to identity politics—have to genuinely change if Democrats hope to win back skeptical voters. Simply holding their noses and letting a few candidates deviate from orthodoxy won’t work.

Take immigration. Democrats have had little to say about Trump’s successful efforts to close the southern border, but much to say about his deportation measures, which they see as cruel and immoral. That, as Josh Barro notes, doesn’t add up to a change in party position. To win back voters’ trust, he argues, the Democrats “must acknowledge that the Biden administration’s policy of laxity was a failure,” and put forward better enforcement measures of their own. He adds: “If Democrats are only seen talking about how the government is doing too much enforcement, we’ll be seen as the anti-enforcement party, and that’s politically deadly.”

And that is precisely what’s happening. The party increasingly looks like the anti-enforcement party that doesn’t want to deport anyone. And that image means that a Democrat running in a conservative area can try to carve out a tough-on-illegal-immigration profile, but—even assuming the activists leave him or her alone—the party’s overall stance on immigration enforcement will mostly negate any benefit from the candidate’s heterodox position.

That’s because Biden administration’s “policy of laxity” wasn’t a failure, it was a strategy, and voters knew it:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller in February of 2021: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

● Tom Cotton’s Response to Kamala Harris’ Border Failures Should Be the Default for All Republicans: “‘You know, Laura, Kamala Harris didn’t have to go all the way to Guatemala and Mexico to find the root causes of this border crisis because they’re not there,’ Cotton told Fox News host Laura Ingraham [in June of 2021]. ‘The root causes are in the White House.’ He further explained that it ‘happened on January 20th when Joe Biden took office, and he essentially opened our borders, reversing very effective policies that had our borders under control.’”

Speaking of Kamala and immigration, the Biden “Politburo’s” border stance made the Bulwark rather cross last November:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29th, 2025

SHE DON’T FEEL NO WAYS TIRED: Nancy Pelosi Chews Up Six Minutes Claiming Democrats Didn’t Move America ‘Too Far To The Left.’

“[T]here are certain people in the country who don’t want to see … women, LGBTQ people, people of color, immigrants taking their place in anything,” she said. “And that’s just the way it is. That’s their problem. That’s not America’s problem. America is this great country with this beautiful diversity.”

Pelosi also ranted about her Catholic views to claim she valued all different types of people — before appearing to attack Republicans while seeming to use a southern accent.

“You’re people of faith? You go to church on Sunday and pray in church on Sunday and prey on people the rest of the week. What is this? What is this?” she asked, laughing.

“Pelosi chuckles, but not even the moderator or Harvard student crowd seems to find it funny:”

There’s no doubt that Pelosi already has the support of Zohran Mamdani, Hilaria Baldwin, Jasmine Crockett, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton, but seems little interested in growing the party’s base much beyond the code-switching far left:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29th, 2025

COIN OF THE REALM: This Is How One Secret Service Agent Dealt With That ‘Mysterious’ Bag of Cocaine in the Biden White House.

Now, as reported by RealClearPolitics national political correspondent Susan Crabtree on Tuesday, Secret Service agents who guard the White House weren’t exactly happy campers about what several agents described as a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” cover-up (emphasis, mine):

The @SecretService Uniformed Division officers who guard the White House were so pissed off that they were forced to be part of a cocaine cover-up in 2023, as several Secret Service sources referred to it, that one officer made a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” commemorative challenge coin about the ordeal to lighten the mood and improve morale within the ranks, according to the photos below and several Secret Service sources.

The officer was punished (placed on administrative leave for an unknown amount of time) for making and distributing the unauthorized coin. The coin’s distribution took place within weeks of the USSS closing the case in 11 days. Many rank-and-file Secret Service agents and UD officers are still angry that they were forced to close the investigation in such a short time + destroy the evidence, as I previously reported. “It made us look inept,” one source told me.

Allegations persist that then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other Secret Service officials pushed to have the cocaine destroyed.

Exit quote: “It was never about the cocaine. It wouldn’t have been all that surprising if the coke was indeed Hunter’s, would it? The real story here was the alleged go-to reaction of the head of the Secret Services and others to destroy the evidence — just one more example of the rot of corruption throughout the Biden presidency.”

The Secret Service played cleanup for Hunter on numerous occasions, including:

● Secret Service says it can’t find Hunter Biden travel records for 2010, 2011, or 2013.

● Sources: Secret Service inserted itself into case of Hunter Biden’s gun.

● Secret Service paying over $30K a month for Malibu home to provide security for Hunter Biden.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29th, 2025

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Liberal Podcaster Goes Off On ‘P*ssies’ Schumer and Jeffries and Offers ‘Kudos’ to ‘No Kings’ Protester Celebrating Charlie Kirk Death.

Liberal podcast host Jennifer Welch went off on the “Democratic establishment” and told them to “jump on board” or face the same fate as MAGA as she offered “kudos” to a protester celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.

On the I’ve Had It podcast on Tuesday, Welch blasted Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) for not being more vocally and actively supportive of New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

“If you think this Zohran thing is happening just in New York, and you think people are waking up only in New York City, you’re mistaken,” Welch said.

She then cut to a clip of a conservative influencer Kaitlin Bennett speaking with a No Kings protester who didn’t seem to have a problem with the recent assassination of conservative activist Kirk.

In the clip, the protester called Kirk “horrible” and said she’s “glad” he’s not around anymore.

“He was horrible on the campuses, the college campuses, horrible person,” the protester said, then telling Bennett she’d “have to think about” whether she wants her dead too.

Earlier: The Assassination Fan Base.

UPDATE:

Posted at 2:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29th, 2025

CODING BEGINS SOON: CBS News begins staff cull days after anchor announced his exit… amid ongoing rumors Gayle King’s days are numbered.

Brutal layoffs are hitting CBS News after its parent company announced a plan to axe more than 2,000 staff across the organization.

New Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss acknowledged the cuts on the network’s morning editorial call Wednesday, Semafor’s Max Tani reported.

Weiss called it a ‘enormously difficult day’ for the network, according to Tani.

David Ellison, the chairman of CBS News parent Paramount, broke the news about the companywide layoffs in a note to staff on Tuesday.

‘In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,’ he wrote.

‘In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth.’

Flashback: Out-of-work coal miners find new work in computer industry.

—CBS News, November 18th, 2017.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29th, 2025

NEWSMAX’S ROB FINNERTY: What’s Up With TV Anchors Adding an Accent When Pronouncing Spanish Names?

We’ve all experienced the ‘accent road bump’ during a TV news program. That’s where an anchor or reporter comes across a Spanish word or name and suddenly there’s some very noticeable pronunciation gymnastics.

Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty says it’s time for this absurd practice to stop.

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty asks why anchors pronounce Spanish-sounding names with an accent, starts talking in an Irish accent to prove how ridiculous it is.

“As I’ve said before, I am Irish. And if I was moderating that debate, would the host introduce me as Robert James Finnerty, don’t you know the little lad that he is Robert James Finnerty?”

“If the host was Chinese, would they then introduce that person with a Chinese accent? I don’t think so. Stop it.”

To be fair, this isn’t all that new a development. The earlier, funnier incarnation of Saturday Night Live was parodying all of the “accent road bumps” and “pronunciation gymnastics” back in 1990:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29th, 2025

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: University Leaders Say ‘Organized Networks,’ Including Iran, Drove Anti-Israel Campus Unrest.

Several leaders of prominent universities on Monday said they believe the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic demonstrations that broke out on campuses across the United States during the Jewish state’s war against Hamas were not organic, instead telling a panel audience they believe “organized networks,” and even foreign governments, may have driven the unrest.

Leaders of notable U.S. universities had not offered many thoughts on the connections between campus protests and outside groups before Monday’s discussion on combating anti-Semitism. During the event, though, Syracuse University chancellor Kent Syverud brought up Iran in particular.

“I really believe [the demonstrations] were encouraged from Iran,” Syverud said. “It did not have the involvement of very many—if any—of our own students.”

Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier agreed, saying the anti-Israel movement on his campus seemed to have been coordinated by outside forces and followed a “playbook” that “was imported” from other universities.

“There was, not a large group, maybe 30-plus students or something, but they were using the playbook that they had seen at Columbia and other places,” he said. “It was the same messaging. So, it’s more than a social contagion. I think they’re organized networks as well.”

“Leaders of notable U.S. universities” certainly didn’t appear to do very much to stop the protests in the wake of October 7th, however. As VDH wrote in December of 2023, “After October 7, the public was shocked at what they saw and heard on America’s campuses. Americans knew previously they were intolerant, leftwing, and increasingly non-meritocratic. But immediately after October 7 — and even before the response of the Israeli Defense Forces — the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29th, 2025

October 28, 2025

IT’S OFFICIAL: The Democratic Party Is Now Straight Up Socialist.

When socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral primary, we said that the concern expressed by some Democrats was phony, because they didn’t want to admit just how far left their party had drifted.

Now, they’ve given up that pretense entirely.

On Friday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed socialist Mamdani, saying the 33-year-old trust fund baby “has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers.”

He’s the most senior-ranking Democrat to do so, but he joins a list that already includes Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

To be fair, Democrats have been trending in that direction for quite some time:

 

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

DON’T GET COCKY: Scandal-ridden candidates expose Democrats’ turmoil.

At the heart of the Democrats’ struggle is a furious debate over whether the midterm elections will be won by tacking to the Left or cleaving to the centre.

Zohran Mamdani’s runaway victory in the New York Democratic primary has prompted giddy speculation among the party’s most Left-leaning members that the country is crying out for more progressive candidates.

But strategists warn this approach is doomed to failure. “For the activist base of the party, the existential question is what’s more important: picking the candidate you love or winning the seat,” said [Democratic strategist Joel] Rubin.

“The white whale we’re hunting is how to win back the white working class voters and the economic and social issues voters who left our coalition at the last election.

“What I’m worried about is not learning the lessons from 2024.”

QED:

Earlier: Imagine That — Actions Have Consequences.

If Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York City, Republicans plan to highlight that fact in their midterm campaigns against Democratic lawmakers nationwide.

That entirely unremarkable observation is the subject of an item in Axios in which the GOP is accused of plotting to “weaponize” New York City Democrats’ voting preferences, which, we should observe, consists entirely of noticing them.

For years, says reporter Kate Santaliz in her scandalized dispatch, the GOP has made former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into a “bogeywoman.” Her capacity to “rile up the base” was unrivaled. But with her diminished role, “GOP strategists are testing new symbols of the party’s left, and hope Mamdani will fill that void.”

Oh, he will: Ya Think? Democrats Are Just Now Realizing It’s Time to Panic Over Mamdani Mayoral Candidacy.

Posted at 8:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

T. BECKET ADAMS: Media Nazi hunters go on vacation.

You can tell a lot about a guy’s biases based on when he chooses to extend grace.

And when it comes to the news media and grace, there’s an overabundance of the latter for Graham Platner, the loony toon Democratic Maine Senate candidate, who, until last Tuesday, sported a sizeable Nazi tattoo on his chest.

“Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner tells AP he got a new tattoo to cover one seen as a Nazi symbol,” reads a news blurb from the Associated Press (emphasis my own).

Reported the Washington Post, “Maine Senate hopeful changed tattoo ex-aide calls antisemitic.”

CBS News, meanwhile, reported that “Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner says he covered up tattoo that resembles Nazi symbol.”

Politico and CNN likewise claimed the tattoo “resembles” a Nazi symbol.

The tattoo in question, which has been inked over, was the Totenkopf (“death’s head”). It’s a specific skull-and-crossbones image infamously worn by the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or the “SS,” which originally served as Adolf Hitler’s personal protection unit before growing into the paramilitary organization responsible for the Holocaust.

The Totenkopf is not exactly obscure. If you’ve seen Indiana Jones, or the Dirty Dozen, or Schindler’s List, or the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, or Life is Beautiful, or Band of Brothers, or Inglourious Basterds, or dozens of other films set during World War II, you’ve almost certainly seen the Totenkopf.

There is even an internet-famous comedy sketch from 2006 by the duo Mitchell and Webb, in which the two comedians play Nazi SS officers who realize, based on their uniforms, that they are the “baddies.”

At this point, Platner must be trolling the media:

Further thoughts from Sasha Stone: The Democrats Have a Nazi Problem, And it’s time to call them out.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Posted at 6:48 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

ROGER SIMON: Too Bad Javier Milei Isn’t Running for New York Mayor.

The more we learn about Zohran Mamdani, the more despicable (and sick) he is revealed to be. Perhaps we need a new hyphenated category for him—Islamist/sociopath. Recently, it was the “aunt” who was so terrified to wear her hijab immediately after 9/11 (never mind the thousands killed, it was the “aunt” that was important), and then turned out, when it was discovered the candidate’s only real aunt was a highly secular, hijab-less woman, who lived in Tanzania, he really meant his nameless “cousin,” who had conveniently passed away several years go.

Now, via the NY Post, “Zohran Mamdani made vile, conspiracy-tinged statement tying NYPD to IDF, resurfaced video shows”. That would be hilarious if it weren’t so far into Jew hatred (forget the relatively passive “antisemitism”) that it crosses the border into outright insanity.

On a personal note, I also discovered online that the rabbi of Central Synagogue, where I was bar mitzvahed what feels like a thousand years ago, is a supporter of Mamdani. If you want to understand how the Holocaust happened, that’s it in a nutshell.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

THE FINAL DAYS OF MSNBC: Scott Jennings Lives Rent-Free in Lawrence O’Donnell’s Head As MSNBC Host Erupts on Air.

“And now CNN eagerly pays a Trump supporter to lie on CNN every day and night for Donald Trump,” O’Donnell said. “CNN did this during the first Trump presidential campaign and presidency. CNN regularly paid Trump supporters to lie about Trump on CNN.”

“But then CNN got a new head. The head of CNN for the last three years, hired by the Trump-supporting owner and operator of CNN, is an Englishman who thinks paying Scott Jennings to lie about Donald Trump* is money very well spent,” O’Donnell added. “Scott Jennings, who used to be an aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, was not always a rabid, lying Trump supporter.”

“When he first started appearing on television, he was capable of criticizing some of the more extreme Trump positions. But Scott Jennings figured out where the money is, and how he could get his own podcast, and decided to become the J.D. Vance of CNN,” O’Donnell continued. “Here’s how bad that television is that they make over there. The show that Scott Jennings frequents the most is on opposite this program. And that show, on a good night, gets half – half — of the audience of this show.”

“This program usually has an audience triple the size of the terrible, terrible television that Scott Jennings is delivering on the absurdly degraded version of CNN presided over by the man who thinks lying for Donald Trump on TV is an honorable pursuit and should be paid for by CNN,” O’Donnell concluded.

Hoo boy. There’s a lot to unpack there, huh?

Exit quote:

* Great moments in projection: Lawrence O’Donnell: “I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals.” Perhaps that’s why in 2021, Politico Gushed: Lawrence O’Donnell ‘Riding High’ — As Biden’s Favorite Ring-Kisser.

In any case, depend upon it, sir – when a man knows his channel is about to clean house in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully: MSNBC Rebrand to MS NOW Taking Place on Nov. 15.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

CLOWN NOSE ON? Stewart Gushes Over Mamdani In Pre-Election Puff Segment.

Late night comedy’s all-out effort to drag Zohran Mamdani across the finish line in New York City’s upcoming mayoral election continued on Monday on Comedy Central with its most direct bit of campaigning. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart welcomed Mamdani to tell him how much “I love hearing” about his campaign and to claim that he has been surprised establishment Democrats have not fallen in line behind him.

Stewart insisted that he is not “blowing smoke,” but he clearly was, “And what I love hearing about this is, one of the things that has been so frustrating in our politics is so much of it has been defined over these last ten years as the negative case against someone, and finally—and I think this is not blowing smoke — I think you’ve made an affirmative case for people. I think the enthusiasm that they have for you is because you have made an affirmative case that’s not about protecting something that is going to be lost or a bad man that’s over there.”

How much smoke was Stewart blowing? This much:

I’m not at all sure if Robinson would have appreciated the compliment: When Jackie Robinson Voted for Nixon and Rebuked Malcolm X.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

WHAT A STUPID QUESTION:

Did Jonathan Chait get a lobotomy?

I don’t think so, and whatever else he is, stupid is not an attribute I associated with him. So when I saw this tweet I about burst out laughing.

Chait is tweeting about Karine Jean-Pierre’s interview with The New Yorker, in which she demonstrates—once again—that anybody who suggested that she is a midwit has been far too generous. She cannot answer the  most basic questions without generating confusion–so much so that the woman who was hired to communicate for the President of the United States spent almost all her time trying to clear up misconceptions that she herself created.

Chait knows the answer, but believes he can’t say it, lest he be crucified by his fellow staffers at the Atlantic (see also: Williamson, Kevin) and by his fellow leftists on social media. We’ll know if his party wants to return from the wilderness when he’s able to verbalize why KJP was in the White House, and why Biden’s self-described “Politburo” believed they couldn’t remove her. (See also: Harris, Kamala.)

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

SAY, I’M BEGINNING TO BELIEVE THIS MAMDANI FELLA MAY HAVE JUST A TWINGE OF ANTISEMITISM TO HIM: Zohran Mamdani made vile, conspiracy-tinged statement tying NYPD to IDF, resurfaced video shows.

Mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani once made a vile, conspiracy-tinged statement tying the NYPD and the Israeli military, according to a shocking video that resurfaced Tuesday.

“We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” the Queens assemblyman said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

Mamdani made the comparison during the 2023 Democratic Socialists of America’s national convention, where he was the keynote speaker.

During a separate panel discussion titled “Socialist Internationalism: The Solution to the Crisis of Capitalism,” Mamdani said it was important to connect “hyperlocal” and “international issues” with residents.

“We are in a country where those connections abound. Especially in New York City, you have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which that struggle over there is tied to capitalist interests over here,” he said..

“For anyone to care about these issues, we have to make them connected,” he continued. “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”

Good and hard, Fun City:

Related: Imagine That — Actions Have Consequences.

If Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York City, Republicans plan to highlight that fact in their midterm campaigns against Democratic lawmakers nationwide.

That entirely unremarkable observation is the subject of an item in Axios in which the GOP is accused of plotting to “weaponize” New York City Democrats’ voting preferences, which, we should observe, consists entirely of noticing them.

For years, says reporter Kate Santaliz in her scandalized dispatch, the GOP has made former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into a “bogeywoman.” Her capacity to “rile up the base” was unrivaled. But with her diminished role, “GOP strategists are testing new symbols of the party’s left, and hope Mamdani will fill that void.”

Evergreen:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE:

And such ranting is Godwin-approved, alas: Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you.

Scott Adams last month: Why Did People Think They Could Cheer Charlie Kirk’s Murder Without Consequences?

There are numerous stories of teachers and people associated with schools who are getting canceled—meaning fired—for saying horrible things: essentially being happy, or saying it was justified, that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. What do you think about that? People are losing their jobs all over the place.

Well, let me tell you the thing that is most shocking about that. The most shocking thing is that the people who spoke out that way believed they wouldn’t get fired. I think they were all surprised, which means they’ve been living entirely within a bubble in which they thought other people would agree with that. Are you kidding me?

They thought they were in the bubble of reality where—let’s say that Hitler was an American and he died—would you feel bad about saying, “Thank God Hitler died”? No, you wouldn’t, because you would assume that almost every single person would agree with you. So it would be easy to say that.

These people are saying it in public for the world to see, as if that’s what a normal person would think. How hypnotized would you have to be?

So, in my mind anyway—and I think I’ve said it online at least once—I think of these people as the “hypnotized Hitlerians.” You can drop the “hypnotized” if you need to. But the Hitlerians are people who live in this little world where they think Hitler actually came to power in the United States because so many bad people on the left have been saying that. People should know better.

They do. But since they believe it advances their goals, and don’t really care who it gets killed in the process, the DNC-MSM aren’t going to stop doing the “hypnotizing” anytime soon:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 28th, 2025

October 27, 2025

TOO GOOD TO CHECK: Scott Jennings’ Days at CNN May Be Numbered.

Scott Jennings is easily the best thing that has happened to CNN. Unlike the faux conservatives the network usually hires, Jennings doesn’t join in with the rest of the network’s voices in trashing Trump and the GOP. He masterfully takes down the leftists on the panels he sits on and makes the segments he participates in watchable because they’re not just an echo chamber of left-wing talking points.

Well, according to a report from Semafor, Jennings may not be with CNN much longer. “CNN personality Scott Jennings visited Weiss this week at CBS’ New York headquarters,” the outlet reports. “A onetime Bush administration staffer, Jennings, as CNN’s primary defender of President Donald Trump, has elevated his profile by sparring nightly with Democrats on the network’s evening roundtable shows.”

* * * * * * * *

If Jennings does jump ship, it could be devastating for CNN, which has finally found someone willing to push back against the endless parade of liberal talking heads who dominate their panels. Since Jennings is a non-staff CNN contributor, he’s completely free to pursue opportunities elsewhere. A source familiar with the situation confirmed his ability to negotiate with other networks, and when asked about the possible move, a CNN spokesperson declined to comment. That silence speaks volumes about CNN’s concern over potentially losing their most effective conservative voice.

Make it happen, Bari.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: WaPo trashes KJP’s Memoir. In her new book, Biden’s former press secretary lets Democrats have it.

Unsurprisingly, “Independent” is a fascinating book for all the wrong reasons. It was dated before it arrived at the printers, perhaps before it was even written; no doubt it will be studied by the historians and anthropologists of the future. Jean-Pierre is an artifact of an age that looks recent on paper but feels prehistoric in practice — the age of pantsuits, the word “empowerment,” the musical “Hamilton,” the cheap therapeutic entreaties to “work on yourself” and “lean in” to various corporate abysses. “Independent” is written in the outmoded register of one of those lawn signs proclaiming that “in this house, we believe kindness is everything,” which have been firmly planted, to no tangible electoral effect, since 2016.

Jean-Pierre is revealingly blinkered. She may represent the future of the Democratic Party, despite her notional disavowal of it. Like many younger Democrats, she came of age in the in-this-house era and made her name by embracing its symbolism and sensibility. Now, she has perhaps been advised by a team of pollsters and PR professionals to distance herself from a party that is rapidly hemorrhaging appeal and support. Yet, like her colleagues in the halls of Congress, she appears to have little authentic understanding of why her erstwhile party’s approval rating has cratered. The approach she opts for in this book — loudly declaring herself an independent in a futile effort to cleanse herself of the taint of her party, all while espousing the same old worldview in the same old tired tone — is one that will surely tempt many of her peers. The silver lining is that she has provided an object lesson in exactly what not to do. The question is whether the Democrats are capable of learning from her example.

Another opinion outlet that should be considered friendly turf for KJP pummels her as well: Karine Jean-Pierre’s MSNBC Meltdown: Smirking, Dodging, and Still No Apology for Slandering Hur.

Whom the Gods destroy, they first make Nixonian:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

‘DAMN, IF HE ISN’T A DICTATOR:’ ABC News Claims Trump Not Leaving Ever.

Watching ABC News’s The View throughout October, one couldn’t help but think that their pearl clutching hyperventilation about President Trump supposedly trying to steal the midterms with the National Guard and the ballroom being evidence that he planned on holding onto power, were meant to incite another assassination attempt. On Monday’s show, they claimed that Trump was in fact a “dictator,” that he was planning on running again in 2028, and he was going to steal the election.

“Well, [Trump] told us he was going to be a dictator on day one and, damn, if he isn’t a dictator,” proclaimed ABC News moderator Whoopi Goldberg. Despite playing a soundbite of Trump denying that he was going to seek a third term because the people wouldn’t support him, Goldberg warned he was going to do it anyway and wanted to know if their audience was “going to let it happen[.]”

Damn if Trump isn’t a dictator – who’s doing a really lousy job of being one:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025
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