Wednesday's child is full of tabs ...
NEW: President Trump tells reporters he will "most likely" be going to Egypt for Gaza peace talks.
— ABC News (@ABC) October 8, 2025
Follow live updates: https://t.co/0uTnvqC5Xk pic.twitter.com/tz2dOsi0dw
Ed: The deal got announced an hour or so later — assuming it’s on the level. If Trump flies there only to get more Hamas Hokey Pokey, there will be hell to pay -- with Hamas, but also with Qatar and Turkey for playing along.
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Times of Israel: Under the proposed deal, Israel is to begin releasing Palestinian security prisoners once the hostage-release phase is completed.
Two hundred and fifty of the remaining 303 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli jails will be released, along with 1,700 Palestinians who have been detained in Gaza since October 7, 2023, including all women and children from Gaza held in that timeframe. Many of those detainees have been held by way of a controversial policy called administrative detention, without due process. For every slain hostage released by Hamas, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans that it is holding.
Channel 12 reported that the understanding currently appears to be that once Hamas hands over all of the living hostages and all the dead hostages it can locate, and makes clear it is not holding any as bargaining chips, the prisoner releases will follow.
Israel will not free Hamas Nukhba terrorists who directly participated in the October 7 massacre, the report said. But there will be some “flexibility” on the issue of the release of some heavyweight terrorists serving life terms, many of whom Israel has refused to free in past deals.
Ed: If Trump can force Hamas to cough up the hostages before an Israeli withdrawal or simultaneous exchanges of Palestinian prisoners, they must truly have realized the straits into which they put themselves. But we should wait to see whether they actually execute any such deal. Let’s wait to see just how well compliance will go before uncorking the champagne.
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BREAKING FROM THE WHITE HOUSE
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 8, 2025
Trump is going to Walter Reed for his physical Friday.
"President Trump is considering going to the Middle East shortly thereafter." pic.twitter.com/qPyHpy06JU
Ed: I wonder if this timing will change now that the deal is all but signed. In fact, I wonder if this isn’t a deliberate misdirection, and that Trump will be on his way to Egypt already.
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Jerusalem Post: The feeling of betrayal by Hamas looms large. For 17 years under the terror group’s rule, Gazans were told that “resistance” would protect them and serve the Palestinian cause. Sacrifice, they were told, was sacred and worthwhile.
But now, after suffering the disastrous outcomes of Hamas’s murderous venture, many have begun to ask hard questions: Was it worth the price? For whom were the sacrifices made? What was the real purpose?
“Gaza has turned into hell, Hamas led us to this hell. Nothing is left, people have lost everything they had, and for what? What did we get out of all this? Nothing but death and destruction,” said F, who resides in a refugee camp with his family in central Gaza.
“Dogs are eating the bodies of dead people that have been thrown away in the streets, and you can also see body parts scattered all over. Is there anything worse than that?” he said.
Ed: Funny how few Gazans thought about this two years ago. That's how Hamas left Israelis on October 7, 2023. At the time, Gazans celebrated that as a great victory. If they have truly recognized the consequences of Hamas' annihilationist terrorism, maybe they'll be ready for something different. Maybe.
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No way to sugarcoat it: this is evidence of a profound moral failure that reflects poorly on all of us who have educated and influenced this generation.
— Robert Pondiscio (@rpondiscio) October 8, 2025
Or failed to. https://t.co/JXgRRSxsf3
Ed: Exactly. Academia and public schools don't educate any longer. They mainly just indoctrinate, especially in blue states and cities. This is just one data point in an avalanche of evidence for that conclusion.
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BREAKING: Lawler and El Jefe just got into a bit of shouting 🤣
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 8, 2025
Jefe got so TRIGGERED that he just LOST IT and screamed, "Why don't you just keep your mouth shut?"
This is so EMBARRASSING and shows just how BAD OFF the Democrat Party in 2025 is. pic.twitter.com/9x0uZhrWxd
Ed: When did Democrats turn themselves into TikTok teenagers? Do they really think that this makes them look like a responsible, governing party?
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Matt Margolis at PJ Media: Through the entire exchange, Jeffries flailed, repeated himself endlessly, and tried to turn every fact into a personal attack. Lawler calmly exposed the absurdity of shutting down the government for political theater while offering concrete solutions. The contrast was stark: one lawmaker focused on results, the other on optics.
By the end, Jeffries looked like a caricature of a frustrated opposition leader, and Lawler looked like someone who actually understands how government works. In other words, Jeffries was the one who embarrassed himself again while Lawler scored a win for common sense, constituents, and anyone still wondering why Democrats can’t govern without a tantrum.
Ed: Again, this demonstrates why the shutdown strategy cuts against Democrat interests. They are the party that argues for government-run solutions to problems, real and imagined. By shutting down government in a fit of adolescent pique, they are demonstrating that they're not interested in solutions -- they just want power. And they are temperamentally unsuited to wield it.
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She is stunning, brave. A leader for Democrats out of the wilderness, riding on California’s nonexistent $15 billion light rail with her future vice presidential running mate, Jay Jones. https://t.co/u9lw2zCLQY
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 8, 2025
Ed: Batgirl strikes again.
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🚨 Thank you, @FaulknerFocus, for focusing on Virginia. The Democrats’ silence is deafening. Our Commonwealth deserves better, and Virginia Republicans will not let up. Virginains are owed accountability. pic.twitter.com/cKacGj2JDx
— Senator Mark Peake (@PeakeforSenate) October 8, 2025
Ed: Speaking of temperamental unsuitability, Jay Jones offers a moment of unique clarity. Not only is Jones unsuited to hold office -- especially as the state's chief law enforcement officer -- but so are the Democrats who refuse to demand his withdrawal from the election. They are endorsing these messages while endorsing Jones. And they need to be held accountable for it.
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Audrey Fahlberg at NRO: Other Democrats are worried, though, that the scandal will drag the ticket down, especially given how much play the story is getting in local and national media as well as in new Republican ad spending. The scandal is expected to be a major topic during Thursday’s gubernatorial debate between Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger and GOP nominee Winsome Earle-Sears, the commonwealth’s current lieutenant governor.
Those frustrated with Jones hope that this will play out like the 2024 North Carolina elections, when CNN tied salacious porn-site comments to an account associated with GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, who lost by double digits but didn’t drag the Republican ticket or the president down with him.
And yet the domino effect continues. On Wednesday, James Fitzpatrick, director of the nonpartisan Center to Advance Security in America, filed a complaint with the Virginia State Bar requesting that Jones’s law license be revoked, citing concerns that the texts revealed in NR’s report conflict with the ethics standards outlined in the preamble of the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct. “Jones’ disgusting, depraved worldview makes him not only unfit to represent the people of Virginia, but it also makes him unfit to practice law,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his letter, first shared with National Review.
Ed: Will the state bar take action? I suspect not; the bar associations have become progressive-activist groups in themselves. However, a failure to act in this instance will reveal their temperamental unsuitability to police their industry fairly and honestly, too.
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And it appears that the poll was taken during the weekend the story was breaking, so there’s a good chance it’s lower now that it has had time to soak.
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 8, 2025
Ed: Let's wait for polling this week on the gubernatorial race, too. Abigail Spanberger had been coasting over Winsome Earl-Sears until now. I suspect that will begin to change as this story spreads. Of course, that means that the Protection Racket Media would have to cover the scandal, which brings us to ...
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Newsbusters: Imagine if there was a Republican candidate in a hotly contested race that was convicted of reckless driving, caught wishing death on a politician and his family in texts, accused of wanting to see police officers shot, and was called to drop out of the race by the sitting President of the United States?
That candidate’s face would be plastered all over ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS’s news shows, next to those heinous texts, accusations, and arrest record, but because Jay Jones is a Democrat, he enjoys the protection of the broadcast networks. ...
So how much time did the broadcast networks devote to the texts controversy?
63 seconds.
Ed: Yeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh.
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"drop out"
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) October 8, 2025
"hate has no place in this Commonwealth" https://t.co/31T96tKh0i
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John Nolte at Breitbart: So, in a mere five years, the Woke Gestapo went from being smugly certain it had forever banished Weiss to watching helplessly as she became a millionaire and their boss.
I don’t care who you are, that’s a great story, a great American story, and Weiss deserves all the credit in the world for pulling herself up, rebuilding from the ashes, and sticking her finger in eye of democracy’s greatest villains—the Woke Gestapo.
Nevertheless…
I do not hold out much hope that she can or even wants to reform CBS News.
My guess, and I hope to be proven wrong, I hope to have misjudged Ms. Weiss, is that during the upcoming 2026 midterm elections and 2028 presidential election, CBS News will be as it is now—indistinguishable from CNN or MSNBC.
Ed: I am a little surprised to find everyone as skeptical as I am at the prospects of change at CBS News. Be sure to read all of John's argument, which overlaps mine but raises other issues too.
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Ed: I get the final Final Word today with my pal Tony Katz!
Right Now! @EdMorrissey of @hotairblog on the Shutdown nonsense and where Democrats go from here.
— Tony Katz (@tonykatz) October 8, 2025
Tune in! https://t.co/kqcrHlFxq2 @WMUNMuncie @93wibc @WGCLradio @953MNC
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