I just got back from a four-day trip to Florida for a little time amusement park hopping. What did I miss? Well, Donald Trump, in the space of 36 hours, broke the following:
- Iran's nuclear weapons program
- Ali Khamenei's ability to be taken seriously
- Russia's alliance with Iran
- The myth that Pete Hegseth can't run the Pentagon
- The myth that Bunker Busters are unproven and uncertain to perform as advertised
- The myth that Iran is a regional power
- Margaret Brennan (Okay, he broke her into several more, smaller pieces)
- Barack Obama's foreign policy kiddie corps (Ben Rhodes, Tommy Vietor, Valerie Jarrett)
- Alex "Jose" Padilla's 15-minutes of fame
- Every elected Democrat except John Fetterman
First, some thoughts on Operation Midnight Hammer, the simultaneous strikes on the three primary nuclear sites within Iran - Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. At the top, President Trump once again showed a total mastery of ambiguity, deception, and head fakery, turning an attack that the entire world knew was coming, and yet preserved the element of surprise so that there was zero collateral damage to any U.S. asset - personnel or equipment. From an operational security standpoint, while the press and others online were chasing decoy B-2s headed to Guam, the attack formation came, saw, released their payload, and were back home in time to watch Game 7 of the NBA championship. There were no leaks, and the entire chain of command from the commander-in-chief through his Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, all the way down to the pilots of the B-2's and refueling air wing, showed military capability that is unmatched on this planet.
The main event, Fordow, the underground uranium enrichment base under a football field's worth of concrete and Iranian mountain, was the recipient of not one, not two, but 14 of the 30,000-pound GBU-57's. The President did not wish to leave anything to chance. He went big, and then he went home. You can see in this imagery before the strike and after, two sets of three holes each. This accounts for a dozen of the 14 massive ordinance penetrators used. The remaining two were probably just to bounce the rubble.
As for Natanz and Isfahan, Israel had already dealt those sites a fairly consequential blow, but after the U.S. dropped 24 Cruise missiles and 75 additional precision-guided weapons launched from multiple platforms between the two sites, Iran is now out of the nuclear weapons manufacturing business.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said over the weekend that somebody, namely the Russians, needs to step up and provide Iran with the nukes it sought in order to settle the score. Sounds ominous enough except for Vladimir Putin saying how much of a friend he is to Israel, and in fact considers Israel to be almost a Russian-speaking country now due to the influx of so many former Soviet Jews. Putin is in no hurry to jump into this fight at the present time, especially considering what he saw play out. And as for Medvedev, even when he "ran" the country, he didn't run the country. This was the same guy who met with then-President Barack Obama and said he would translate his message to Vladimir. Putin's always been the guy in charge, and he doesn't want any part of this.
Khamenei, who previously has denied Iran is in either the terrorism or nuclear weapons business, is now so hopping mad that he's threatening to unleash terror cells he's already planted in the United States. He also wants to shut down the Straits of Hormuz. Apparently, he wants whatever constitutes as his navy, as well as whatever dinghies remain in the Houthi fleet, to become the lattice for a new reef to grow at the bottom of the Gulf. Khamenei's internet may have cut out enough of late to not realize the Nimitz carrier group is now on station and might have something to say about a blockade.
The night of the strike, after President Trump's address to the nation, I knew the Sunday shows would be a mess, trying to find anyone out there they could to talk to about why this was such a bad idea and an unconstitutional move, even though when Barack Obama acted unilaterally in Syria without prior Congressional approval, it didn't bother media one bit.
I tweeted out that Margaret Brennan's Face the Nation would be the most likely culprit of how to misread the room entirely. I wasn't wrong. She went up against Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, who disabused her of every faulty premise she presented.
Margaret "Matlock" Brennan is trying to defend Iran and indict the administration for acting against the nuclear threat by making the bar of entry on any action hard intelligence of Khamenei, on tape, ordering the making of a bomb. It's laughably absurd. This isn't Law and Order, it's not The Wire, and a Portland district court judge might try, but isn't going to get away with issuing an international injunction against the administration ordering them to rebuild Iran's nuclear sites. Iran's intentions were perfectly clear. Their words are meaningless. According to Brennan, Reagan's 'trust but verify' line could only be satisfied if the Soviets pinky-swore that they were disarming.
More on judges in a minute, but as for the feckless Democratic Party, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has been rock solid on the strike. By Sunday morning, former number two Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer, offered a mild backing of Trump's action. That's it. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, criticized the attack. He took Iran's side. So did the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. Even the so-called moderates like Ro Khanna couldn't stop their inner foreign policy pinball machine from tilting.
The fact that Khanna is appearing with Tom Massie as an ally on this issue should have told him that this is probably not a good look for him. If there's ever been an opportunity to be against the state of Israel, Massie has taken that opportunity every time.
Khanna is trying to maintain that Iran was never out of compliance with the International Atomic Energy Agency during the time of the JCPOA. Even if you believe in the agency's ability to monitor whether Iran was cheating or not, which I do not, and you give Khanna his premise, it's still totally irrelevant. Iran is, or was, out of compliance as recently as May.
"The Iranian nuclear weapons development program is well advanced, and Iran possesses a growing arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long distances," the Austrian domestic intelligence agency report stated.
They also went on to say Iran had enough enriched uranium for at least six, and according to Israeli intelligence, as much to provide for a dozen or so nuclear warheads. There was no time left. The diplomacy clock had run out. But because Trump is the one who pulled the trigger, the left, almost to a person, sided with Iran, because the largest state sponsor of terror in the world also happened to be against Trump. To Democrats, the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
There are a handful of conservatives on Twitter that think this move from Trump shatters his MAGA coalition, and that Republicans can kiss the 2026 midterms goodbye because of the fallout of the Iran strikes. This is nonsense.
There has been much criticism of the President for his nebulous on again, off again tariff policy. The left has plenty of ground, some warranted, some unwarranted, for inconsistencies in Trump carrying out all sorts of different policy items thus far. But being fuzzy about Iran getting a nuclear weapon has never been one of those things. From the time he came down the elevator at Trump Plaza ten years ago, Donald Trump has never misstated his stance on Iran vis-a-vis nukes. He's been on record hundreds of times and has never wavered. Once he concluded the Iranians would never take the offramp he provided, he knew he had to act. The only question was the timing and how he could engage in verbal sleight of hand in order to protect the personnel carrying out the strikes.
But let's even give those voices online their premise that this hurts or depresses MAGA turnout in the midterms. I have eight reasons why I'm not as bullish on House chances, and those eight reasons are in addition to the economy improving, inflation in check, income to cost of living improving, and tax cuts becoming permanent by 2026. It lies in four red states - Ohio, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia. All four are expected to clear legal hurdles and implement revised Congressional redistricting maps. If the Constitution still means anything, and state legislatures are allowed to set their own maps, Ohio will add three Republican-friendly districts, Louisiana will add one, Georgia will add one, and Texas could add another three. That's potentially 8 new districts that favor Republicans. Given the state of district court judges, I'm sure there will be further challenges, but Republicans have been winning those on appeal. And there's an outside chance that Arkansas might even add one more if they clear a legal hurdle. I'm just not buying the doom and gloom here. The vast majority of the country thinks this strike is long overdue, and Trump gets full marks for giving his all to allow diplomacy to work before taking decisive action to stop a problem from becoming a nightmare. If the economy continues to improve, and Iran has been essentially taken off the board and the Middle East planes out a bit, I'm pretty bullish on the GOP's House chances. And I think they can add a seat or two in the Senate, given the vulnerability of Jon Ossoff in Georgia, and open seats in Michigan and New Hampshire.
Now, the courts. In the same week that saw Donald Trump take on the head of the snake of international jihadi terrorism in Iran, district courts continued to make a mockery of the Article III branch of government, including the United States Supreme Court.
Remember Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen's favorite constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia? You know him, right? He's the illegal alien MS-13 gang banger who beat his wife regularly while living in the Free State, enough so to cause her to seek multiple temporary restraining orders. He's also the same person who got caught in Tennessee smuggling additional illegal aliens across state lines into Maryland as part of his gang duties. Included in the stew of new charges is inappropriate conduct with a minor he was trafficking. After a few months in the El Salvadorian Graybar Hotel, he was returned to the United States to meet up with indictments on about a hundred new federal charges.
No matter, said the Tennessee district court judge. Barbara J. Holmes, an Obama appointee in 2015, looked at Garcia, his prior record, the charges and gravity of evidence against him presently, and denied the government's attempt to hold him without bail. Her solution? Turn him loose. She'll take another look at the case on Wednesday, but the government is immediately appealing her ruling on his pending release, continuing to detain him in the meantime.
Until the Supreme Court finally reigns in these rogue district court judges, we are seeing the left-wing judiciary become much more potent and powerful than the Democratic Party is by a long shot. Who are these judges? Well, they include the likes of Michael Farbiarz, who just ordered the release of Columbia "student" green card holder Mahmoud Khalil from ICE custody, presumably to attend to his newborn child, only to see Khalil back at in the streets protesting Sunday on behalf of Iran. I guess embracing the quality time with his new child was a little less important than the cause of promoting terrorism in New York City. Quite simply, the federal bench is becoming the most politically powerful party in the country next to the Republicans. Khalil is literally in the streets of New York defending the people who do this to women in Iran if they dare to uncover their faces in public, because of the power of one Biden-appointed judge.
Don't talk to me about the strength of the Democratic Party's political leadership. The DNC is as much a flaming hot mess as Fordow right now. And in the Senate, Chuck Schumer is even more pathetic than normal than cold barbeque Chuck Schumer. Remember this gem from Chucky earlier in the month?
From this, one would think that because Trump was trying a last ditch effort at diplomacy, Schumer was against that. He seemed to be for standing tough on Iran. Or maybe he was just taking whatever side Trump wasn't on at that moment in time. After the strike? Well, as you might expect, same Chucky, doing a complete 180.
Democrats don't worry me. They're about as toothless a paper tiger as the mullahcracy in Iran these days. All bark, no bite. Judges continuing to expand their boundaries because no one's keeping them in their lane? That concerns me greatly. If there's any possible question involving the resolution of a close Congressional district election result next year, how do you suppose a federal judge is going to rule? I cut my teeth producing the Hugh Hewitt Show in the summer of 2000 when the country worked its way through the fall presidential campaign into basically what was a draw. 538 votes in Florida made all the difference, and the lower courts, and even the Florida Supreme Court, tried to upend the election by exceeding their boundaries into what chads counted, which dimples didn't, whether the military could or could not participate in exercising their franchise, and who was allowed to monitor the counting process. The Supreme Court had to intercede not once, but twice before the chaos was settled. Now picture mini versions of those dramatic 36 days a quarter-century ago and multiply it by 20 to 30 different Congressional districts.
The Supreme Court needs to drop their own rhetorical version of a GBU-57. The radioactive legal enrichment in district courts all over the country is beyond levels meant for peaceful use, and it has already been weaponized. We now know the MOP's work. It's time for the Court to drop their own Midnight Hammer.
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