<![CDATA[2026 Elections]]><![CDATA[Chuck Schumer]]><![CDATA[Graham Platner]]><![CDATA[JD Vance]]><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]>Featured

Tuesday’s Final Word – HotAir

You get a tabbie in the dark, it’s raining in the park, but meantime





Ed: This is your periodic reminder that a state run by Democrats who keep talking about “saving democracy” are utterly incompetent at running one. This is an embarrassment that should get voters unhappy enough to remove all of the incompetents who refuse to fix it. An upcoming case at the Supreme Court will likely force the state to reform anyway, as the court is likely to rule that ballots received after Election Day in elections involving federal offices must be disqualified. Can’t happen fast enough. 

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WSJ: At the start of the U.S.-Iran war, officials in Oman raced to establish a back channel with Tehran that, according to Arab officials, helped Gulf states reopen flight corridors—a diplomatic coup made possible by Muscat’s staunch impartiality in the conflict.

Three months later, that neutral stance is beginning to backfire. Washington increasingly interprets Oman’s approach toward Tehran as hostile to America and, according to U.S. and Arab officials, has pressed Oman to pick a side and cut diplomatic ties with Iran.

In recent days, the Trump administration has threatened to sanction and even bomb Oman, after a new intelligence assessment concluded that Muscat was planning to join Iran in tolling vessels in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, according to another U.S. official. Oman has repeatedly denied that it plans to do so.

Ed: One consequence of showing “restraint” in this region is that everyone else sees it as weakness. Other players will adjust their calculations as a result. Oman has always played both sides, as has Qatar, and those two are going to side with the IRGC if the US leaves them in control of Tehran. 

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Ed: I guess I’m not surprised that Schumer would sink this low, I do think, however, that Schumer will soon have an unpleasant surprise or two coming his way soon, as we have not heard the last from Platner’s past. If something really ugly emerges, Schumer will have egg on his face that may take a very long time to remove … if ever … for having endorsed a Nazi-tatted socialist cad. 

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Ed:  Mediaite has more on Fetterman’s remarks, too. Nothing Fetterman says here is inaccurate. And yet the Democrat establishment spent today embracing Platner and raising funds for him. That speaks volumes about the supposedly anti-fascist “party of women.” 

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Ed: The Platner tax will only get applied if Republican opponents make Platner an issue in every Senate and House race. I suspect they are waiting to do that until Platner actually wins the nomination, but the move today by Schumer to wrap his arms around Herr Totenkopf should be enough. 

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Mediaite “And he was like, ‘Well, I don’t know’ – you know – ‘Am I too old?’ I mean, it was the age question no matter where we went,” she continued.





“And so, of course, you know, we heard that, what people were saying, but then people were doing polling, you know, who could beat Trump? And the only person who polled that could beat Trump was Joe Biden. And so that’s why Joe decided to continue on,” she added.

“Do you or does the president now regret dropping out of the race?” Geist asked.

“You know, I would never want anyone I loved to go through that again,” she replied. “And it was so painful, not just for us, not just for me and for Joe, but we have children and grandchildren. And to see them have to go through that was really a hard thing, a hard time for our family, and I would never want to put our family through that again,” Jill Biden replied.

“But does he believe to this day that he would’ve defeated Donald Trump in that election?” Geist pressed.

“I believe he would have beat Donald Trump in that election,” Jill Biden said.

Ed: That’s nonsense on stilts. One reason Biden challenged Trump to an early debate was to reverse polling erosion that had been happening for months. Voters had grown furious with Biden’s border policies, which he attempted to adjust at almost the same time for the same reasons.  By the time the debate took place, Trump had run a consistent lead over Biden for eight months, and Biden would have had to go on the campaign trail in 2024. Jill’s flat-out lying, either to herself, everyone else, or both. 

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Ed: What do you mean “we,” Kemosabe? I seem to recall when “we” kept pointing out Biden’s senility, only to be lectured about ageism and instructed that Biden’s aides kept calling him Sharp As a Tack™. Also, there were those few weeks when CNN covered “cheap fakes” as a national threat … until the debate. 





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Ed: Well … bye. 60 Minutes has been corrupt for decades, and it’s going to take some ass-kicking and heads-rolling to reform it. Scott Pelley is Temu Rather, and should be the first to go, pour encourager les autres. 

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Politico: There are only three real threats that could complicate Vice President JD Vance’s path to the Republican nomination in 2028.

One would be a spectacular betrayal by President Donald Trump. America’s gossip-in-chief has played enough 2028 parlor games with friends and aides to ensure a stream of stories about Trump considering alternatives to Vance — chiefly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. There is a long way between Trump’s kibitzing and actually intervening to wipe out his loyal deputy.

The second would be a grisly scandal that implicates Vance, specifically, with smoking-gun evidence. It would have to be indefensible even for the Trump administration. Vance has given us no reason to expect that kind of demise.

The third threat to Vance is Spencer Pratt.

Ed: Give me a break. Pratt hasn’t even won a spot in the mayoral runoff yet. This is a Fantasy Politics League chinstroker, not a serious piece of political analysis. Vance and Rubio clearly would be far better positioned, even if Pratt won a miraculous victory in Los Angeles as mayor. We hope he does, but he may not even make the runoff at the moment. Calm down. 

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Ed: The ads have been entertaining. And effective, too – effective enough to have media outlets covering them as an AI threat to traditional political campaigning. The only thing that rings false is the idea that MacArthur Park was a safe, family-friendly environment in 2013. Maybe 1983 or 1993, but I’d question that, too. 

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SemaforActing Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice is nixing the president’s “anti-weaponization” fund. When asked about the $1.8 billion fund by Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., this afternoon, Blanche said, “We are not moving forward with the fund.” Clarifying, Meng asked: “Ever?” Blanche replied: “Correct.” The news could now unlock relatively quick action on Senate Republicans’ party-line immigration enforcement bill, possibly this week. 

Ed: Good. It was a bad idea, and it needed to get the heave-ho. Let’s get the DHS funding in place now. 

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Ed: A D+4 among likely voters isn’t great news for the GOP, but it’s not as bad as some other polling. RCP has the split at D+7 at the moment, which is very bad territory. 

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Dr. Albert Mohler: But when it comes to Talarico, he tries to be evasive. Here’s what he says, “I don’t believe in a progressive or conservative Christianity. I believe in a biblical Christianity. My faith is rooted in scripture and in the teachings of Jesus Christ.” Well, again, that is a move very similar to the liberals of the early 20th century. And of course they were repudiating Christianity and now we can see in terms of the pastor of this church, where that leads and I would say inevitably, and by the way, if you were to go back to those original theological liberals, they called themselves sometimes modernists in the early 20th century. They were adamant about the necessity of perpetuating Christian morality, for example, a Christian understanding, a biblical understanding of marriage and sexuality and all the rest.





Over the course of the last several decades, mainline Protestantism has ditched all of that. And of course, it turns out that this pastor, Jim Rigby, was very much a part of that within the PCUSA, the Presbyterian Church USA, which is the liberal Presbyterian denomination, or at least the largest of them, which is decreasingly large. There are a lot of conservatives there in Texas who have been very much onto, very much aware of what James Talarico is all about. One of the most amazing things is that Talarico has actually wandered or waded into some territory and he said some things which are very much on the record and well, you can look at them. Some of them are now posted on social media in which he says the most incredibly liberal things.

I don’t mean just liberal as compared to conservative. I mean, liberal as in terms of basically repudiating Christian truth and this is what becomes very, very clear.

Ed: My friend and colleague Dr. Mohler is reacting to the New York Times profile of Talarico and his pastor, Jim Rigby. You will want to read the whole essay (or watch the whole video), and then bookmark this. You will want to reference it often in this election, and perhaps pass it along to people who may not understand just how heretical Talarico’s claims are. 

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Ed: People outside of Texas don’t count, of course, and the people inside Texas will like go the full Bless Your Heart mode on Talarico and Dems. I would advise those outside Texas to remember how Beto O’Rourke and Colin Allred worked out and save their money for other races, though. 





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Ed: The whole family is despicable. 

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Last night’s lyric: “Radar Love” by Golden Earring:


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