<![CDATA[Democrat Party]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]><![CDATA[Iran]]><![CDATA[Liberal Media]]><![CDATA[Media Bias]]>Featured

The Iranian Regime and the Political Left’s Shared Enemy

One of the great odd couple/buddy movie pairings in the 70’s and 80’s was Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. The two were supposed to play the two leading characters in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles in 1974, with Pryor already co-writing much of the script with Brooks. But just before filming began, Pryor backed out, and Cleavon Little was chosen to star as Bart, Rock Ridge’s first Black sheriff opposite Wilder’s Waco Kid. 

Two years later, Silver Streak premiered, a murder mystery set aboard an Amtrak trip from Los Angeles to Chicago. The movie is 50 years old this year, and even though many parts have not aged well, it always struck me at the time, and even watching it a hundred times later over the years, that everyone on the train had a gun. There were handguns, pistols, shotguns, and rifles everywhere on board. There was even a conveniently placed, loaded harpoon resting against the wall at the rear of the train in a cargo car. For a journey that was supposed to be a lovely alternative to air travel and allow riders to see half the country, the train was essentially an armory on rails. That part of rail travel seems to have not changed much today as the would-be assassin Saturday night at the Washington Hilton hotel, site of the White House Correspondents Dinner, took that same route before boarding a second train on his quest to decapitate the Trump administration in the nation’s capital. 

Cole Allen, an intelligent 31-year-old Cal Tech product who tutored STEM students as recently as last year, marinated himself in the Trump-hating poison offered non-stop by the progressive left, and let that constant flow of venom radicalize him to the extent that he threw the rest of his life away for a delusional one-man jihad to take out not only President Trump, but as many of his Cabinet members as he could. And if a room full of Beltway journalists were caught up in the crossfire, so be it. 

Thus far, reactions to another attempt on Trump’s life by those on the left-wing incitement side of the political aisle fall into three buckets: He was actually a disgruntled Trump voter, his heart was in the right place, or the attempted assassination was actually a false flag operation staged to make Trump look sympathetic. I guess there’s technically a fourth – Saturday night’s attack is just another manifestation of the ubiquity of guns in this country, not the psychosis of the potential shooters using them. Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday went down the ‘it’s the guns’ fault’  rabbit hole with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.





As for his motivation, Mr. Allen’s manifesto and online writings leave very little doubt. Nor does his campaign donations to Kamala Harris. 

And yet, even with all the disclosures of how twisted and warped the shooter’s mind had become by the political left, former President Barack Obama still couldn’t put his finger on the motive. 

For that matter, looking at his Azkaban-esque presidential library, he couldn’t put his finger on a talented architect, either. 

The left’s insane denial of culpability reached its peak, though, within hours of the attempt on Trump’s life, with multiple online voices claiming the whole thing was staged.

Our good friend Mary Katharine Ham had the best post answering this conspiratorial absurdity running amok. 

The folks doing weekend duty on M-SNOW, the cable network that has partaken in incitement of violence against Donald Trump for years, couldn’t quite piece together who the shooter was targeting in the first place. They were totally stumped at who might have been the target of the man carrying a bunch of guns racing past security with the intention to bust into a ballroom that just so happened to contain the President of the United States on the dais at the head table. 

Don Lemon, the disgraced and fired CNN anchor who now runs a podcast fueled entirely on Trump hatred, couldn’t help himself. He refused to attend and gave his reasoning why before the bullets began to fly. 

After the shooter was taken down, the President wanted to continue with the evening. He didn’t want to give in one inch to the violence. But since the room was breached by people running away, many of them taking wine bottles from their tables with them (perhaps as offerings to Kamala Harris for later interviews), it was simply not possible to re-sweep the room, run everyone through security again, and start over. 

Instead, Donald Trump and his team, along with the White House Press Corps, all still wearing their tuxedoes and formal wear, went back to the White House Brady Room where an impromptu, 30-minute press conference was held. The President talked to several reporters Saturday night in addition to the press conference, and began his Sunday by calling Jonathan Karl of ABC at 7 AM before talking to Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News. And of course, last night, Norah O’Donnell got a quickly-scheduled sit-down with President Trump for 60 Minutes. Because, to Don Lemon, that’s how you demonstrate what taking away press freedom looks like. 

During the press conference Saturday night at the White House, the first question went to Weijia Jiang of CBS, the current head of the White House Correspondents Association. 





That’s obviously another way Trump is depriving the media of its freedoms – praising them for how they comported themselves as professionals during the crisis. 

As for Trump, his immediate interaction with the press in the wake of yet another attempt on his life was calm, respectful, gracious, and reassuring. He recognized the moment for what it could have easily deteriorated into, and instead used it as a call to unite the denizens and scribes of the Beltway. It was the right tone, and one that, when deployed by Trump, can be very disarming to so many in Washington who truly hate him. 

But did it work? Will the unity of shared trauma experienced by everyone in that ballroom last? Of course, not. But it was a fine pivot nevertheless, and the Trump charm offensive could go a long way with the American public as we get closer to the midterm elections if he shows that side of himself more often. 

One person not buying it is former Meet the Press anchor, Chuck Todd. 

After the President reminded people of the ridiculous lawsuits preventing him from building the ballroom on the East Wing of the White House, a venue that would be perfectly-suited for an event like the White House Correspondents Dinner, Todd said this. 

It’s not a vanity renovation project. Every president going forward, publicly or privately, will thank Trump for a great, secure venue with which to hold state dinners in the future. Instead of a hotel ballroom, where there’s a thousand possible Cole Allens-in-waiting upstairs in a room as a registered guest, the White House ballroom would be a location where Allen would never make it past the outer perimeter and onto the grounds, let alone the building. Only those with credentials get in, and they’re all very tightly screened. 

This tweet is rich from Chuck Todd in that now he’s blaming the Iranian “mess” on Trump. A few weeks ago, he was floating the whole “Bibi and the Jews lured Trump into attacking Iran” narrative. 

But since Todd and the Democrats treat Donald Trump as though he’s the enemy (and in the case of Mr. Allen, the actual antichrist), and since Chuck seems concerned about what he deems as a mess in the Middle East, let’s take a quick look at how things are going, shall we? 

After an initial report that a handful of shadow oil tankers left Iran and got through the naval blockade, this was the follow-up a couple of hours later. 

As the late Gilda Radner, as Emily Litella, used to say on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, “Never mind.” The blockade is continuing to block Iranian ports, and the effects are absolutely crippling the country. Puppet President Masoud Pezeshkian had a message for residents of Tehran that sounded eerily similar to a Willie Nelson song – Turn out the lights, the party’s over. 





There have already been widespread reports of power outages all over Tehran. The infrastructure is already crumbling, and that’s without American and Israeli air forces taking the next escalatory step of blowing up power plants and bridges. 

Japan, which before hostilities broke out in the Strait of Hormuz imported between 90 and 95% of its oil from Iran, used to buy a token amount daily from the United States. Today? Oil tankers sailing into Japanese harbors laden with American oil warrant national news coverage. 

A PhD in IT and artificial intelligence, living in Tehran, reports on life in the city now that the blockade has had a few weeks to do its job. 

I want to pay attention to what he wrote as much as what is said in the video clip. 

As an Iranian in Iran, I need to point out that the economic situation in Iran is catastrophic right now. Most people still haven’t received their Farvardin monthly salaries (March 21-April 20 in Iranian calendar). 

Businesses are seeing record-low sales — when no one has income, people only buy bare survival necessities. I can personally confirm this: I haven’t been paid either. I’ve started selling whatever I can just to get by. Bank staff, nurses, teachers, pensioners — none have received their money. I have practically zero income. If it wasn’t for the free Starlink for Iranians (thank you @elonmusk ), I wouldn’t even have internet right now. 

This is the brutal reality on the ground. Yet Islamic regime agents keep lying that “the enemy” (the West) is paying a heavier price. Complete nonsense. The Hormuz situation strained things globally a bit, but it’s nothing compared to what Iranians are enduring. 

We were already collapsing economically before this — that’s what sparked the protests and the massacre that followed. Now it’s accelerating toward the breaking point. If the Basij and IRGC thugs also stop getting paid enough, they’ll finally feel the heat too.

Here’s another account of the mood of average Iranians in Tehran. 

The economy is eating people alive. 

Prices are through the roof. Eggs, rice, bread, the most basic things, now feel like daily calculations of humiliation. Spending has become necessity only. People are selling dollars, gold, whatever little reserve they had, not to build a future, but to survive the week. 

The streets and subway are not as crowded as they should be. Street vendors are desperate. Restaurants and cafés are bleeding customers. Businesses are taking hit after hit from the blackout. Layoffs are spreading like smoke after a fire. 

There is no mass flight. No grand panic stockpiling. Not yet. What you see is something quieter and heavier: controlled pressure, exhausted restraint, a city burning through its last buffers while pretending to function. 

And the blackout damage has barely begun.





Miad Maleki of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has been calculating when the regime reaches the tipping point of being absolutely screwed in their oil business. Their catastrophe happens when they can no longer put oil coming out of the pipeline at Kharg Island into containers, floating, land, or buckets lying around, and have to cap the wells at their source in the fields of Southwestern Iran. Maleki says their point of no return is days away. Once that happens, the cost to restart the flow down the road is an enormous price to pay, something the regime has no ability to appropriate.  

Six to sixteen days at the absolute most before they have to shut it all down. President Trump thinks it’s even sooner than that. 

A week ago, I said that the more time goes on with Iran threatening traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the more the markets will, out of necessity, move oil away from that chokepoint forever, taking away Iran’s leverage. As of a week ago, almost 80% of the oil traffic through the Strait was flowing through an alternative route. Add another one to the mix very soon, which will raise that percentage north of 90. 

And as for Iran’s attempt to bypass the petrodollar and force tankers and cargo ships to pay tolls to the regime in either Chinese yuan or cryptocurrency, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is taking that option off the table, too. 

By striking a dozen of its Arab neighbors with missiles and drones, Iran has driven them into partnerships with Israel. One recent example is the United Arab Emirates, which just took delivery of an Iron Dome system from Israel, saying they will never forget who their friends were when they needed them, and who attacked them. 

Iran is isolated. China is not helping them, at least not significantly, and is actively sourcing oil from other locations, including the United States. Russia is talking to them, but Putin has his hands so full of Ukrainian drones taking one critical infrastructure site after another off the table, he can offer little more than a sympathetic ear. 

Regime remnants still think they can survive by baiting President Trump into resuming a hot war, spiking oil prices, causing stock markets to fall, and risking his political standing back home. They continue to miscalculate at their peril. Every day, Trump is squeezing the life out of them, and it’s not having much effect on anyone here outside of gas prices in blue states like California. So what is the regime’s fallback position? This, which turns out to be my favorite post from the weekend. 





Please, Mr. President, can you dial back the rhetoric? Oh, and death to America. And death to the Zionist Joos, too. They still hate him, and the suits in Tehran know the end is near, but they can’t convince the uniforms running the IRGC to play ball unless Trump softens his tone. 

Speaking of softening his tone, after a full day of talking to all sorts of different media outlets, Donald Trump sat down with Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes. Where she was serious, Trump gave her thoughtful, reflective answers like this one, on political violence increasing in this country. 

Trump also reiterated his desire to reschedule the correspondents dinner as soon as possible, for a multitude of reasons. 

But then, Norah decided to go at President Trump with a gotcha question. She had the wannabe assassin’s manifesto, which was made public earlier in the day on Sunday. The accusations are not new, they’re not substantiated, and there’s no evidence out there to support any of the supposed Epstein files damaging to Trump. But that hasn’t stopped Beltway Trump-hating journalists and social media influencers from trading in this bile since he returned to power in January, 2025. Of course, the President has read the manifesto as well. You might think that O’Donnell might have the class to not give the perp his 15-seconds of fame by repeating his bile to Trump’s face. Nah. 

“I’m just reading what he said,” Norah said in her defense. Scott MacFarlane, while he worked for CBS as a colleague of O’Donnell, reported the same unsubstantiated rumors against the President as part of the Department of Justice document releases. And CBS wasn’t the only network to run with the rumors. M-SNOW made a living off it for months. ABC traded in it both in their news division and on trash television like The View. Late-night shows on all three networks used the allegations against Trump as source material for “comedy.” And to what end? An otherwise book-smart California man with a degree from Cal Tech saw it, heard it, read it online, internalized it, obsessed over it, armed himself, and went to the No Kings rally to bask in other believers calling Donald Trump Hitler, fascist, Nazi, and the spawn of Satan.

And then, he plotted and executed a cross-country trip, with his weaponry, to act on what all these people read and said to him. 

Donald Trump gave Norah an earful, and she deserved every bit of it. Remember October 1st, 2024, when O’Donnell purportedly served as moderator of the vice-presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz? Her performance ranks among the absolute worst as a moderator in the modern era. She constantly fact-checked Vance, gave Walz a pass at every turn, and at one point, when Vance was correcting her erroneous fact-check of him, his microphone was cut off. 

Once O’Donnell ticked off Trump, there wasn’t any going back. She also brought up the appearance of the potential shooter at the last No Kings rally in Los Angeles, as though it’s the President’s fault for driving him there.  





So much for the unity Trump sought. Not even one full day could go by without O’Donnell treating Trump as the causation of the near miss at the Washington Hilton, not the victim of another assassination plot fomented by the American political left. The President threw a bone at Weijia Jiang and her network, because she treated him with respect before, during, and after the shooting at the correspondents dinner. Norah O’Donnell tossed aside the bone that began gnawing on Trump’s leg, because she can’t stand him.  

Fortunately, Donald Trump can walk and chew gum at the same time. He can prosecute the conflict against the Iranian regime until they are no longer a threat to America or its allies in Europe or the Middle East. He can fight to improve the White House with a ballroom appropriate for the nation’s political leadership to use when hosting other world dignitaries. He can push for a Defense budget with meaningful growth in both ships and the military industrial complex, desperately needed in America with the threats we face on the horizon. He can multitask with the best of them. 

Never Trump, Inc? Whether they are elected Democrats, former Republicans, or Resistance media types like Norah O’Donnell, like a moth to a flame, they are single-minded on one thing and one thing only – going after Donald Trump…relentlessly. He is their public enemy number one. 

Just imagine what the country could achieve if these same people spent their collectivist energy on the enemies America actually has instead of siding with them against a duly elected president living rent-free inside their heads.







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