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August 22, 2026
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Trump's Kinda Ticked Off as War Rages in Lebanon – HotAir

Gotta click a link to a tab that’s right for me, a tab to keep me browsing, keep me surfing with some energy …





Trump says, adding that so many Iranian leaders are gone that “I don’t know who the hell to deal with.”

The comments come as Iran sends mixed signals: President Masoud Pezeshkian says it may be time to “end the war today,” while Iran’s parliamentary speaker strikes a far more defiant tone toward the U.S.

Now the pressure ramps up: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is expected to lay out new sanctions Monday aimed at further isolating Iran, with its ties to Russia and China presenting a major challenge.

Ed: That’s precisely what the “economic D-Day” was designed to do: create and expand fractures in the regime. Those get patched over during attacks on the country, but the blockade and other economic consequences of the war will erode the standing of the regime even with those that may still support it. The fact that this split has become public so soon is a sign of how close the existential moment may be. 

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WSJ: The war and the economic strictures have piled pressure on Iran’s already spiraling economy, further sinking its currency and making it hard for Iranians to afford their daily needs. Tehran’s more moderate leaders worry the pressure will eventually undermine the country’s stability. 

It is unclear, however, whether hardliners who recently levied tough new demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz or the Trump administration, which is demanding deep concessions and called again this week for the regime’s collapse, can come to an agreement.

“The war must come to an end at some point,” Pezeshkian said Friday in comments reported by Iranian media. “It is better that we demonstrate our strength and dignity today and tell the world that we have won and that we are ending the war.”

Ghalibaf was less direct but said there will be no security if the country ignores its economic crisis. 

“No matter how much military power we have, if our people are struggling and the country lacks financial circulation and economic growth, we will not achieve progress,” the parliamentary speaker said. “As someone who has experienced war, we understand the true value of peace.”





Ed: For the last few months, people have speculated that Trump would have to declare victory to save face and depart the battleground. It didn’t take long for the Iranian regime to start floating that as their own exit strategy. 

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Ed: Make no mistake about this. Pezeshkian wants a negotiated end to the war because it’s the only way this regime survives. They are facing an existential credibility crisis as well as an economic catastrophe. If they can get the US to cut a deal with the IRGC, that strengthens their claim to authority. It’s one reason why we should exercise a great deal of strategic patience, rather than impatiently seek a bad deal that the IRGC will not honor. 

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Andrew C. McCarthy at NRO: Hamas elaborates that its specific “struggle against the Zionist invaders” is not strictly confined to Israel, let alone anything as narrow as a particular regime that happens to govern the Jewish state. The target is Jews. “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people,” the covenant proclaims. The jihadists don’t see the conflict as Palestinians versus Israel; it is the Islamic umma (the putative worldwide community of Muslims) against Jews. That’s patent from the opening paragraphs: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.”

To make the distinction crystal clear, Hamas’s founders invoked Islamic scripture, from the al-Bukhari and Muslim collections of hadiths — the words and actions of the prophet Mohammed, recognized as doctrinal over a millennium before Israel won its independence in 1948 and before “Palestinians” were recognized as a distinct ethnic category:





The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, “Oh Muslims, Oh Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

This is why Hamas can never be trusted to lay down its arms, renounce violent jihad, and accept a peaceful settlement that abides Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Ironically given Kushner’s current exertions, Hamas resists settlement negotiations with Israel because to negotiate is to accord legitimacy to the counterparty. As a matter of fundamental doctrine, sharia supremacists revile Jews and will never accept a Jewish regime that governs Muslims or what Islamists see as Muslim territory — very much including territory that was the Jewish homeland thousands of years before Islam existed.

Ed: Andy is entirely correct about this, although his ire toward Trump (understandable in the moment) overlooks the fact that this is the first president to actually do anything about Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The IRGC and its proxies are terrorists, extremists who will never negotiate in good faith and start slapping “Coexist” stickers on the bumpers of their Toyota pickup trucks. They will lie, cheat, steal, and murder to achieve their extremist vision of world domination, which is why Trump needs to finish the IRGC for good, or even better, force their collapse so that the long-subjugated Iranian people can pull them down for good. 

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She seems incredibly devoted to her job, never takes a day off. Sometimes she works so hard she forgets to eat and sleep, and now everyone in America is saying the same thing: Why can’t I get a millennial that works like that?

There is, you know, a little more to the story. She had bone cancer in her 20s. She liked Trump because he sped up experimental treatment, which she believes helped her. But, you know, in America it’s just like, “Oh good, someone new to hate.”

Ed: All of Maher’s material here is fair game. You’ll notice, though, that the reaction to his final line here was far more muted than the audience’s initial reaction to the mention of Jon Ossoff. Maher called Ossoff and the audience out for their crap, and they belatedly realized it. 

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Lydia Moynihan at the NY Post: Modern life is full of unattractive infrastructure — cell towers, strip malls, cable lines, warehouses — but data centers have received an inordinate amount of bad PR. The combination of anger about the new technology and a lack of information has made for a full blown data-center derangement syndrome.

A recent Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans oppose building a data center in their area compared with only 53% who oppose a new nuclear power plant nearby.

Sam Lyman, head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, says the backlash has become “a massive moral panic” that has spiraled far outside the realm of what is logical.

“Ban data centers,” as he puts it, is the modern tech-policy equivalent of “defund the police” — a rallying cry for progressive elites that doesn’t actually serve the lower-income and working-class communities they claim to want to protect.

Gently pushing back on that hysteria is the best thing for a president who is seeing his own party become infected with anti-data-center fever.

Ed: Perhaps the most oxymoronic thing about this moral panic is the explosion of websites and online campaigns against data centers. It’s akin to staging conferences on global warming and using private jets to attend them. It’s yet another hypocrisy in yet another moral panic that assumes the sky is always falling, and only cultish behavior will stave off disaster. 





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Ed: As well as demeaning two women to do it. 

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Axios: Florida’s new Democratic Senate nominee, Angie Nixon, and the state party’s chair had a heated conversation Friday which included a yelling match about the impact of socialism and the challenges of campaigning in a red state like Florida, three people familiar with the conversation tell Axios. …

According to two people who spoke with Nixon, both she and Fried yelled at each other over the course of the call. Another person who spoke to Fried said the chair did not yell but was yelled at.

  • “Nikki wants her to back away from DSA, from socialism,” said one person who spoke with Nixon. “She’s listening to other people saying that they’re afraid, they’re scared — the Jewish members and the Hispanic caucus. But to Angie, Nikki doesn’t want Angie to be who Angie is. Angie has already done the backing-away.”
  • On the call, Nixon told Fried, “You never gave a care about me from the beginning, and now you’re telling me how to run my campaign?” according to the source.
  • At one point, the source said, Nixon yelled, “stop gaslighting me!”

Ed: It’s not like Fried is a moderate, either. We’ve been writing about Fried’s foibles for years. If Angie Nixon is too extreme for Nikki Fried, it’s gonna be a long general election for Democrats in Florida. And beyond. 

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Ed: Via Instapundit’s Ed Driscoll. Could this be a coincidence? Maybe, but I’m not a big believer in coincidences. Are you?

===

PETERS: “They’re not running to be members of the Democratic Party. They’re running, many of them anyway, as Democratic Socialists. It’s a totally different political organization. And in fact, they want to take out the Democratic Party. I mean, that’s their stated goal. They not only want to take out the Democratic Party, they want to take out the entire constitutional system that the Democratic Party is allowed to participate in governance.”

MAHER: “And they like communism. I proved it here a couple of weeks ago just by quoting them. They use the word a lot. They’re not actually trying to hide it, although if you ask them they will deny it.”

Ed: Kudos to Maher for pointing this out. The DSA agenda speaks for itself. And the point about Democrats winning a slim majority in the midterms is key. Dana Bash is referencing the Freedom Caucus, which she inaccurately refers to as the Tea Party, but she’s correct in pointing out how Mike Johnson has been forced to work with them to get anything passed thanks to the razor-thin GOP majority in the House. When the Squad expands to a size greater than a Democrat majority might be, the communists will flex their muscle in an even more aggressive fashion, and Hakeem Jeffries is too weak to deal with it. 

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Ed: Tell me again how Talarico will win a statewide election in Texas with this messaging. 

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Last night’s lyric: “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Coo” by Rick Derringer.


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