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Tuesday’s Final Word – HotAir

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December 16, 2025
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Tuesday's Final Word – HotAir

Tabs don’t go away mad, tabs just go away …





Ed: Behold my shocked face. David will display his shocked face first thing in the morning. 

===

Issues & Insights: One of the unanswered questions raised by Minnesota’s massive welfare scandal is how it could have gone on so long, given its scale and the fact that alarm bells had been clanging for years.

The New York Times provided the answer, if inadvertently, when it quoted a former fraud investigator in the state attorney general’s office, who said that “There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc” for Democrats.

That is it in a nutshell when it comes to government waste, fraud, and abuse.

For today’s Democrats, these aren’t problems to be solved. They are cherished benefits that support their (and their friends’) lifestyles and keep them in office.

Ed: Democrats appear to love fraud in many different ways. The Protection Racket Media loves to cover it … up. J.D. Vance had something to say about that today, too. 

===

“I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask three-year-olds at the height of the COVID pandemic…”

“I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job.”





“I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponents.”

“So at least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it.”

Ed: This is the kind of corruption that matters most. Individuals grifting the system for cash are a major problem, but healthy institutions can correct for it. The kind of corruption Vance highlights corrupts the institutions themselves, which weakens republics, and creates far greater problems for individual liberties and rational self-governance. 

===

Noah Rothman at NRO: Perhaps Welch is so genuinely ignorant of the current events on which she regularly opines that she is authentically unaware of the dozens of left-wing figures who either welcomed Kirk’s killing as a righteous comeuppance or excused it as the fruits of his own labors. Maybe she thought pretending to be ignorant of that phenomenon would help her make a point about gun violence that inadvertently cast Kirk as better informed on the subject of modern acts of mass violence. Either way, Welch made a fool of herself.

Not that faceplants like these are bad for her personal brand. Even if you’re wrong – even if you’re knowingly wrong – the incentives in the alternative podcast landscape reward bombast and braggadocio as much as they discourage humility and circumspection. This episode is worthy of study only as it relates to what progressive audiences want. And despite the best efforts of the Democratic political class to gently nudge activists away from the performative self-righteousness of the resistance-era left, what they want is the fight for fight’s sake.





Ed: Two thoughts. First, one has to wonder how an ignorant reality-TV celebrity (as Noah and Jim Geraghty detail) ended up as an eminence grise on the Left at all, or maybe it’s not all that mysterious. Welch has been a political commentator for a hot second, and already the NYT has turned her into the voice of a generation. Ignorance is folded into that process, it seems. Two: Noah is giving the “Democratic political class” too much credit. They aren’t nudging anyone toward sanity, as the Schumer Shutdown proved. 

===

Ed: The money is starting to walk away from Heritage. The story there isn’t over yet. Here’s the link to my open letter to the Heritage Foundation five weeks ago. Stay tuned on these board departures. 

===

NY Post: Candace Owens’ attacks on Erika Kirk are fueled by her own jealousy and bitterness at being pushed out of Turning Point USA, sources claim to The Post.

The independent broadcaster, 36, described as “sadistic and dangerous” by insiders, didn’t hold back from spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the grieving widow and her husband, activist Charlie Kirk, after he was assassinated on Sept. 10. …

Those who spoke to The Post claim Owens was loathed by staff when she worked at the Daily Wire, guests on her podcast doubt she believes her own lies and her pattern of inflammatory behavior can be traced all the way back to high school.





“Everything she is doing right now is because she wants to destroy Charlie’s legacy and the organization he built because he threw her out of TPUSA,” alleged one insider.

Ed: So much for the summit meeting yesterday. Of course, the expectations for outcomes were pretty low anyway, although a few deluded people speculated that TPUSA might send Owens to sleep with the fishes. 

===

Ed: This is the kind of data that the GOP has to emphasize over the next several months. Today’s jobs report isn’t great news, but it wasn’t awful either. Wages are still increasing past the rate of inflation, which is what Vance references here. Vance will be campaigning for Republicans in the midterms, of course, but this is a warm-up for his pitch starting in early 2027.

===

Bill Glahn at Power Line: From where I stand, reducing the federal workforce is a win-win. But in BLS accounting, the reduction in government employment is a drag on the overall employment numbers,.

By origin, the number of native-born Americans employed is up more than 2,600,000 over the past twelve months. The number of foreign-born workers employed has fallen by 21,000 over the past year, reflecting the reduction in the overall foreign-born, working-age population in the past twelve months.

So much winning.

Ed: Again, there are more moving pieces in the jobs market than this, but this one does not get enough attention. It’s also the reason that rents have fallen by over 5% since the start of the year. The exodus of illegal workers from the US will have multiplicative effects on wages and rents over the next several months, too. It had better deliver those results if Republicans hope to hold both or either chambers of Congress. 





===

… protest the dissolution of Mexico City’s transparency institute and the transfer of its functions to a government agency.

The opposition bloc accused the ruling party, Morena, of not respecting an agreement to make the new transparency body tripartite, leading to the podium occupation.

Ed: At least this is more entertaining than anything that happens in our Congress. It’s just as stupid, though. 

===

Semafor: Longtime broadcaster Michele Tafoya is seriously looking at a GOP Senate bid in Minnesota and met with National Republican Senatorial Committee officials last week, a person familiar with the conversations told Semafor.

Tafoya’s candidacy has been on the back burner for months as Republicans largely focused elsewhere, and in the ensuing few months a tough Democratic primary has bubbled up between Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn.

Ed: I love Tafoya as a journalist and podcaster. She invited me to be on her show and I had a good conversation with her. I think Republicans may be too outnumbered in Minnesota for anyone to compete in a statewide race, but Tafoya is smart and is unlikely to stumble in ways that impede the rest of the GOP ticket in the midterms. She’s a better bet than Royce White, even if it’s only to force 

===





Ed: Notable on the policy itself, but imagine what a Vance-Rubio ticket would look like on the campaign trail. MAGA at home, Teddy Roosevelt-ian on foreign policy. And then imagine how any Democrat would compete against either, and especially both. 

===

Eddie Scarry at The Federalist: This is the person Trump refers to as “ice maiden,” which I thought was to suggest a certain steely self-possession rather than just a nickname for a fragile woman at risk of melting.

She has made the entire public question the sincerity and priorities of this administration and made it all the more difficult to defend a White House that, until now, was pretty easy to defend. By the way, all the accompanying pictures of Wiles and her peers were wildly unflattering, and if she has any enemies, she might consider recommending the photographer for their weddings.

Being silent worked for Wiles. She should go back to doing that.

Ed: Chiefs of staff should follow Teddy Roosevelt’s advice, too: Speak softly and carry a big stick. And preferably, speak so softly that it never makes it to the public, while using the big stick liberally. 

===

Ed: I agree. I don’t think the VF article is a fatal error, although it might ding Wiles’ credibility a bit. Trump also does interviews with hostile reporters who have proven to be grinding axes. I’m still a little mystified as to why the Trump team chooses to engage the Protection Racket Media in this way, but those choices were made long before Wiles joined Trump’s team. 





===

Ed: This is the best interpretation of my purpose in this career that I’ve yet seen. 

===


Editor’s note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you’re digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments — and support independent platforms — why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!





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