In the immediate aftermath of an attempted terrorist attack by young supporters of radical Islam outside Gracie Mansion, Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose to tell the world which side he’s on. And it’s definitely not on the side of the cops and protesters who would’ve died in an explosion the young radicals hoped would cause death and destruction &#8220;even bigger&#8221; than the Boston Marathon bombing. No – it’s on the side of radical Islam, the kind supported by his virulent anti-Israel activist friend Mahmoud Khalil.
“Last night, as we marked the one year anniversary of his detention, Rama and I were honored to welcome Mahmoud, Noor, and their son Deen to Gracie Mansion to break our fast together,” Mamdani posted. 
The mayor <a href="https://x.com/NYCMayor/status/2031185185002164590">attached a picture</a> of he and his wife welcoming the activist who led the anti-Jewish protests at Columbia University, including illegal occupations of buildings which caused the Trump Administration to detain him over support for terrorist organizations like Hamas and lying on his original visa form.
The mayor, who chose to condemn the twenty participants in the “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” protest as white supremacists but slow-rolled his condemnation of the would-be Islamist terrorists, was deliberately sending a signal that is impossible to ignore. Zohran Mamdani won’t endorse the violent young radicals outright – that would be a bridge too far – but he wants everyone to know where his heart lies.
It’d be less disturbing if, as so many legacy media organizations declare, Mamdani is a fringe character in the Democratic Party, a TikTok friendly accidental mayor thanks to the fluke of a rash of bad candidates undone by scandals present and past. But Mamdani doesn’t do things by accident, especially when it comes to social media: he sent a message by hosting Khalil, and he wanted young Democrats to see it. And for New York City’s Jewish population to see it, too.
The reason why is made clear by new polling data from the Manhattan Institute, which <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/do-democrats-want-to-be-normal-survey-analysis-of-todays-democratic-coalition">surveyed</a> the current Democratic coalition on numerous questions related to policy. MI’s overall takeaway is that the Democratic Party has opinions that are much more moderate than those of Mayor Mamdani or New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But digging into the survey’s details illustrate a younger radical fringe which doesn’t have a problem with Khalil, and probably doesn’t have much of a problem with the attempted bombers, either.
According to MI’s polling, a quarter or more of 18–29 year-old Democrats view Israel essentially the same way as Nick Fuentes. “One in four (26%) of these younger Democrats believe that Israel is a colonial apartheid state that must be dismantled and that Israel bears responsibility for any and all violence since its founding,” writes MI vice president Jesse Arm. And of that same cohort, 38% claim the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel was either an “inside job” or a “false flag operation”, allowed or created whole cloth by Israel as a pretext for war in Gaza. And of course they would think that – 24% of them told MI’s pollsters that the Nazi Holocaust of Jews was either greatly exaggerated, or did not happen at all.
There’s no real separation between these Democrats and Mayor Mamdani – he simply represents an elevated luxury version of these beliefs, one that calls for the end of billionaires while hanging with Alex Soros and Huma Abedin in their tricked out penthouse duplex overlooking the city. The Gracie Mansion Khalil féte is a drab return to the Seventies era of “That Party at Lenny’s,” when Leonard Bernstein hosted the Black Panthers and the doyennes of the city hoped to leave their society friends behind as one of “the few attuned souls” to the new Radical Chic. 
As Tom Wolfe <a href="https://nymag.com/article/tom-wolfe-radical-chic-that-party-at-lennys.html">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>They had to be morally avant-garde, able to articulate the luxury opinions fashionable at that exact moment. They had to perform all these inversions—rising to the social stratosphere by ostentatiously demonstrating their solidarity with the oppressed, securing their place atop the structures of power by striking radical poses, and pretending to support tearing those structures down.</blockquote>
Of course, Democrats and their legacy media allies will dismiss this development as an exaggeration. It’s just a dinner, after all. What’s to worry about a bit of light terrorism among friends? And there were probably Nazis there, what do you expect? His wife&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-makes-excuse-for-wife-oct-7-likes-but-paper-trail-doesnt-add-up">Instagram likes</a>, who cares about those, she&#8217;s a private citizen! Chuck and Hakeem, they’re still the leaders of the party last we checked.
The aging neoliberal Democrats still fancy themselves in charge of the situation. They still have their hands on the wheel, and the youngsters will learn their place in time. With the rise of Mamdani and his cohort, that grip will be tested like it has not been in half a century. Do not be surprised when it fails.

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The national narrative about the result of last night&#8217;s Texas Senate Democratic primary is that the party dodged a bullet. Picking Austin state representative James Talarico over Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett was the savvy move, ensuring a competitive statewide race that will, at worst, be a drag on Republican dollars in the upcoming midterms, and at best could finally fulfill leftist dreams of turning the state blue.
It&#8217;s possible this national narrative is right, and Talarico will make it a race against embattled incumbent Senator John Cornyn or, Democrats hope, controversial Attorney General Ken Paxton. There&#8217;s plenty of investment by the donor class and the party establishment in this effort. The dutiful legacy media complex, from Stephen Colbert to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/03/02/james-talarico-profile" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New Yorker</a>, is already building up Talarico as that rare thing, a Christian of the Left who can win over centrist voters. They are already giving him the serious &#8220;young man looking into the middle distance thinking about noble stuff&#8221; profile already done to death for fellow Ivy League grads Beto O&#8217;Rourke and Pete Buttigieg (to no avail). Expect more of the same in the months ahead.
Despite Kamala Harris&#8217;s endorsement, Crockett faced a deluge of Democratic donor opposition for her Senate effort, as billionaire lefties went all out for Talarico — and paid for all the dirty political attacks he claims to demur from. As the Washington Free Beacon <a href="https://freebeacon.com/democrats/mess-in-texas-billionaire-backed-talarico-shrugs-off-racism-scandal-to-steal-senate-nod-from-jasmine-crockett/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Meanwhile, a billionaire-funded super PAC linked to Talarico—who repeatedly assailed the influence of billionaire-funded super PACs—relentlessly attacked Crockett on the airwaves. The Lone Star Rising PAC, started by a longtime friend of Talarico just days before the candidate launched his Senate campaign, spent millions on negative ads against Crockett over the past few weeks. LinkedIn founder and Jeffrey Epstein pal Reid Hoffman was among the billionaires who bankrolled the super PAC, along with hedge fund titans Stephen Mandel and Mark Heising. The group also received millions via the same &#8220;dark money&#8221; networks Talarico had promised to ban via ‘anti-corruption’ legislation.</blockquote>
The irony here is that while Democrats might have wanted Talarico because he could make Texas competitive, they ended up picking a guy who — for all his invocations of Scripture — is actually further left than Crockett. Her record isn&#8217;t moderate, but it&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/upshot/crockett-talarico-texas-senate-election.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more moderate</a> than you&#8217;d think given her fiery social media persona. And her appeal was to a broad ethnically diverse camp that tends to grade as more moderate, while Talarico actually performed best in multiple polls with liberals. There&#8217;s a reason that white voters in Austin were his greatest center of support, and it&#8217;s not because he name-checks the Magnificat while making the case for abortion.
Texas Democrats may ultimately regret this decision. Crockett would&#8217;ve had a tougher path to victory, but she could&#8217;ve made inroads into the communities that Democrats need to peel back from Donald Trump&#8217;s coalition. With Talarico, it looks like Beto all over again — a guy who&#8217;s further left than the media will ever acknowledge trying to fake out moderate voters just until Election Day. In case you missed it, this was their favored approach just last year to win statewide in Virginia and New Jersey with two new governors who even got described as moderates by the Wall Street Journal, and instantly revealed they were nothing of the kind.
So watch out, Texas. You&#8217;re about to get the nice young man junior Bible camp version of Abigail Spanberger. Don&#8217;t fall for it.

Texas State Representative Talarico Campaigns Ahead Of Primary Election

Will James Talarico Flip Texas Blue? Don’t Be So Sure.

James Talarico

Jasmine Crockett

John Cornyn

Ken Paxton

Texas

Donald Trump understands something fundamental about foreign policy that most politicians don’t — including ones who have been active in this space for a very long time.
In the run-up to Operation Epic Fury, the critique circling on Capitol Hill wasn’t quiet. Republicans were concerned that, given the risk factors involved in a major regime change war — even one that was undertaken overwhelmingly by air and sea, not Army boots on the ground — the president had done little or nothing to warn the American people of the potential losses inherent in any attack.
Unlike the precision strikes Trump has used in the past — amazing feats of military technological capability, yes, but with lower potential loss of American lives — going after the Iranians meant inevitably setting off a barrage of missiles and drones that could attack all America’s forces in the Middle East, as well as our allies and regional partners.
Exfiltrating Nicolás Maduro and his wife without the loss of a single American life was an incredible achievement, one that was only possible thanks to the bravery and commitment of a terribly wounded helicopter pilot. Things could’ve gone sideways very quickly. Instead, the American forces under Trump pulled it off without one death. Assign it to good fortune, good planning, or the grace of God, but this is not the way such missions are expected to go.
The line from one old military hand to me in the run-up to the Iran strike was simple: How long can the old man keep going back to the table and coming up aces?
That risk, for a normal politician, would require advance mitigation. Think back to the lengthy effort George W. Bush and his associates put into making the case for war in Iraq. The many briefings, public speeches, presentations before the United Nations, and an open effort on television and in op-ed pages to make the case for war were meant to warn people of the potential loss of life and materiel. The message was clear: Steel yourselves for the worst, but understand we’re doing this because we think it needs doing. Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction require it.
Of course, after the WMD turned out to be a pittance of what was expected, and Hussein’s threats turned out to be the actions of a blowhard maintaining his hold on power, the Bush administration was forced into an uncomfortable pivot toward a war built on positive vibes and spreading democracy. The whole prewar case turned out to be built on falsehoods, albeit falsehoods every intelligence service in the West purportedly believed.
Trump became, like so many Americans, an outspoken critic of this war after the fact, as it dragged on interminably and descended into chaos that cost American lives and resources. He took the lesson, as did many politicians in the rising generation, that boots-on-the-ground regime-change wars without clear goals in mind are a pointless and expensive exercise.
But Trump seems to have taken another lesson from it, too: that the messaging build up to such action is unwise and unnecessary.
So, if the political critique of President Trump’s approach in Iran is that he didn’t make the case to the American people, it’s true — he didn’t. He understands that he doesn’t need to.
Americans assess foreign policy and national security not as ever-running aspects of their daily lives, but as a binary: success, or failure. We like to win. We hate to lose.
What Trump has done is show that he knows more about the reality of these issues politically than any longstanding politician, consultant, or commentator. He understands the importance of unpredictability. He makes his decisions in his own time and believes Americans will judge him only if his effort is unsuccessful. And if it is a failure, no amount of prior argument — readying the ground with an awareness of risk, detailing the potential benefits to energy markets or a destabilized China — will make a difference anyway.
It’s a fundamental change in the way an administration conducts foreign policy. It’s in keeping with Trump’s roll the dice approach. And it’s also based on enormous confidence in what the United States military is capable of when you ask them to blow something up instead of changing hearts and minds.
Donald Trump understands the old Vince Lombardi dictum applies here: Winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing.

Untitled design – 2026-03-02T095935.961

Trump Didn’t Sell America on War in Iran. He Doesn’t Need To.

Donald Trump

George W. Bush

Iran

Iraq War

The role of the President of the United States is not typically occupied by a showman. You could gesture at various prior inhabitants of the office – Andrew Jackson mounting his horse and standing between cannon and the Tennessee militia, Teddy Roosevelt surviving charge and shot to become more myth than man, Barack Obama levitating above us all as a biracial angel sent from on high to cleanse all our sins – but no one has seized that motivating spirit more mightily than Donald J. Trump, the ultimate television producer. He watches it all, and he knows what the people want: more, more, and more.
They don’t want a speech. They want a show. At the State of the Union, he gave them their show, all that while trading barbs with a heckling crew of gesticulating idiots, whose political acumen has aged so poorly that they did not even realize that sitting on their hands would grant the president and his party the best midterm advertising fodder they could ever have. “A billion dollar ad!” one consultant texted me. Republicans are going to need it come midterm time – and Democrats could’ve easily avoided giving it away with a lick of common sense.
In days past, you had Joe Manchin and a handful of red state Democrat House members standing and applauding coal or cops or dead terrorists. This time around, Trump himself couldn’t help but break the script to comment: “These people are crazy.” Yes, it’s the kind of thing you might hear from your uncle watching Fox News. But it’s not wrong! It’s a reason Trump won, and a reason his party might keep winning.
“How can you not stand for that?” the president said, giving running commentary on his own speech, gesturing toward the sparse but diligently seated Democrats to his right. How hard is it to applaud respectfully for at least some of Trump&#8217;s speech as a Democrat? It shouldn’t be hard at all. Illegal immigrants aren’t the reason you ran for office. Your first priority should be your citizens. You can’t honestly claim that the world isn’t a safer place with a hamstrung Iran nuclear program, a Nicolas Maduro in custody, and a narco regime to our south hemmed in by military forces. All these are policies many Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, claimed to support before in some form. Is it really going to end their career to admit Trump is right about even one thing?
You get the hint of how far things have gone in the response from Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who went all the way to Williamsburg to speak to the nation from the very stodgy and very fake replica House of Burgesses. The original, where Patrick Henry did his very problematic liberty thing, burned down twice. The one she was speaking to you from was built in the 1930s by the Rockefellers. And her speech had a similar flavor to it: applause that sounded clipped and rinsed, and delivery that was robotic and circular with an odd “did Gemini help write this?” rhythm. What’s more, she herself seemed to catch at certain lines of critique. You mean to tell me that Spanberger, a veteran CIA agent, thinks killing terrorists and pressuring Iran is… bowing to China and Russia? Don’t insult our intelligence, Abigail. Not even you believe what you’re saying at this point, you’re just vying to be Gavin Newsom’s Number Two.
The State of the Union is a storied tradition that should remain just that: the stuff of stories, past, written down and shelved. It is wholly unnecessary. The whole thing could just be an email. Except – and this is where Trump comes in – that the best moments in it were created by people who had nothing at all to do with politics or his policies.
When he flashed on the screen in the early going, Royce Williams was nothing to look at – a diminutive military veteran, seated next to the First Lady for reasons unbeknownst to the crowd. But I, and likely many others watching, recognized the man as the great unheralded hero of a forgotten war – the man who took down four MiGs, the terrorizer of Soviets, a century old legend. The headlines and pictures tomorrow will probably focus on the young heroic hockey team that brought Olympic Gold to the United States for the first time in 46 years. But Royce Williams, the man whose mission made him unappreciated for so long, finally getting his due? That’s the real tearjerker. That’s what a showman pulls off. And that’s who Donald Trump is.
Early returns indicate his speech worked. A poll from CNN found the number of Americans who think Trump&#8217;s policies will move the country in the right direction went up by 10% among people who watched his speech.
Fortunately for Republicans, Trump is very good at this. Unfortunately for Republicans, he’s basically all they’ve got. And like it or not – he’s not on the ballot any more. Time to wake up to reality, GOP: the reality of a future without your champion at the lead.

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Ben Domenech

Mamdani Heralds The Rise Of The New Radical Chic

Will James Talarico Flip Texas Blue? Don’t Be So Sure.

Trump Didn’t Sell America on War in Iran. He Doesn’t Need To.

Trump Delivers A Show At State Of The Union