Punch-Kroenig

Is The American War Machine Dead?

China

Defense Spending

DW Opinion

Foreign Policy

Hanwha

Henry Kissinger

Iran war

Matthew Kroenig

NATO

Pentagon

Richard Nixon

Ukraine-Russia War

Weekend Punch

The Trump administration has significantly expanded its intelligence presence in Cuba in recent months, according to people familiar with the plans, as Washington intensifies pressure on Havana&#8217;s communist regime and prepares for a wider range of potential operations.  
Two people familiar with the administration’s efforts told <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/04/us-sends-more-intel-assets-to-cuba-01023267">Politico</a> that the United States has increased intelligence assets on the island. One described the move as a significant expansion of the CIA’s presence, while another said the intelligence buildup could serve as a critical step for future operations against the Cuban government.
The sources cautioned that military action remains far from certain. Expanded intelligence collection can support a wide range of operations, including diplomatic pressure, counterintelligence, recruiting sources inside foreign governments, and preparation for possible military contingencies.
The increased intelligence activity comes as the administration has made Cuba a central target of its broader effort to confront hostile governments in the Western Hemisphere, arguing that the communist regime poses a national security threat just 90 miles from American shores.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family fled Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution, has made confronting the Cuban regime one of the defining priorities of his foreign policy agenda. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rubio-reveals-how-cuba-is-trying-to-undermine-america?author=Drew+Berkemeyer&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Rubio+Reveals+How+Cuba+Is+Trying+To+Undermine+America">In July</a>, the State Department released a 99-page report accusing Havana of decades of espionage, ideological influence operations, and support for revolutionary movements around the world.
“For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States,” Rubio wrote following the report’s release.
The report argued that Cuba’s greatest strategic success has not been military power but its ability to export revolutionary ideology, conduct espionage, and cultivate influence networks inside the United States and abroad.
The administration has repeatedly framed Cuba as a growing national security concern because of its relationships with Russia, China, and Iran.
During a House budget hearing in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hegseth-says-cuba-poses-a-national-security-threat-as-tensions-rise?author=Drew+Berkemeyer&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Hegseth+Says+Cuba+Poses+A+National+Security+Threat+As+Tensions+Rise">May</a>, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told lawmakers that he considers the Cuban regime a threat to the United States after Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) questioned him about Havana’s relationships with America&#8217;s foreign adversaries.
“I do,” Hegseth said when asked whether he believes Cuba poses a national security threat. 
One administration official described Cuba as a major priority for Rubio, who believes Washington has run out of patience with a regime that has resisted years of diplomatic engagement and economic pressure.
The Trump administration has already increased pressure on Havana through renewed sanctions and an energy blockade that has contributed to widespread blackouts across the island. 
Officials have also intensified public messaging against the regime. The State Department’s recent report accused Havana of serving as a hub for Russian, Chinese, and Iranian intelligence activity while maintaining its own espionage networks against the United States.
Although U.S. intelligence agencies have long operated in Cuba, as they do throughout the world, rebuilding capabilities on the island would provide the United States with greater visibility and leverage in the Cuban government’s military, intelligence services, and relationships with foreign powers.
Whether that pressure results in negotiations, internal political change, or a broader confrontation remains unclear. But the expansion of U.S. intelligence activity suggests Washington is preparing for a wider range of possibilities than traditional diplomacy alone.

Cuba. Havana. Theatre Detail

Communist Cuba Is Back In Trump’s Crosshairs

Communism

Cuba

foreign affairs

Leftism

Marco Rubio

National Intelligence

Rubio

Spying

State Department

Trump Administration

In May, India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant decided to make known his thoughts on the country’s young people.
“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in the profession,” Kant said, in reference to college graduates who go into careers like journalism. He later retracted his statement following public outcry.
But by then it was too late.
“What if all the cockroaches come together?” 30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke tweeted on May 15. With that, the satirical Cockroach Janta (People’s) Party (CJP) was born.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
What if all cockroaches come together?
— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) <a href="https://x.com/abhijeet_dipke/status/2055493761912741903?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The CJP’s name is a send-up of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has held political power in the country for over a decade. Thousands of the party’s cockroaches — as they like to be called — are swarming the streets of India, demanding greater accountability in the government and education boards.
They have reason to be angry. India’s education system is going down the drain, and it’s flushing its cockroaches along with it.
Each year, millions of students compete for top spots at colleges and in the government. To say that students’ test results determine their future would be an understatement. In a country where over 65% of the population is under the age of 35 and roughly 11 million students graduate from high school each year, every point earned on a test can be the difference between life on the streets and a well-paying job that will support their families.
But the job shortage is not the only challenge Indian students face as they enter the workforce. Over the past decade, repeated exam paper leaks have plagued the country’s education system, erasing years of students’ preparation and hard work. 
On July 24, the CJP called for the resignation of India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, accusing him of failing to safeguard exams. The next day, he resigned.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Pune!!! Wow!!! <a href="https://t.co/6JHDzjyE8C">https://t.co/6JHDzjyE8C</a>
— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) <a href="https://x.com/abhijeet_dipke/status/2080683292655861874?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This is a major scandal. Poor Indians often spend their nights under street lamps, using what little glow they can capture to prepare for entrance examinations. Stories fill the Indian tabloids of parents who sacrifice everything they own for their children to study for these tests.
But the CJP does not limit itself to protesting against the corrupt education system. Cockroaches also advocate for greater social change in India, such as freedom of the press and women’s safety.
The CJP has called for media conglomerates to have their exclusive licenses canceled so independent media can flourish. Cockroaches are also voicing their disgust over the increasingly dangerous conditions for women. In New Delhi — which is notorious for being the most dangerous city for women in India.
When women don’t reciprocate a man’s attention, sometimes a man will throw acid on the girl’s face to permanently blind her and disfigure her skin. In addition, when a wife’s family is unable to meet the monetary and property demands of the husband’s family in the form of a dowry, the woman may face severe abuse and even death. By calling attention to what has been going on in India for years, the CJP is showing they want India to be better.
Many prominent Indians have joined the satirical party, including Kirti Azad, a famous cricket player who helped India win the 1983 cricket World Cup. To spread even more awareness, Sonam Wangchuk, a well-known Indian activist, went on a hunger strike for 26 days. This increased the CJP’s popularity and even sparked discussions with members of India’s Parliament. After Wangchuk ended his strike, Modi urged him to follow his doctor’s advice and said he would pray for Wangchuk to have good health.
History is rife with examples of student-led movements that demanded more from their political leaders. Take the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Protesters jingled their keys in the air to tell the ruling Communist Party it was time to pack their bags and lock the doors behind them. Despite being met with violence from police, protesters continued to rattle their keys and demand an end to communist rule. The movement was successful and eventually led to the end of communism in the country. 
While CJP protests are largely nonviolent, cockroaches have faced tear gas, police batons, and other acts of intimidation from authorities. But that hasn’t stopped them from challenging corruption and demanding accountability. Only time will tell whether the CJP succeeds in bringing about meaningful change. But if change can begin with the jingling of keys, why can’t it begin with the marching of cockroaches?

INDIA-POLITICS-EDUCATION-PROTEST

India’s ‘Cockroach Party’ Is Sparking National Debate

Education

Free Press

India

Modi

political parties

Young people

President Trump In The Situation Room During Strike on Iran

Ending The War In Iran Means Winning, Nothing Less

America First

Iran Nuclear Deal

IRGC

JD Vance

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

Nicolas Maduro

North Korea

Rebeccah Heinrichs

Strait of Hormuz

President Donald Trump on Monday brushed aside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s objections to selling F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, saying the United States alone will decide what weapons it exports. 
Speaking aboard Air Force One ahead of Netanyahu&#8217;s White House visit, Trump praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan while making clear that foreign leaders would not dictate U.S. arms sales.
&#8220;Nobody tells me what we should be selling,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;Turkey has been a tremendous ally for me.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
&#8220;Prime Minister Netanyahu opposes sending the F-35s to Turkey&#8230;&#8221;<a href="https://x.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &#8220;Nobody tells me what we should be selling or not. Turkey has been a tremendous ally.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/8gSzavJ6Ce">pic.twitter.com/8gSzavJ6Ce</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2081797692389286004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 27, 2026</a></blockquote>
Trump&#8217;s remarks came just weeks after Netanyahu urged Washington not to approve a sale, arguing Turkey&#8217;s increasingly hostile posture toward Israel makes transferring the stealth fighters too risky. 
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think they should be given F-35s or engines for their fighter jets,&#8221; Netanyahu said in an interview with <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6400346259112">Fox News</a>. 
In the same interview, Netanyahu described Turkey as &#8220;a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood&#8221; and warned that it posed a growing regional threat to both Israel and the United States.
Trump, however, dismissed the notion that Israel&#8217;s concerns should determine American policy. 
&#8220;Turkey&#8217;s not a big fan of Israel. You know that, right? They&#8217;re not a big fan of Bibi,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;But they&#8217;ve been great for me.&#8221; He went on to praise Turkey&#8217;s military capabilities. &#8220;Very powerful country, by the way. Tremendous military. Very big military. Very powerful military. Has a lot of great equipment.&#8221;
The exchange highlighted one of the few areas where Trump has publicly broken with Netanyahu, continuing to pursue closer ties with Turkey despite Israeli objections. 
The proposed sale remains complicated, and certainly not final. Trump indicated during a July meeting with Erdogan that he favored moving forward, but the State Department recently <a href="https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-903578">informed</a> Congress that Turkey still does not meet the legal requirements necessary to rejoin the F-35 program.
Turkey was removed from the multinational F-35 program in 2020 after purchasing Russia&#8217;s S-400 air defense system, triggering sanctions under the Countering America&#8217;s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The State Department told Congress that American policy &#8220;remains unchanged&#8221; and that Turkey must resolve the S-400 issue before any sale can proceed.
The F-35 is widely regarded as the world&#8217;s most advanced operational fighter jet, and Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East to operate the aircraft. Israeli leaders have long sought to preserve that military edge by opposing sales of the jets to neighboring countries.
&nbsp;

U.S. President Trump Arrives In Ankara, Turkey For NATO Summit

Trump Won’t Budge For Netanyahu: ‘Nobody Tells Me What We Should Be Selling’

Allia

Arms sale

Benjamin Netanyahu

Donald Trump

Executive

F-35

Global Politics

Israel

Muslim Brotherhood

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey

In a cold, sterile room, officials at two long tables, separated by a wide divide, sat, staring. On one end, Team USA was represented by the Biden administration. On the other end, Team China. As U.S. officials slowly rolled out each scripted word, they informed the People’s Republic of China of their modern-day human rights abuses. <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/03/26/china-defends-itself-on-human-rights-by-pointing-to-history-of-slavery-in-us/">Then came China’s turn</a>. Staring down the barrel of the divide, right into the eyes of America’s top diplomat, the Chinese leader spat out, unscripted, that the U.S. no longer spoke from a position of strength; it had no authority to lecture on human rights abuses.
They painted the picture of America’s human rights abuses as “deep-seated … they did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter.” On the issue of forced labor, Chinese officials rebuked the U.S., saying it had no moral authority to judge. They then proceeded to show pictures of their machine cotton production versus America’s historical production through slavery.
Even through a screen, you could feel the air sucked out of the room.
And that’s when I realized, as a public relations professional, China was officially on track to win the PR war. Just a few short years later, it looks like they’ve done just that.
This month, the Pew Research Center <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/07/15/people-in-many-countries-now-view-china-more-positively-than-the-u-s/">released a blockbuster report</a> showing that more nations had a favorable view of China than the U.S. The data also pointed to an indisputable trend: most countries still believe America respects its citizens’ freedom more than China does, but that gap is rapidly shrinking. Across the board, global sentiment toward China trended up. Pakistan topped as China’s biggest fan. But most telling, the countries with the highest regard for the U.S. were those in China’s crosshairs: Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and, most interestingly, India.
I can attest to this. As someone who grew up in Taiwan, the closer you are geographically to China, the more acutely aware you are of its striking capabilities. Literally. The <a href="https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol52/iss3/2/">mid-90s Chinese missile attacks on Taiwan</a> are seared in my mind, as my school operated daily air raid simulations. The people who live closest to China’s power often have the least romanticized view of it.
But lest you think this positive shift is just a global phenomenon, it’s not. We’re seeing the same trend here in America.
Pew also noted <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/14/americans-views-of-china-have-grown-somewhat-more-positive-in-recent-years/">Americans are steadily warming to China.</a> Today, over a quarter of Americans have a positive view of China, doubling over the last three years. Just like the global data, 2023 seems to be a pivotal year, with the graphs showing, pretty much across the board, most countries softening their views on the PRC. Why is that? I’m not sure anyone knows for sure. But as a PR professional, I’m convinced it is in part due to China’s refreshed messaging.
Every PR practitioner knows that two of the biggest PR metrics are message pull-through and audience sentiment. China appears to be excelling at both. The ultimate victory isn’t when someone repeats a paid message but when they repeat it organically, in their own words, believing it’s their own conclusion. Scroll through TikTok, and you’ll see videos of young influencers comparing the human rights abuses of America vs. China, debating who is more “imperialistic.”
Look at top streamer and socialist political commentator Hasan Piker. His recent trip to China was viewed millions of times as he stood in Tiananmen Square, not mentioning the atrocities but rather holding a Chinese flag, stating he had <a href="https://thehill.com/video/hasan-piker-blasted-for-china-livestream-i-dont-have-any-patriotism-for-america/11256155/">“no patriotism in his heart for America.”</a> Later, he showed reverence for former communist dictator Mao Zedong by claiming he would never criticize him. In an interview with a <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/us/diplomacy/article/3343845/hasan-piker-talks-about-his-controversial-china-trip-and-thinking-chinese-thoughts">Chinese news outlet</a>, Piker said that China&#8217;s social contract outperforms America&#8217;s, emphasizing the country’s perceived achievements.
When it comes to positive sentiment, it’s not just Piker; we can also look at social media to reflect the patterns found in the Pew data. Social media accounts share “Chinamaxxing” content: A social trend where Gen Z romanticizes the communist nation and adopts Chinese aesthetics. For years, experts <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5432077-tiktok-china-influence-us/">recognized the significant impact</a> China’s use of TikTok can have on its 170 million U.S. users. Even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/19/the-guardian-view-on-perceptions-of-superpowers-the-world-isnt-chinamaxxing-its-america-avoidant">The Guardian points out</a>, “China is increasingly investing in overseas influence operations, including working with or amplifying local social media content creators.” It appears that the CCP understands a critical point of PR sentiment: You don’t have to win complete adoration; sometimes reducing opposition is victory enough.
I see this in my personal interactions as well. Because I grew up in Taiwan, many people share their thoughts with me about China. And what I’ve heard is a definite softening on <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/country/china">China’s human rights abuses</a>. “They just want to be left alone” or “They only want to operate in their sphere.” They paint China as some geopolitical Greta Garbo, when that’s just not the case.
It’s why Chinese President Xi Jinping recently described U.S.-China relations through the framework of the <a href="https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/discussing-thucydides-trap">Thucydides Trap</a>, wishcasting his nation to surpass the U.S. as the global superpower. It’s why <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1630978524684413">U.S. farmers are alarmed at American farmland being sold</a>. Even Hollywood can’t produce some American movies without agreeing to zero mentions of the <a href="https://www.heritage.org/china/heritage-explains/how-china-taking-control-hollywood">“Three Ts”</a>: Taiwan, Tibet, or Tiananmen Square.
China doesn’t need to convince Americans that it’s good. It just needs to convince us we’re hypocritical. Make us feel its ambitions are harmless. The latest Pew data confirms China’s global sentiment is improving, while its talking points are increasingly repeated by Americans themselves. By the two measures I know best, sentiment and message pull-through, the country appears to be gaining. Regrettably, China has been waging the PR war for years — and it appears to be winning.
***
Emily Osment Davis is a writer and communicator with a background in non-profits and politics and a not-so-secret love of celebrity gossip. She covers the space where Hollywood meets D.C. — because sometimes the two aren’t so different. You may have read her work in Newsweek, USA Today, Fox News and more.

Hands waving small Chinese flags

Is China Winning The PR War?

Chinamaxxing

Communist China

Hasan Piker

Hollywood

Public relations

Taiwan

Thucydides Trap

Tiananmen Square

TikTok

Xi Jinping

Last night, President Trump gave a prime time address. On its face, the president&#8217;s speech was about election meddling.
In general, of course, he&#8217;s right. We do need to pass the SAVE America Act and secure our elections. It’s not Jim Crow 2.0 to require ID to vote or to show proof of citizenship to register to vote.
But beneath the president&#8217;s big speech last night lurked a threat far greater than the question of election interference or election security.
No one seems particularly interested in covering that threat, and it is the greatest external threat our country has ever faced.
That threat is China.
They&#8217;re a threat to America. They have many allies here in the United States. Bernie Sanders does open events with the Chinese. Hassan Piker has an actual Chinese flag in the background. Zohran Mamdani, China-friendly Democratic Socialists of America, and many big corporations that want to do business over there are all a part of this.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2466?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
China must be defeated.
China is not a strategic opponent. They&#8217;re not a country with whom we should seek a conciliatory relationship.
They are an enemy, period. They are the most insidious and dangerous enemy we have ever faced.
Nazi Germany never put phones with their propaganda in the hands of your children. The Soviet Union didn&#8217;t own trillions of dollars of American bonds.
China is not only a country that has murdered tens of millions of its own citizens, that supports literally all of our enemies abroad, that unleashed a global pandemic that killed millions of people and shut down the entire Western economy, and that wants to develop artificial intelligence to take over our minds and outcompete our military; they&#8217;re a country with global ambitions, and their ambition runs right up against the United States.
President Trump stated:
<blockquote>Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People&#8217;s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China&#8217;s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files. That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening.</blockquote>
The accusation is not that China hacked voting machines or changed voter tabulation outcomes; it’s that they gained access to hundreds of millions of voter records.
Some of that is public information. You or I could gain access to voter records because voter registration is, in many states, public information.
The question is why China was doing that. Answer: They were doing that in order to manipulate American citizens. They were going to do a deep dive into the registration status of Americans and then use that information in order to target Americans.
The president contended last night that there were members of the Deep State — people who are career appointees in the executive branch — who spent the year 2020 suppressing information about China meddling, essentially on behalf of Democrats.
One declassified document, which appears to be from the national intelligence wing, said, “Ahead of the 2020 presidential elections, China had extensive plans to utilize potential (blacked out) and cyber operations to sway public opinion against the Trump administration and international opinion against the U.S. government. The China plans were designed to exploit U.S. societal fissures and vulnerabilities, to influence U.S. and other audiences, and, by extension, U.S. government decision-making. The plans addressed several scenarios, including military conflict between the United States and China, as well as other potential crises.”
China was attempting to exploit U.S. fissures and vulnerabilities, perceived or real, including racial tensions. They would allege that white people hate black people, incite demonstrations and marches as evidence of racial divides, increase the level of conflict between police and anti-racism activists, and feed any sense that U.S. law enforcement resents people of color.
Did that stuff materialize in 2020? Of course it did. They wanted to ramp up political party disagreements and disagreements between Congress and the Trump administration. They wanted to ramp up international propaganda. The intelligence stated, “China had developed capabilities to project themes on these topics into social media (TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others) as well as mainstream media, through a variety of overt and hidden influencers and media contributors. One of the options included gathering information on senior U.S. government officials to influence public opinion on those officials.”
We should have suspected all of this. These subversion operations, demoralization operations, really, have been long-time communist policy dating back to the Soviet Union.
Former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge published a report in April that addressed this. She reported that the CIA, led by Director Gina Haspel, would not document the Chinese influence operations formally, out of concern that President Trump would use the intelligence to his advantage.
This, presumably, was the sort of Deep State Trump was talking about.
If you actually would like to end the threat to the United States, you have to contain and strangle Chinese power. You must. China is not a strategic opponent. They are an enemy.
Here are some things we should do.
First, we need to economically wreck them. That means, yes, tariffs. It means we need to crack down on our trade with China. But to do that, we have to strike better trade deals with our allies in the region. If you&#8217;re going to make people choose between China and us, we have to offer a carrot to our friends and a stick to our enemies.
It also means we have to radically lower our spending. We can&#8217;t just keep selling our bonds to China. We cannot make the future of the country dependent on China holding our debt, because that means any time they want to hurt us, they just sell our debt into the open market and destroy our capacity to borrow.
It means that we do have to restore important manufacturing in countries other than China. That doesn&#8217;t mean all the way back home, which is very expensive sometimes. It means you have to go to allies. Sometimes you have to manufacture in India, for example. We need to draw closer to India.
We need to go after the countries that trade in necessary valuables with China. We need to secure our supply lines for rare earth minerals.
The United States is the economic gorilla on planet Earth, and we ought to throw our weight around. With regard to China, this notion that we thrive and China thrives, China has played the markets against us. China has used a certain opening of its economy in order to maximize its own leverage and power. We need to reverse that.
Second, we must rebuild the American military. This is not optional. This is necessary. The president has called for a significant upgrade in our military capacity, including for things like Patriot missiles and THAADs. Democrats are stalling this on the basis that they&#8217;re angry about the Iran war.
We should point out that Iran does not exist as a baseline military power without Chinese and Russian help. These are people who could not construct an IKEA box, but somehow they have fairly sophisticated weaponry courtesy of the Chinese.
We need to build up our military, and that means getting sophisticated about it. China is building a massive drone capacity. We need to work with firms to develop sophisticated weaponry to stall out the Chinese threat. There is no excuse for the American government purposely handicapping and kneecapping our own military capacity.
Third, we have to crack down on China&#8217;s technological infiltration of American society. That means we need to crack down on their information operations. It also means cracking down on nonprofits that act essentially as pass-throughs for the Chinese Communist government. We need to end the practice of people dropping babies from China. We need to end student visas from China. Why are we educating hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens who go back to China and bring stolen IP and knowledge back to our enemies?
There are a ton of people in positions of power who want to keep making nice with the Chinese. Bernie Sanders has been doing a full-on propaganda effort on behalf of the Chinese to undermine our AI industries. Believe me, the Chinese want nothing more than to destroy our forward capacity with AI. They want us to destroy the lead that we currently hold in AI, and they are succeeding because they are spreading a bunch of nonsense about data centers and how they&#8217;re going to wreck our industrial farmlands.
There are 875 million acres of farmland in the United States. If we were to build all of the data centers you could possibly want in the United States, four or five million acres out of 875 million acres, and it&#8217;s not all going to be built on farmland — what are we talking about here?
Some large-scale businesses are trying to do business in China. This was the problem with Apple.
Very few politicians are willing to stand up and say the truth, but President Trump is one of them. He has reoriented the political landscape regarding China. Until President Trump took office, most American politicians were still preaching the idea that China was a strategic partner. Trump largely moved them from strategic partners to strategic opponents.
In 2014, after Xi Jinping became the Chinese dictator, he wrote, “The battle for mind control happens on a smokeless battlefield. It happens inside the domain of ideology. Whoever controls this battlefield can win hearts. They&#8217;ll have the initiative throughout the competition in combat. When it comes to combat in the ideology domain, we don&#8217;t have any room for compromise or retreat. We must achieve total victory.”
These are our enemies, and we need to fight them using all the means at our disposal.

IMG_5196

The Conversation America Needs To Have

Ben Shapiro

Data Centers

Opinion

Trade War

Vice President JD Vance&#8217;s decision to spend nearly three hours chatting with Joe Rogan on his podcast is the type of choice that drives consultants to drink more heavily than they do on a normal Wednesday. Devoting that amount of time to open questioning and long-winded theorizing about politics, culture, and conspiracy theories is a minefield for any elected politician, and one where it&#8217;s easy to create clips that will be edited and used to make half-baked arguments or warp what&#8217;s said into an unintended context.
Unfortunately for Vance, despite his well-known and much-admired communication prowess, that&#8217;s exactly what happened. On Iran, Israel, Jeffrey Epstein, and more, the vice president came across as far more interested in defending his own personal opinions than fulfilling the task of representing the Trump administration. Taken as a whole, the interview reads as if he&#8217;s already the 2028 nominee, speaking for the Republican Party he wants to manifest, not the one that currently exists under President Trump.
Time and again, the knock on this VP has been simple: He&#8217;s too online. He pays far too much attention to random social media accounts criticizing his tireless advocacy for a bad deal with Iran than he does to the possibility that the deal is, well, bad. He complained vociferously to Rogan that Israel is apparently funding some of the same people who are criticizing his deal online. But given that polls show the deal is unpopular with a significant portion of Republicans, and that only a small minority of voters think it&#8217;s a better deal for America than it is for Iran, Vance seems to be investing a gargantuan belief in the effectiveness of pro-Israel propaganda to move the needle.
Conservative Fox viewers and Daily Wire readers have never been sold on this deal, and now that it&#8217;s fallen apart, it&#8217;s something he should be eager to put in the rearview mirror — a collapse he should understand is the fault of Iran doing what Iran always does, not something he should blame on foreign manipulators. The sooner voters forget about Vance&#8217;s cheerleading for a doomed plan as his first major foray into foreign policy, the better it is for him.
For a vice president who seems to view the world more through the lens of podcasters than real life, the prescription is clear. The biggest viral trend over the past few months for American parents is in favor of giving kids a &#8220;nineties summer&#8221; — minimal screen time, maximum outdoor time, a throwback to the America where the rare moment of connecting to the internet came with the crackling sound of AOL dial-up and people focused on the real world of their neighbors and friends, long before the word &#8220;podcast&#8221; even existed. Perhaps that&#8217;s the recipe the vice president needs to reset, and get back to being the effective voice for this administration he was in its first year. Let the podcasts roll on. Everybody needs a break sometimes.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

JD Vance Is In Desperate Need Of A Nineties Summer

Four House Democrats — Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM), Maxine Dexter (D-OR), and Delia Ramírez (D-IL) — spent four days in Cuba meeting with communist President Miguel Díaz-Canel, government ministers, medical officials, business leaders, and other groups before concluding that President Donald Trump&#8217;s energy sanctions had transformed the island into what they described as a &#8220;silent Gaza.&#8221;
The congressional delegation made the trip after the Trump administration imposed a de facto fuel embargo on Cuba earlier this year following the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, tightening pressure on Havana by threatening penalties against countries that continue supplying fuel to the island.
<a href="https://apnews.com/article/cuba-embargo-congress-pocan-legerfernandez-dexter-ramirez-e369a23097dcf104d424af88cdc2134a">Speaking to reporters</a> after the trip, Pocan said someone he met in Cuba described the island as a &#8220;silent Gaza” — a comparison he said was &#8220;apt.&#8221; 
&#8220;There may not be bombings, but there are certainly conditions that prevent people from going about their daily lives,&#8221; Pocan said. &#8220;They can&#8217;t go to work, they can&#8217;t preserve their food, they can&#8217;t access medical supplies, or live as they did before.&#8221; The comparison comes as left-wing lawmakers have repeatedly invoked Gaza in debates over seemingly unrelated domestic and foreign policy issues.
The delegation also directed criticism at Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family fled communist Cuba. &#8220;I think Marco Rubio is making this personal and not professional,&#8221; Pocan said. 
Ramírez went considerably further, accusing the United States of pursuing &#8220;60-year-long imperialistic policies&#8221; against Cuba and blaming Trump and Rubio for worsening what she called a humanitarian crisis.
&#8220;Plain and simple, our 60-year-long imperialistic policies, including an immoral, inexcusable, cruel blockade, have contributed to the dire conditions facing Cubans who yearn to be free,&#8221; Ramírez said in a <a href="https://ramirez.house.gov/media/press-releases/ramirez-statement-oversight-visit-cuba-and-humanitarian-crisis-island">statement</a> released after returning from Havana.
She also claimed Trump was advancing a &#8220;white nationalist agenda&#8221; through his immigration policies and argued the United States must end the blockade, end the sanctions, and dismantle policies she said violate international law.
In a joint <a href="https://pocan.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/reps-pocan-dexter-leger-fernandez-and-ramirez-return-cuba-fact-finding">statement</a>, the four lawmakers claimed the Trump administration&#8217;s policies were &#8220;strangling&#8221; Cuba and warned that sanctions were &#8220;killing everyday Cuban citizens.&#8221;
Dexter, a physician, praised Cuba&#8217;s government-run healthcare system, saying, &#8220;Cuba created a free, universal healthcare system that millions of Cubans and others around the world have come to expect and depend on.&#8221;
Léger Fernández likewise condemned U.S. policy, saying, &#8220;What the United States is doing to this island is a siege.&#8221; 
Cuba&#8217;s communist government quickly embraced the Democrats&#8217; comments.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla celebrated the delegation on <a href="https://x.com/BrunoRguezP/status/2077046192857350539">X</a>, writing that the lawmakers had confirmed through &#8220;firsthand exchanges&#8221; the &#8220;collective punishment&#8221; imposed by the United States and the &#8220;inhuman impact&#8221; of what he called a &#8220;genocidal policy designed in South Florida.&#8221; Rodríguez also promoted the slogan &#8220;Cuba is not a threat,” a phrase frequently used by the Cuban government in international campaigns against U.S. sanctions.
The Trump administration has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-targets-cubas-power-structure-in-sweeping-blow-to-communist-elites">defended</a> its Cuba policy as an effort to weaken the communist regime rather than to punish the Cuban people. The White House has argued that Havana&#8217;s decades of economic mismanagement, combined with authoritarian rule, bear primary responsibility for the island&#8217;s ongoing shortages and rolling blackouts.
Rubio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba before Fidel Castro consolidated power, has long supported maintaining pressure on the communist government and has argued that sanctions should remain in place until meaningful democratic reforms occur.

CUBA-US-SANCTIONS-ENERGY

After Cuba Trip, Dems Blame U.S. For Turning Communist Island Into ‘Silent Gaza’

United States

For the first time in decades, peace between Lebanon and Israel is becoming a reality. In June, Lebanese and Israeli officials signed a U.S.-brokered framework in Washington, marking their first direct talks since 1983. This achievement was personally facilitated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with key diplomats — Lebanon&#8217;s Nada Hamadeh Moawad and Israel&#8217;s Yechiel Leiter — engaged in direct negotiations, alongside Ambassadors Mike Huckabee and Mike Waltz, longstanding advocates for the region&#8217;s Christian communities. When Aoun meets President Trump at the White House on July 21, these dedicated individuals are prepared to turn this fragile opening into a lasting peace.
Lebanon&#8217;s president, Joseph Aoun, is a leader, and this is a critical moment.
Aoun is a president who says out loud what timid men whisper. When Iran&#8217;s Revolutionary Guard presumed to dictate the terms of Lebanon&#8217;s peace, Aoun answered them to their faces, on television, with Christiane Amanpour: &#8220;It&#8217;s not your country, it&#8217;s our country.&#8221;
Everyone understood he was speaking about Hezbollah — the militia contrived and funded by Iran to build a colony inside Lebanon, an armed state within a state that has fomented only war, at home and across every border. The words were so plainly true they should have been unremarkable. Yet no Lebanese leader of Aoun&#8217;s stature had ever dared to say them quite so clearly on a platform quite so public. His predecessors were frightened, bought, or weak.
This is why the United States should give President Aoun his due. He inherited a state hollowed out by corruption, a currency turned to paper, a port turned to rubble, and a militia that answered to Tehran, not Beirut. A weaker leader would manage the decline and scrape what personal gains he could for himself. Instead, Aoun leads.
&#8220;I will not let my people die,&#8221; he says. But keeping people alive is the bare minimum. The harder task now is to help them thrive again — and that he cannot do alone.
If America truly has the partner in Beirut it appears to have, it should validate him with substance, not sentiment: far greater support for the Lebanese army as it meets its commitments, the Gulf mobilized to underwrite reconstruction, and Europe and the wider world rallied behind Aoun — first to deny Hezbollah the power to steal any more of Lebanon&#8217;s future, and then to speed regional peace.
Lebanon is worth it.
If Hezbollah, an enemy of Lebanon, of America, and of Israel, is no longer able to deny the Lebanese government a monopoly on force, then regional peace will be inevitable.
The geostrategic arithmetic is simple. A country cannot have two armies. A state cannot be sovereign while a foreign-funded militia holds a veto over war and peace. Disarming Hezbollah is not an obstacle to Lebanon&#8217;s freedom; it is the precondition. A majority of Lebanese now say so. The only party still betting on rockets and ruin is the one that dragged Lebanon into catastrophe again and again — and would gladly do it once more.
Now the test: words have carried Aoun to the White House, but only deeds can carry Lebanon the rest of the way. President Trump&#8217;s terms should be just as plain: disarm Hezbollah and choose peace with your neighbors, Israel among them, and the United States will be no less a friend to this new Lebanon.
Lebanon’s cedars raised Solomon&#8217;s Temple; its shores gave the world its alphabet. It remains the only Arab nation with a Christian head of state, and Christians are still nearly a third of its people, the largest such community left in the region.
St. John Paul II called Lebanon &#8220;more than a country; it is a message.&#8221; Pope Leo XIV carried that word onto Lebanese soil last winter, preaching &#8220;Blessed are the peacemakers&#8221; while calling on Hezbollah to lay down its weapons.
To achieve this would rank among the great achievements of any American president in modern history. President Trump would help restore Lebanon and finish off Iran&#8217;s most prized proxy, and the price of it all would be peace with Israel.
I can already see the Lebanon that waits on the other side of this decision. I see a Lebanon of open borders and open markets, where a young professional eats lunch in Haifa and dinner in Beirut. I see Beirut restored to its place as the jewel of the Mediterranean, a rival to Dubai and Tel Aviv. I see ancient Christian communities no longer fleeing westward but flourishing in their land. I see the cedars standing tall again — just as the Psalmist promised, &#8220;The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.&#8221;
This Lebanon is waiting for leadership.
***
Reverend Johnnie Moore, PhD, is Vice Chancellor and the head of Middle East studies at Pepperdine University. Moore was twice appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. The views expressed in this piece are his own.

LEBANON-VATICAN-RELIGION-DIPLOMACY-POPE

Lebanon’s Peace Means Middle East Peace – And Trump Holds The Key

Joseph Aoun

Lebanon

Middle East

Senator Lindsey Graham died Sunday morning, hours after landing back in Washington from his tenth wartime trip to Kyiv, where he&#8217;d spent the week pushing a new Russia sanctions package and meeting twice with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In our era of social media-driven cognitive impairment, the hot takes came quickly and focused on how Graham had changed from a searing critic of Donald Trump in the 2016 cycle to one of Trump’s closest Senate allies. But there was little mystery to Graham’s evolution: he did us the favor of both saying explicitly what he was doing and — rarer for politicians — actually following through. In plain sight, Graham changed his means but not his ends; that combination is rare enough that pundits’ confusion is understandable. But accuracy is important, even online. Graham’s legacy is as one of the most inconsistent men in Washington in his approach towards Donald Trump — no small feat when J.D. Vance is Trump’s own vice president — but as one of the most consistent men in his principles. That combination confuses more people than it should.
Chris Cillizza and the quote that confuses those who do not wish to see
Chris Cillizza&#8217;s <a href="https://chriscillizza.substack.com/p/the-one-lindsey-graham-quote-that">post on the morning of Graham’s death</a> reaches for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/magazine/lindsey-graham-what-happened-trump.html">Mark Leibovich&#8217;s 2019 profile of Graham</a> to argue that he was a mere weathervane, pursuing relevance by any means necessary. Asked what had happened to him, Graham told Leibovich: “ ‘This,’ ” Graham said, “is to try to be relevant.” Politics, he explained, was the art of what works and what brings desired outcomes. “‘I’ve got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country,’ he told me.”
Cillizza focuses on the first part of the quote: “This is to try to be relevant,” and stops there. But Cillizza not only ignores the second part of the quote about “working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country,” but he also ignores Graham’s actual record, which belies Cillizza’s accusation of Graham as a man who &#8220;held policy positions lightly and a desire to matter tightly.&#8221; Graham did throw in wholly with Trump, but it was always in the service of his long-standing policy preferences for American leadership and an interventionist foreign policy. You can oppose those goals — plenty of people do, not all of whom are Democrats, liberals, or media members (I repeat myself) — but Graham always advocated for them, regardless of how cringe-inducing his public devotion to Trump could get. Even Will Saletan of the Bulwark, in his <a href="https://specialto.thebulwark.com/p/the-corruption-of-lindsey-graham">interminable 2023 series</a> excoriating Graham for his surrender to Trump, <a href="https://specialto.thebulwark.com/p/trumps-best-friend">noted</a> that when Graham was defending Trump most fiercely, “he was simultaneously lobbying Trump to adopt, or at least not to abandon, hawkish foreign policies.”
Anne Applebaum and the case of the missing Ukraine support
Anne Applebaum acknowledged Graham’s death by resurfacing her 2020 Atlantic cover story, &#8220;<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3_RouLwI10rEYFfGKtdXD1Y&amp;utm_source=copy-link&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=share">The Collaborators</a>,&#8221; in which she cited Graham as the marquee American example of a Republican who&#8217;d abandoned his convictions to accommodate a leader he privately despised — the domestic analog, in her telling, to the Eastern European and Vichy French officials who made their peace with regimes they knew were rotten.
Aside from the indecency of re-publicizing those accusations the day of Graham’s death and the questionable arguments made in the piece itself, what made Applebaum’s choice even more bizarre was her own body of work since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Few writers in America have made a more forceful, sustained case that Ukraine is, in her words, the front line of the entire contest between democracy and autocracy — that what happens there determines whether the free world holds. With that record, one would think she would have noticed Graham’s robust record of support for Ukraine. He visited Kyiv 10 times since the invasion. He co-sponsored the toughest sanctions package on Russia&#8217;s oil trade to move through Congress. He spent his final week alive lobbying the Trump administration for Tomahawks and locking down a bipartisan sanctions deal with the White House&#8217;s sign-off — the deal he announced, with evident pride, half a day before he died. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, NATO&#8217;s Secretary General Mark Rutte, and Ukraine&#8217;s own prime minister all said as much in their tributes Sunday. In other words, Graham&#8217;s record on Ukraine was the opposite of collaboration with authoritarianism: Applebaum&#8217;s silence on that record, even in a post marking his death, only shows her own inability to recognize reality.
Graham understood “The Room Where It Happens.” His critics don’t
Cillizza isn&#8217;t alone in reaching for the Broadway musical Hamilton song &#8220;The Room Where It Happens&#8221; as shorthand for what happened to Graham, and to Washington, D.C. more broadly. It&#8217;s an understandable reflex. Aaron Burr, as Lin-Manuel Miranda writes him, is the purest portrait we have in American pop culture of a politician who wants access for its own sake — envious of a compromise he had no hand in, chasing a seat at the table with no fixed idea of what he&#8217;d do once he got there. When Hamilton needles him about what he actually stands for, Burr not only has no answer but embraces, at the song’s close, the path of doing whatever he has to do to get into that room.
Miranda&#8217;s Burr accurately describes far too many Washington politicians, before and after the age of Trump. In fact, it is a better description of many of Graham’s most searing critics: the conservatives who spent many years advocating the same foreign policy goals as Graham and then renounced those beliefs, and all others that were connected to conservatism or the Republican Party, once Trump won in 2016. But it never accurately described Graham: he was closer to Hamilton, who fervently pursues his ambition and relevance but in the service of his long-standing goals to “build something that’s gonna outlive me,” like the national bank and the nation’s financial system. Graham has, to pick just one example, advocated for military action to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions and capabilities for many years, and died having seen his advocacy play at least some role in bringing President Trump around to making that happen.
The weekend of Graham’s death, we saw a different example of Miranda’s Aaron Burr reincarnated: Congressman Ro Khanna went to Israel to provoke an international incident in an effort to revive his fledgling 2028 presidential campaign and distract from his fervent support for a Nazi tattooed-Senate candidate in Maine who was forced to withdraw after a World Cup capacity crowd’s number of scandals. This culminated in a period of drastic principle reversals by this formerly respected Congressman, who has combined a newfound distaste for Israel worthy of Tucker Carlson and other formerly conservative podcasters with advocacy of a wealth tax, which would destroy the economy of Silicon Valley — a region that is not only the greatest wealth generator of the world but also based in his own district. As cringeworthy as Lindsey Graham’s devotion to Donald Trump could get, it’s worth contrasting him with Khanna to see what true surrender to illiberalism looks like. Graham may as well have been Alexander Hamilton by comparison.
Graham was a typical politician, and there are worse things to be
Graham was a politician and never pretended otherwise. In the Leibovich profile from 2019, Graham responds to Leibovich’s “what happened to you?” question with “Well, O.K., from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” continuing with his quest to be relevant to help bring about his preferred policy outcomes. Many more conventional Republican politicians could not accommodate themselves to Trump’s way of doing business and left office; some chose the path of more consistent “#Resistance” and, mostly, failed. The best thing that can be said about Graham’s legacy is that he accepted the trade of making himself look ridiculous (as he often did) to help advance his long-standing principles – and the country was (I strongly believe) better off for that trade. Graham was emblematic of the politician who said, “A man never stands taller than when he is on his knees kissing someone’s ass,” only he never lost sight of why he was compromising his approach. Most politicians – before or after the age of Trump – pursue relevance for its own sake, and make themselves look just as ridiculous in doing so. If Lindsey Graham is to be remembered for his approach to Trump, those memories should accurately reflect what he did. And that is enough to make him stand out as a Hamilton in a town of Burrs.
***
Jeremy Senderowicz is a lawyer in New York City.

Senator Lindsey Graham Speaks On President Trump’s Announcement Of Troop Withdrawal In Syria

Lindsey Graham: A Hamilton, Not A Burr

Aaron Burr

Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton

Lindsey Graham

Zohran Mamdani has decided that Italians are not real New Yorkers.
Real New Yorkers are from Pakistan or from Bangladesh. There&#8217;s “Little Palestine” as well.
Little Palestine, by the way, sounds really terrible if in any way it mirrors the Palestinian areas in Israel.
Mayor Mamdani released a map showing immigrant enclaves, but they missed one called Little Italy, which, of course, is probably the most historically important enclave in New York City.
Instead, Mamdani put out a bunch of neighborhoods that he invented: “Little Pakistan,” “Little Senegal,&#8221; or “Little Yemen.”
Who’s in Little Yemen, the Houthis? Anyone want to visit?
These are not real names of neighborhoods. Of course, there’s no labeling of Jewish areas in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, or Borough Park.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2462?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
In a statement, a City Hall spokesperson said the map was not designed to highlight religious enclaves in the Big Apple. Instead, they said it highlights New York City neighborhoods with substantial foreign-born populations from regions and countries around the world.
Great job. You ignored Little Italy.
And the Italians are angry.
This is where we need to insert the clip of Tony Soprano explaining that Columbus was an American hero.
Remember, Zohran Mamdani is the guy who took a picture of himself and posted it on social media in the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, flipping off a statue of Columbus with the caption, “Take it down.”
It turns out that the inanimate statue didn&#8217;t care.
So Columbus needs to go, but we must, must, must inform visitors to New York where Little Yemen is, where Little Pakistan and Little “Palestine” are.
Sounds awesome.
Mamdani is trying to run the city of New York as though it were its own little polity — its own country. Today, City-Journal <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/city-journal-daily-newsletter-jul-10-2026#:~:text=Earlier%20this%20week%2C%20Ana%20Mar%C3%ADa,was%20directed%20to%20cancel%20it.">reported</a> that a top Mamdani official tried to meet with the Iranian government:
<blockquote>Earlier this week, Ana María Archila, commissioner of New York City’s Office for International Affairs, was scheduled to meet with Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations, Amir-Saeid Iravani. Archila allegedly did not inform Mayor Zohran Mamdani of the meeting and was directed to cancel it.</blockquote>
The State Department instead met with Mamdani and his administration to say, “Guys, you are not allowed to do that. You don&#8217;t run your own foreign policy with regard to Iran, as much as Mamdani would like to think that he does.”
City-Journal noted:
<blockquote>On April 16, a message seen by City Journal was sent to staff within the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs asking them to prioritize diplomatic engagement in part based on whether foreign officials “are . . . in political alignment/leftist.&#8221;</blockquote>
So they wanted to engage diplomatically only with regimes that agree with them, and the first place they tried was Iran.
I can&#8217;t imagine why.
You mean that Zohran Mamdani and his priorities match the priorities of the Iranian ayatollahs?
That’s shocking. I just can&#8217;t believe it.
This is where the Democrats have gone at this point.
City Journal continued:
<blockquote>The administration’s international ambitions have not been limited to public comments. Last month, Mamdani <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-05-29/gustavo-petro-to-travel-to-new-york-to-meet-mayor-zohran-mamdani.html">intended</a> to meet with leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro. The meeting was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/06/10/mamdani-was-meet-with-colombias-leader-trump-made-sure-it-didnt-happen">called off</a> after the State Department declined to issue a visa following Petro’s attendance at a rally hosted by Mamdani in September. Archila’s international meetings include a two-day trip to Barcelona in April to participate in a <a href="https://www.pes.cor.europa.eu/event/local-progressive-mobilisation">conference</a> hosted by the Party of European Socialists.</blockquote>
Mamdani doesn’t need to be president. He thinks that New York is his flagship city, that he is going to run his own foreign policy, and he&#8217;s going to make it unlivable for people he doesn&#8217;t like.
I know there are a lot of Democrats saying, “He talks a big game, but he&#8217;s not going to be able to do anything.”
Famous last words.
Real estate investors are already fleeing the city.
They should. Because the city that Mamdani runs is not a city that is great for people who traditionally like our country.
It is utterly unsurprising that the same Mamdani who was flipping off a statue of Columbus is perfectly happy meeting with Iran.
It is all the same thing forever and always: The red-green alliance — the Marxist-Islamist alliance — is alive and kicking.
It also has that horseshoe aspect where they have the sympathy of people like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie.
Erasing Little Italy is just the start.

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