UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald Worships Feet Again
Glenn Greenwald is worshiping feet again, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
The post UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald Worships Feet Again appeared first on .
No, You Don’t Have To Be A Dispensationalist To Believe In Zionism
Fulfillment theology not only fails to do justice to the actual Bible but also caricatures Christian Zionism, rooting it all in dispensationalism.
FBI, DOJ Epstein memo sparks right-wing outrage: 'Nobody is believing this'
The joint memo from the FBI and Department of Justice was meant to provide transparency and increase trust. Unfortunately for the administration, it drew only rampant criticism and distrust that has spread like a wildfire.
On Sunday, the Trump administration released a memorandum that powerfully explained there was nothing to see or hear about the death of infamous financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The memo claimed that after a full investigation where every nook and cranny was searched, there was no "blackmail list," no sign of co-conspirators, and certainly no evidence of wrongdoing in his death.
This sparked a flurry of negative reactions across social media, with only one prominent conservative backing the administration's fumble.
'Was she lying then or is she lying now?'
On Monday, BlazeTV's Liz Wheeler immediately called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to be fired.
"If I'm President Trump, I would not tolerate this behavior anymore. She has become a LIABILITY to his administration," Wheeler told host Glenn Beck.
Wheeler added that if the Epstein memo is indeed telling it like it is, the attorney general should not have assumed "its veracity and publicize[d] it for clicks."
Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison made a series of similar remarks in which he called for releasing any missing documents.
"The DOJ can't just say 'case closed' on Epstein and expect the American people to move on. Full transparency is not optional. This won't cut it," Burlison wrote on X.
The congressman even boldly claimed the administration could be concealing information.
"Nobody is believing this. Either they’re hiding something, or they’re inept. Or incompetent," he added.
With such harsh criticisms being levied at the Trump administration, there were only a few willing to step in and defend them.
RELATED: The Epstein memo is a joke — and the joke’s on us
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So far, the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro is the only prominent conservative to come out in defense of the administration, seemingly taking the facts presented in the memo at face value. Shapiro also insisted that any critics who are dissatisfied with the DOJ and the FBI's findings ought to produce their own evidence supporting their theories on Epstein.
"Does this put to bed all inquiries? Of course not," Shapiro said on his show Monday. "People can continue to speculate as much as they want, and I think there are still open questions here regarding how did Epstein make his money. That's a very serious open question, and the speculation for a long time was he made his money from blackmail."
Shapiro admitted that some major questions remained unanswered, but he also felt that FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino are telling the truth.
"But the DOJ and the FBI, again, run by people like Dan Bongino and Kash Patel and Pam Bondi ... people you elected and put into these positions to get you the truth on this matter are telling you that he was not murdered, he did not keep a client list, and he did not blackmail powerful figures," Shapiro said.
"If you are willing to throw that over and claim they're lying, then I'd like to see you present your evidence that they are in fact lying because I know Dan. I don't think Dan Bongino is lying to me," Shapiro added. "I know Kash Patel a little bit. I don't think Kash Patel is lying to me. I don't think these people are lying to me."
RELATED: Is the FBI salvageable? Here's what bureau insiders have to say
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Despite Shapiro's defense of Bondi, Bongino, and Patel's findings, others have noted that certain discrepancies remain unaddressed.
Critics point to Bondi's previous remarks about the Epstein files being on her "desk" as evidence that the administration is not being as transparent as they claim.
"Sorry but this is unacceptable," investigative reporter Robby Starbuck wrote on his X page. "Was she lying then or is she lying now?" he asked.
Similarly, commentator and actor Russell Brand asked what happened to Trump supporters' aggression toward "deep state obfuscation."
"We were promised the Epstein client list and flight logs — now we're being told they don't even exist," Brand wrote on X.
Political pundits like Tucker Carlson have gone even further, accusing the FBI and the DOJ of fully participating in a cover-up.
"So let's just assess this logically," Carlson said on his show Tuesday. "The current DOJ under Pam Bondi is covering up crimes. Very serious crimes by their own description."
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Our republic is sick. The Machiavelli of Mar-a-Lago has the cure.
A progressive friend said something insightful weeks ago: “Trump doesn’t feel like he’s in power unless someone is getting hurt.”
His observation came during the public “breakup” of Elon Musk and President Trump over Musk's criticism of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — but before Trump sent U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to help quell riots over immigration enforcement. And before Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear targets. And before the right splintered over America’s role in Israel’s war.
Tucker Carlson’s ‘peace first’ politics will keep the moral high ground, but Trump’s exercise of power affirms his political legitimacy.
As a political science major, our friend owes some of his prescience to his undergraduate study of Niccolo Machiavelli.
In both “The Prince” and “Discourses,” Machiavelli grounded his theory of politics in his understanding of human nature. Because people are motivated by a capricious self-interest, he believed, people will fight with one another to realize their goals.
“This is to be asserted in general of men,” Machiavelli wrote, “that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous,” and compete incessantly for power, resources, and more. The regime whose primary goal is to placate rivals, whether internal dissidents or foreign enemies, will descend into chaos, Machiavelli believed. To prevent collapse, the strong leader must exert force — force that suppresses, punishes, or destroys the weak, force that he uses not occasionally or whenever a problem materializes, but constantly.
This is Machiavelli’s central paradigm: Politics is battle — not a battle between good and evil or right and wrong. Just a battle, ongoing and continuous, to defend the principles on which the regime operates, if not the ones upon which it was built. In “Machiavelli on Modern Leadership,” the late historian Michael Ledeen wrote that according to Machiavelli, a leader “has no other objective or thought or takes anything for his craft, except war.” Democratic and Republican presidents alike abide by this rule, both internationally and domestically. President Lyndon Johnson waged a war on poverty. Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Joe Biden spoke of the war on COVID-19.
Trump uses force because conflict — not consensus-building, cooperation, or governance for the common good — is the nature of political leadership.
This is a reality that pundits and commentators passionately decry, especially when their preferred party isn’t in power. It is a notion that shocks progressives still in thrall to the mellifluous voice of President Barack Obama, who promised that politics was not a battle but a journey toward a more perfect union. His musings about “bringing a gun to a knife fight” are all but forgotten. Obama the pacifist is the living memory.
“I did not set out to be a politician, but a community organizer,” he wrote in “A Promised Land.” “And what I learned in those years, and what I still believe, is that politics, at its best, is a pilgrimage — a steady, sometimes halting, often frustrating march toward greater justice and equality.” His rhetoric called for solidarity. His tone was messianic. He promised that our shared moral striving would lead to a drastically improved future, that the long pilgrimage of America would arrive someday at a profound and sacred destination.
Ironically, that destination was Trump.
From the very beginning of his campaign for president, Trump openly embraced the battle metaphors that embarrassed Obama. We are fighting against the corrupt establishment, he would say. We are fighting to win the battle against illegal immigration. We are in a battle for the soul of our country.
“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more,” Trump said on January 6, 2021. In the game of politics, Trump embraced conflict and was determined to win on all counts — for himself and for the country.
His foreign policy supports this point.
RELATED: How Tucker Carlson vs. Ted Cruz exposed a critical biblical question on Israel
Speaking after the military strike on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in late 2019, Trump was unequivocal in his statement of victory. “Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world,” Trump said. “He will never again harm another innocent man, woman, or child. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a safer place. God bless America.”
Both hawks and doves celebrated the win. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called it a “game-changer.” Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson counted Baghdadi’s death a “victory for civilization itself.” A few months later, a fault line appeared on the right when a drone fired missiles at Qasem Soleimani, killing the Iranian Quds Force commander. Carlson criticized Trump for goading Iran into a military conflict that would weaken America.
“There are an awful lot of bad people in this world,” Carlson said on his television program in early 2020. “You can’t kill them all.”
This month, the fault line widened. As Trump prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, Carlson cried out for more public decision-making. He spoke about the “real divide” on the right, a line that separates people like Carlson and Steve Bannon from the interventionists and neoconservatives in the modern conservative movement. “The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it – between warmongers and peacemakers,” Carlson posted on X.
Carlson warned against foreign entanglements as distractions from the problems at home, but the violence itself seemed to offend him. In one conversation with Bannon, Carlson paraphrased a story found in all four Gospels, where the apostle Peter draws his sword against the arresting party in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus scolds Peter, saying: "Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). Carlson interpreted that passage as meaning people who espouse violence will suffer in the end.
But one biblical reference always calls to mind another.
In the Gospel of Luke, a passage about the Last Supper contains a comment from Jesus to the disciples that “the one who has no sword [should] sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36). Looking about, the disciples take an inventory and tell him, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” Jesus offers a cryptic response: “It is enough” (Luke 22:38). Perhaps Jesus is chiding them for taking him too literally, as if to say, “That’s enough of this talk.” But equally possible is that Jesus was saying that two swords are enough, that physical conflict is necessary but should serve the interests of defense rather than conquest.
Though the U.S. strikes on Iran resulted in a ceasefire and perhaps negotiation of a peace deal, this outcome will not be permanent on the larger international scene. There will be more attacks, more violence, more opportunities for political leaders to practice their craft with strength and foresight. Carlson’s “peace first” politics will keep the moral high ground, but Trump’s exercise of power affirms his political legitimacy.
As Machiavelli famously wrote: “It is better to be feared than loved.”
Right now, Donald Trump is both.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearWorld and made available via RealClearWire.
‘We’re going to do real science’: RFK Jr. promises Tucker Carlson he will study vaccine-autism link
For decades, there has been a significant group of skeptics who claim that ingredients in vaccines have led to increased rates of autism among children. They’ve pointed to past studies as proof. Yet, those in so-called “mainstream science” have said those studies are flawed.
The skeptics have not been deterred, and now one is the secretary of Health and Human Services. In an episode of "The Tucker Carlson Show" podcast released Monday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the eponymous host that he is determined to get answers.
'We’re going to do real science.'
The discussion around autism and vaccines was just one part of a wide-ranging conversation between the two men. Carlson started off the discussion on vaccines and autism by asking, “One of the first things you did as secretary, I think — tell me if I'm misstating it — was commission a kind of study of autism. Can you tell us what that is? What are you seeking to do with that?”
Kennedy went through the history of studies performed in the past on whether there is a link between early childhood vaccinations and autism. He claimed of studies that were conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, “They all say what the CDC wanted them to say — which is they couldn't find a link.”
He then claimed that other groups, including the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, have not completely ruled out the possibility of a link. Kennedy added, “And they were highly critical of the way the CDC was making decisions about the vaccine schedule.”
As the discussion continued, Kennedy laid out why he believed the decision-making process around the vaccination schedule had “essentially been captured by industry.” In other words, the very pharmaceutical companies that make the vaccines were driving the policy on when vaccines should be administered.
RELATED: RFK Jr. torches vaccine panel to make consequences count again
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Kennedy explained why he believes that the CDC, led by those with industry ties, eschewed the scientific method, which called for extensive studies and kept approving more vaccines to add to the schedule.
He added, “None of those studies did what you would do if you wanted to find the answer — which is to compare outcomes in a fully vaccinated group to health outcomes in an unvaccinated group.”
Except one.
Kennedy claimed that in 1999, the CDC commissioned a study of children who had received a hepatitis vaccination as compared with those not vaccinated. He then said, “They found an 1,135% elevated risk of autism among the vaccinated children.”
“It shocked them. They kept the study secret and manipulated it through five different iterations to try to bury the link,” the secretary added.
Kennedy went through why he believes the CDC hid the data, noting that many independent scientists have found a “link” between some vaccinations and increased autism.
Kennedy then pledged that under his watch the studies that have been recommended will be done. “We're going to do real science. And the way we’re going to do that is — we’re going to make the databases public for the first time.”
RELATED: How Big Pharma left its mark on woke CDC vax advisory panel — and what RFK Jr. did about it
He pledged that data from the CDC, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, private HMO data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, and more will be made available for researchers to peruse.
Kennedy pledged money for grants and to do more “in-house studies ourselves,” all with a goal of having answers within six months from now — or possibly even sooner.
“We should have some answers by September, some initial indicator answers. And then, over the next six months, all these large studies by independent scientists all over the world, we anticipate there will probably be about 15 different major teams who are all trying to answer this question,” said the secretary.
“And within six months, we’ll have definitive answers — after September,” he concluded.
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Ted Cruz Should Move On From Sunday School Geopolitics
If you're going to let your vague memory of a Sunday school slogan guide your foreign policy aims, make sure what you learned was correct.Today's top stories
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