Trump Trolls The Pope, Usual Suspects Apoplectic

From CBS News:

President Trump on Monday defended his decision to post an AI-generated image appearing to depict him in the likeness of Jesus, insisting the image shows him as a "doctor."

. . . "I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor," the president told reporters in an impromptu press conference outside the Oval Office. "And it had to do with Red Cross. There's a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one."

He continued: "So I — I just heard about it. And I said, 'How did they come up with that?' It's supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better, and I do make people better."

His tongue, of course, is firmly planted in his cheek -- but in his defense, there's no specifically Christian symbology in the image. Trump is depicted holding some sort of shimmering crystal in his hand, which is more New Age than Christian. While he wears some sort of white base garment, it isn't specifically an alb, and the reddish robe he's wearing is generic; it certainly isn't any sort of vestment. The symbols around him are patriotic, not religious. The intent is in fact humorous and even self-deprecating, not blasphemous.

But let's look at some of the context from the past week:

Last Thursday [April 9], Pope Leo XIV inexplicably met with President Obama's highly partisan top strategist, David Axelrod, in a longer-than-scheduled meeting at the Vatican.

Speculation at the time was that the pope was discussing an Obama visit to the Vatican, as the former president had said he'd like to have. Much was made of all three players being from Chicago and loving the White Sox.

But Axelrod's name is strongly associated with partisan politics and the Democrat establishment, so it definitely looked as though the pope was going political and attempting to send President Trump a message beyond his current public criticisms.

Knowing this, I was skeptical this was about an Obama photo op to best Trump, who certainly isn't going to be meeting the pope any time soon, and speculated that more likely, the pair would be discussing political action and communication strategies to knock out Trump and help elect Democrats.

In the wake of the image, Trump's tweets, and Vice President Vance's remarks that "in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic Church, and let the President of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” Pope Leo said his role is to preach the Gospel, not to enter into political disputes.

Well, OK, then why did he meet with David Axelrod, who isn't Catholic but is best known as a Democrat political consultant? It's hard to avoid thinking he does in fact intend to play politics, but if he's challenged, he'll sanctimoniously claim he isn't. And this is actually pretty transparent:

It is patently obvious that these tweets, which are indistinguishable from DNC messaging and make no meaningful mention of Christ, were drafted during or as a result of the meeting with Axelrod. People don’t seem to remember how closely associated the Church and the Democratic… pic.twitter.com/Me5tG785SE

— William Wheelwright (@ploughmansfolly) April 13, 2026

Monica Showalter continues at the second link:

For Axelrod, it's a crisis for Democrats that they have lost so much of the Catholic vote. Catholics were in the Democrats' minds, their property, their captive vote.

Americans of any religious denomination have always had a good sense of when their religious leaders are on point and when they're not. As Main Line Protestant leaders have become increasingly leftist and pansexual in their outlook, their members have simply stopped listening and stopped going to church. In the past, Catholics have tended not to take the pronouncements of far-left clerics like the Berrigan brothers seriously.

I think there's another factor at work: Last Wednesday, I pointed out that in his earlier posts denouncing the attacks on Iran, Leo effectively enabled Trump's strategy of forcing Iran into negotiatikons -- although Trump wasn't going to be bamboozled into lengthy and unproductive intransigence. As soon as Iran tried that, Vance declared the negotiations over.

The problem for Leo is that even if he insists he isn't playing politics, if he tries to dialogue publicly with Trump, that's what he's doing. In matters of public dialogue, Trump is agile. Over and over, he makes remarks that shock people, but he somehow gets his point across. As early as 2015, apparently hoping to nip Trump's presidential ambitions in the bud, Politico listed The 15 most offensive things that have come out of Trump’s mouth -- and that was even before his remarks about Carly Fiorina ("Look at that face!") and Megyn Kelly ("blood coming out of her wherever").

Trump has been rewriting the rules throughout his political career. Leo is kidding himself if he thinks he can play politics with Trump, claim that's not what he's doing, and come out on top.

UPDATE:

It is in the best interests of the Roman Catholic Church, the USA and the world that the Vatican publicly release details as to the subject matter of the recent meeting between Pope Leo XIV and Obama's political strategist, David Axelrod.

This incident is harming the Church in…

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) April 14, 2026

Swalwell: I Don't Get It

So the stanmdard take on Congressman Eric Swalwell dropping out of the California governor primary race is that it was cooked up by the Democrat establishment to avoid having two Republicans win the top two positions in the state's jungle primary.

Under California’s voting system, the top two vote-getters in the primary will proceed to a general election in November, no matter what party they’re from. If the primary were held today, according to the most recent polling, that would mean two Republican candidates, each pulling in just 14 percent of the primary vote, battling it out for the governor’s office in the fall. A lot could change before primary day, but the Democratic Party is increasingly nervous.

The two Republicans are Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff, and Steve Hilton, a Fox News host. The top Democrat until he pulled out of the race was Swalwell, who had been polling at 12%, compared to Bianco and Hilton, who each polled at 14%. So the story goes that people like Speaker Emerita Pelosi, Sen Schiff, and Speaker Jeffries decided to push Swalwell out of the race to concentrate the Democrat field and try to get enough support for at least one of the also-ran candidates to make the top two.

But I'm scratching my head:

Before the bombshell news, Swalwell had trailed the Republicans at roughly 12%, just 1 point ahead of billionaire Tom Steyer, who garnered 11%, and former Rep. Katie Porter with 7%. Candidates Xavier Becerra, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa each held 4% of likely voters, while Betty Yee and Tony Thurmond followed, each attracting just 1%.

. . . Still, if Swalwell had emerged from the primary as one of the top two vote-getters, he had extremely good odds of winning the general election and succeeding Gavin Newsom as governor in a state where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly two to one.

Now, Steyer and Porter must scramble to catch up with less than two months before the June 2 primary. Porter was considered an early frontrunner until her campaign imploded after videos surfaced of her berating her staff. Steyer, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, has spent more than $100 million of his own money on a series of expensive television ads, yet remained stuck in third place among Democrats and fifth overall before Swalwell’s sexual scandal broke.

Let's think about this for a moment. Straight white males don't fare all that well among 21st century Democrats. Swalwell's most visible problem at the moment is that he's a little too straight and a little too male; we'll just throw the white part in at no charge. But even if the Democrats had been able to keep the rape bit out of the news for another seven months, he still would have been a straight white male. The two big Democrat winners in last year's governor races were, after all, attractive white women.

This suggests to me that Swalwell's problem wasn't all the groping, schtupping, and so forth, but that as a straight white male, he wasn't going to rally enough Democrats either in the primary or the fall. But who are the next runners-up in current polling? Tom Steyer, a straight white male billionaire, seems unikely to resonate with California Democrats:

Billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental warrior Tom Steyer, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, is facing mounting questions about how he earned his wealth — notably investments in private prisons that are now being used to house undocumented immigrants facing deportation.

Some of the most vicious political attacks come from his Democratic rivals and Sacramento special interest groups as the June 2 primary election fast approaches, but Steyer has been dogged for years about his past, controversial business ventures and how they help fund his unbridled campaign spending.

That leaves Katie Porter, a former congresswoman who in fact had been the overall front-runner for the election as of last summer, but several incidents last fall eventually put her behind both the Republicans and Steyer. The video embedded above from last summer, when she was briefly front-runner, encapsulates the problem: she's overweight, dowdy, shrieky-squeaky, and abusive. As one commentator notes, first impressions matter. It seems unlikely that Steyer will move the needle; he ran a similar self-funded campaign for president in 2020, but he dropped out before the primaries.

So why did the Democrat elders decide to dump Swalwell? It appears that his sexual misconduct had been an open secret for years:

The women described a similar pattern of events: Swalwell, who is married and has three children, showed close interest in their lives when they were in their twenties and finding their footing professionally, making them feel special and even starstruck. Then, they said, he would send them increasingly sexual messages. Many said they reciprocated and engaged with him in part because of his position of power. In some cases, those inappropriate exchanges escalated to alleged unwanted physical touch or sexual assault, often tied to episodes of heavy drinking.

. . . But several of the women who made allegations about Swalwell said that the congressman’s actions had long-term implications on their lives, leaving them confused, distraught and scared. They said they decided to come forward after hearing rumors that they were not alone in their experiences with the congressman.

“I always felt like if I came forward, I was going to suffer the consequences because he was so powerful,” the former staffer who accused Swalwell of assaulting her said, adding, “I’ve lived in fear every single day.”

But all of a sudden, it's now OK to trash Swalwell? What puzzles me is that a strategy of eliminating Swalwell to consolidate support behind some other candidate could well work if there were a credible candidate among the others -- but so far, the best prospect seems to be Katie Porter. The two most prominent non-sraight white male contenders, Sen Alex Padilla and Kamala Harris, announced they would not run last year. Given less than two months remaining before the June 2, primary, it's unlikely either would change their mind.

So, why did the Democrat elders choose to greenlight the me-too attacks on Swalwell, who might well have been able to surge if he chose to represent his candidacy as a referendum on Trump? Gavin Newsom turned the Proposition 50 redistricting referendum campaign which originally looked like a loser, around on exactly that basis. Instead, Pelosi, Schiff, et al chose to trash their front runner by making it suddenly OK to accuse him of sexual stuff, when they'd previously kept the victims fearing for their careers and reputations if they uttered a peep.

I'm scratching my head.

The Story So Far

It's been quite an Easter octave. A week ago, Trump threatened to nuke a whole civiliation, with an effenheimer no less, following which Iran asked for negotiations. This set me to watching for signs of what was really going on.

Let's keep in mind that ever since the Viet Nam War, the conventional wisdom has been that "negotiations" have nothing to do with ending a war, they're a tactic for the weaker side to get an extended pause in the bombing so they can recover, rehuild, and resume hostilities at a time of their choosing.

Let's also keep in mind that modern Islamists simply never "negotiate" in good faith. They use "negotiations" like the North Vietnamese did, with the added feature that following extended delay, as soon as the "negotiations" conclude, they violate any "agreements" and simply resume fighting.

But let's add a third factor. Trump is no dummy, and he prides himself on his ability as a negotiator. All week, a little voice in my head kept telling me Trump had to be aware of what the Iranians would do in any "negotiation". Why would he waste his time? After yesterday's developments, I think we're starting to get the picture.

On April 1, in a national address, Trump said the US military objectives in Iran were "very close" to being met. By April 8, the day after Iran agreed to "negotiate",

". . . America's military achieved every single objective on plan, on schedule, exactly as laid out from day one," Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said during a press briefing this morning at the Pentagon. "Iran's navy is at the bottom of the sea. .. . Iran's air force has been wiped out. Iran no longer has . . . any sort of a comprehensive air defense system; we own their skies. Their missile program is functionally destroyed: launchers, production facilities and existing stockpiles depleted and decimated."

In other words, if Iran intended to buy any sort of time to rebuild in a cease fire, or somehow delay a US offensive, this wouldn't buy them anything; the US had already met its objectives. Still, the conventional wisdom insisted Iran had one final card: they still controlled the Strait of Hormuz:

Iran has insisted that ships wanting to transit the strait must secure its permission and has suggested it retains the right to impose a fee for passage.

The Iranian navy released a map late Wednesday indicating it may have mined the strait and outlining the designated shipping lanes vessels should use to transit safely. It directs outbound ships leaving the Persian Gulf along a route just south of Larak Island, while inbound vessels must follow a route north of the island — both closer to Iran’s mainland than the route often taken before the war.

A large portion of the strait, marked in a rectangular box that also includes Oman’s territorial waters, is designated in the map as “hazardous.”

That's what Iran was claming as of Thursday. The situiation was unclear:

Chinese ships were among a long line of vessels waiting for clearance to leave the strait, said Muyu Xu, a Singapore-based analyst with Kpler. She said that the overall picture was still confusing and cited how last week Iran said it was accepting Chinese yuan as payment for transit, but then changed to a preference for cryptocurrency.

Ships “don’t know whether they need to pay first, or they go past first and then Iran sends a bill? It’s just a lot of uncertainty,” she said.

Which is just how Iran wanted it -- yes, they'd agreed to open the strait, but given the overall uncertainty, it was de facto closed. And who knew where all those mines were, or whether there were any at all? This would also keep insurers nervous and keep rates high.

So he talks began Friday, but not long after they started,

Centcom wrote Saturday on X that its forces “began setting conditions for clearing mines” in the passageway.

The command added that the USS Frank E. Petersen and USS Michael Murphy, both guided-missile destroyers, transited the strait and operated in the Arabian Gulf “as part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines” that the IRGC previously laid.

“Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of Centcom.

This was preceded by idle threats from Iran. At the same link:

After the U.S. military launched operations to de-mine the Strait of Hormuz, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy reportedly warned an American destroyer in the passageway.

“This is the last warning. This is the last warning,” the Iranian forces radioed to one of the two U.S. destroyers in the strait, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Passage in accordance with international law. No challenge is intended to you, and I intend to abide by rules of our government’s cease-fire,” the U.S. ship responded, referring to the temporary pause in hostilities between the two sides.

The Hill has reached out to U.S. Central Command (Centcom) for comment on the reported radio message. The IRGC Navy, meanwhile, denied Saturday that U.S. ships passed through the Strait.

Consider this: the US sent not one, but two destroyers through the Strait of Hormuz. It's hard to avoid thinking it would never do this if there were the remotest chance of either ship hitting a mine and being damaged, much less sinking. Imagine the morning headlines, much less the photos and video equivalent to Ukraine's sinking the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva in 2022. It would be a military disaster exponentially worse than if Iran had captured the second airman who'd ejected from an F-15 last weekend. This was yet another of Trump's calculated risks, and again, it paid off.

Following that,

In the least surprising international news this week, Vice President JD Vance provided an update Saturday night on his negotiations with the Iranian regime that included confirmation of that regime‘s refusal to make any reasonable deal.

. . . Within two hours of the ceasefire announcement, the Iranian regime was already bombing multiple countries in the Middle East, especially Israel. It also refused to track down and disable the mines it scattered in the Strait of Hormuz, while simultaneously demanding massive tolls from countries that send ships through the strait. Throughout every step of the process this week, the Iranian regime has been arrogant, demanding, defiant, and irrational.

This strikes me as confirmation that this had been Trump's plan all along: Iran was expecting to use the "negotiation" as a means to drag out the cease fire for its own benefit while continuing to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage. But as we've seen over and over, one of Trump's own negotiating strategies is always to walk out, which on Saturday, having proven the US is the one that controls the strait, he instructed Vamce to do. Then,

President Donald Trump announced a U.S. blockade on the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday.

Trump made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social account, blaming the failure to reach a deal with Iran during talks in Pakistan this weekend.

"At some point, we will reach an 'ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT' basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, 'There may be a mine out there somewhere,' that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted," Trump continued.

"I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas. We will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!

So at the end of the week.

• Trump negated the Islamist "negotiating" strategy of delay via inmtransigence and simply announced negotiations were over
• Then he simply demonstrated that the US already controls the key negotiating asset Iran thought it had, the Strait of Hormuz
• He then announced the US itself was blockading the strait, subject to removing all mines.

Crazy

Apparently in the wake of Trump's post calling out Tucker, Megyn, Candace, and Alex, commentators are beginning to weigh in on what those people are actually saying. Rich Lowry at The National Review, which has never been especially favorable to Trump, has the following to say in the video embedded above:

I think first factor is the isolationist Right, overlap with a lot of these people, thought they controlled Donald Trump. They thought Trump was an isolationist the way they are isolationists. And it was never true, he was never an isolationist, and also, in his second term, he's actually been hyperactive in terms of foreign policy. So this led to extreme disappointment, which led on the one hand to a massive reevaluation of Donald Trump. Now yes, Donald Trump made wild threats in the runup to the cease fire with Iran. Are we really shocked by that? Do we not remember fire and fury with North Korea in the first term? And also, he dropped an f-bomb in that post on Easter morning. Bad! Shouldn't have done it! But also, we're shocked? We think he's polite in all his communications and observes all of the norms? No!

. . . Now, Tucker Carlson sounds like a member of the Committee to Save the World during the first term. This was the establishment type that considered Trump a danger and thought he had to be controlled. . . . Here he was, calling on people around Trump to get the nuclear codes and stop potential nuclear conflict. [inserts clip of Carlson] Now, there's another way to deal with disappointment with Trump, not mutually exclusive to the one we just talked about, which is to believe he's being controlled by shadowy forces that happen to be Jews. . . . This is why it's such a key part of the world view of a Tucker Carlson, or of Candace Owens, that the United States government killed JFK.

. . . And Tucker Carolson sees these kinds of conspiracies everywhere, right? The USS Liberty, the spy ship that was accidentally and tragically shot up by Israeli forces during the Six Day War, was a deliberate attack, and the US government was in on it and is still covering it up. Chemtrails, the US government is using commercial aviation to spread these chemicals in the atmosphere for dastardly reasons. The government might be covering up the real killer of Charlie Kirk. . . .

So Tucker Carlson is suggesting Donald Trump might be part of some Satanic project. Now, what country around the world considers the United Ststes the Great Satan? Right? Iran. And now you put on top of this that a lot of these people think Israel is the main problem in the Middle East and perhaps in the international system broadly, and here, our domestic politics as well.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse also weighed in following Trump's post, specifically referencing Alex Jones:

When President Trump responded to the goofball diatribe of Alex Jones, what he apparently was referencing was a segment Jones put out on his podcast when he first requested the administration to intervene and use the 25th amendment to remove Trump. Mr. Jones followed that call for the 25th amendment, by saying he wanted administration officials to conduct a soft-coup against the President of the United States, because Trump wasn’t following his advice.

He then embedded this clip from Jones's podcast:

🚨 Alex Jones and Robert Barnes call for an internal coup of President Trump.

Jones "How do we 25th amendment his ass?"

Barnes "Tackle Trump and let him pretend he is President"

These are the people telling you you're not America First 🤡 pic.twitter.com/vjJO553vj5

— J (@JayTC53) April 7, 2026

Robert Barnes, who as I've noted frequently appears on these Woke Right podcasts, gives his inchoate solution to the obstacles posed by the 25th Amendment:

Tackle Trump and let him pretend he's president, and publicly report that he's going through a health issue, and they have to take over.

In other words. just don't bother following the 25th Amendment, don't involve the cabinet and Congress, just lock him up and proceed. Sundance concludes,

Folks, these characters are not psychologically stable people. This is a level of weird only evident now because Trump decided to address it.

But let's look a little farther into Candace Owens and her allegations against the Macrons. According to a defamation suit filed against Owens by the Macrons,

These outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions included that Mrs. Macron was born a man, stole another person’s [her brother] identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte; Mrs. Macron and President Macron are blood relatives committing incest; President Macron was chosen to be the President of France as part of the CIA-operated MKUltra program or a similar mind-control program; and Mrs. Macron and President Macron are committing forgery, fraud, and abuses of power to conceal these secrets.

. . . she makes absurd claims that Mrs. Macron (as Jean-Michel) participated in the Stanford Prison Experiment, which Owens claims is somehow linked to her later “transition.” Owens has also gone so far as to suggest that the Macrons are involved in an alleged conspiracy to distract Owens from investigating Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

I think Rich Lowry's explanation is the most generous: some people, even given what Trump revealed about himself in his first term, somehow sincerely thought he'd always agreed with them, not necessarily just in foreign policy, but over a whole range of other issues. But Trump has been remarkably consistent in his views on Iran, dating back to before he entered politics. These people are sincere, if mistaken, but they need to be careful not to be drawn into the craziness. I suspect Edward Feser is in this group.

There's a second group that's disappointed, assorted conspiracy theorists like Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Michael "Lionel" LeBron, who have always believed in one or another widely held conspiracy theory, and they apparently thought Trump believed in those theories as well. Trump has turned out to be more grounded and hard-headed than they thought.

A separate issue is Trump as Jacksonian. I think I must have missed school the day they taught Andrew Jackson in history class -- they maybe might have mentioned the Battle of New Orleans and the Bank of the United States, but for whatever reason, they leave out the business of him invading and seizing Florida without authorization in 1818. Walter Russell Mead promoted the parlor version of Andrew Jackson when he called Dubya, a Yale Bonesman, a "Jacksonian". Dubya would have been on the board of directors of the Bank of the United States. Part of the Trump problem is Walter Russell Mead's fantasy of Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson probably said the f-word on Easter morning himself, just he didn't do it on Truth Social. Nobody seems to have thought very hard about what "Jacksonian" really means. I'm sure Trump hasn't, because he's never needed to. That's at the heart of the bigger problem.

The Empire Strikes Back

I made Trump's takedown of podcasters he doesn't like into the opening credits of Star Wars... because it fit perfectly.

This is pretty incredible. 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/dxvtWBjltP

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) April 10, 2026

Last night:

President Trump lashed out at four right-wing critics of the Iran war Thursday, describing them as “NUT JOBS” and “losers” who will say anything for attention.

“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs,” Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post.

“They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” the president raged. “Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did!

Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly both wore out their welcome at Fox, for reasons that have never been fully explained. Megyn Kelly has built her podcasts into something of a media machine; accounts say she has an army of producers nearly as big as she had at Fox, but she projects a breathless girlie-girl persona that's hard to get past -- and nobody's gonna want to cross the girlboss by telling her that. And ever since he left Fox, Tucker has struggled to find a center, and at 56, the preppie schtick is more and more incongruous.

Maybe Fox simply decided that no matter their eye and neck lifts, both had reached their sell-by dates. But Trump is always able to cut to the heart of the matter: "they have one thing in common, Low IQs". This brings us to Candace Owens. In this whole context, there's a strange data point. Michael LeBron, a YouTuber and standup comic who posts under the name Lionel, has recently hopped aboard the Candace Owens train along with Kelly, Carlson, and Jones. But not all that long ago, he had this to ssy on WABC New York:

Candace Owens, as you know, is this firebrand, African-American lady, who suggests, out of nowhere, and states, repeatedly, repeatedly, that Brigitte Macron, the first lady of France, is a man. WAWAWAWAWA! Born a man. WAWAWAWAWA!n Wait a minute! That's not it! You think that's it? I can't even go through the list of the crimes she has alleged. . . and one of the allegations that she has made. . . was that she is Macron's father. Sounds like "Luke, I'm your father", sounds like a
Star Wars episode. I mean, it's crazy.

I don't know exactly when Lionel made these comments, maybe sometime last summer, but since then, he's done a complete 180 on Candace Owens. As of last December, he was saying Candace Owens's Radical Shift in Conservative Discourse Has Them Terrified:

Lionel celebrates Candace Owens as the vanguard of new media, whose bold questioning of taboos exposes the obsolescence of legacy conservative figures like Ben Shapiro and accelerates the shift to decentralized, authentic discourse.

Ben Shapiro is just another relentless self-promoter in Conservative, Inc. You don't need to think Candace Owens is good to think Ben Shapiro is a hack. But this brings me to another question. Not only Lionel, but several other C-list YouTubers like David Freiheit, who posts as Viva Frei, and his frequent guest Robert Barnes, have all turned against Trump at roughly the same time, when they'd been supporting him well after the 2024 election. It would take some effort to trace exactly when this happened -- Lionel and Candace had done it before the March 1 Iran attacks.

On the other hand, Megyn, Tucker, Candace, Alex, Lionel, and Viva Frei are all B- and C- listers, and I'm not sure if they're worth the time to figure them out. But not only is Lionel anti-Trump, he's also singing the praises of Candace Owens, whom he'd previously skewered for claiming not only is Brigitte Macron a guy, but he's Emmanuel's dad. I'd been following Lionel since 2016. He's sharp. He's got a sense of humor. What changed his mind?

When I looked into Candace Owens not long ago, I learned that Candace married the son and heir to a wealthy member of the UK House of Lords, whirlwind courtship, and her net worth with her husband is now thought to be in the hundreds of millions. On the other hand, it's hard not to think that her B- and C-list colleagues, particularly Alex Jones, must need money, especially Megyn and Tucker, who are trying to run legacy-style media operations without legacy-style budgets. That kind of money can buy a lot.

On the other hand, Trump is a lot smarter than any of those, and he thinks the explanation is just low IQ. Occam's razor would support Trump's estimate.

UPDATE:

Tucker Carlson has been in absolute free fall among the GOP. His net favorable has dropped by 47 points.

Meanwhile, Trump crushes Tucker among the GOP. Trump's net favorable is 54 pts higher than Carlson's.

When you up against Trump, you in the grinder to quote Good Burger. pic.twitter.com/oz30tsWGhW

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 10, 2026

Legacy Media Thinks It Sees An Opening

Real Clear Politics is a creature of big investment money and legacy media, although the conventional wisdom says it's pro-Trump:

In November 2020, The New York Times published an article alleging that since 2017, when many of its "straight-news" reporting journalists were laid off, RealClearPolitics showed a pro-Trump turn with donations to its affiliated nonprofit increasing from entities supported by wealthy conservatives. RCP executive editor Carl Cannon disputed the newspaper's allegations of a rightward turn. . . . Cannon stated that RCP regularly publishes perspectives from both liberal and conservative publications, saying that "the simple fact is that the amount of liberal material published in RCP every week dwarfs the annual conservative content in The New York Times".

But the circumstance on the ground is that RCP gets its reputation from polling averages, when polls wouldn't exist if they weren't financed by legacy media, and legacy media won't buy polls that don't tell them what they want to hear.

In 2012, Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, said "They are a huge force. Their polling average is the Dow Jones of campaign coverage."

Nevertheless, as I've discussed here, recent RCP averages, for instance from last year's midterms, were wildly outside the margins of error for the individual polls that made up the average. The whole process was garbage in-garbage out. The same applies to the opinion pieces they run twice a day: one from Victor Davis Hanson, Column A, against one from Robert Reich, Column B -- what are we supposed to do, put them in a blender and figure out what's the truth? This is a meaningless exercise.

As of this morning, RCP seems to have taken it on faith that Iran has split MAGA, and Trump has lost his coalition: A teetering ceasefire bodes ill for treacherous US-Iran talks ahead. A New Theory of Trump: The 'Soft TACO'. Iran Folly Blasting GOP Coalition to Smithereens.

Granted, each of these is a Column A, counterbalanced at least in theory by an equivalent piece from Column B, but how are we expected to derive any real insight from this process? Let's take the last piece above, from Megyn Kelly of all people -- she covered the military action of the past five weeks almost not at all on her podcast; for most of that time, she was still breathlessly reporting on the whole Nancy Guthrie nothingburger when everyone else had moved on. But here's what she says now:

So what led Trump, at 79 years old, to sit in there in that Situation Room when Bibi Netanyahu was seated as an equal? Trump didn’t even sit at the head of the table. Trump sat at the side of the table and Bibi was across from him as an equal in the American Situation Room.

What led him to sit there and buy what that guy was selling hook, line, and sinker when every other president was able to see through that liar?

This isn't commentary, it's repetitious hysteria. And it's hard to avoid seeing hysteria in this whole strain of opinion. Yesterday I noted that Edward Feser seemed to have calmed down, at least a little, after Trump announced the cease fire, but by evenning, Trump was again immoral and corrupting consciences:

💯 As @johnddavidson argues, the president’s extreme threats, even when not carried out, send the world the message that U.S. policy is not governed by just war principles but by “might makes right” realpolitik. And sending that message is itself immoral and corrupts consciences. https://t.co/smsdH9xY1u

— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) April 9, 2026

In fact, Feser now seems to see himself as a whole new political species, a "postliberal":

Brutal piece from @SohrabAhmari demonstrating the sheer irrationality of the last year of governance. From economics to foreign policy, it has not advanced postliberal goals, or America First goals, or any goals at all, amounting to little more than a series of despotic spasms. https://t.co/CsRubq27Hy

— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) April 9, 2026

You know what? Edward Feser is an angry guy. Down deep, there's something basic that doesn't have anything to do with Trump. Farther up in the thread, he muses that maybe libertarians aren't so bad -- "While many libertarians are, from a postliberal point of view, awful on social issues – abortion, drugs, pornography and sexuality in general – they often produce penetrating critiques of economic and war-making policy that identify perverse incentives, unintended consequences. . ." So he's rethinking whether maybe he should cast his lot with atheist, pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-LGBTQIA+, pro-porn Ayn Rand cultists as long as they hate Trump as much as he does. There's something out of kilter here.

I think the basic problem for the current crop of Never Trumpers is that Trump is actually succeeding at resetting both domestic and international political arrangements. For instance,

I estimate that net international migration has plummeted to roughly one-third of the levels observed at the end of Biden’s second term. Official U.S. Census Bureau projections already indicate that net international migration in 2026 is expected to be roughly nine times lower than in 2024—an estimate I view as broadly reasonable.

The largest declines in net international migration have occurred in Democratic-leaning urban areas—particularly in California, Chicago, and the Northeast, but also in parts of Texas, Colorado, and Florida. Given that the Census has already signaled that 2030 U.S. House reapportionment may already be unfavorable to Democratic states, a continuation of this trend—where domestic outmigration from blue states is not offset by international inflows—could further exacerbate those losses and frankly make the 2032 Electoral Map pretty scary for Democrats.

Internationally, he's simply recognizing changed circumstances. Traditionally, let's keep in mind, the UK was the lead non-US NATO ally. Certainly others are aware that this is no longer the case:

There are Russian warships in English Channel and there is nothing we can do about it, our Prime Minister is being cucked by Putin whilst our Navy is utterly degraded. We spend £60b/year on defence - for what exactly? We are sitting ducks

All the while 10s of thousands of… pic.twitter.com/gRlvMiIk6S

— Winston Marshall (@MrWinMarshall) April 9, 2026

A better perspective on the overall view of Trump is from Sundance at Conservative Treehouse:

Most of us have supported Trump throughout his endeavors in office, trusting him to do what needed to be done, and using his best judgement on whatever the issue was while understanding that he has much more information than us. This still applies today.

This doesn’t mean that President Trump can see everything or has immediate reference for everything happening.

. . . The White House is focused on the issues confronting them daily; they have a priority perspective, and they do not see everything. Trust God, and pray for President Trump.

Hysteria and bitter anger aren't a recipe for success in any case. Trump has had people like George Conway, John Bolton, Michael Cohen, Mike Pence, and Ann Coulter throughout his political career. But these have never been anything but blips. My view continues that on one hand, Trump is astonshingly lucky, and it's better to be lucky than good. On the other hand, the harder he works, the luckier he gets.

So, What Was All The Fuss About?

Yesterday morning:

An unspeakably evil threat. Every soldier has the duty to disobey orders to carry this out, every government official has the duty to do whatever is in his power to stop it, every churchmen has the duty to speak out against it, every citizen to resist in any moral way possible. pic.twitter.com/1t7uP2gwr7

— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) April 7, 2026

Oh, well, never mind:

Seeing a lot of this. My entire life I've been regarded as an extreme right-winger, but suddenly, because I oppose threatening a civilization with destruction, I must really be an "MSNBC lib." This sub-moronic level of thinking prevails within a large segment of the right today. https://t.co/VowTaibj3p

— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) April 7, 2026

And the chuds wanna have it both ways!

Here we go again, with the cult’s usual two-step:

1. Trump’s doing X would be a great idea, actually!, but also

2. What an idiot you are for thinking he’d ever do X!

It’s “Heads I win, tails you lose” sophistry. Whatever happens is always said to have been the goal all along.

— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) April 8, 2026

At minimum, Prof Feser seems to be dialing things down -- but it doesn't matter too much; if a sinful thing, viz, making a threat, has a good outcome, that doesn't make it good. But then there's Luke 14:5:

Then he said to them, 'Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?'

I guess even if that had a good outcome, that didn't make it good, huh? But here's the story from the UK Telegraph:

On Tuesday morning, before he posted his ultimatum to Truth Social after weeks of extending the deadline, Mr Trump had reportedly expressed in private that although negotiations with the Iranians had been “very serious”, he did not know whether a deal could be reached.

He fired off his salvo, threatening to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if leaders did not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz.

. . . In the other corner was China, who reportedly pressured Iran to accept the terms of the ceasefire – presented by Pakistan – at the 11th hour, according to The New York Times.

Talks had so far been indirect. Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey had passed messages between the US and Iran over the past two weeks as they desperately tried to avoid a global recession caused by the effects of rising energy prices on markets, as well as more death and destruction in the region.

On the morning of the ceasefire announcement, following Mr Trump’s warning, Tehran ruled out direct talks completely.

. . . Meanwhile, the US struck Kharg Island overnight. The island is Iran’s economic lifeline that handles 90 per cent of its oil exports.

It was a sign of the US’s determination to show that this was no bluff.

. . . As the hours ticked by, everyone from Pope Leo to the actor Ben Stiller called on the president to back down. At the same time, the administration fielded calls from executives and political allies trying to decipher whether Mr Trump was bluffing.

Then came the breakthrough. Three hours before the deadline, Iran said it was “positively” reviewing Pakistan’s proposal.

Mr Trump, who is thought to have been holed up in the Oval Office all day, was considering the proposal and would issue a response, the White House said.

The ceasefire gives Mr Trump a win, or at least the appearance of one, at a moment when it really mattered.

As The Telegraph noted, Pope Leo weighed in, saying “this threat against the entire people of Iran … truly is not acceptable”. But the problem is that Trump has developed a negotiating style over three different careers that's proven effective. It includes making wildly unreasonable demands until he gets a response he can live with, but it also includes careful study of his opponent. The Iranian mullahs are intransigent, they don't negotiate in good faith, and they treat the Western wish to seem reasonable as weakness.

Trump's counter-strategy was plain all along. Yesterday I linked to Fred Kaplan at Slate, who asked, "What Kind of Person Talks Like This—Let Alone a President at War?" But he almost got things right:

[O]ne might charitably interpret Trump’s tweets as a reprise of Richard Nixon’s “madman strategy”—the notion that an enemy will surrender out of fear that the American president is as crazy as he sounds and really will carry out his threat. But it’s worth noting that the ploy didn’t work for Nixon against North Vietnam—and it’s unlikely to work for Trump against Iran.

While Kaplan accurately characterizes Nixon's "madman strategy" (which was carefully calibrated with Kissinger), he underestimates its success. In 1972, faced with North Vietnamese intransigence, Nixon progressively removed previous restraints on US strategy, ordered B-52 strikes on North Vietnam, and ultimately mined Haiphong Harbor.

Though both the Soviets and Chinese frowned on the mining, they did not take active steps to protest it. With the North Vietnamese coast effectively closed to maritime traffic, Nixon ordered a new air interdiction campaign, dubbed Operation Linebacker, to commence.

. . . With imports into North Vietnam down 35-50% and with PAVN forces stalled, Hanoi became willing to resume talks and make concessions. As a result, Nixon ordered bombing above the 20th Parallel to cease on October 23, effectively ending Operation Linebacker.

If anything, Pope Leo facilitated Trump's "madman strategy" when he called it "not acceptable". Indeed, Trump cultivates his bad-boy image, again because it serves his purpose as a negotiator:

During a phone interview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday, Aug. 19, the president gave a new explanation for taking action to end the war in Ukraine — including positioning himself as a mediator between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s pretty-- I want to try to get to heaven if possible," Trump said.

"I’m hearing that I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole,” he added, to laughter from the Fox News hosts. "But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

But let's take the potential alternative to dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that opponents often float -- why couldn't the US have simply demonstrated the power of such a bomb by dropping it over the open ocean near Japan, instead of destroying cities? The problem is that while this might have demonstrated that this was technically possible (although in the actual circumstance, the Emperor's cabinet saw the possibility that even the actual damage at Hiroshima was American deception), it still wouldn't have sent a message that the Americans had the will actually to use it against cities.

All the hysteria in the leadup to yesterday's deadline, including Pope Leo's remarks, sent the clear message, not just to the mullahs, but to the Chinese and Pakistanis, that Trump didn't even care if he went to hell, he'd destroy a civilization. Trump couldn't have asked for a better group of people to vouch for his intent. Even the mullahs began to see these weren't your grandfather's Republicans.

It's worth noting that Nixon employed the "madman strategy" to further the US's then policy of containing the Soviet Union, and negotiation that resulted in a stalemate was the desired outcome. Trump's object, on the other hand, isn't containment -- but he's employing a strategy that Nixon in fact did demonstrate was effective.