The Only Journalist Who's Been Working Over Spring Break Is Mark Halperin

The reason he's working is because he has a lot of incentive. He crashed and burned his career in 2017, when multiple women filed sexual harassmnet and misconduct complaints against him from his time as political director of ABC News, at which point his then-employers NBC News ahd Showtime fired him. He began a serious attempt at rehabilitation in 2019 but faced major headwinds, and he made little progress until last year, when he began work for Megyn Kelly and MK Media, hosting the 2WAY news platform.

I've followed him on 2WAY, and I get the impression that what he's trying to offer is someone who has good inside sources, who asks those sources good questons, and does good analysis of what he learns. What he's betting is that since this is something nobody else is providing, he can rebuild his career with it.

Lately, he's been unique in covering the putative upcoming "negotiations" over the Iran war. One question that's come up for me over the past few days is why, over the past week, "Tehran", or whoever claims to be speaking for the mullahs, has consistently demanded the same unrealisic proposals.

These include reparations from the US, full control over the Strait of Hormuz and the right to charge tolls, withdrawal of all US bases in the region, a permanent end of the war, and the end of sanctions. It made these demnds last week before Trump announced a pause for negotiations, but it reiterated them yesterday. So what are the prospects for negotiations? At about 2:05 in the video embedded above, Halperin says:

I think the president and Bibi have had a plan all along to do regime change. . . . The whole point of this extrordinary, unauthorized attack, the whole point of all this firepower, the whole point of assassinating foreign leaders, is because this regime has been run by crazy, theocratic murderers. And if you replace a bunch of crazy, theocratic murderers with a bunch of crazy, theocratic murderers, you haven't really solved the problem. So I believe, although it's been played down, and although I believe the president could end the conflict without this, I believe there's been a secret plan to do regime change. . . . How did World War II end with the Japanese and the Germans? Surrender.

He fleshed out these ideas in more detail in another post:

We don't know if there'll be peace talks, but there might be tomorrow in Islamabad, they might feature the vice president, they might feature the president's two special negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The Iranians might not come, because they don't think the deal that's on the table is any good. They also might not come, according to Axios, something I thought of, although not based on reporting, it'd be a good time to kill them, if you wanted. . . . We also know that the Iranians, quite rightly, have observed the past is prologue with Donald Trump, and the last two times there were negotiations going on, they were basically just a pretext to attack.

In other words, Halperin, whose read on Trump makes him more savvy than most believe, thinks he's playing a deeper game. After all,

The United States military is deploying thousands of Marines and several more battleships to the Middle East, even as President Donald Trump’s top officials are reportedly engaged in talks to potential end to the war with Iran.

Some 2,200 Marines from the 31st Expeditionary Unit, traveling aboard the USS Tripoli, are due to arrive in the region on Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal, along with an amphibious landing dock, the USS New Orleans.

The troop movements are taking place against the backdrop of the first tentative signs of ceasefire talks since the conflict began on Feb. 28. After giving Iran an ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of its power grid, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that he had “constructive conversations” with the Iranian leadership, “regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.”

Iran has denied that talks had taken place. A statement from Iran’s foreign ministry, reported by the semiofficial Mehr News Agency, said Trump’s statements were designed to “reduce energy prices and gain time to implement his military plans.”

Military experts interviewed by TIME suggest that the suspicion may not be far-fetched.

I've linked here to analysis that said Trump announced a pause for negotiations to calm the markets, and this lasted at least until yesterday. Today,

The S&P 500 fell on Thursday, weighed by higher oil prices, as traders followed the latest developments out of the Middle East.

The broad market index declined 0.7%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 108 points, or 0.2%.

Crude prices rose on Thursday, putting pressure on equities. Brent futures jumped 4% to above $107 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate futures climbed 3% to above $93.

So, what is Trump's deep game? I suspect it's that the Crusades left a lot of business unfinished. He's going to take crazy, theocratic murderers out of Islam, which is to say he's going to take Islam out of Islam. This will leave Islam in a state comparable to liberal Protestantism, at least aa far asa the US is concerned. The Europeans will have a different job on their hands.

So, What's Going On With Iran?

BREAKING: Immunity for two key figures in the Iranian leadership:

Iran regime's FM and Parliament Speaker get temporary immunity from the US and Israel, Channel 14's @bardugojacob reports.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf received… pic.twitter.com/EHLIlEfrxY

— C14 News Israel | EN (@c14israel) March 24, 2026

As I noted yesterday, it's a near-impossible task to try to put together even the vaguest and most superficial account of what's happening in the Iran negotiations, I think in large part because legacy media is leveraging the laziness and complacency of its staff to work in its favor.

The best information I've found over the past day simply hasn't been from US sources, for instance, the X post above from an Israeli TV station. I take "temporary immunity from Israel and the United States" to mean a promise not to blow them up with missiles for the duration.

This Fox News story does provide some perspective on Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, after first quoting Trump, ""Nobody knows who to talk to, but we're actually talking to the right people, and they want to make a deal so badly."

Trump’s statement that he is speaking to a "top person" has focused attention on one name in particular: Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

The White House is quietly exploring Ghalibaf as a potential interlocutor and even a possible future leader, Axios reported.

A former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander and current parliament speaker, Ghalibaf represents a hybrid figure inside the system, bridging military credentials and political authority.

. . . Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi remains one of the most visible figures internationally.

If talks were to take place, Araghchi likely would be part of the Iranian delegation alongside Ghalibaf, Reuters reported.

But analysts caution that his role is limited. He may act as a channel for communication, but does not set policy independently.

Another X post from the same Israeli TV station gives the impression that some sort of active debate is taking placr among the Iranian ruling elite. In particular, it seems to confirm my surmise that the military isn't being paid, quite possibly due to a missile or bomb strike on the data center that runs the payroll:

Channel 14 Claims:

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said, "You took all the money, and now your soldiers are suffering because there are no salaries. Give back what you stole." - per Senior Iran Analyst Dror Balazada

He added: "I don’t trust you to stop the… pic.twitter.com/XWclqhtR9Z

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 25, 2026

As of late last week,

Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gathered before dawn Thursday in Riyadh for talks aimed at finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the war in Iran.

But there was one big problem, according to Arab officials involved in the discussions: finding a counterpart in Iran to negotiate with. Earlier that week, Israel killed Iran’s national security chief, Ali Larijani, who had been considered a viable partner who could engage with the West.

But by yesterday,

During the Q&A media segment of Mark Wayne Mullin’s swearing in ceremony, President Trump was asked how he can trust the Iranian leadership he is currently communicating with. President Trump responded that he doesn’t trust anyone; however, the voices in Iran currently negotiating with the U.S. team sent something of great value to the White House to verify their [bona fides].

These voices appear to be Qalibaf and Araghchi. In addition,

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are involved in ongoing peace talks with Iran.

The president had originally tapped special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to lead talks with Tehran. However, Iranian officials refused to negotiate with Witkoff and Kushner, according to the Guardian.

“We’re in negotiations right now. They’re doing it, along with Marco and JD; we have a number of people doing it,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “The other side, I can tell you, they’d like to make a deal. And who wouldn’t if you were them?”

“Look, their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their communications are gone. That’s the biggest problem,” Trump continued. “As opposed to Iran, we’re roaming free. We can do whatever we want, and as you know, today, we were going to have the privilege of shooting down a very big electric generation plant, one of the biggest in the world, and one shot to the right location, ends the plant and it collapses, and we held off, based on the fact that we’re negotiating.”

On the other hand, even if there are negotiations, we don't really know what's being discussed. Acccording to the Wall Street Journal via The Times of Israel,

Iran is demanding reparations for attacks on it, the lifting of all sanctions, and the closure of all US military bases in the Persian Gulf as conditions to end the war with the US and Israel, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

In addition, Iran wants guarantees that the war won’t start up again, as well as a halt to Israel’s strikes on Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, the Journal says.

Iran’s demands also reportedly include a new arrangement in the Gulf that will let the Islamic Republic collect tolls from ships that traverse the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil usually travels.

But, coming as it does from US legacy media, this doesn't appear to be current:

The newspaper cites a US official as saying Iran’s demands were ridiculous and unrealistic, and Arab and US officials as saying Iran’s stance makes the possibility of a deal even more remote than before the war.

The sources cited by the Journal say the messages between Iran and the US were relayed indirectly via Middle Eastern intermediaries late last week.

Channel 12 reported last night that the US had submitted a 15-point plan for ending the war that included an end to Iran’s support for regional terror proxies, restrictions on its ballistic missile program, and dismantling of its nuclear program.

So it appears that following Trump's threat last Friday to take out one or more power plants, a group of Iranians was able to get together, convince Trump they had the authority to negotiate, and even begin some type of serious negotiation, including for starters a promise from the US and Israel that they wouldn't take this group out, at least as long as they negotiated.

But Trump is still holding the strike on the power plant in reserve, while it appears that the negotiators are taking the position with the Iran hardliners that if they can't pay the troops, they can't withstand the Marines. In other words, negotiate now, things will get worse if we don't.

The Wall Street Journal in the meantime is declaring the war already lost:

The latest unpopular war in the Middle East is deepening Mr. Trump’s political difficulties. His job approval has fallen to its lowest point in his second term. A majority see him as focused on problems abroad rather than at home, and on problems other than their principal concerns. They blame him—not Iran, not the oil companies, and certainly not Joe Biden—for rising gasoline prices.

. . . It’s up to the president to conclude this war in the way that does the least damage to our national interest—and to the people’s waning confidence in their public institutions.

The WSJ has never liked Trump. I think it's a bad bet. But if legacy media is so much against the war and our prospects in it, why have they been making it so difficult to get a clear picture of how things are going? It took me several hours yesterday and this morning to come uo with this survery, much of it drawn from non-US sources.

Yup, It's Spring Break

I've developed a theory that from the first of the year to Presidents' Day, the media, legacy and alt, simply continues the break it's been on since maybe Columbus Day. Then it's several weeks of desultory effort until a break for Mardis Gras, followed by more desultory effort until a few weeks before Easter and spring break, then desultory effort until Memorial Day, at which time everything more or less shuts down for summer, after which there's desultory effort between Labor Day and Columbus Day, when the goof-off cycle restarts.

Let's look at the current news of the Iran war. Trump says he's having productive negotiations with Iran, right?

President Donald Trump announced Monday he is postponing planned U.S. military strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days after what he described as "very good and productive" talks with Tehran.

But what, exactly, is going on?

President Trump said Monday he has not been in contact with Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei during ongoing negotiations with the country.

“We’re dealing with a man who I believe is the most respected and the leader,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Fla.

“We have not heard from the son,” he said, referring to Khamenei.

“Every once in a while, you’ll see a statement made [from Khamenei] but we don’t know if he’s living,” Trump said.

“But the people that seem to be running it, and they seem that based on really fact, because things they’ve said have taken place,” he continued.

Except, well, maybe not:

Mojtaba Khamenei approved talks with the US to quickly end the war on Iranian terms. Trump postponed strikes and expects an agreement within five days.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi secretly informed US envoy Steve Witkoff that Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei had approved negotiations to reach a potential agreement, Al Arabiya reported on Tuesday, citing Israeli media, UNN writes.

Sources told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that Iran's supreme leader, who was appointed after his father Ali Khamenei died during the first strike of the US-Israeli war against Iran last month, agreed to quickly end the war under Iran's terms.

As ynet writes, after Trump announced a channel for negotiations that could lead to an agreement, Aragchi's secret message to Witkoff: "We have received Mojtaba's consent and blessing." "Iran quickly denied this. But a phone call between the Iranian foreign minister and Witkoff, with Kushner's participation, shows a different picture. The Iranian official confirmed that Khamenei Jr. had taken his murdered father's place and made it clear that the heir 'approved closing the story as soon as possible if our conditions are met.'" Israel, the publication writes, remained outside the negotiations and accidentally learned of their existence.

But if Israel is outside the negotiations, this appears to be news to Netanyahu:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday evening that any deal to end the hostilities between the US, Israel, and Iran would protect Jerusalem’s “vital interests,” in his first comments since US President Donald Trump announced earlier in the day that he was holding talks with Tehran about ending the war.

In an upbeat video statement, Netanyahu said he spoke with “our friend” Trump in a phone call on Monday, and that the two discussed the president’s desire to end the fighting with Iran through a deal.

So I'm nothing near a capital-J Journalist, just an old retired guy with time to check the news after breakfast, and all I can get about the top story for the past month has been vague stuff containing contradiction after contradiction. Trump isn't negotiating with the dead or comatose gayatollah. Yes he is. The dead or comatose gayatollah has even blessed negotiations, but Iran has denied this, but the gayatollah will approve an agreement provided his conditions are met, except that Netanyahu, who is outside the negotiations, has talked to Trump and is convinced there will be a deal to protect Israel's vital interests.

But on PJ Media yesterday:

On Friday evening, President Donald Trump issued Iran’s mullahs a 48-hour deadline: Open the Strait of Hormuz or say goodbye to your power plants.

And then, this morning — just 12 hours before the deadline ended — the president abruptly pulled the plug[.]

But did you notice the timing?

Trump delivered the ultimatum on Friday evening, after the U.S. markets had closed for the week. And he canceled his ultimatum on Monday morning, just before the U.S. markets reopened.

And the new five-day deadline? Why, it conveniently begins after the U.S. markets close on Friday!

None of this was coincidental.

. . . Had Trump stuck to his 48-hour deadline — which would’ve elapsed AFTER the close of U.S. markets on Monday evening — panicked investors would’ve braced for the worst when trading began at 9:30 a.m., triggering a self-fulfilling prophecy of economic Armageddon. They would’ve anticipated oil shortages, starving civilians, mass migrations, and global chaos, because that’s what investors do: They overreact to good news — and they overreact to bad news.

Which is why Trump is mitigating the financial cost by ratcheting up tensions when the markets are closed — and lowering the temperature when they reopen.

In other words, it doesn't matter what Trump is doing, because it's all 4D chess. But this does nothing to help anyone understand what's going on. Don Surber has an essay comparing TV news coverage of the 1991 Gulf War to coverage of the current Iran War:

35 years ago, when the Persian Gulf War began, ABC alone drew 13 million viewers.

In all, the big three networks drew more than 32 million viewers with CNN adding another 10.8 million viewers.

43 million viewers then.

25.429 million now in the opening week.

That is a 42% drop in their audiences.

When you consider the USA’s population is 38% larger today that shows just how far television news has fallen. It took a long time for ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC to establish themselves as reliable sources for objective information. All that collapsed with the deification of Obama and the demonization of Trump.

It is not as if people are uninterested in the war. A March 16 Economist/YouGov poll showed 41% say they are seeking out the news more than usual. They just didn’t go to TV news for their information.

Surber limits the problem to television news, but he himself can see the problem is biggerL

On his show on Friday, Bill Maher said, “During most primetime nights, less than 1% of the country is watching Fox News, CNN, and MS NOW, combined. A guy on TikTok pressure washing his driveway gets bigger ratings.

“76% of Americans watch less than 1 hour of any cable news in a month.”

So where are they going? One place is certainly the web, and alt sources are certainly available there -- but the alt sources, like Salem Media, are just as lazy and complacent as legacy, and right now, all the alt guys are at the beach with their legacy colleagues. They'll be back a week or so after Easter and go through the motions until Memorial Day, when they'll check out again for the beach until fall. Surber says, "It is not that the television shows today are terribly bad. They are horribly bad. Especially the news."

But it's not just TV, most of what's on the web is horribly bad as well.

Let's Take A Closer Look At Candace Owens

A visitor very kindly sent me several links about Candace Owens and her husband, George Farmer. Farmer, the wealthy son of a member of the UK House of Lords, converted to Catholicism in 2018, and almost immediately after his conversion, he married Owens:

Farmer explains he first met Owens on December 11, 2018 [after a UK Charlie Kirk appearance where she shared the stage], eating dinner together the next night. He had a life-changing “God moment” one week later, on December 18. He proposed 11 days after his God moment, on December 29: “Nothing had been said. There had been no romantic overtures at all at this point.”

“It had all been very above board, talking about politics and engaging in philosophical conversations, and at the end of December, I called her a couple of times to kind of chat and again, had these prolonged conversations, mainly about politics and trying to understand what she wanted to do in life.”

By December 29, 2018 (18 days after meeting her), he was flying to Africa for New Year’s when he called Owens and said, “Listen, I know this is completely crazy, and we just met, but how do you feel about getting married to me?”

Two things seem incongruous to me here. The first is that the four Catholic cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, would argue against whirlwind courtships and whirlwind conversions, yet this is just what we see here. In addition, at least in the US, formal conversion to Catholicism normally takes place via the Rite (now Order) of Christian Initiation for Adults, a year-long process of catechesis that ends at the Easter Vigil. A web search tells me the process in the UK is substantially the same, except that it continues to use the acronym RCIA, and it also ends at the Easter Vigil.

So all we know about George Farmer's conversion is that it took place during a "God moment" in the UK in December, 2018, and it doesn't seem to have involved the Easter Vigil. So exactly how did he convert, and at what parish did he enter the Church in her eyes? That's my second question.

But now we come to Candace Owens herself and her own conversion to Catholicism. According to the National Catholic Reporter,

The firebrand conservative commentator Candace Owens has announced her conversion to Catholicism, a long-expected move for the controversial 34-year-old Black ideologue.

She announced the news on social media Monday afternoon (April 22 [2024]), describing it as a "decision to go home."

. . . The change for Owens comes amid shifting sands in her professional life, including an acrimonious exit from The Daily Wire in March following statements she made and supported that were seen as antisemitic.

. . . Long identified as a Reformed Evangelical Protestant, in recent years Owens began speaking more frequently about Catholicism, not least because of her convert husband, the British activist and former Parler CEO George Farmer, whom she married in 2019.

. . . Owens revealed that she regularly attended Mass with Farmer and their children but was not yet decided on making a denominational change. By March of this year, however, in response to a social media post asking if she is Catholic, she responded, "Almost there."

Some interpreted Owens' response as an indication that she would be received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, but there was no announcement forthcoming from the Nashville-based pundit. [In 2024, the Easter Vigil took place on March 30, but her announcement wasn't made until late April.]

In her social media announcement post this week, she is seen with the Oratorian priest Julian Large and a large vigil candle in her husband’s native London at the Brompton Oratory, a Latin Mass community established by St. John Henry Newman in 1849.

So again, precisely how, when, and where was she received into the Catholic Church, and how extensive was her catechesis? But no matter where and how it occurred, it pretty clearly took place not long after her split with Ben Shapiro and her departure from Daily Wire, and that also accompanied a major change in her public stance toward Israel and the Jews. In late March 2024, The Guardian reported:

The far-right commentator Candace Owens left the rightwing Daily Wire website amid tensions over her alleged antisemitism and opposition to US funding of Israel’s war in Gaza.

. . . Owens has criticised US support for Israel but also mused about “political Jews” and a “very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism”, remarks Shapiro called “absolutely disgraceful”.

On Monday, on social media, Owens liked a post in which a user asked Shmuley Boteach, a well-known rabbi, if he was “drunk on Christian blood again”.

Owens subsequently came under fire from the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL, which campaigns against antisemitism, posted a report by the progressive watchdog Media Matters about remarks in which Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and white supremacist, praised Owens for mounting “a full-fledged war against the Jews”.

The so-called "blood libel" is, of course, full-blown anti-Semitism, and at minimum, it's unfortunate that it's emerging at the same time that Owens is publicly embracing Catholicism. According to a March 2024 piece at The Times of Israel,

In recent months, Owens has also attacked Shapiro – who originally platformed her on his Daily Wire website – as a “Talmudic Jew,” urging her listeners to buy a discredited antisemitic screed from the 19th century. She has also claimed that Jews were behind the transatlantic slave trade, and that “they believe they have a right to own us.” She has called Israel an “occult nation,” pointing as evidence to the Star of David on its flag (a “cultic…hexagram”), and has suggested Israel was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

During the same period, she's attacked "Christian Zionists":

Candace Owens, a voice many Christians have trusted for cultural commentary, has made some extraordinarily serious claims about Calvary Chapel churches. . . . [S]he suggests . . . that Calvary Chapel has been “infiltrated” by military and intelligence operatives, that we’re part of a coordinated psychological operation designed to manufacture “Christian Zionists,” and that what appears to be a move of God is actually a carefully orchestrated deception stretching back to the 1960s.

. . . In her broadcasts, Candace weaves together an intricate tapestry: MK Ultra mind control programs, Britney Spears’ conservatorship battles, Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, various financial scandals, Turning Point USA’s internal conflicts, Hollywood’s darkness… and then, somehow, Calvary Chapel pastors and churches.

The connecting tissue? Military backgrounds. Financial connections. A “feeling” that something isn’t right. The sense that too many scandals orbit around certain names and places.

This for me raises the question of how well-catechized either Owens's husband, George Farmer, and Owens herself were before they converted to Catholicism, and indeed, whether they were formally received at all. Consider the reported remarks of Pius XI on September 6, 1938:

Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. No, it is not possible for Christians to take part in antisemitism. We acknowledge for all the right to defend themselves, to adopt measures of protection against what threatens their legitimate interests. But antisemitism is inadmissible. Spiritually, we are Semites.

She claims to attend mass with her husband and children, but if she pays any attention at all to the readings and likely the homilies, she's got to get the impression that a pretty big slice of the Christian Bible covers the spiritual struggles of the Jews in conquering and trying to keep the Promised Land. So I think it's legitimate to question the sincerity of her conversion. Indeed, even her father-in-law, Lord Michael Farmer, became publicly uncomfortable in August 2024:

Farmer, a big-money donor to Conservative Party politicians in the UK, wrote that he was “very aware of the cruelty meted out” against Jews both before and during the World War II period when he came of age.

“The best man at my wedding and life-long friend was Jewish,” Farmer wrote, adding that he valued the “kindness and thoughtfulness from Jewish friends … at a time when I had few close relationships.”

Farmer, a member of the House of Lords, which is the upper chamber of the UK parliament, went on to praise Israel as a “rare example of a democracy in the Middle East.”

“Of course, it has the right to defend its citizens when murderously attacked on its soil in one of the cruelest and most callous pogroms in history,” Farmer wrote, referencing the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas which left nearly 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians dead and scores more in Hamas captivity.

Her husband, George, has been remarkably subdued amid all this controversy, and I almost detect a faint echo of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. There are lots of people lately who make a big deal of their public Catholicism -- but what's puzzled me for some years is how few people like that I actually run into at our parish. There are public Catholics, Catholics who star at Catholics for Catholics galas, Catholics who hold forth on social medai -- but then, there are just Catholics.

I wonder how soon Candace in particular will move on to something else.

Candace Owens And Tucker Carlson Have A Network That Beats Legacy Media

Whatever bad things you might otherwise say about Salem Nedia, which owns PJ Media, Instapundit, RedState, and other alt outlets, the one thing they haven't done has been to hop onto the Joe Kent bandwagon. That bandwagon includes various conspiracy theories that are never fully articulated, but they hint at broad Israeli involvement, not just in prompting the US to attack Iran, but in being somehow behind both the Charlie Kirk assassination and even tbe attempted Butler, PA assassination of Donald Trump.

In fact, Salem's Instapundit linked to this X post, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else:

𝗛𝗢𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚.𝗔𝗜 𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗘𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗝𝗢𝗘 𝗞𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗡𝗔𝗥𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗜𝗡 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟 𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘. 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬 𝗙𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗟𝗗 𝗘𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗘𝗕𝗔𝗧𝗘.

Joe Kent goes on Tucker Carlson. Within minutes — not hours, minutes — the same clip, same… https://t.co/fOP7qwmZFO pic.twitter.com/TEF2OVLlz5

— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) March 20, 2026

It points out that almost simultaneously with Thursday's Joe Kent interview on Tucker Carlson, the identical clip was on Russian state TV (RT), Iranian state media (HispanTV), Hamas-aligned Quds News Network, 🇹TRT (Turkish state broadcaster), Sputnik Brasil, Jackson Hinkle, Candace Owens, MTG, and Max. The following day, he was on Megyn Kelly, whose interview is embedded at the top of this post. Then a whole series of alt YouTubers, including Micheal Lebron, who posts as Lionel, Mark Dice, Shawn Ryan, Tim Dillon, and Ian Carroll, had good things to say about Kent.

Thursday night, Candace Owens featured him at a Catholic Prayer For America Gala in Washington sposored by the group Catholics for Catholics (CFC):

Although CFC had announced Kent would be interviewed on stage by Candace Owens, the far-right podcaster and influencer, his actual five-minute appearance at the black-tie affair — which C-Span interrupted its regular programming to broadcast — turned out to be rather anodyne. Kent briefly repeated his anti-Iran War views. When pressed by CFC president John Yep, Kent added a religious flourish: “Having faith, I was able to hear God’s voice. . .”

Although Kent says he's Catholic, at least insofar as his baptism is concerned, his past statements in political camapaigns have been in questionable conformance with Catholic teaching.

At a 2022 town hall, Kent agreed with a Christian nationalist in the audience who asked whether the far-right extremist would support a 20 year ban on nearly all immigration to the United States, in part to combat “demographic replacement.”

Now [2023], more than a year after the initial reporting, Republicans’ top choice for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District is claiming he never agreed with the idea of a 20 year immigration ban, and is threatening legal action against the paper.

Candace Owens appears to have been one figure with foreknowledge of Kent's resignation. At the first link above,

After Kent announced he was leaving the Trump administration on Tuesday, Owens immediately seized on it for her own purposes. Within an hour of Kent posting his resignation letter on X, Owens quote-tweeted it, calling him “an American hero, patriot and veteran.” She disparaged Trump as “a shameful president,” adding: “May American troops take his lead and look into conscientious objection to Bibi’s Red Heifer War. Goyim stand down.” . . . The next day, Catholics for Catholics announced she would be interviewing Kent at their gala.

Candace Owens herself is a recent Catholic convert. At the same link,

Two years ago, [Catholics for Catholics] celebrated Owens’ conversion, which coincided with her firing from right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire over her antisemitism. Along with Catholics for Catholics, many on the online right rallied behind Owens after her departure from Shapiro’s organization, praising or sanitizing her antisemitism.

Owens also has a history of brief affiliations with conservative organizations, which don't always end well. According to Wikipedia,

On November 21, 2017, at the MAGA Rally and Expo in Rockford, Illinois, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk announced that Owens had been hired as the organization's director of urban engagement. Turning Point's hiring of Owens occurred in the wake of allegations of racism at Turning Point. In May 2019, Owens announced her departure as communications director for the organization.

. . . Owens left PragerU in 2020 to host Candace, a show on The Daily Wire. The show premiered on the platform on March 19, 2021. Its episodes were filmed in front of a live studio audience and aired weekly. Notable guests included Donald Trump, UFC president Dana White, and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan.

Jeremy Boreing announced Owens would be leaving The Daily Wire in March 2024, a move believed to be related to a string of comments considered to be antisemitic, culminating in Owens liking a tweet referencing blood libel. There had also been months of tensions with co-host Ben Shapiro and other Daily Wire staff.

Shapiro himself, of course, is an ambitious self-promoter. But it's significant that the current Candace-driven controversy over Joe Kent seems to stem in large part from her campaign against Erika Kirk, which in turn seems to stem from a lingering complaint against Turning Point USA:

Owens said Tuesday [December 16, 2025] that her suspicions about certain employees at Turning Point USA, the conservative organizing group Kirk co-founded and where she once worked, hadn’t been assuaged by her meeting with Erika Kirk and other Turning Point staffers. Owens heavily implied that she believes Israel had something to do with Kirk’s death, promoting an unsubstantiated theory that Israeli officials have denied and that some of her critics say is evidence that she is boosting antisemitism.

Owens’ campaign following Kirk’s September 10 assassination has driven deep divisions within the MAGA influencer world. Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and comedian Dave Smith have all defended her to some degree, while Tim Pool and Ben Shapiro have both described Owens’ actions as “evil,” and Nick Fuentes has said she’s a narcissist hurting America.

. . . Owens has instead suggested France, Israel and Egypt might have been involved; that Charlie Kirk was “betrayed” by people close to him; and that state and federal law enforcement are covering up a bigger crime.

It's hard to avoid thinking that Joe Kent's resignation played into a larger conspiracy framing that was driven even before the February 28 attacks on Iran by preconceptions formed primarily by Candace Owens, apparently with the assistance of Tucker Carlson. Then, between them, they seem to have controlled a larger, MAGA-affiliated group of podcasters and commentators, especially Megyn Kelly. But Joe Kent is their creation.

We Gradually Learn More About Tucker Carlson

I continue to be fascinated by the notional "MAGA civil war" involving figures like Tucker Carlson. In fact, we know very little about Carlson. For instance, someone on YouTube remarked that he'd said that people who argued in favor of the US nuclear attacks on Japan were "evil", so I decided to follow up. I asked my AI oracle, "Has Tucker Carlson said those who support the nuclear bombing of Japan are evil?" It answered,

Yes, Tucker Carlson has stated that those who argue in favor of dropping nuclear weapons on civilians are "evil."

His comments were made during an April 2024 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience and later reiterated in other formats.

. . . In subsequent discussions, such as on the War Room podcast in November 2024, he described nuclear weapons as "demonic" and argued there is no upside to them, suggesting their creation was driven by non-human forces.

It provided a link to a UK Guardian story from 2024:

Demons that Tucker Carlson claimed attacked him as he slept were also responsible for the invention of nuclear technology, the conservative former Fox News host said on Monday in another bizarre contention.

Carlson made the claim on the War Room podcast hosted by his fellow rightwing extremist Steve Bannon[.]

. . . Nuclear weapons are demonic, there’s no upside to them at all, and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or doing the bidding of the forces that created nuclear technology in the first place, which were not human forces obviously,” Carlson said during a discussion on the perceived “spirituality” involved in the US development of atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in August 1945, hastening the end of the second world war.

“Let me ask you this,” he continued. “What was the moment we can point to that nuclear technology was invented? I’ve never met a person who can isolate the moment where nuclear technology became known to man. German scientists in the 1930s? Really? Name the date? It’s very clear to me that these [nuclear weapons] are demonic.”

That's a peculiar question to ask. I asked AI, "When was 'nuclear technlogy' first theorized?" Its answer was pretty clear:

Nuclear technology was first theorized in the early 20th century, with the most direct conceptual foundation—the nuclear chain reaction—proposed by Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard on September 12, 1933.

. . . Albert Einstein's formula E=mc squared provided the first mathematical proof that a small amount of matter could be converted into a massive amount of energy, though the mechanism to do so was unknown.

. . . Following Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann's experimental discovery of fission, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch provided the first theoretical explanation in 1939, naming the process "fission" and calculating its immense energy release.

. . . The Frisch–Peierls memorandum theorized that a small amount of pure uranium-235 could create an explosive chain reaction, moving nuclear technology from abstract theory to an actionable military project.

The transition from theory to technology was finalized on December 2, 1942, when Enrico Fermi's team achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction with the Chicago Pile-1 reactor.

Even without AI, Carlson could have dug this sort of thing up in ten minutes on the web. And this is a story of technological trial-and-error that was presaged in the development of steam propulsion, electricity, the light bulb, and heavier-than-air flight. There's no need to postulate demons, although if you do, you may as well postulate that demons inspired James Watt, Thomas Edison, or the Wright Brothers -- except that Occam's Razor more or less excludes this with any of these others.

But Tucker knows from demons. Back to the Guardian link:

Carlson’s talk about demons follows remarks he made last week about how he was allegedly “physically mauled” by one a year and a half ago. The former Fox News host claimed that it was a nighttime attack where he was left bleeding and scarred by “claw marks”.

Those comments came in a preview clip posted to YouTube of an upcoming documentary, Christianities?, which is billed as a “journey to the heart of the faith”.

John Heers, founder of the non-profit First Things Foundation, asked Carlson if he believed that “the presence of evil is kickstarting people to wonder about the good”.

“That’s what happened to me. I had a direct experience with it,” Carlson replied.

Asked if he was referring to journalism, Carlson responded: “No, in my bed at night. I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled.”

His assailant, Carlson added, was “a demon … or something unseen that left claw marks on my side”.

It was, he said, a “transformative experience” that left him “seized with this very intense desire to read the Bible”.

I went looking for John Heers on the web and discovered that he's the founder of the First Things Foundation, which has no relation to the First Things journal. Heers says on his website,

We aim to unite people in authentic ways to create long lasting relationships that lead to beauty incarnate. Right now we do this in two ways:

At home we offer the Supra dinner and a restaurant that offers the Supra with great food and unrivaled hospitality.

Overseas in developing countries we offer human beings to live an existence that radiates the Supra, that radiates hospitality and the notion of healing. Those human beings offer aid in the form of authentic projects, on the ground, in real time.

In other words, he's some kind of quasi-hippie flake. What on earth is Tucker Carlson doing with him? A 2023 story, Tucker Carlson and Religion, may have some bearing. although this subject is murky indeed:

Vanity Fair was the only major publication to suggest that religion may have played a role in his firing [from Fox]. In a recent speech to the Heritage Foundation, Carlson described the world as locked in a religious battle between good and evil. Rupert Murdoch, FOX chair and founder, is (at least) vaguely hostile to religion. But not his ex-fiancee. She was a major fan of Carlson, calling him a “messenger of God.” Vanity Fair reports that this may have contributed to Murdoch’s sudden booting of his star:

[Murdoch was briefly engaged to Ann Lesley Smith, who believed that Carlson was "a messenger from God". She arranged a dinner with Murdoch and Carlson, which appears to have had the effect of canceling the engagement.]

. . . All this raises questions about Carlson’s religious views — ideas he increasingly puts center-stage.

. . . Carlson’s relationship with the Episcopal Church has often been noted in the press[.]

His divorced parents raised him (at least loosely) in the Episcopal Church. In 1983, when he was 14, Carlson was sent to St. George’s, an elite private school, one of the educational crown jewels of the denomination.

A year later, in 1984, the Reverend George Andrews arrived to be the school’s new headmaster — and his daughter, Susan, would eventually date and later marry Tucker Carlson. And thus, Tucker Carlson’s father-in-law is an Episcopal priest, one who once held a plum appointment at a posh boarding school.

While most articles mentioning Carlson’s education praise St. George’s elite status, they fail to mention the fact that the school was also the site of the worst sexual abuse scandal in the modern Episcopal Church. George Andrews was the headmaster from 1984-1988, nearly the exact years in which Carlson was a student, and during which a music teacher was accused of abuse by a number of victims.

. . . After almost a decade at the school, that teacher was terminated. . . . There is no suggestion that Carlson’s father-in-law was in any way involved in abuse. The investigation was about how he handled it and what he knew at the time.

Following the revelations of the St. George’s scandal, the Diocese of Southeast Florida opened an investigation into Andrews as well (the story was reported by a FOX News affiliate in Florida). There is no indiction how this investigation and any legal issues it raised were finally resolved.

According to Wikipedia, George Andrews was headmaster of of Saint Andrew's School in Boca Raton, Florida, from 1989 to 2007. According to this 2016 link,

An Episcopal diocese in Florida says it is investigating a former headmaster at the elite Rhode Island boarding school St. George's, which is at the center of an abuse scandal.

The Rev. George E. Andrews is accused of failing to report sexual abuse by a teacher to authorities when he led the school in the 1980s. He now runs a consulting firm that places chaplains at Episcopal and other schools. His son-in-law is the Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, and his daughter sits on the St. George's board.

It appears that whatever Andrews may have done to address the scandal, he also kept it quiet, and it apparently stayed quiet for almost 30 years. And as far as Episcopalians were concerned, that was a Good Thing. I do have a sense, with a number of other writers, that Carlson is deeply conflicted about his Episcopalianism. I asked AI, "Is Tucker Carlson currently a member of an Episcopal parish?" It answered,

As of early 2026, Tucker Carlson remains a self-identified member of the Episcopal Church, though he is highly critical of the denomination's leadership and progressive theology. While he has not publicly named a specific local parish where he is currently a member, he has confirmed in several recent interviews that he still attends services.

Well, this is just the start of a journey down the rabbit hole.

Harvard Jewish Enrollment Declines

On Wednesday,

The Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA) today released a report, A Narrowing Gate: Jewish Enrollment at Harvard and Its Peers: 1967–2025, documenting what it describes as a significant and anomalous decline in Jewish undergraduate enrollment at Harvard University over the past two decades.

The report's central finding is that Jewish enrollment at Harvard stands at approximately 7 percent today—the lowest recorded since before World War II, roughly half what it was a decade ago, and the lowest among Ivy League institutions for which reliable data exist. Three independent sources converge on this conclusion: the Harvard Crimson Freshman Survey series, a 2016 stratified random sample conducted by the Brandeis University Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies (CMJS), and enrollment estimates from Hillel International.

The report does not assert that Harvard intentionally discriminates against Jewish applicants. Instead, it identifies what the authors describe as a measurable anomaly in enrollment trends that warrants closer examination.

It's worth noting in this context that Penny Pritzker, who is "Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation", is effectively the university's CEO, and she's of Jewish heritage, although according to AI,

Penny Pritzker is Jewish and has a strong connection to her heritage, often supporting Jewish causes and speaking on her family's history. However, there is no public information indicating she is an "observant" or Orthodox Jew, as she is primarily recognized as a civic and business leader rather than a religious figure. . . . There is no specific publicly available record confirming her membership in a particular synagogue.

While the HJAA study appears to go to great lengths not to speculate on the cause of this decline, it's worth pointing out that Alan Dershowitz, who has written extensively on Jewish quotas in the Ivy League (for instance in his 1992 Chutzpah) attributes the whole selective-admissions culture of the Ivy League to the desire to limit Jewish enrollment beginning in the 1920s, as the prosperous offspring of 19th-century immigrants began to have the wherewithal to apply.

In other words, the whole rationale that made Harvard Harvard, that it selectively chose the crème de la crème, was that it carefully limited the number of Jews in its student body. It did this by stressing things like "well-roundedness" in applicants and "geographical diversity", giving preference to applicants from areas outside coastal cities and suburbs. There seems to have been a national consensus that supported this approach, which was taken pretty much for granted, possibly because it did retain a fairly high "Jewish quota", even if it was in fact a quota, until the 1990s, and this is reflected in the HJAA report:

HJAA is calling on Harvard to conduct a formal review of the issue. Harvard currently tracks enrollment by race, gender, geography, income, and first-generation status. Jewish students are protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act but do not fall within Harvard's demographic tracking categories. The university collected religious preference data through the early 1990s but no longer does so.

In other words, even though Harvard was required at least to be able to report its proportion of Jewish students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, just as it had to report on blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, it simply stopped counting them in the 1990s, and -- a coincidence? -- that's when the numbers began to decline. A 2025 article in The Globalist that predates the HJAA study, points out some of the otherr anomalies:

• Four out of Harvard’s last six presidents, including Alan Garber, Harvard’s recently installed president, have been Jewish [but as with Penny Pritzker, not necessarily observant Jews.}
• Five decades ago, American Jews represented about 20% of Harvard undergraduates. The decline in Jewish undergraduate enrollment to 10% reflects the dramatic changes in the racial composition of a class. [As of the HJAAS study, the percentage has declined further to 7%.]
• Fifty years ago, the student body was about 80% white and 12% Black, with a small percentage of Asian Americans.
• For the Harvard class of 2028, the breakdown is 14% Black, 37% Asian American, 16% Hispanic and 33% white (the number for white students, which Harvard did not disclose, is inferred). {For whatever reason, foreign students are omitted as a group here, when other reports put them at about 20%.}
• Fifty years ago, American Jews were 25% of white students — now they are about 30%. That is impressive for a group that represents 2.4% of all Americans.

In other words, even though we've cut way back on whites, as a percentage of whites, the Jews are higher than ever! They should be grateful! But the basic question is that the traditional "white" slice of the pie has shrunk from 80% white to 33% white, when the current percentage of non-Hispanic whites in the US population is 56-58%. Something's going on here, and it's not enough to claim the Jewish quota has gone up among this shrinking overall group.

I asked my AI oracle, "There are reports that Jewish enrollment at Harvard has fallen to 7% from 25% at its peak. Are particular groups gaining as a result?" It answered,

While the HJAA describes this decline as a "statistical anomaly" compared to peer institutions, it does not definitively name one specific group that has gained exclusively because of this shift. Instead, the report and broader university data highlight several concurrent demographic trends:

. . . The HJAA report tested several "structural explanations" for why Jewish enrollment specifically has declined while other groups grew. They found that no single factor—including geographic diversification, socioeconomic targeting, or athletic recruitment—fully explains the gap.

Except that as Dershowitz would point out, "geographic diversification, socioeconomic targeting, or athletic recruitment" are century-old methods of indirectly disfavoring Jewish applicants in the first place, along with others like favoring legacies and preppies, which apparently remain significant parts of tne otherwise shrinking overall "white" slice of the pie. The AI reply also mentioned this:

Over the last two decades, Harvard has significantly expanded its international student recruitment, though this specific group saw a slight decrease in the most recent 2025 data.

I asked AI, "What is the percentager of international students at Harvard?" It answered,

As of the 2025–2026 academic year, international students make up 28% of the total student body at Harvard University. This represents a record high for the institution, with 6,749 foreign students enrolled despite ongoing federal pressure and visa challenges.

Overall University: 28% of all students are international.

Harvard College (Undergraduate): Approximately 15% of students are from abroad.

Clearly the rise in DEI and foreign student admissions accounts for the decline in native-born US white enrollment from 80% to 33%, and foreign students in particular likely account for the rise in anti-Semitism on campus. According to The Hill,

27 percent of its student body, or some 6,800 attendees, in the 2024-2025 academic year was made up of international students, who typically pay more in tuition and other costs than domestic ones.

According to NAFSA data, international students at Harvard contribute approximately $383.6 million annually to the area’s economy, supporting around 3,910 jobs.

In other words, these are the wealthy scions of third-world elites. Foreign students are all about the Benjamins. But this is just the start of the questions that need to be raised about what's going on at Harvard.