The Continuing Problem Of Jericho

In a 2000 article at Catholic Herald arguing for the immorality of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Edward Feser cites Gaudium et Spes 80:

Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.

But the Almighty approved of Joshua taking this same action after the walls of Jericho came down (Joshua 6:20-27):

20 As the horns blew, the people began to shout. When they heard the sound of the horn, they raised a tremendous shout. The wall collapsed, and the people attacked the city straight ahead and took it.

21 They observed the ban by putting to the sword all living creaturese in the city: men and women, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and donkeys.

. . . 24 The city itself they burned with all that was in it; but the silver, gold, and articles of bronze and iron they placed in the treasury of the house of the LORD.

25 Because Rahab the prostitute had hidden the messengers whom Joshua had sent to reconnoiter Jericho, Joshua let her live, along with her father’s house and all her family, who dwell in the midst of Israel to this day.

26 On that occasion Joshua imposed the oath: Cursed before the LORD be the man who attempts to rebuild this city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn will he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son will he set up its gates.

27 Thus the LORD was with Joshua so that his fame spread throughout the land.

The city was burned with everything in it; all the living creatures, men, women, infants, and animals, were put to the sword; the land itself was cursed. Sounds a lot like a nuclear attack to me. Under certain circumstances, God not only approves of it, he orders it to be done. But in the case of the cities of the plain, God does it directly Himself (Genesis 19: 1-29):

23 The sun had risen over the earth when Lot arrived in Zoar,

24 and the LORD rained down sulfur upon Sodom and Gomorrah, fire from the LORD out of heaven.

25 He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil.

26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.

27 The next morning Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before the LORD.

28 As he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole region of the Plain, he saw smoke over the land rising like the smoke from a kiln.

29 When God destroyed the cities of the Plain, he remembered Abraham and sent Lot away from the upheaval that occurred when God overthrew the cities where Lot had been living.

At one point, I posed the question to Feser in a comment on one of his posts about the immorality of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks asking how he reconciled his view (which had in fact changed recently as of 2020) with the destruction of Jericho, but he didn't answer. In fact, going over some of his posts on this subject, visitors have asked him to explain why he's changed his view, and I have yet to find an answer to those comments, either.

Certainly a good Thomist is going to say that, first, God is perfect. His instructions are perfect, and His own actions are perfect. Scripture is inerrant; neither the stories in Genesis nor Joshua are incorrect. The only way I can reconcile this is with the moral of Job, as outlined in Catholic Answers:

There is a happy ending, and the moral is quite clear, even if Job does not grasp it. But he does realize now that there is no reason why God should have to account to anyone for what he does. Man cannot grasp the mysterious ways of divine providence. In permitting the innocent to suffer and even die and in not punishing the evildoer during his lifetime, God has his reasons, even if man cannot grasp them.

The bottom line is that, contra Just-war hardliners, things aren't that cut and dried. CCC 2309 on one hand lists "rigorous conditions for moral legitimacy", but at the same time, it provides for "evaluation of these conditions" within the "prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good". Would nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki be less grave than the evil to be eliminated, to wit, the millions that would be killed, including innocent civilians, in a land invasion of Japan?

The just-war hardliners propose some sort of negotiation that might have averted both -- but wouldn't that necesssarily involve other compromises like, for instance, allowing Japan to retain some territories it had conquered in China, South Asia, Manchuria, or Korea? It needs to be recognized that any such compromise would allow Japan to continue genocidal policies comparable to those Hitler had imposed in Europe. This is the same fantasy that the Operation Valkyrie conspirators against Hitler entertained -- that eliminating Hitler would allow a negotiated end to the war that might let Germany keep Poland, say, while withdrawing from Russia and France.

But as it applies to Trump -- so far, Trump hasn't ordered a thing. One comment on social media sticks with me: "Trump is giving a lesson in how to actually use our power without resorting to war". Certainly what he's doing now lies well within the province of prudential judgment, including projecting the idea that he might in fact behave irrationally.

Let's Acknowledge That Trump Is A Smart Guy

I ran into an interesting take on Trump at the G7:

A G7 assembly with a final day invitation list that brought Australia, Mexico, Ukraine, South Korea, South Africa, India, the United Nations and the World Bank into it. Why? Because President Trump, that’s why.

U.S. President Donald Trump smartly exited the G7 assembly a day early, he departed just before the crowd of interests arrived. If we drop the pretending we all know why Canada invited them and these nations came running – Tariff$!

He was supposed to have sideline meetings with Ukraine's Zelensky and Mexico's Sheinbaum. We know he was able to avoid meeting Zelensky by leaving early; whether he met with Sheinbaum is uncertain, but he would have had little to say to her in any case -- the Mexicans who are leaving the US voluntarily far outnumber those formally deported, and this will diminish remittances to folks back in Mexico no matter what.

This all says to me that Trump is playing a bigger game than the news cycle recognizes. He left the G7 ostensibly to follow pressing developments in Israel and Iran, but we shouldn't be too sure of that. He may not have been thinking about Iran at all when he left the G7. When he said, “The Wall Street Journal has No Idea what my thoughts are concerning Iran!” I think he meant more than he was explicitly saying.

Consider that over the past several days, his remarks on Iran have been all over the landscape. On Tuesday, he posted UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, which gave Edward Feser the vapors:

When a country tells an enemy’s government and citizens that it will settle for nothing less than their surrender with no conditions at all – thereby putting themselves entirely at their foes’ mercy – they are obviously bound to fight more tenaciously and brutally, which will tempt the threatening country to similarly brutal methods of warfare in response.

. . . As they routinely do, Trump’s defenders may suggest that his words should not be taken at face value, but interpreted as mere “trash talk” or perhaps as exercises in “thinking out loud” rather than as final policy decisions. But this helps their case not at all. War is, needless to say, an enterprise of enormous gravity, calling for maximum prudence and moral seriousness. Even speaking about the possibility must be done with great caution. (Think of the chaos that could follow upon trying quickly to evacuate a city of nearly ten million people, even if there were no actual plan to bomb it.) A president who is instead prone to woolly thinking and flippant speech about matters of war is a president whose judgment about them cannot be trusted. (And as I have argued elsewhere, he has already in other ways proven himself to have unsound judgment about such things.)

Yet by yesterday, he extended Iran's deadline for negotiations, which he'd earlier strongly implied had expired after 60 days when Israel attacked Iran on June 13, by another two weeks (or maybe not):

“Based on the fact that there is a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place in the near future, I will make my decision of whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday, reading a statement from the president to reporters.

Reuters has finally figured out that Trump's strategy is to keep everyone guessing:

President Donald Trump kept the world guessing about whether the United States will join Israel's bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites as the Israel-Iran conflict entered its seventh day on Thursday. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump declined to say if he had made any decision on whether to join Israel's campaign. "I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do," he said.

Trump in later remarks said Iranian officials wanted to come to Washington for a meeting and that "we may do that." But he added, "It's a little late" for such talks.

. . . Asked if he thought the Iranian government could fall as a result of the Israeli campaign, Trump said: "Sure, anything could happen."

Referring to the destruction or dismantling of Iran's Fordow nuclear enrichment center, Trump said: "We're the only ones that have the capability to do it. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do it - at all."

This reminds me again of Henry Kissinger's negotiating strategy with the Soviets: warn them that Nixon is unstable and could fly off the handle at any time, and Kissinger is the only one who can control him -- but if the Soviets do something Nixon thinks is extreme, it could set Nixon off even beyond Kissinger's ability to reason with him. This appears to have succeeded.

I'm not sure who Edward Feser thinks has sound enough judgment to negotiate with the Iranians, unlike Trump. Biden? He might not necessarily remember Khamenei's name. Obama? He sent pallets of cash to Iran that financed their nuclear program. The only alternative that comes to mind is Mitt Romney, whose demeanor would be calm, stable, and deliberative, but I have a feeling the ayatollahs would interpret that as namby-pamby.

I saw a comment on YouTube that wondered why everyone is focused on the deeply dug nuclear facility at Fordow. Why would Israel or the US be going to such trouble to telegraph their intentions, letting the Iranians focus on the idea of a bomber strike there with bunker busters? Doesn't this sound like strategic deception? They must actually be planning something else.

In any case, there are several lessons to be learned from Truman's strategy that led to Japan's surrender in 1945. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, issued two days after the successful testing of the atomic bomb, renewed a call for Japan's "unconditional surrender", but it mentioned the term only once, and contrary to prior statements, it made no mention of the emperor's status.

The short-lived interim Secretary of State Joseph Grew had advocated for retaining the emperor as a constitutional monarch. He hoped that preserving Hirohito's central role could facilitate an orderly capitulation of all Japanese troops in the Pacific theatre. Without it, securing a surrender could be difficult. Navy Secretary James Forrestal and other officials shared the view.  Allied intentions on issues of utmost importance to the Japanese, including whether Hirohito was to be regarded as one of those who had "misled the people of Japan" or even a war criminal, or alternatively, whether the Emperor might become part of a "peacefully inclined and responsible government" were thus left unstated.

The Japanese were fully aware of the apparent movement in the Allied terms reflected in the declaration, and some in the government interpreted this as meaning a military surrender without the removal of the emperor. However, it was the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki that drove both the emperor and a cabinet majority to the view that, provided the Allies agreed to retain the emperor, Japan would surrender.

Thus a careful carrot-and-stick approach, including the actual detonation of atomic bombs, tempered by the tacit application of a few actual conditions to the term "unconditional surrender", brought an end to the war, something hard line just war theorists like Edward Feser apparently don't acknowledge.

It seems to me that Trump is acting very much in the spirit of both Truman and Nixon-Kissinger, allowing hmself a great deal of leeway to deal with circumstances as they arise, while on the other hand leaving the level of his actual cooperation with Israel unstated and uncertain from both a domestic and foreign policy point of view.

Bishop Strickland On Israel And Just War Doctrine

In the YouTube embedded above, Bp Joseph Strickland uses just war doctrine, as partly outlined in CCC 2309, to, question the moralty of Israel's attacks on Iran. He cites it at 2:10:

"The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration." That's from the Catechsm of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2309.

But then he departs from the Catechism and never quite comes back to it:

A preemptive war, a war launched not in defense but in anticipation, is not a just war. As Pope St John Paul II said before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity," from his address to the dioplomatic corps, January 13, 2003. And Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, with clarity warned that the concept of a preemptive war does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. . . . A nation does not have the moral right to wage war simply because it suspercts it might be attacked.

I've been looking carefully at the arguments pro and con for both Israel's right to attack Iran starting on June 13 and the justification for any US direct military assistance in that and potential succeeding attacks, although we must acknowledge that the overall strategy behind the attacks, which were timed to begin immediately after the expiration of Trump's 60-day deadline for negotiations to conclude, was clearly worked out in collaboration with Trump from the start.

For now, Bp Strickland's attempt to use just war doctrine against Israel leaves me unconvinced. His unstated assumption is that the Israel-Iran conflict began on June 13 with Israeli aerial attacks on Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities. However, the conflict between Israel and Iran has been an ongoing proxy war for decades, something Wikipedia acknowledges with an entry on Iran-Israel Proxy Conflict.

While this conflict has existed since the Iranian mullahs seized power, its current phase dates to October 7, 2023:

In the weeks since the Hamas massacre on October 7, pundits have debated whether or not Iran helped Hamas develop the plan for the terrorist assault and if Iran had foreknowledge of the attack. Citing a Hamas source, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran helped plot the attack and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp gave it the go-ahead at a meeting in Beirut. Another Journal report claims that in the weeks leading up to the assault, hundreds of Hamas and other Islamist militants received specialized training in Iran. . . . Ultimately, the details of Iran’s role in the plot itself will emerge. But this much is already clear: Iran has funded, armed, trained, and provided intelligence to Hamas for decades. Though Hamas has multiple income streams, funding from Iran has been especially important for the group’s military and terrorist structures.

In other words, the June 13 attack isn't something that emerged de novo between parties that had previously been at peace like, say, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As of May 2024,

Senior Iranian military officials are developing concepts for destroying Israel without having to defeat the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Iran recognizes the technological superiority of the IDF and the risk that an overt war could draw in the United States, which Iranian leaders desire to avoid. . . . Their thinking proceeds from the theory that destabilizing Israel would cause Jewish citizens to flee Israel and end the long-term viability of a Jewish state in Israel.

So I'm not entirely on board with the idea that the June 13 attacks created an entirely new, preemptive state of war. Instead, Israel since its founding millennia ago has been in a defensive posture vis-a-vis its surrounding states, something current Israeli leadership continually cites.

But there's another problem with the Biblical context of the Almighty's purpose for Israel. In Numbers 13, God tells Moses to send spies into the Promised Land to evaluate its suitability. They return and report that it certainly is suitable, but they'll have to fight the current inhabitants, and they're not sure if they want to do that. The upshot is that Moses hesitates. In Numbers 14, God condemns Israel to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, one year for each day the spies spent in Canaan, for its unwillingness to follow God's plan.

So then we eventually come to the Siege of Jericho, which is definitely not part of a defensive war on Israel's side -- Israel instead is belatedly trusting God's instructions. Jericho amounts to a major conundrum for supporters of just war doctrine, especially for those who argue that the atomic bombs used against Japan weren't justifiable -- except that the destruction of Jericho was an event comparable to a nuclear blast:

Following God's law, the Israelites killed every man and woman, the young and the old, as well as the oxen, sheep, and donkeys. Only Rahab [a Canaanite prostitute who hid two Israeli spies], her parents, brothers and all "those who belonged to her" were spared. They were incorporated into Israel. Joshua then cursed anybody who rebuilt the foundations and gates, with the deaths of their firstborn and youngest child respectively. This was eventually fulfilled by Hiel the Bethelite under King Ahab's reign.

I asked the web, "How does the Siege of Jericho conform with just war doctrine?" and couldn't find a single specific link that gave me a satisfactory answer. However, "AI" replied,

The question of how the siege of Jericho conforms with Just War Doctrine is complex and often debated. Just War Theory is a framework that outlines ethical and moral principles for judging the justification of going to war (jus ad bellum) and the methods used in war (jus in bello).

. . . The conquest of Jericho is often described as a "holy war". This suggests a divine mandate rather than a war fought for typical "just" causes like self-defense or correcting a grave injustice.

. . . God's plan for conquering Jericho involved unconventional actions, such as marching around the city and the collapse of the walls through divine intervention, rather than conventional military tactics.

. . . Some interpretations might argue that the divine command to conquer Jericho establishes a unique context where standard Just War principles may not apply in the same way.

. . . The destruction of Jericho was also seen as a way to prevent the Israelites from being corrupted by the "outsiders" and their practices. This could be seen as a form of preventative action, which is a consideration in Just War Theory.

Not too bad for AI, is it? But didn't Bp Strickland just say that no preemptive war is just? I went back to searching the web and found an essay that discusses the problem in relation to Aquinas (who, however, never directly addressed just war in relation to Jericho):

Ruling out anticipatory defense in various modes confounds morality and practicality, entailing a cure worse than the disease. Instead, prudence as St. Thomas Aquinas envisaged it—the cardinal virtue of right reason about right things to be done—ought to determine whether or not to use force sooner rather than later in accordance with the other criteria for jus ad bellum Aquinas stipulates: rightful authority, just cause, and right intention. Aquinas maintains a wise silence on the question of precisely whether or when force should be used sooner rather than later. So should we.

. . . Aquinas’s formulation of just war theory grounded in the cardinal virtue of prudence should loom large in any calculation of when, how, for what purposes, and to what effect the United States should wage war.

Whether the United States resorts to force sooner rather than later should be a prudential judgment, not a categorical one.

And this brings us back to CCC 2309, a part that Bp Strickland doesn't cite:

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

I read the whole meaning of CCC 2309 to say that although all four conditions for legitimate defense must be met, there is nevertheless room for evaluation on the part of civil and military authority.

So far, I'm leaning toward a position that it's by no means clear that the current phase of the Iran-Israel conflict is any sort of discrete, anticipatory attack on Israel's part. The justification and the proper tactics lie within the prudential judgment of US and Israeli leadership. Every current indication is that these issues are under thorough debate within US leadership in particular, and President Trump appears to be carefully weighing arguments from all sides.

Fewer Illegals, Lower Murder Rate, Higher Wages?

I was intrigued by a recent observation that this year, the US may have its lowest murder rate ever.

Answering this question starts with identifying the previous record low rate. The current record low occurred in 2014 when the FBI reported a murder rate of 4.45 per 100,000. That’s slightly lower than the murder rates reported in 2013 (4.53), 1963 (4.58) and 1962 (4.59). Prior to that the FBI didn’t really release national murder estimates with sufficient participation to rely on.

. . . It’s still early in 2025, but murder is down an enormous amount so far. The [Real-Time Crime Index] has it down more than 20 percent through February, fatal shootings are down 14 percent in the Gun Violence Archive, the Major Cities Chiefs Association has homicide down more than 20 percent in the first quarter, and I recently found a greater than 20 percent decline in the 30 cities with the most murders in 2023.

. . . If this decline continues through the Fall then we should seriously start having a discussion about the probability of a record breaking year. Until then, it’s sufficient to be aware of and measuring the possibility of a new record low.

The piece doean't speculate over any cause, it just reports the decline. But this took me back to a question that had been on my mind since I saw an episode of the true crime series See No Evil that aired this past June 3. In the episode, Gabriel Perez, 20, is shot to death at 5:30 AM while sitting on a curb with his skateboard outside a McDonald's in Fargo, ND. The shots were fired from a vehicle that sped away.

The driver was later identified as Miguel J Cooley, who suspected Perez was having an affair with his wife. Perez had been cruising around Fargo all night on his skateboard, which apparently was his sole mode of transportation, and had in fact hooked up with Cooley's wife via phone text not long before. She had agreed to meet Perez outside the McDonald's, which is why Perez was there, but Cooley had discovered the texts on his wife's phone and met Perez outside the McDonald's instead and shot him.

While the show portrayed the detectives solving the crime, it left many questions unanswered, not least of which was how Mexicans wound up in Fargo, ND, about 100 miles from the Canadian border. Perez's family described him as a "goofy" sort of guy with a sense of humor, but gave little explanation of why he spent his nights roving around Fargo on his skateboard and how he might have earned a living.

The episode was equally silent about Cooley, who lived with his wife in Moorhead, MN. They had a car, which was more than Perez had, but again, we're told nothing of their nationality, occupation, or how they all managed to be up to all sorts of mischief so early in the morning.

Because the first link above is seemingly so reluctant to speculate on why the US murder rate has been plunging so drastically, I'm forced to make my own associations: I suspect that people who otherwise might be in places like Fargo, ND, spending the early hours of the morning on skateboards arranging trysts outside McDonald's and getting blown away by jealous husbands are instead leaving the country in significant numbers.

A atatement from the White House yesterday reported another positive trend:

In President Donald J. Trump’s first five months in office, real wages for hourly workers have seen their largest increase under any administration in nearly 60 years — and we’re just getting started with pro-growth, pro-prosperity policies that finally put America First.

Blue-collar workers have seen real wages grow almost two percent in the first five months of President Trump’s second term — a stark contrast from the negative wage growth seen during the first five months of the Biden Administration.

“The only other time it has been this high … was during President Trump’s first term,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in an interview with the New York Post.

From Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media:

The only semblance of an argument that the Democrats have ever had about illegal immigration is that the illegals are here doing the jobs that Americans won't do. Because of the historical lack of will to undertake the task of mass deportations, it was an argument that was difficult to disprove.

. . . The notion that illegal immigrants became a significant part of the labor pool in the United States because Americans just decided to stop working is absurd. American workers were replaced with cheaper options, plain and simple. Employers got addicted to their off-the-books, substandard-pay laborers. It never had anything to do with concern for illegal immigrants or the lack of available American workers.

. . . A restaurant just up the street from me was hit with a big ICE raid a couple of months ago and lost so many workers that it had to shut down for several days. It's been up and running just fine since then, though. It even got a new paint job. Given the fact that the place was under ICE scrutiny, I can't imagine that the owners went out and hired a bunch of illegals in order to reopen.

Via the Washington Examiner:

Another 2024 top pollster has recorded an approval rating high for President Donald Trump, the latest in a trend showing that liberal attacks are bouncing off a political Golden Dome surrounding him.

InsiderAdvantage, rated the second-best national pollster in 2024, put its mid-June approval rating at a sky-high 54% and its disapproval down to 44%.

This is consistent with Rasmussen.

UPDATE:

The far-left Wall Street Journal estimates that America’s immigrant population has declined by 773,000 since President Trump assumed office in January 2025. The far-left Washington Post puts the estimate of foreign-born workers leaving the workforce at around an even million.

Trump vs Chatsworth Osborne, Jr

From one of the last Rush Limbaugh shows:

RUSH: Do you know who Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. was?

CALLER: No, I don’t.

RUSH: Do you ever remember watching a television show — how old are you?

CALLER: Sixty. I didn’t watch much TV, though.

RUSH: Okay. Well, there was a very, very popular TV show in the 1960s called Dobie Gillis.

CALLER: Okay. I never saw that. That’s why.

RUSH: It was a college kids’ program. Dobie Gillis was a college student, and his buddies were college kids. It was kind of like a college kid version of Leave It To Beaver. And one of the characters was this uppity, elitist, snobbish, know-nothing character named Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. You know, who would name a kid Chatsworth? It’s obviously somebody’s last name. Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. So the kid was a preppie. And it’s a very affectionate nickname that I have developed for Tucker Carlson. I haven’t used it in a long time. But that is the source of it. You should YouTube Dobie Gillis and you’ll see the character.

Wikipedia has an extensive biography that definitely reinforces the idea that Tucker is a preppie.

When Carlson was in first grade, his father moved Tucker and his brother to the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, and raised them there. Carlson attended La Jolla Country Day School and grew up in a home overlooking the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. His father owned property in Nevada and Vermont, and islands in Maine and Nova Scotia.

. . . In 1979, Carlson's father married Patricia Caroline Swanson, an heiress to Swanson Enterprises, daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson and niece of Senator J. William Fulbright. Though Patricia remained a beneficiary of the family fortune, the Swansons had sold the brand to the Campbell Soup Company in 1955 and did not own it by the time of Carlson's father's marriage. This was the third marriage for Swanson, who legally adopted Tucker Carlson and his brother.

. . . Carlson was briefly enrolled at Collège du Léman, a boarding school in the Canton of Geneva in French-speaking Switzerland, but said he was "kicked out". He attained his secondary education at St. George's School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he started dating his future wife, Susan Andrews, the headmaster's daughter. He then spent four years attending Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and graduated in 1991 with a B.A. in history.

Trinity is upper-upper Episcopalian, but it isn't an Ivy. It's a little puzzling to me that Tucker didn't get into an Ivy; with a wealthy family background and a prep school graduate, his chances of getting into an Ivy -- maybe not Harvard, but certainly Brown or Penn -- should have been quite good. (Trinity was one of my safety schools.) But there's another problem:

After college, Carlson tried to join the Central Intelligence Agency, but his application was denied, after which he decided to pursue a career in journalism with the encouragement of his father, who advised him that "they'll take anybody".

Again, with high social standing, a prep achool background, and at least a Trinity degree, he should have been a prime candidate for the CIA, but something was off. Look at his dad's resume, which included director of Voice of America, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles. Dad Carlson hired and fired journalists. Instead, Tucker has worked for a whole series of networks, all of which fired him, most recently Fox. Somehow I suspect his dad knew something when he said, "they'll take anybody".

So yesterday,

Tucker Carlson sounded the alarm about the looming danger of a U.S. war with Iran under President Donald Trump’s leadership, warning that such a move would not only devastate America’s global standing but end Trump’s presidency outright.

During an interview with Steve Bannon, Carlson laid bare the stakes, accusing globalist elites and war-hungry neocons of pushing America toward a disastrous conflict that could “scuttle” the nation on the “shores of Iran.”

“I actually really love Trump. I think he’s a deeply humane, kind person,” Carlson said.

“I’m saying this because I’m really afraid that my country is going to be further weakened by this. I think we’re going to see the end of the American Empire, obviously. Other nations would like to see that, and this is a perfect way to scuttle the U.S. on the shores of Iran. But it’s also going to end, I believe, Trump’s presidency—effectively end it. And so that’s why I’m saying this.”

Trump replied later in the day,

“I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen,” Trump told reporters when asked about Carlson’s comments during a meeting with the British prime minister at the Group of Seven summit.

. . . The former Fox News host’s opposition to U.S. involvement in any conflict in the Middle East underscores a looming divide among parts of Trump’s base over how to proceed toward Iran.

Limbaugh has had other pertinent things to say that apply to the current situation:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Sunday criticized the media, saying members of the press will fail to destroy President Trump.

“The media did not make Donald Trump and they can’t destroy him,” Limbaugh said on “Fox News Sunday.”

. . . ”It’s not going to work on Trump. He doesn’t fit that mold. They’re trying to every day. It’s kind of comical to watch.

. . . “Trump has a connection with his voters that most politicians don’t have…and that connection that he has is not anything that anybody else can break. Only he can break it.”

Tucker's problem is that he isn't even that good at media.

"He’s Pulling The Trigger On Everything All At Once"

The quote above is from Dana Williamson, Gavin Newsom's former chief of staff, referring to Trump in an article in Politico from Saturday. The piece refers to California:

Between the deployment of federal agents to Los Angeles, the gutting of climate standards and the manhandling of the state’s senior U.S. senator, the state absorbed one show of force after another from the president. And in the balance of power between the Trump administration and the nation’s most populous state, California was on the losing end.

But it looks like California is just one piece of the story:

The United States is shifting military resources, including ships, in the Middle East in response to Israel’s strikes on Iran and a possible retaliatory attack by Tehran, two U.S. officials said Friday.

. . . President Donald Trump is meeting with his National Security Council principals Friday to discuss the situation. The U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public.

. . . The Navy has additional assets that it could surge to the Middle East if needed, particularly its aircraft carriers and the warships that sail with them. The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson is in the Arabian Sea — the only aircraft carrier in the region.

Via Real Clear Politics:

In a matter of days, Israel’s pre-emptive strikes have shattered Iran’s defensive shield. Iran’s air defence systems were swiftly eliminated, opening the skies to unimpeded Israeli air power. Simultaneously, precision strikes and covert operations decapitated key nodes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command, missile bases, nuclear facilities, and other military targets; too many to list here.

. . . One looming issue remains unresolved: the Fordow uranium enrichment complex. Fordow is Iran’s most challenging nuclear site, buried half a mile deep under a mountain, and it has survived the initial onslaught intact. As long as Fordow remains operational, Iran’s regime keeps a dangerous ace up its sleeve. The facility houses advanced centrifuges enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels and could potentially expedite a crash nuclear weapons effort if the leadership feels cornered. In Israeli eyes, allowing Fordow to remain unscathed would be a grave mistake.

As of yesterday afternoon:

A massive explosion can be seen in the distance along the Tehran-Qom road, coinciding with reports of an earthquake in Qom, near the Fordow nuclear facility. pic.twitter.com/RcGTQzKXKV

— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) June 15, 2025

Reuters has confirmed that the US military redeployed a large number of aerial refueling tankers to Europe to provide “options” to President Trump amid the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict. https://t.co/FVJjQLzt7x

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 16, 2025

From Eli Lake at The Free Press:

As I reported earlier this year, even before Trump’s second presidency began, the restrainers inside the MAGA movement had hoped to create an America First foreign policy that pares down America’s global military footprint. On the other side, a mix of pro-Israel evangelicals, Jews, and the remnants of GOP hawks have sought to keep America engaged in the world.

. . . One reason for the public spats between various Trump allies is that the inner circle deliberating on Iran policy is very small and has been fairly tight-lipped, according to administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The inner circle consists of Trump himself, along with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles; his chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; CIA director John Ratcliffe; and Vice President J.D. Vance.

. . . the president said nothing in the first eight hours of the hostilities. The only official statement from the administration was a chilly one from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, emphasizing that Israel was acting unilaterally. But at 5:56 a.m. on Friday morning, Trump weighed in on Israel’s side. “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” he posted on Truth Social. “But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.” That was not an accident, one administration official told me. “Trump was waiting to see if the Israeli mission was a success before he weighed in on it.”

. . . Ultimately, the fortunes of the Trump administration’s restrainers and hawks depend above all else on factors out of their control: the performance of the Israel Defense Forces and the decision of Iran’s supreme leader. Three days into the war, the anxious predictions of the restrainers have not come to pass.

But meanwhile, Trump is off to Canada for the G7:

[A]s the G7 kicks off it is very interesting to notice who shows up on President Trump’s G7 schedule in Canada – that has absolutely no bearing on the G7 meeting in Canada.

According to the schedule, President Trump has meetings with both Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Neither Mexico or Ukraine are in the G7 (Italy, Germany, France, USA, Canada, Japan, U.K).

. . . Obviously Zelenskyy is traveling to Canada at the behest of the global intelligence network because they are afraid President Trump may no longer keep Zelenskyy at the center of the foreign policy universe.

. . . President Trump’s rapid deportation program is making it very difficult for Mexicans in the USA to send money back to Mexico. This is quickly becoming an urgent matter for Mexican officials who will be forced to intervene in support of the local Mexican economy if President Trump keeps impeding the accumulation of illegal wages in the USA.

I'm not sure if we've seen anything like this level of activity from any administration, ever.

Not Enough Paid Instigators?

As far as I can tell, the only extended violence anywhere in the country in yesterday's No Kings Day demonstrations was in Los Angeles, where things had been simmering since last weekend. All I can think is that LAPD somehow talked sense into Mayor Bass and convinced her that the way to stop riots, as was finally done in the 1992 Rodney King episode, was to have the media show people being arrested, not just looting stores. Thus photos like the one above, showing people retreating from tear gas, have finally begun to appear, unlike last weekend's shots of rioters waving Mexican flags:

But also, note that the people in the top photo, retreating from tear gas, are young, countercultural, and dressed to storm the barricades. The people at No Kings Day events anywhere else in the country apparenty weren't in this demographic:

Not...really.

From a basic scan of the pics, it's an insanely old, white, female, middle-middle class (not upper or lower or working), neurotic/masked crowd.

The people at the Army's birthday parade....looked like America. https://t.co/uPglJp7po0

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) June 15, 2025

A lot of commentators have noted that the No Kings Day organizers had weeks to prepare for the event, even before last weekend's LA riots and Sen Padilla's stunt:

"No Kings Day of Defiance," a nationwide series of protests scheduled for Saturday, was planned as a counter to the military parade taking place in Washington, D.C., on the same day. That parade is being held in honor of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, which coincides with Mr. Trump's 79th birthday.

"On June 14—Flag Day—President Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday," organizers said. "A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn't staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else."

But it sounds like pretty much all they could come up with was cat ladies and the sort of people who still wear masks in public, although there are plenty of those left. But I'm still scratching my head about basic questions of prudence:

LOS ANGELES: police are using tear gas and crowd control munitions to break up the crowd

Though I identified as press and had my badges / credentials displayed, an officer still shot me with a rubber bullet

Another shot a tear gas can at me. They are targeting press pic.twitter.com/Y2gWVX4WhK

— E (@ElijahSchaffer) June 15, 2025

Why on earth would anyone deliberately attend an event where there was even the slightest potential for violence? Or even if it was part of your job as a reporter, why would you put yourself into the part of the crowd that was being pushed back or kettled in? But it's also worth stressing that LA was the only place yesterday where anything like this occurred at all. In Philadelphia, the cat ladies calmly marched to the art museum and went home.

Byron York makes a related point in the Washington Examiner:

The RealClearPolitics average of polls keeps a running comparison between the polling of Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush at the same point in their second terms. Right now, Trump’s job approval stands at 46.6%. On this day in 2013, Obama’s job approval rating was…46.6%. And at this moment in 2005, Bush’s approval rating was a touch lower, at 45.6%.

The presidents and the events of their presidencies were entirely different. And yet, in mid-June of the first year of their second term, all were in almost precisely the same place in terms of job approval.

What does it mean? For one thing, it means the efforts to portray Trump as a uniquely dangerous threat to American democracy — to denormalize him — aren’t working.

. . . The premise of such a critique is that Trump is doing outrageous things that Americans should never accept. The problem is that many Americans, in some cases, majorities of Americans, don’t think Trump’s actions are outrageous. They support what he is doing on immigration. They support what he is doing for the economy. They support what he is doing to cut federal spending on wokeism and Left-wing causes. That’s what is keeping Trump’s job approval numbers in the same place as Obama’s and Bush’s.

The No Kings Day planners had weeks to plan things out, and they apparently had megabucks to finance it, but it fizzled. The only spot that remotely resembled the 2020 BLM riots was LA, but the outcome, after what must have been a week of intense behind-the-scenes pressure on Mayor Bass from law enforcment, was photos of dispirited wannabes running from tear gas and a reporter complaining he'd been hit by a rubber bullet even though he had a press pass. Poor baby.

They had all the Walmart fortune behind them and apparently couldn't hire enough paid instigators. On the other hand, I suspect law enforcement had very good intelligence as well.