Trump has called on the GOP to vote for the release of all the Epstein files, and get down to touting their accomplishments and achieving more for the American people. One can conclude from this that such a release would hurt more Democrats than Republicans, something I’ve long believed anyway.
I’ve written before at some length on Epstein and the files, for example here as well as here. So I’m not going to go into the details of my position again, but I will add that the Epstein story gives people who are into wild conspiracy theories (about Israel or anything else) much fodder for their spinnings – not that any release of any files would shut them up. It wouldn’t.
But this related story is really quite something. It concerns Stacey Plaskett, a (non-voting) House member from the Virgin Islands who was receiving advisory texts during a House hearing in 2019 from none other than Jeffrey Epstein, a donor of hers (and yes, he was already a convicted sex offender). Epstein was doing the modern-day Cyrano thing via text, suggesting points for Plaskett to make as she questioned witness Michael Cohen before the House. The goal? To hurt Trump, against whom Epstein apparently had significant ire. Plaskett is a Democrat.
More:
At 2:34 p.m. (during the hearing), Epstein told [texted] Plaskett “Good work” — a minute after she finished her questioning.
The texts were released as part of roughly 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate made public Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee.
The documents redacted Plaskett’s name, but the newspaper analyzed the messages and compared them to hearing footage to report Plaskett was indeed texting Epstein.
It’s been widely remarked that we know next to nothing about Thomas Crooks, the young man who shot Trump in the ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. Crooks himself was shot dead that day. The FBI – headed by Wray at the time – seemed to be saying that Crooks had not much online presence to speak of, which certainly might have been true but seemed rather unusual for someone his age.
Also, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and many facts about the alleged culprit Tyler Robinson came out, it seemed that Crooks might have been of similar ilk although we didn’t know.
Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that [Wray’s deputy] Abbate misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again.
Among the 17 accounts uncovered by our source were ones on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora.
The online interactions from when Crooks was ages 15 to 17 give us a better understanding of his evolution into an assassin, and invite more questions about what — or who — reversed his ideology.
“The danger Crooks posed was visible for years in public online spaces,” says the source. “His radicalization, violent rhetoric and obsession with political violence were all documented under his real name. The threat wasn’t hidden.” …
He left a digital trail of violent threats, extremist ideology and admiration for mass violence. He spoke openly of political assassination, posted under his real name and was even flagged by other users who mentioned law enforcement in their replies. Despite this, his account remained active for more than five years — and was only removed the day after the shooting.
“None of this online activity was referenced in the final congressional report released in December 2024, making this even more troubling,” the source said.
The idea is that either the FBI is utterly and totally incompetent – always very possible – or is covering up the fact that they investigated this guy and weren’t alarmed (definitely possible), or perhaps both. The official word from the FBI is that Crooks was not on their radar screen until July 13, 2024, the day of the shooting.
Oh, and Crooks also had an online interest – much like Tyler Robinson – in furries and gender-bending stuff.
For many years I’ve made it a practice to read a lot of comments all over the blogosphere and in the MSM. I’ve noticed in recent years a growth in comments from – for want of a better word – trolls. Maybe some are bots. Maybe some are by actual people who are paid to do this. My sense, for what it’s worth, is that the majority are written by real people who are not being paid, and who devote a large portion of their free time to the task and have multiple accounts, concentrating on large circulation papers and blogs. They seem especially common on large traffic blogs that use a service such as Disqus to farm out their comments rather than doing their own policing. Hostile trolls can become very numerous on and even overwhelm such systems. So perhaps they seem more numerous than they actually are – but they seem plenty numerous indeed.
I usually notice even more of them on an election night that’s disappointing for Republicans, such as November 4. They come to crow, they come to taunt, they come to mock and tease. Tons of trolls.
The reason I’m writing this, though, is that as I skim such comments these days, it occurs to me that I often can’t tell if they were from leftists or from people on the Fuentes/Carlson right. The reason is that the two groups say such similar things on an occasion like that: you MAGA Republicans are losers, Trump is a loser, Jews and Israel are evil, Republicans lose because they support Israel – that sort of thing. The only identifier for the Fuentes/Carlson group as opposed to the leftist group are these words you see now and then: AMERICA FIRST!
It’s easy to forget, looking at the cesspools that some comment sections have become, that most people have better things to do than crank out bile or to even follow any of this closely. But of course, that sort of inattention can be exploited easily by propagandists.
Politics really is downstream from culture, and the internet has not helped our culture or our politics.
Confession: I saw it. I idly thought it was rather charming. Cute little animals! Seals (or are they otters?), bunnies, puppies! Snow! It had a sort of childlike appeal – and I don’t even like Coca-Cola.
But apparently it’s a very controversial ad which has received lots of criticism, especially because it’s AI. For example:
One AI-generated Christmas ad could have be brushed off as a novelty experiment. With two in a two in a row, Coca-Cola is making AI slop a new festive tradition.
Despite the backlash last year (or because of it?), the soft drinks giant has again decided to start the season with an AI-generated mess that sabotages its brand. Somehow it still doesn’t see the contradiction of its ‘real magic’ tagline. …
The polar bears of old are now joined by an incongruous mix of gawping AI critters, from rabbits to seals, before the piece end with a jump scare: an AI-animated Santa Claus inspired by Haddon Sundblom’s 1930s illustrations.
Apparently there are flaws in the ad, too. Apparently people don’t like AI – really really don’t like it. You be the judge:
See this – a reminder of that terrible day. If you read the tweets there, you’ll see what we already know – that jihadis are not just killers, they are barbaric sadists who delight in torturing their victims, the better to terrorize.
It is a major failing of the west that so many people have become apologists for and appeasers of such groups.
Currently in France, they’ve got their work cut out for them:
French authorities say the terror threat has evolved significantly since 2015, with anti-terror police and prosecutors now increasingly focusing on young homegrown extremists, including children, who are radicalizing online, often in isolation.
Authorities say they have foiled six alleged Islamic extremist attack plots so far in 2025, involving suspects aged 17 to 22. Three suspected Islamic extremist attacks this year killed two people and injured several others.
Most of the people I know – men and women – seem to detest Trump with a passion. But only a very few are emotionally disabled by it. Those are the true sufferers from TDS. For the rest, it’s a sort of parlor sport that may darken their mood at times but usually doesn’t affect their lives all that much. But for those few with true TDS, it’s very disabling. And I bet quite a few therapists suffer from it, too.
I know, I know; you say, “Cry me a river.”
But to me, it’s become a sad and fascinating topic. Among the people I know, the ones with disabling TDS have other sorrows in their lives that are also bringing them down. TDS represents a sort of straw that breaks the camel’s back.
NOTE: By the way, when I was a child and I would hear the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” for many years I pictured it as a camel laden with drinking straws. Why a camel would be carrying that particular load was beyond me, but there were (and are) a lot of puzzling things about the world.
This isn’t really primarily about Megyn Kelly, but I mention her because she’s somehow gotten herself involved in the entire Fuentes/Owens/Carlson/Shapiro brouhaha. It’s hard to write about any of this without sounding like a junior high school gossip – “he said then she said then he said then they said then he lied and she lied and he attacked her and she attacked her and he denied … ” or something like that.
So I won’t go into the Megyn Kelly part in any detail except to say that she seems to be taking the tack of “I have no responsibility to say anything bad about Owens or Carlson – but hey, that Shapiro is quite the liar” – when he really is not. If you want to get up to speed on it, just watch (to take one example) this video, which goes into the ins and outs. Suffice to say that Kelly has been either disingenuous, uninformed, or downright mendacious – or some combination of those things.
As I said, I’m not getting into the details here. My point in writing this post is that lately I’ve been pondering whether I’ve been surprised at the feet of clay of so many pundits on the right, such as Carlson and Kelly and Owens (there are others). The answer is: no. They are not people I’ve ever especially admired or looked up to, or trusted. I certainly used to think more highly of them than I do now – but trust? No.
That thought made me wonder which people, among the pundit class, I do trust – if anyone. Both of the names which immediately came to mind are (or were) also in academia: Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson. I assume they have said things in their lives with which I might disagree, but if they have I can’t think of it offhand. They have earned my respect over the years and seem to be people not just of extremely high intelligence, but of integrity. The same cannot be said for Carlson, Kelly, and Owens, although I don’t think they are dumb. But they are in the influence business and in the click business, and that doesn’t bode well.
There is a war of ideas and propaganda going on in both parties. On the Democrat side, it seems almost finished, and the extremists on the left have won in the sense of driving out moderates. On the right, we’re in the middle of a battle that rears up periodically – the last time featuring Pat Buchanan. On the right, it hasn’t been resolved – and probably won’t ever be resolved in the permanent sense.
These things are part of politics and of human nature. It’s interesting, also, that a tool of the extremists on both sides is Jew-hatred – this time, clothed in the disguise of Israel-hatred and double standards. Jew-hatred is an old old story, too.
NOTE: Here’s another video worth watching, with James Lindsay – who apparently foresaw the battle on the right before it was apparent to most people.
I originally was going to write a two-parter about Tucker Carlson, which seemed like plenty – more than enough. So to all of you who think I’ve gone on way too long about him, I understand. I almost agree with you.
That “almost” is because it’s hard to get the flavor of what’s going on with Carlson – or with Candace Owens for that matter, who comes up quite a bit in relation to him – and I think it actually is rather important. Perhaps I’m being alarmist. But for many years I’ve been spending an awful lot of time looking around online at political sites, and I’ve seen this movement grow and grow and take over a lot of places. It’s creepy in every sense of the word: offensive, and spreading like a weed.
Maybe it’s bots. Maybe it’s paid shills. Some of it undoubtedly is. But it seems organic to me, and although small, very vocal and quite poisonous. I believe their goal is to split the right and ultimately take over from more rational heads. Whether they will accomplish that or not, I don’t know. But it’s a real danger, and I’m trying to raise awareness.
So a conversation in the comments here made me think one more post on the dismal subject would be in order.
I think Tucker’s views about spirits and demons have everything to do with his foreign policy views. He thinks we’re in a battle against demonic forces which he believes were behind the world wars and are currently pushing us into a war with Iran. He hasn’t gone as far as Candace in explicitly saying that the Jews are being controlled by demonic forces but that’s clearly what he actually believes.
Tucker has long been an isolationist but his descent into conspiratorial madness is something new.
“He thinks we’re in a battle against demonic forces which he believes were behind the world wars and are currently pushing us into a war with Iran.”
That’s not controversial according to the Bible (except the part that demons are pushing us into a war with Iran). Obviously a failed prophecy – since that didn’t happen.
“He hasn’t gone as far as Candace in explicitly saying that the Jews are being controlled by demonic forces but that’s clearly what he actually believes.”
I’m not sure why you would make that connection. Have you read/heard anything by Carlson that indicates he believes the “Jews are being controlled by demonic forces”?
I know very little about Candace Owens. I’d be interested in a link were she said Jews are controlled by demonic forces in so many words.
I think there’s plenty of things Carlson has said about the government of Israel that are problematic/wrong without going there, unless he’s actually said that.
Actually, Carlson’s modus operandi isn’t saying controversial things outright, at least not usually. It’s showcasing people who say such things, nodding along with a thoughtful mien, and failing to challenge them. So no, I very much doubt he’s called Jews demons. Nor do I know whether he’s showcased anyone who literally calls all Jews demonic, although he’s showcased many people who lie and lie and lie about Israel.
As for Owens, I wrote a previous post on her that featured a few of her many tweets that certainly imply it – as well as Israelis as Nazis – for example:
Gaza is a concentration camp where an open genocide is taking place. It has taken Goebbels levels of propaganda to try to convince the world it isn’t happening but it is. Just like Adolf Hitler, Bibi Netanyahu is an ethnocentric imperialist monster and we will make sure the world remembers what all of you supported when God has his vengeance.
With enough time, I’m sure Hitler would have been very open to similarly running a sophisticated global blackmail ring with Jeffrey Epstein and perhaps would have even orchestrated the assasination [sic] of a sitting U.S. President or conducted a false flag or 2 to demand our allegiance.
Let me know how horrified you are by this comparison, and I’ll let you know how little we care. I will never stand with genocidal maniacs, who are committing an open holocaust and trying to usher in WW3, all while purporting to be eternal victims.
Israel rapes and murders innocents, (including their own countrymen) steals land, and then uses sexual blackmail to force leaders of other counties to accept deals with the land they’ve stolen.
Synagogue of Satan.
Christ will win.
Is “Synagogue of Satan” close enough to “demonic”?
Candace Owens’ history of spreading vicious and dangerous lies about Jews was on full display during a 25-minute interview this morning on @CNN. She repeated her false claims that the U.S. government is occupied by Zionists, called Zionists “demonic” and “literally possessed by demons,” and that Israel’s war with Hamas was a “Holocaust.”
So, Zionists are literally possessed by demons. And I assume she would include the “Christian Zionists” who incense Tucker Carlson “more than anyone.” It strikes me, and not for the first time, that the existence of Israel has given Jew-haters the perfect cover. They can say just about anything they want about Israel and Israelis, however foul and however mendacious (often involving Nazi comparisons), and they can deny that what they’re saying is about Jews themselves. Then they use strawman arguments like “criticizing Israel isn’t anti-Semitic,” which of course is true; but people aren’t calling them Jew-haters because they criticize Israel. They call them Jew-haters because they focus on Israel obsessively to the exclusion of far worse situations in the world, they apply completely different and far harsher standards to Israel then to any other country, and they very often lie about Israel.
I found a video of a Carlson interview with Owens, which apparently took place about three months ago. During it they talk a lot about what brave truth-tellers they are, and they also mention their traffic numbers and how big they’ve gotten, especially Candace (who is now one of the most listened to podcasters on YouTube). A comment there like the following isn’t unusual; most of the commenters seem very admiring:
While looking at this video I had the sensation of witnessing a conversation between two giants. Thank you, Candace and Tucker.
The interview is about two hours long. A lot of it concerns Owens’ balmy views about Brigitte Macron being a man, something of which Owens is convinced. I didn’t watch every minute of the video but I watched about half, and if you want to get an idea of Carlson’s extreme deference towards Owens and admiration of her, just watch some of it – especially the latter parts. For viewers previously unfamiliar with her – and I hardly can blame anyone for not wanting to immerse him or herself in this fetid stuff – I have prepared a few clips. They’re only partly about Owens, though. They’re here because they’re also very much about Tucker Carlson – about whom he wishes to platform, about what sorts of ideas he fails to challenge, and about what he himself adds.
I’ve cued up several clips from this interview in order to demonstrate the form the insinuations both of these people take. Each segment is quite short.
In this first clip they discuss Nick Fuentes; this was months before Tucker interviewed him, and they both seem to have detested Fuentes at the time this video was made. Here Tucker seems to be advancing a theory that Fuentes is actually a neocon plant paid to attack the anti-neocon right (including Carlson and Owens, whom Fuentes had been criticizing at the time):
This next clip is about their mutual detestation of Seth Dillon, the head of the Babylon Bee, who criticized Candace and Tucker after they deigned to be oh-so-very-nice to him. I include this clip because it also shows Tucker and Owens lauding Darryl Cooper, that “historian” who thinks Churchill is the villain of WWII. I also included it because of Owens’ unchallenged remark that Israel supporters sadistically cheer the murder of Palestinian children. It’s also the case that, after Charlie Kirk was assassinated (the video is from before that event), Seth Dillon was one of the people Candace Owens accused of being part of a vague but sinister conspiracy around Kirk’s death:
This next clip, however, is the one most directly relevant to the blog comment thread I quoted at the beginning of this post. Note Candace’s repeated statements that Israel is demonic, and Carlson’s reaction (or non-reaction) to that. It’s also an excellent example of how conspiracy theories blend together. For example, when this clip begins they had both been talking about the need to release the Epstein files (she has said Israel is involved, natch), then she segues into a statement that Israel assassinated JFK, and then she implies that there’s something terribly nefarious about Israel’s Birthright program (a program which gives – not every American Jew, as she claims here – but young American Jews free trips to Israel in order to help them see for themselves what it’s all about). Have a listen:
I thought I was finished with my work on formatting the poetry book by Gerard. I sent the PDF to the printer a couple of days ago – hooray! – and got back a proof that alas, didn’t look quite right.
It turns out that formatting poetry in order to create a print hardcopy book is much more difficult than formatting prose for the same type of book. I won’t get into the descriptive weeds here and detail the problems it presents, and why. But suffice to say that, for example, if you look at a poetry book, not only do the lines have to be just so, but the margins can change dramatically from poem to poem in the book. Writing and book formatting programs often have unforeseen problems with this – unforeseen by me, anyway. For most of my life I’ve been reading poetry books and never noticed the intricacies of their printing. I sure do now.
I think – accent on the think – I’ve found an acceptable work-around. But it will take quite a few more hours.
The administration has decided that Antifa is a terrorist group, the better to move against it. Here’s the declaration about Antifa in the US:
Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. …
Because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations.
And this order does something similar regarding Antifa abroad:
Today, building on President Trump’s historic commitment to confront Antifa’s campaign of political violence, the Department of State is designating German-based Antifa Ost, along with three other violent Antifa groups in Italy and Greece, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists and intends to designate all four groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, effective November 20, 2025. The designation of Antifa Ost and other violent Antifa groups supports President Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, an initiative to disrupt self-described “anti-fascism” networks, entities, and organizations that use political violence and terroristic acts to undermine democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental liberties. Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, “anti-capitalism,” and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas.
When the Democrats were in power, they mostly looked away or actively encouraged Antifa – or denied its existence except as some sort of idea. That approach has ended – for the moment, anyway.
It will be interesting to see what practical effect this new policy will have on the movement. Antifa’s adherents seem mostly to be those disaffected young men everyone seems to be talking about these days, whether on left or right or the fringes where left and right seem to resemble each other in chaos, rage, and rebellion.
