Split Screen: Parade Honoring Army’s 250th Birthday and Angry Protests. Minnesota Suspect Captured. Will the Mullahs Fall? And More
Everybody loves a parade.
Well, normal, everyday people that is. Some other people prefer riots and bitter protests. We saw both groups on Saturday.
The headline on Miranda Devine’s column on America’s split-screen weekend is: “Army’s 250th Anniversary Parade Was Celebration of America—Unlike Foolish ‘No Kings’ Protests.:
Devine hails the parade as “a feel-good patriotic triumph and a rebuke to Democrats and their mean-spirited, small-minded anti-Trump protests.” She writes:
America has the mightiest army in the world. It’s something to be proud and patriotic about. Why not celebrate?
And what a show it was, with uniforms dating back to the Revolutionary War, 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 helicopters participating, not to mention a robot dog and drones.
The parade was a display of pride in our troops and their awesome weaponry, but importantly, it also stood as a warning to our adversaries at a time of global peril, amid the specter of war in Iran.
How did the parade affect our friends on the left? Most, I imagine, didn’t bother to watch. Washington Post columnist Max Boot cravenly apologized for even watching the parade:
My worry was that Trump would turn the Army parade into just another political pageant. Those concerns only grew when I saw how many of the spectators were wearing MAGA hats or shirts.
But my apprehension began to melt away as soon as the music started to play and the soldiers began to march. Dear reader, I hope you do not think I am going soft on Trump if I tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed the entire parade.
MSNBC hosts were shocked that the military parade lacked the “dark, malevolent energy” they had assumed would characterize it. But the editorial board of the Washington Post didn’t give an inch:
Ostentatious muscle-flexing does not make America appear confident — particularly when there are questions about whom, exactly, it is meant to honor.
It was obvious to regular people that the parade honored the U.S. Army. President Trump spoke for only 8 minutes, and his birthday was almost unmentioned. The “No Kings” drew large-scale gatherings reported in major hubs such as Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon; and New York. The Atlantic has a picture spread that is outside the paywall. There was also violence. A protester was shot and killed in Utah. Townhall finds details of the Utah incident “odd.” The groups involved in putting on “No Kings” were a who’s who of the left. Alluding to the Democratic leadership, which is “stereotypically old and white,” Powerline brings us “No Kings at the Old Folks Home.”
The suspected assassin in a political murder in Minnesota has been captured after a massive manhunt. He is Vance Luther Boelter, who allegedly killed a top Democratic lawmaker and her husband and wounded two others and apparently had a list of 70 “targets.” He claimed to own a private security firm, though it may not have had clients. He was appointed to a state board by Governor Tim Walz, and a friend claimed that he was a Trump voter. Boelter’s wife has also been apprehended. Boelter left behind a manifesto. As of this morning, the Boetlers are a complete mystery, with the chic lefty Daily Beast seeking to portray him as a “MAGA maniac.”
Democratic State House leader Melissa Hortman, who was killed along with her husband, recently made news when she crossed political lines to vote against free health care for illegal immigrants. Scott Johnson of Powerline, who lives in Minnesota, had a good post on the popular legislator.
Israel is taking casualties but also hitting Iran where it hurts most—in the Islamic state’s nuclear facilities. One-third of Iran’s missile launches have been destroyed. But that is not enough. “The Fordow Imperative—for Trump and Israel” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial that criticizes “isolationists” for urging that strikes cease before Iran’s nuclear arsenal is destroyed. Hopeful Iranian Americans are calling for regime change. How likely is that? Charlie Gammell asks this question in the London Spectator:
The clue is in the name of Israel’s operation. ‘Operation Rising Lion’ is a direct reference to the Pahlavi flag used by Iran before the Islamic revolution, which shows a lion standing proud against the backdrop of a glowing orb, the sun….
As bombs rain down on Iranian cities and Supreme Leader Khamenei hides in a bunker somewhere in Lavizan with his family, the Israeli hope is for ordinary Iranians to rise up against a regime in disarray and free the Iranian people once and for all. Yet the longer this mythical uprising doesn’t take place, the more chance there is of national sentiment swinging in behind the regime. …Or at least trying to. Saddam Hussein, when he began a war with a freshly-minted revolutionary Islamic Republic, gambling on a swift victory against a troubled nation, made the same miscalculation. …
We remember Iranian dissidents taking to the streets and asking the new American president, “Where are you, Obama?” Out to lunch as far as they were concerned. A warm word of support would have gone far without Obama’s lifting a finger. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton writes today in the Wall Street Journal that the Iranian regime has never been weaker than now. Bolton suggests that the U.S. help the dissidents, which would risk being drawn into a war. But it is clear that Israel’s goal is for the regime of the ayatollahs to fall. President Trump reportedly vetoed an Israeli plan to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader, but the U.S. is helping Israel defend herself from Iranian missiles.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interview with Bret Baier of Fox yesterday made it clear that he counts on President Trump. Lee Smith writes for the Tablet a piece headlined “The Normal President.” “By quarterbacking Israel’s attack on Iran,” Smith argues, “Trump brought an end to a particularly demoralizing era in American history.”
Meanwhile, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal gives President Trump high marks for listening to farming and hospitality businesses and making some deportation exceptions. I thought it strange that my liberal friend is outraged, but then I realized that ICE raids on chic restaurants she frequents are viewed as good propaganda.
Highly recommended: The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley explains how progressive government policies on crime, economics, and schools set the stage for the current LA riots:
You can understand why Gov. Gavin Newsom would be piqued by the president’s assertion that the state and city couldn’t be trusted to protect the peace. It’s human nature to take more offense at slights grounded in truth than those that aren’t. Mr. Newsom accused Mr. Trump of inflaming a “combustible” situation. Why was the city prone to ignite?
Because progressive government policies, which ironically harm immigrants most of all, created a tinderbox. …
Lionel Shriver wrote a magnificent piece that explains something that’s been inchoate in my mind for some time: that due process, which can be dragged out to more than is strictly speaking due, can be used to ground-to-a-halt deportation. Think about it: 10 to 20 million hearings.
In “Has Deporting Illegals Become Illegal?” Shriver begins with the tale of Kilmar Abrego Garcia:
I’d assess the odds that Kilmar is a thug at about 90 per cent. But proving membership of unofficial allegiances in court is a bastard. If every individual deportation case must be adjudicated according to exacting evidentiary rules and appeal procedures, America’s drastic, undemocratic demographic change will proceed inexorably. Only mass round-ups and swift group trials could effectively address the staggering ten million gate-crashers during the Biden administration alone. What are the chances of that?
In New York at the weekend, ICE raids were impeded by LA-style crowds of righteously indignant protestors screaming: ‘Let them go! Let them go!’ The officers just doing their jobs looked beleaguered, tired, numb and pre-defeated. After all the ICE agents’ thankless labours, what proportion of their detainees will still get to stay in the country in the end? I’ll take another stab at 90 per cent.
