Category: Daily Musts

Mystery Solved: We now know why President Trump abruptly ditched plans to take his brand-new Qatari-gifted Air Force One out of Ankara, flying to London, where he switched planes, to the old Air Force One.   

Seems Iran had hatched a plot to kill the president and the new Air Force One lacks defensive countermeasures of the old jet:

The new Air Force One, which President Trump flew on earlier this week to Turkey, lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities, according to multiple officials who have been briefed on how the jet was retrofitted.

Experts say the absence of those capabilities on the Boeing 747-8 aircraft, which was donated by Qatar, creates potential risk in using the jet abroad, a dynamic underscored by the abrupt decision on Wednesday for Mr. Trump to leave Turkey on the old Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service.

The episode is intensifying the focus on Mr. Trump’s demands to rapidly retrofit the donated 747 to replace an aging fleet that had served as the official presidential planes.

Israeli intelligence revealed the plot to kill the president, whose response was curious: “They want to take out the US leader — me. I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long.” Query: Should we beware of Qataris bearing gifts?

Iran finally buried its late Supreme Leader, as the war roared back to life. We now have photos of the late ayatollah’s bombed-out headquarters. Ayatollah Junior has yet to put in an appearance. A deal to remove Syria from the U.S. terror list might lead ultimately to a way to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. This could thwart Iran’s strategy to strangle the world’s oil supply. Victoria Coates writes that Iran’s plan for the strait could derail Gulf nations.

The New York Post’s cover is a picture of an eerily hooded Tyler Robinson. The headline shouts: “Trans Lover of Charlie Kirk’s ‘killer’ reveals in Courtroom: Tyler confessed to me.” A video interview with Lance Twiggs, former roommate and sexual partner of the accused, was played during a hearing into Kirk’s assassination in the Provo, Utah courtroom:

The former lover of Charlie Kirk’s accused assassin told Utah prosecutors that the suspected killer “wishes he hadn’t done it,” according to a video played in court Thursday.

“I just asked him in person if what he said was true the night before, and he said it was, started crying a little bit and said he wishes he hadn’t done it,” Lance Twiggs told investigators in a video interview.

The night before, according to text messages prosecutors displayed later, Robinson allegedly took credit for Kirk’s shooting in a conversation with Twiggs. …

“I am still ok my love, but am stuck in orem for a little while longer yet,” Robinson replied — allegedly. “Shouldn’t be long until I can come home, but I gotta grab my rifle still. To be honest I had hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you.”

More on Twiggs’ testimony. Everything you need to know about the Charlie Kirk murder: The Federalist provides helpful sketches of the personnel and what the judge said when he denied grieving widow Erika Kirk’s request that more of the Lance Twiggs interview be shown in court.

You Knew This Was Going to Happen. The New York Times blames Donald Trump for the Graham Platner debacle. Don’t miss—or maybe do miss: “‘There’s No Graham Platner Without Donald Trump’: 3 Writers on the Fiasco in Maine.” In “What we really learned from Graham Platner’s dropout video,” Monica Hesse of the Washington Post writes:

The through-line of Platner’s nearly year-long campaign was authenticity. The fact that he was a back-deck and graphic-tee kind of candidate, the polar opposite of Collins, who is prim and decorous and always concerned and who has maybe never swung a kettlebell on a lawn in her whole life. “The difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is, at least Ted Cruz is honest,” he’d said in his announcement video. Platner vowed to always be honest.

Did Graham Platner ever seem “authentic” to you? No, he didn’t to me either. The lesson of the Platner campaign is that the elites have a hard time spotting a genuine member of the white male working class. No, hard as it is for elites to believe, not all of them have Nazi tattoos and mistreat women.

Meanwhile, Democrat Party elites were understandably eager to rid themselves of Graham Platner, but Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York asks about the Maine voters who gave him a stunning win in “Giving Platner the Bum’s Rush.” Dropping candidates is getting to be a habit, and it’s not a sign of strength, according to Michael Barone:

There are lessons here aplenty. It’s risky to support little-known candidates. Nostalgia for a working-class politics that hasn’t existed for two generations can produce bad strategy. It’s off-putting when those who claim to be preserving “democracy” overturn the choices of voters. Going off the deep end may not be a profitable response to the otherwise going off the deep end.

“‘Bet on Democrats’ Midterm Enthusiasm” is the headline on Matthew Continetti’s Friday piece. Continetti writes:

The problem for Republicans is that energetic voters can overwhelm structural barriers. Democrats are fired up to vote. They have been voting in primaries in greater numbers than Republicans. They’re more likely to say that they’re “absolutely certain” to vote and that voting is “much more important” this year than in the past. They have led the generic congressional ballot since March 2025. And they have been overperforming in special elections, flipping 30 state legislative seats. No seat has flipped from Democrat to Republican….

Enthusiasm can’t be manufactured; it’s organic. And it’s the difference between winning and losing….

Is “Useful Idiot” too harsh? Yep, the New York Times again. Ira Stoll explains at the Washington Free Beacon why the NYT headline “How Economic Anxiety Is Driving the Democratic Socialists’ Surge” is so dumb.

But I Thought We Were at War with Iran? “A Top Mamdani Official Tried to Meet with Iran” is an alarming City Journal headline. The scheduled meeting was called off but:

The development is a continuation of Commissioner Archila and the Mamdani administration’s ongoing use of public resources to advance an agenda that extends well beyond New York City. On April 16, a message seen by City Journal was sent to staff within the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs asking them to prioritize diplomatic engagement in part based on whether foreign officials “are . . . in political alignment/leftist.” The message confirms previous reporting by El País, noting that Archila has “focused . . . on deepening relations with foreign leaders who share Mamdani’s worldview.”

That Archila’s meeting was even contemplated raises questions about her judgment and the administration’s priorities.

“How worried should Democrats be about the Democratic Socialists of America?” Jake Altman asks in the lead to a City Journal story. Headline: “I Watched the DSA Go Crazy. The Democrats May Be Next.” Altman explores the strategy and tactics of the anti-democratic Left. Ms. Must’s Question: What percentage of the party is sympathetic to the far Left?

Former Chicago Mayor and Obama administration figure Rahm Emmanuel, who harbors 2028 aspirations, is clearly attempting to position himself as a moderate Democrat. Emmanuel delivered a speech in Israel on “the US-Israel relationship: where it stands today and the road ahead.” I haven’t read it and so hope my skepticism is ill-placed.

We’re sorry to learn that Senator Mitch McConnell is still in the hospital. The Left is in a frenzy of unsubstantiated rumors that the condition of McConnell, who will go down in history as a master of the Senate, is being concealed so that a special election can be avoided.

Some of McConnell’s colleagues are beginning to sound like the Dems on Joe Biden, but I can’t imagine McConnell is that bad off. Nevertheless, Nicole Russell of USA TODAY urges more transparency. We wish the Senator a speedy and full recovery.

Well, the U.S. certainly bent over backwards to give peace a chance.

Iran. Not so much. Resumed strikes by both countries are the result (here, here, here, here, and here). I guess you could say that we’re giving war another chance.

A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Trump Tells the Truth About Iran” is the newspaper’s Editorial Board’s response to renewed military hostilities:

In June Mr. Trump called Iran’s new leaders “very rational people” who were “nice to deal with.” Vice President JD Vance, the lead U.S. negotiator, insisted that even the thugs atop the Revolutionary Guard Corps want to “turn over a new leaf” with the U.S.

This Age of Innocence lasted all of three weeks. Perhaps Mr. Vance will tell us why he believed that and whether he still does. Asked on Wednesday what changed his view of Iran’s leaders, Mr. Trump answered: “I got to know them.”

The question is what the President will do with that knowledge. He said talks could continue but added, “I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.” That won’t get done with on-again, off-again talks and tit-for-tat bombing. Any U.S. action risks escalation, so it had better be with a strategic purpose.

The U.S. is striking targets near the all-important Strait of Hormuz:

This was the second day in a row that the U.S. had attacked Iranian targets in what U.S. officials say is an effort to stop Tehran from striking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The funeral of the late Supreme Leader made Iran appear united and just as powerful as before the war. The Free Press suggests that it was a Potemkin funeral. In “The Iran the Funeral Cameras Don’t Show,” Masih Alinejab writes:

… Don’t take what you’re seeing at face value.

In the months since Khamenei’s death, I have received hundreds of messages from friends and contacts inside Iran. They are not messages of grief but of disbelief, relief and, when people feel safe enough, joy. A woman from Isfahan told me in March that she had been dancing in the street with strangers. A man in Tehran sent a voice note laughing so hard he could barely speak. Then he caught himself: “Don’t use my name.”

He was still afraid. They are always afraid.

The regime has always “used mass mobilization as a proof of legitimacy.” The Free Press shows how the spectacle was put on and takes us to places the cameras don’t go. Aaron MacLean in the same outlet argues: “The president has to choose between four options on the Strait of Hormuz. None of them are pain-free.” Meanwhile, the president says Iran has called and … they want to make a deal.

The Wall Street Journal has a tick-tock on Oval Office discussion that led to the breakdown of the deal. I wonder if your reaction will be the same as mine: Look out, JD. Rubio stock rising.

Beware Qataris Bearing Gifts? President Trump was forced to use the old Air Force One instead of the shiny new one gifted by the Qatari government to leave the NATO Ankara summit.

Maine’s Nazi tattoo guy officially dropped out of the race to unseat Maine’s moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins. The (satirical—but just barely) Babylon Bee reacts:

Democrats Quietly Add ‘Have You Raped Anyone?’ To Questionnaire for Aspiring Candidates

Politico, which helped torpedo Platner’s candidacy, chronicles what happened “inside the tense final hours of Graham Platner’s campaign.”

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine’s headline reads: “Slimy Dems — the party of Me Too — show their true colors in Graham Platner scandal.” Fun: The Washington Free Beacon highlights the 2028 Dems who disgraced themselves to defend erstwhile candidate Graham Platner. Big Three: Ro Khanna, Ruben Gallego, and Elizabeth Warren. Ms. Must also disgraced herself yesterday: I don’t know how I did it, but I mixed up New York Times Michelles—Cottle and Goldberg—in an item commenting on the Free Beacon’s story on Michelle Goldberg’s reluctant disillusion with Platner. Apologies to both Michelles.

Nice Try. You’ve got to hand it to ingenious Dems, who attempt to paint warnings about the socialist surge in their party as old-fashioned red-baiting (here and here). Political guru Karl Rove, however, writes that the socialists spell trouble for the Dems:

Socialists running in deep-blue districts can keep saying outrageous things and win. But it’s places like Colorado’s Eighth District, pitting the former Army helicopter pilot against the leftist Yale law graduate, that will decide which party runs the House. Game on!

Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley takes us beyond the immediate electoral aspects of the socialist surge with a column headlined “Socialism and the Decline of the Black Family.” Riley writes:

Conservatives are right to be concerned about the impact on our free-market capitalist system if enough people with such views are elected to positions of power. But socialism’s impact on the traditional family structure is no less concerning….

But socialists such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels dismissed the traditional family as a tool of oppression that advanced the patriarchy by exploiting the domestic labor of women. Similar thinking informs today’s politicians and policymakers who want to expand the welfare state to address economic inequality. For them, nuclear families in general, and fathers in particular, were an obstacle to central planning schemes.

“How the Smithsonian Lost America’s Plot” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial on the Trump administration’s controversial report on the Smithsonian:

The report isn’t a cheerleading document seeking to hide America’s warts. What it seeks is a history of the U.S. that doesn’t resemble the 1619 Project in its partisan bias.

The report’s examples show the degree to which progressives have captured the history museum. In one exhibit, the Pledge of Allegiance was described as a tool to “instill American nationalism through flag ceremonies.” Nationalism? That’s a needlessly pejorative edge. How about patriotism?

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III decried the report as “not fair,” while old guard Washington Post architectural critic Philip Kennicott made angry harumphing noises. As long as we’re on the subject of aesthetics, I detect a certain unattractive glee in this: Trump’s D.C. makeover hits another snag at Meridian Hill. The fountain pipes are rusty, and so the water is brown—all President Trump’s fault. Is this Pulitzer Prize material or what?

When Gavin Newsom Helps Women. “How California Effectively Legalized an Open-Air Sex Market” in City Journal tells a more aesthetically unappealing story. Christopher Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp write:

It’s midafternoon outside KIPP Academy of Opportunity, a charter school serving children in fifth through eighth grade on South Figueroa Street in residential Los Angeles. As children inside prepare for their futures, a young female struts by in high heels, wearing nothing but a bikini and a jacket. 

“We’ll see some police officers roll by and some young women out here just prostituting. They’re walking right by, and the police drive right by them,” the school’s gun-toting security guard said. “It’s normal.”

This was all the predictable result of public policy. In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law decriminalizing loitering with intent to commit prostitution. When he signed the bill, Newsom suggested it would help would reduce the harassment of women.

Far from it: prostitution activity began spiking up.

Three For the Road. We know that current Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent admires Hamilton! But former Senator Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux counter that “Hamilton Was No Protectionist.” … Richard Porter at RCP has an interesting take on President Trump’s $2 billion earnings last year:

… I think voters have long-since come to terms with Trump’s eagerness to continue doing business even while in office. That’s not my concern. I’m wondering whether Trump and his family will become the kind of “cheerful” givers that would make them happier, while bequeathing a prize that would benefit the world. 

Next Time Somebody Says Capitalism Doesn’t Work. Tell them about this Costco cashier.

It’s Official: “Trump: Iran Ceasefire Is Over” is the U.K. Telegraph headline on the latest development in the Middle East. 

Donald Trump has declared an end to the ceasefire with Iran.

The US president told reporters he didn’t “want to deal with them any more” after launching overnight strikes on Tehran.

In an angry address at the Nato summit in Ankara, Mr. Trump told reporters: “These are evil, sick people,” and described them as scum and a cancer that needs to be cut out.

On Tuesday night, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces had struck over 80 targets, including Iranian air defence systems, coastal radar sites and 60 IRGC small boats.

Shortly before, the US Treasury said it had banned Iran from selling oil, one of the key components of the MoU.

The U.S. strikes come in response to Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte calls the U.S. strikes “absolutely necessary.” Oil prices immediately skyrocketed while stock prices fell. Iran is just one of the issues for NATO.  “Trump looms large as NATO grapples with challenge of rearming Europe,” the BBC reports. Meanwhile, the president is on about Greenland again.

President Trump has had kind words for Turkey’s President Erdogan and is considering selling Turkey F-16s, which National Review is against. “Trump’s Ankara remarks reveal a grand strategy hiding in plain sight,” argues Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis (ret.) at Fox Digital. “Don’t Launder Erdogan’s Record at the NATO Summit,” counters the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer.

Gee whiz, Ms. Must never thought she’d see a headline like this in a respectable outlet: “Ex-girlfriend of Graham Platner says he removed condoms without consent during sex.” Even though the MSM is optimistically exploring a succession (here and here), the Democratic nomination for the Maine senatorial race remained in limbo early this morning.

The public is left to wonder: How did this happen? Shouldn’t Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo have been a tipoff? The general consensus is that the Dems haven’t seen hide nor hair of a genuine while male member of the working class in so long that they mistook Platner for a representative of an endangered species. A Free Press story headlined “Beware the Honest Oysterman,” by Caitlin Flanagan, explains:

With Graham Platner, Democrats thought they had finally—finally!—made contact with the white working class. So they ignored all manner of red flags.

A Wall Street editorial headlined “Why Did They Cover for Graham Platner?” takes off in the same direction:

Democrats want to fall in love with their candidates, and none more so than the supposed common man plucked from obscurity. That was Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner—“my kind of man,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. But long after the love died and the truth emerged, they defended him. Until now, when they can’t.

When we recall that Tim Walz, whose main qualification was that he supposedly knew which end of a hunting rifle the bullet came out of, was the Dems’ first attempt at locating a white male, it begins to make sense. The New York Times consistently promoted Platner. Ira Stoll discusses this in a Washington Free Beacon story that details the “Anatomy of a Hype Job: How the New York Times Boosted Graham Platner.”

You might enjoy NYT columnist Michelle Goldberg’s apologia:

“While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself,” Times columnist Michelle Goldberg writes. “Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was ‘nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.’” In retrospect, Goldberg now acknowledges, “If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.”

Even the apology doesn’t quite do justice to how deeply in the tank Goldberg was for Platner. ….

Do read on to find out how in the tank for Platner Goldberg was. Her apology has triggered mirth, including a Hot Air piece delightfully headlined “Goldberg: Sorry I Promoted Maine Kampf (But The Bulwark Denies Responsibility).” What alerted Dems that there might be a problem with Platner? A sudden attack of virtue or the polls, as Dana Perino suggested on The Five? Platner’s downfall (if I am not being premature) further exposed the limits of the “believe all women” mantra, as noted by The Free Press. Meanwhile, the Babylon Bee comes through again:

Rape Allegations Mar Reputation of Local Nazi

Platner was popular despite it all because he represents the far left of his party. Another contest that pits the Dem hard left (à la Platner) and an “establishment favorite” is taking place in the battleground state of Michigan, where moderate Rep. Haley Stevens confronts Wayne County Health Department Director Abdul El-Sayed: 

“If you want your politics dictated by AIPAC or Chuck Schumer, then I’m not your guy,” El-Sayed said. …

When the New York Times wasn’t busy boosting Graham Platner, it was expressing its shock and horror that three conservative women were pregnant. I mean, ick, right? Bethany Mandel takes on the New York Times report on pregnant Republican women in a very nice Examiner piece headlined “The best pronatalist policy isn’t economic. It’s Usha Vance’s wardrobe“:

In the pages of the “Critic’s Notebook,” the Times writer, Vanessa Friedman, seemed genuinely unsettled by the mere fecundity of these women. The thrust of Friedman’s column is that women such as Vance, Leavitt, and Miller have abandoned what used to be the accepted political uniform for pregnant women, trading the loose tunics and oversized jackets favored by figures such as Cherie Blair for dresses that celebrate rather than conceal the pregnant form. 

To explain why this matters, Friedman quotes Helen Lewis, author of Difficult Women, who observes, “It’s really noticeable that the MAGA women are not hiding their pregnancy. There is pride in being pregnant and being fertile.”

A companion piece to Mandel is City Journal’s “Want More Babies? We Need More Friends,” by Rob Henderson. The subtitle explains:

If Americans are to revive our sagging national birthrate, we must rebuild the ordinary social structures that made children thinkable and natural.

Ms. Must climbs on her hobbyhorse to suggest that low fertility rates have an even deeper cause than social structures, which is manifestly clear in the best work on the crisis ever—a novel by mystery writer P.D. James—The Children of Men—about a society that stopped having babies.

At the other end of the lifespan, an op-ed in the Washington Post deals with elder fraud, which is surging.

The sage Victor Davis Hanson remains irked by “Mamdani’s Embittered Fourth of July Rant to America“:

Thus spoke the pampered rich kid from Uganda, who immigrated to America with his now-endowed professor father and elite filmmaker mother, the latter reportedly supported by millions of dollars in grants from the Qatari royal autocracy.

Upon arriving, the Mamdanis joined what is statistically America’s wealthiest and most highly credentialed ethnic group: the enormously privileged Indian American community. (But how was that possible in Mamdani’s version of a racist America that supposedly detests the wrong accents and skin colors?)

When this nepo baby includes himself among the supposedly “victimized” (“the rest of us”), should we laugh or cry?

Alas, Mayor Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, missed her husband’s Fourth of July remarks because she was instead co–hosting a pricey pro-Palestine retreat in Corsica.

Must Be Briefly Mentioned: Rich Lowry’s “Women’s basketball is out to destroy superstar Caitlin Clark — and itself, too.” … Powerline’s “The Sick Smithsonian,” about another great American institution that seems to have fallen to the Left. … And Michael Goodwin’s “America 250 showed the pride and joy this country has to offer,” an antidote to Mamdani’s remarks.