I’m going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.
General James “mad dog” Mathis
Let’s cut to the chase.
Donald Trump was 33 years old when the Iranians Mullahs took our people hostages.
For 46 years he has seen them chant “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” and pursue policies toward that end practically unchecked and unhindered and become the number one source of worldwide terror while only being checked twice.
Once by Ronald Reagan whose mere election was enough to convince Iran that holding our people hostage would be the end of the Islamic Republic. With the hostages released Reagan choose to let them the regime survive.
And briefly by George W Bush who while recognizing them as part of the “Axis of Evil” and had armies to the east and the west of the nation and a Navy to their south, choose not to take them out when they struck at our armed forces against us in Iraq.
Donald Trump, in both cases saw the end result of letting Iran off the hook not only in the spread of radical Islam throughout the world which dates from the time of the hostages but their pursuit of Nuclear Weapons which without a doubt would be distributed to terror groups.
Yet even so, unlike the Mullahs who seized and held our people, he gave them a fair warning, a chance to give up their nuclear weapons and survive as they are.
When they did not he ended their nuclear program for them. If are an American born before 1965 as I was and do not hate your country or are not paid by our enemies, the moment that the United States of America ended the Iranian Nuclear threat to the world is a moment of great satisfaction.
Why is he not going all in to destroy Iran and bring down the Mullahs? Because he understands that while a regime change forced by America might end well with the return of the Shah’s son it might also become the next Libya with every terror group in the world making a play for power.
So now that the choice to be a nuclear power is off the table he is giving them the basic Jacksonian choice as described by the late great Steven Den Bestie:
You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. You play fair with me and I’ll play fair with you. But if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you.”
While they may not realize it, the Islamic Republic of Iran is in the same position it was on the day Reagan was sworn in. They may think that the choice before them is: “Do we strike back at America and if so how and when?”
It is not.
The choice Donald Trump is giving them is: “Will the Islamic Republic survive or not?”
100 years ago we had one of the wisest Presidents ever in office. That man was Calvin Coolidge. He was known for an age of prosperity but also known for giving good advice such as this line:
“I have never been hurt by what I have not said.”
Coolidge once held the office of Vice President, JD Vance the current Vice President apparently has taken his advice to heart and put out a hilarious tweet in the face of the whole world screaming for him to say something about Trump vs Musk which said:
Slow news day, what are we even going to talk about?
It’s worth pointing out that Elon Musk is right that the “Big Beautiful Bill” does not cut as much as it should and spends more than it should, that is simple math and Elon is very good at math.
But as an engineer he should also be good at the math involving tolerances, that is, how far you can push something before you reach the danger point.
As I’ve already pointed out, this is the best bill that could be gotten out of the house with the majority you have, the math is very direct, you needed one more than a majority in the House and 50 votes in the senate on a reconciliation bill.
Without bigger majorities you can’t do better than this. It’s not just a matter of straight math it’s a matter of tolerances and Musk should know this.
There was a lot of talk coming out of the MSM over yesterday but the thing that I found absolutely Hilarious was this tweet from the official Democrat party twitter/x account:
I'm sorry but getting @TheDemocrats to call for the release of the #EpsteinFiles is troll level ULTIMATE!
I think the feud is a real thing but if it's not this is 12 dimensional chess not 4 https://t.co/lsWAZGv8T8
In case the tweet doesn’t show the Democrats tweeted:
Kill the bill and release the Epstein Files!
Yes you read that right, the DEMOCRATS are now suddenly calling for the release of the Epstein files. I replied thus:
I’m sorry but getting @TheDemocrats to call for the release of the #EpsteinFiles is troll level ULTIMATE! I think the feud is a real thing but if it’s not this is 12 dimensional chess not 4
This is why you should never tweet while angry or on a emotional high.
If I’m Trump I tell Pam Bondi: I know you’re going through them but dump them all by the end of next week they asked for it.
I say the end of next week because this is going to be the only story for the next few days so if you have news you want hidden now’s the time to drop it.
I often refer to Tip O’Neill’s excellent autobiography “Man of the House” because it has so many lesions on how politics works. Yesterday’s kerfuffle remined me of one such story.
LBJ was meeting with Tip and called for some polling figures and an aide was slow in getting them and Johnson chewed him out with a profanity laced tirade. When Tip spoke to the aide saying that president or no I wouldn’t take that kind of grief from anyone the aide answered: That’s just his way five minutes from now he’ll forget all about it.
If there is one consistent thing about Donald Trump it’s the ability to work with people that he doesn’t agree with or even doesn’t get along with because he is completely goal orientated. You will see him make peace and a deal with anybody as long as it advances his goals. He’ll let Elon rant and jab him gently as he has so far but one there is a common goal he won’t be shy about making up with him, particularly when he knows he holds all the cards right now.
There are folks like Steve Bannon, who never liked or trusted Musk who want Trump to go all Houthis in Yemen on him.
Trump won’t rise to that bait. He’ll simply let good economic numbers for the country (and bad stock numbers for Tesla) speak for themselves. He’ll let folks like the teamsters who voted for him remind him that he may have kicked in money but the voters were showing up at rallies for Trump long before he turned up and that with one customer base already upset with him it’s not a good idea to upset a second until Elon reaches the Cardinal Richelieu moment from the 1948 version of the Three Musketeers:
When that moment comes (and there are signs it already has) Trump will take this scene from The Chosen to heart:
Let’s pray for them both and hope Elon this scene from the classic picture Harvey to heart.
I recommend pleasant over smart too or to quote Tip O’Neill again: “I always knew how to count.”
Finally there is one point on this thing that I completely missed that John Nolte didn’t:
Nolte said, “We don’t know what’s really going on, but I do know that Trump is sticking his finger in the eye of his biggest donor and that never happens. How many times did Barack Obama piss off George Soros? Zero.”
Seriously can you think of any pol, even one who doesn’t have to face the voters again, who is willing to stand up to his biggest donor to advance what he thinks is right? Does nobody see the amount of street cred this gives Donald Trump in terms of fighting for his principles? Who else has ever done this?
It’s like the story of the Mafia approaching Rocky Marciano to try to get him to throw his title fight against Don Cockell to clean up on the odds. Rocky rebuked them saying he was ashamed that they were Italian. The dons were disappointed but were impressed that he stood up to them.
In the end when Musk realizes this he will get that his best chance to meet his goal of reaching Mars is with Trump at his side vs sword to sword.
Yesterday the left was partying like Satan until 3 pm on Good Friday, let me remind them it quickly went down hill for him from that point.
One of the problems with being a person who is used to getting his way is that occasionally you don’t and when you’re not used to it you can make statements you will regret in the future. This is one of them:
Now I could say a lot about this the most logical thing being that if Trump had been actually involved with Epstein (or if he had been for that matter) there is zero chance that the Biden White House or the Biden FBI would not have leaked it long ago, certainly they would have done so during election 2024 as Musk should be smart enough to know but right now he’s angry and so he is speaking out of his hat without knowing.
However unlike Elon Musk who was too busy worrying about cars and rockets in 2016 to be paying attention to the Epstein story I WAS paying attention to it and thus saw the critical clip from Morning Joe from May 16th of 2016. I’m keying to the critical part
Everybody at the Table knows who Jeffery Epstein is, and what the story is
Nobody at the table wanted to talk about it
and more:
Mind you Trump hasn’t even bothered to say a word about Epstein yet and the table does its best to spin this in a different direction, but the very fact that Trump is who is forced MSNBC to deal with the story even if most of dealing with it was talking about Trump’s willingness to go there.
Take a look at the set of dejected faces on that video, remember those faces are being broadcast on MSNBC to liberal viewers who would never do a web search of the words “Jeffery Epstein + Bill Clinton”
Donald Trump did that and if you’re a conservative it’s a joy to behold.
The real funny thing and the giveaway wasn’t the video alone, it was the steps that were taken to hide it making copyright claims and burying it:
So, You’ll have absolutely no problem sharing this clip with people far and wide and giving them a hint about the relationship between Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton and how the media views it…provided you are someone like me who
already saw the clip
remembered what show it was on
knew what day it was broadcast
And knew what time segment to look for
As for everyone else NBC says to you: Beware of the Leopard!
Again this doesn’t get done if Trump was involved.
Now I’ll give Elon a pass for not knowing this as he wasn’t paying attention back then but an engineer should know better than to open his mouth before knowing what he is saying is true.
I strongly suggest resolving this rift if it can be but it not so be it.
Update: Forgot to mention that it was the TRUMP administration that arrested and jailed Epstein after being protected by dems forever.
It’s irritating to have to bring this up, but the Republicans have a 220-215 majority in the House and a 53-47 majority in the Senate which isn’t really 53 votes given that Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, Bill Cassidy and a few others seem to do everything they can to torpedo the conservative agenda. For the most part, they’re ineffective in that respect, because none of them are all that willing to be the one vote that kills a bill or a nomination. They know there will be consequences for that, and they don’t have the courage to face those.
Nevertheless, that 53? It plays like 51. And the 220 plays like 215; luckily, 215 was all the Big Beautiful Bill needed on Thursday morning.
You have the number of votes that you have. Then there is the reality of the the filibuster:
Mike Johnson couldn’t send a clean, stripped-down budget bill through the House, though that would have been easier, and the budget aspects of the bill might have been better. Know why? Because codifying Trump’s agenda through legislation in 2025 means everything has to be attached to a must-pass bill.
As in, budget reconciliation.
You have to force the agenda through an omnibus bill if you want to pass it, because Democrats will reflexively filibuster everything the rules allow them to.
There is zero chance of passing a bill in the senate that requires more than 50 votes and JD Vance. Which means it has to be done in a single bill.
And then there is a reality:
The point is that while this thing could have been quite a bit leaner from a budget perspective, assuming it gets through the Senate and Trump signs it, Congress will have then codified the bulk of Trump’s agenda by the middle of the summer and there won’t be all that much to do for the rest of the year other than to shrink the federal government.
Which isn’t a bad place to be in.
And if you can’t understand why Vought would be so sanguine about the bill even though it doesn’t seem to be very aggressive in chopping down on federal spending, this is likely why.
Some of this is speculative, I’ll grant. But again, this is an ongoing process. And we are dealing in the world of what is possible with the Congress we have.
Within that world, this is a win. Sure, it’s probably not a beautiful win. It’s a 50-yard field goal with one second left to eke out a victory, and the team didn’t cover the spread.
But in the end it will be codified into law and let me remind you of something I said 15 years ago during the Scott Brown special election back in 2010:
…in an attempt to stop Obamacare. In a broadcast by 73wire with Stacy McCain and Ali Akbar (Brown’s new media guy) we talked about the healthcare bill and there was an interesting exchange. I stressed how important this election was because it was necessary to stop obamacare BEFORE it was passed prompting the following:
Ali: “And if it does pass, we will repeal it!”
DaTechGuy: “No we won’t.”
It was very telling that Ali (who is a really smart young man) didn’t argue the point with me and changed the subject.
It was six long years before there was a chance to get rid of Obamacare, and when that chance came John McCain with the applause of every Democrat in the Senate cast the vote to save it.
There is a lot that COULD have been in that big beautiful bill if we had more votes to spare in the House or the Senate but there is plenty IN that bill that the left loathes and that we have wanted to get done for a while.
Once those things are law it will be tough for Democrats to get the votes to repeal them. They’ll need the house and the senate and a President ready to sign and they’ll need majorities where even Democrats in swing districts will go along and you remember what happened last time swing dems did so.
Thus came the Stupak Amendment and the fig leaf he provided while proving disastrous to him and his followers was a Godsend to others as he said later:
“I had a number of members who thanked us after because they could vote no.”
But Stupak fig leaf would quickly wither. His seat and 62 others for democrats would not survive election day and even more shocking to the left the New GOP majority would remain even after the re-election of President Obama
I think putting the dems in this position is a good idea.
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