Politics This Is the Basic Political Problem for Republicans MAGA’s “detour” is bad news for the GOP if it drags out. EL SEGUNDO, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 08: High gas prices are displayed at a Chevron gas station as an American flag flies on April 8, 2026 in El Segundo, California. California imports approximately 75 percent of its crude oil with nearly one-third of the crude supplied from the Middle East as prices at the pump in the state are averaging $5.93 per gallon today amid the war in Iran. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) This headline captures President Donald Trump and the Republicans’ midterm election problems in a nutshell: Inflation in March hit its highest level in two years as the Iran war spiked energy prices. There is simply nothing that has happened in American politics between Trump’s epic 2024 political comeback and the Democrats’ romp in last year’s off-year elections running on an affordability mantra that would suggest voters prioritize a foreign war over higher prices. A thousand clips of Trump expressing his distaste for the ayatollahs or a hundred polls showing rank-and-file Republicans still support him do not prove otherwise.  Before the war, Trump could tout favorable inflation reports and falling gas prices. While inflation still remains well below the 41-year high it hit under the vanquished former President Joe Biden, it is markedly higher than in Trump’s first term. And because inflation is cumulative, it is harder to gain political points from the rate of inflation going down than demerits from it going up. Public approval of Trump on Iran is running slightly below his overall job approval rating in the RealClearPolitics polling averages, and neither is good enough for Republicans in November. Democrats currently lead the GOP by 5.4 points in the generic congressional ballot, though some individual pollsters show a bigger margin.  Salvaging the Republicans’ midterm election prospects is going to require extricating the U.S. from the war in Iran while keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, whether GOP lawmakers know it (or are willing to publicly admit it) or not. Otherwise the Democratic attack ad line that we can afford bombs abroad but not groceries at home writes itself, even if it seems a bit more hypocritical given what Biden and congressional Democrats were doing in Ukraine when inflation was running hot. It won’t matter. Trump risks a repeat of 2020, when he heeded bad advice from people who were never his reliable allies in the first place on Covid-19 lockdowns, destroying the economy that was his ticket to a consecutive second term. But the pandemic was outside Trump’s control and not a crisis of his or the overconfident medical expert class’s choosing. Trump cannot say the same of the Iran war. Whatever the sins of the Iranian government, and they are real, this war was a detour for MAGA and the Republican Party. Only Trump, with an assist from Vice President J.D. Vance, can get them back on track. That won’t be easy. Not only do the remnants of the Iranian regime get a vote, especially on waterways access, but Trump’s new media allies—who are the same as the old boss—won’t cheer his ending the war as lustily as his beginning it.  The hawks will bay for blood, demanding Trump “finish the job.” Whether that job is the rescue of the Iranian people from the mad mullahs or the death of their “civilization,” seemingly a pair of contradictory goals, will vary by the commentator and the moment. There isn’t much evidence that anyone in the Trump administration thought much more than degrading Iran’s military capacity was a doable or finishable job in the first place, including advisers committed to “maximum pressure” on Tehran.  Avoiding an intractable forever war and further disruption of the global economy remains as imperative now as it did before Operation Epic Fury began in the first place. Only now it is much more difficult. Wars, once started, are hard to end. Trump has succeeded on this front in the past where George W. Bush failed because he stuck to military achievable goals, cutting deals with the leaders who remain and cutting his losses before things spiraled out of control. He has never tried to nation-build, especially in the Middle East.  This is the first time Trump has flirted with something more ambitious (or foolhardy). But the administration finally seems ready for an offramp, if a face-saving one can be found. If the conversation has not substantially shifted away from war and Iran to domestic issues and an improving economy by late summer, Republicans will pay an electoral price for high prices. It may already be too late for congressional Republicans. But 2028, and the race for the party’s future, remain a long way away. The post This Is the Basic Political Problem for Republicans appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs The Man Vance Met in Islamabad Mohammad Ghalibaf is a pragmatist and worthy negotiating partner for the U.S. TOPSHOT – Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf speaks during an election campaign rally ahead of the presidential vote in Tehran on June 15, 2024. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images) Face-to-face talks over the weekend between U.S. and Iranian delegations in Islamabad ended without a peace agreement. Vice President J.D. Vance, who led the American team, said in a press conference following the marathon talks that the Iranians had not accepted the American terms, and that the failure to reach an agreement is “bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States.” That need not mean an inevitable return to war. The incentives to avoid it are today as powerful as they were before the talks. We are still in the first half of the two-week-long truce agreed by the U.S. and Iran. A quick deal would have been possible only if one or both of the sides had been prepared to soften their bargaining position rather than try securing desired concessions. That was clearly not the case. Still Vance’s comments suggest the U.S. has underestimated Iran’s political will and misunderstood the moment. The remaining truce time must be used in Washington to fundamentally reassess its own approach: Instead of expecting Iran to simply comply with all the demands, the U.S. should prepare for a series of negotiation rounds, including numerous expert-level meetings—this is how real diplomacy is done and how stable agreements are hammered out. The truce can be prolonged and needn’t be subject to artificial self-imposed deadlines. Peace deserves, and requires, real effort and time. The good news is that signals from Tehran suggest readiness to make a deal. The speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is the man in charge. The delegation he brings is not only large and senior but also covers the entire Iranian political spectrum. It comprises moderates, like the foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and his deputies, reformists like the governor of the central bank Abdolnasser Hemmati, and hardliners like Ali Bagheri Kani, the chief nuclear negotiator under the late conservative president Ebrahim Raisi, and member of the parliament Mahmoud Nabavian.  Not only does this delegation appear to have full authority to make a deal with the United States, but its ideological variety ensures any deal reached would reflect the buy-in of different factions comprising the Iranian ruling system. Moreover, Ghalibaf is the man that can deliver.  I listened to him directly at the Tehran Dialogue Forum (TDF) in May 2025, weeks before the Israeli strikes on Iran that kicked off the “12-Day War.” Ghalibaf doesn’t come across as an ideologue, but he is a conservative pragmatist—calculating, ambitious, and deeply attuned to power.  His career tracks the Islamic Republic’s own evolution: from Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander to police chief to mayor of Tehran to parliamentary speaker. He has run for president four times. He has lost every time. Yet he remains standing, and, following the assassinations by the U.S. and Israel of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Secretary of the National Security Council Ali Larijani, he’s arguably more influential than ever. Decades ago, he called himself a “religious Reza Khan,” referring to the military commander of the early 20th century who would later become Reza Shah Pahlavi, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. It might sound shocking that an IRGC commander would compare himself to the founder of the dynasty overthrown by the very Islamic revolution he served. But it makes perfect sense if one considers that the comparison was not ideological. It was about projecting hierarchy, order, and strength.This “Iran First” nationalism is not necessarily hostile to the West, but it is utterly indifferent to Western approval. Ghalibaf does not need Washington to like him. But he isn’t ideologically opposed to making a deal with Washington. And without the constraints imposed by the former supreme leader he is free to pursue one.On a deeper level, Ghalibaf’s and Vance’s political instincts are not that far apart. In his latest presidential run, in 2024, Ghaibaf proposed building a wall on Iran’s border with Afghanistan to stop drug smuggling and undocumented migration. This is not the policy program of a revolutionary exporting Islamic jihad. It suggests a state manager concerned with borders, security, and sovereignty—all points he emphasized strongly during his rare speech to the international audiences at the TDF. Intriguingly, Ghalibaf’s nationalism and Vance’s America First populism arise from the same principle that liberal elites often reject or misunderstand: National interests trump abstract internationalism. Vance is not negotiating with a fire-breathing radical who dreams of destroying America, but with a normal state manager who worries about standard challenges of statecraft, such Afghanistan’s chaos spilling into Iran—just as many in Vance’s own political orbit worry about the drugs and violence spilling across the Rio Grande. Of course, those shared political instincts do not, in themselves, provide sufficient ground to make a deal after almost half a century of bilateral enmity that has now culminated in a major war. And the already arduous task is made more difficult by President Donald Trump’s statements undermining his own negotiator.As Vance sat down with Ghalibaf in Islamabad, Trump was on Truth Social declaring that Iran’s Navy is “gone,” its Air Force “gone,” its leaders “no longer with us, praise be to Allah.” He boasts of obliterating missile factories and clearing the Strait of Hormuz—a “favor” to the world. From an Iranian view, such bluster looks more like sabotage than strength. Vance cannot succeed if Trump keeps lighting the negotiating table on fire.And then there are neoconservative agitators like Marc Thiessen of The Washington Post, apparently one of Trump’s favorite commentators. Thiessen recently suggested—duly endorsed by Iran superhawk Mark Dubowitz from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies—that the U.S. should threaten Ghalibaf and his team with assassination if they don’t surrender to Trump’s will.The immorality and illegality aside—and they are staggering—Thiessen’s advice is also simply idiotic. What does he think would happen if the United States assassinated Ghalibaf? Iran would not capitulate and suddenly embrace American demands. It would simply replace him, likely with someone far more intransigent and far less interested in any deal. The chances of a negotiated end to the war might vanish, which may be what Thiessen and Dubowitz are hoping for. Beyond that, every other country in the world would draw the obvious conclusion: The United States is no longer an agreement-capable nation. Why negotiate with Washington if your lead negotiator can be murdered for failing to deliver the outcome demanded by Washington? Why risk good-faith engagement when the price of failure might be a drone strike? Yet despite Trump’s unwise rhetorical intervention, and despite the bloodlust of America’s Iran hawks, the opportunity that was opened in Islamabad remains real. The fact that the talks did not lead to an immediate deal is not a good reason to abandon efforts to reach one. And if an agreement continues to prove elusive in this series of talks, then at least a Vance–Ghalibaf channel should be nurtured to orderly disengage without relapsing into a war that neither Washington nor Tehran needs. The post The Man Vance Met in Islamabad appeared first on The American Conservative.

Friday’s Five Quick Things column had four other entries, all of which I thought were more interesting, but the one which got me the most feedback was Thing #4 about Eric Swalwell, the noxious, oafish California congressman who, over the weekend, “suspended” his bid to become that state’s governor amid a tsunami of allegations of sexual abuse in his past. Here’s what I said about Swalwell (in part; feel free to read the whole thing here)… Eric Swalwell is a political beta male. He might be a sexual alpha predator, if only in a hookup sense, but it’s the lack of moral standing that makes it impossible for him to wield any real power within that party. He’s compromised. If you look around, you will see that’s true of the vast majority of the higher-profile male Democrat politicians around the country. My theory, which I’ll confess is pretty new, and I’ve not fully tested it, is that this is a major — if not THE major — factor in the Dems’ hard matriarchal turn of late. That party has been feminized, and its moderating forces stripped away, because it no longer can produce male politicians with traditional convictions. I mean, how can you when you want to turn boys into girls and Trump Derangement Syndrome is your sole political currency? What self-respecting male would be willing to lead a party like that? It’s probably worthy of a little further examination, because I did get a few questions about what I meant in that passage. First, though, boy… this really escalated quickly, didn’t it? “I am suspending my campaign for Governor,” Swalwell wrote on X on Sunday. “To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.” He wrote, “I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.” The Democratic congressman’s exit completed a stunningly swift collapse for a candidate who had shown signs in recent weeks of pulling ahead of a crowded Democratic field, with prominent interest groups and elected officials beginning to coalesce behind him. But an ex-staffer’s allegation that Swalwell had sexually assaulted her, detailed in a San Francisco Chronicle report and followed by more misconduct allegations in a CNN report, led those allies to abandon Swalwell en masse as high-level staffers departed his campaign. Swalwell started last week vehemently denying accusations against him as nakedly political attacks on the race’s frontrunner. He ended it politically isolated, his top campaign surrogates and prominent endorsers withdrawing their support or urging him to exit the race. By Friday afternoon, Swalwell’s two campaign co-chairs, Reps. Jimmy Gomez and Adam Gray, called on Swalwell to drop out, as did Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement saying the accusations “must be appropriately investigated with full transparency and accountability,” and that, “As I discussed with Congressman Swalwell, it is clear that is best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign.” Swalwell had come under enormous pressure not only in the governor’s race, but in the House, too, where he now is facing calls for his expulsion. Meanwhile, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer in a New York City hotel room in April 2024. And then, as the Swalwell Outrage Frenzy entered its critical stage… “I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make. “I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members. Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong. “But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties. Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress. “I will work with my staff in the coming days to ensure they are able, in my absence, to serve the needs of the good people of the 14th congressional district.” That’s from the honorable Sir Fartsalot himself, when he realized this wasn’t just about his future as Gavin Newsom’s successor but his personal freedom. I had a quite good – and quite prescient – column already written about this on Monday afternoon, just before the Swalwell feeding frenzy consumed him. Because it was being floated, apparently not just among the denizens of the Democrat hackosphere, that Republicans in the House would consider a grand bargain in which Swalwell would be expelled from Congress along with Texas GOP cretin Tony Gonzales in some sort of idiotic prisoner exchange-type arrangement. I’m pretty sure our regular readers can predict what I had to say about that. Thankfully, the Swalwell follies became a far larger production than could be contained within the bounds of such ecumenical dumbassery, and his party shortly recognized there was no further monetization possible of Swalwell as a political entity. I noted that striking at Swalwell, and Swalwell alone, would isolate him in a way which would either force the Democrats to back him — as they have done for a decade when they knew damned well how toxic he was — or to run away from him and in so doing, break their morale in a way that can be weaponized against others who should also be expelled from Congress. Like Ilhan Omar. Or Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who ripped off $5 million in FEMA funds in a case almost nobody seems to know about. That’s still good advice for dealing with the other smelly kids in the class (though nobody is as smelly, on a number of levels, as Swalwell has been). It’s hardly a surprise that Eric Swalwell is politically radioactive now. The Democrats have known that he was politically radioactive — or that he would eventually reach that status — since Barack Obama was president. They knew he was screwing a Chinese spy, and they still put him on the Intelligence Committee. And Nancy Pelosi pretended there were “no concerns” over that indefensible decision. Why? Here’s why… Swalwell’s political career should have been over after he slept with a Chinese spy. It wasn’t. Instead, Pelosi put him on the Intelligence Committee so he could tell ridiculous lies about Trump and Russia. Democrats enabled this monster.pic.twitter.com/lVzF21r0lJ — MAZE (@mazemoore) April 11, 2026 Swalwell was weaponized by his party to attack Donald Trump on the basis of an indefensible, obvious, malicious lie — that Trump was compromised by the Russians and acting on their behalf as some sort of Manchurian (Siberian?) Candidate. (RELATED: ‘Accountability’ for RussiaGate? Don’t Bet on It) Which gets me back to the statement I made in the 5QT on Friday. They knew Swalwell had no moral standing to judge Trump or his loyalty to the country. Swalwell was banging a Chinese spy, plus he was repeatedly leaking sensitive information as a member of that committee. Eric Swalwell: Allegations of sexual misconduct, leaking sensitive information and more. According to this 2017 FBI report, “(Redacted) noted Swalwell has been the source of a lot of leaked information and had to be counseled to be more careful.” This week’s subscriber Article… https://t.co/BCdkPSW9se pic.twitter.com/a6wEBSXtK5 — Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) April 13, 2026 You’d say it’s insane to use Swalwell in the role of Trump accuser, but if you do, it shows you don’t understand the Democrats at all. The fact that Swalwell was guilty — and everybody knew it — of that which he was falsely accusing Trump is a feature, not a bug. If you’re today’s Democrats, you don’t burn somebody with a good reputation in order to spread a lie like the Trump-Russia hoax. You burn a Swalwell, because you know it’s only a matter of time before Swalwell goes up in smoke. When he does, you touch off the frenzy, and you let the fire consume him, and you forget he ever existed, which is what they’re doing now — while at the same time, dangling his ouster from Congress to the Republicans as a consideration for getting rid of Gonzales. If the GOP is dumb enough to take that deal, you wash your hands of Swalwell and snicker that you suffered no net political loss from his demise. After using him for a decade to smear the man atop the GOP. This is how they play this game. And it almost worked for them, except that the dirt was simply piling up too fast to contain it. They were never going to let somebody like Swalwell have an actual leadership position within their party. They were never going to let somebody like Swalwell have an actual leadership position within their party. It’s not that they respect any notion of moral standing; it’s that a compromised white guy is a tool to be used, not a leader to be followed. Look at Joe Biden and that pattern, which established itself right around the time Obama took that party over, becomes obvious. A strong, uncompromised, straight male leader within that party — especially if he’s white — would likely rein in the worst of their Hard Left political, economic, and cultural excesses, both because they’re horrific politics and because nobody can govern effectively while saddled with those. This is a party run by the Liz Warrens, Kamala Harrises, and Abigail Spanbergers of the world. They don’t take orders from alpha males. (RELATED: I Miss the NYC Democrats I Used to Work With) And as I said, Swalwell was never an alpha male. Not politically, and not on the national scene. Swalwell was a step-n-fetch-it for the Democrat machine, because they all knew who and what he was. They weaponized him against Trump because he was a political suicide bomber; my guess is that most of the top brass at the DNC are utterly amazed he’s lasted this long before being taken out. Is it a smart strategy? Well, with Swalwell leaving the California governor’s race, the Democrats’ top candidate is Katie Porter, who is even less palatable than Swalwell. I haven’t seen the polls to back up this contention, but based on how she’s performed so far and her own bizarre persona, I don’t think Porter could beat Steve Hilton without “help” in that race. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Glorious Return of the 5QT) (And our regular readers, I’m sure, know what I mean by “help.”) So maybe it’s too smart by half. On the other hand, these are the strategies you employ when you don’t have other strategies available. There are very, very few non-compromised straight white male politicians in the Democrat Party. Probably even fewer non-compromised straight non-white male politicians, for that matter. And none, or virtually none, of either stripe are competent enough to carry either a policy or political agenda over the long haul. And so you have a collection of Eric Swalwells being inflicted on the public in order to carry out the various pieces of the Democrats’ action plan. (RELATED: The Spectator P.M. Ep. 205: The Impending Collapse of Eric Swalwell) Chuck Schumer. Chris Murphy. Chris Coons. Dick Blumenthal. Adam Schiff. Hakeem Jeffries. Robert Garcia. They’re all the same. They’re all expendable. When any of them seek to actually run anything, like going for the presidential nomination or even running for governor, they find out how expendable they are. Swalwell is going to get the Brett Kavanaugh treatment — though with mostly true allegations in Swalwell’s case — until he goes away entirely. Because he’s all used up now. A smart GOP would recognize this dynamic and prolong it as long as possible for maximum collateral damage. But the Swalwell Follies doesn’t appear to have a long run in the big theater. That’s a pity. Hopefully it’ll last a while as a sideshow on the judicial stage, though, because the consequences of what he’s done – on multiple levels – need to be sufficient to give pause to the other Swalwells out there. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: Finally, an Iran-Free 5QT! It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause. The ‘Real’ Must Triumph Over the Fake — In Iran and Elsewhere Image licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Historical analogies are never exact, and some can be misleading. With the announcement by President Trump of a naval blockade or quarantine of the Strait of Hormuz, the specter of another Cuban Missile Crisis comes to mind. In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy ordered the U.S. Navy to institute a blockade of Cuba to prevent more offensive weapons from being supplied to the Castro regime in Cuba by the Soviet Union. Kennedy used a blockade instead of air strikes on missile installations in Cuba to give maximum flexibility for diplomacy to end the crisis. Kennedy’s blockade worked, a deal was struck, but it was, to quote the Duke of Wellington about Waterloo, a “close run thing.” The current war against Iran was launched because President Trump today, like President Kennedy in 1962, was unwilling to countenance a dangerous enemy obtaining the capability to deliver nuclear weapons against our country and our country’s interests. The direct threat to the U.S. in Cuba in 1962 was considerably greater than the threat posed in 2025-2026 by a nuclear-armed Iran, but in some respects, that is because President Trump acted preemptively in June 2025 and March 2026 to dilute the threat, instead of reacting to an established fact as Kennedy did in October 1962. (RELATED: The Return of Realism in American Foreign Policy) Trump’s preemptive strikes have destroyed Iran’s navy, inflicted significant damage to its ballistic missile inventory, and further degraded Iran’s ability to develop and deliver nuclear weapons. The one “weapon” Iran has in spite of the U.S. and Israeli attacks is its control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil travels. This explains, more than anything else, Iran’s unwillingness to accept U.S. ceasefire terms. Trump’s announcement of a blockade, however, takes that “weapon” out of Iran’s hands. (RELATED: From Marathon to Hormuz) Like Kennedy’s naval blockade of October 1962, Trump’s naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz (the entrance and exit of the Persian Gulf) will play to America’s strengths. We are a maritime power that is uniquely capable of establishing what Alfred Thayer Mahan called “command of the sea.” (RELATED: Who Controls the ‘World Ocean’ Commands the World) In October 1962, the U.S. had the advantages of both geographical proximity and unmatched sea power in the Caribbean Sea. In today’s Persian Gulf crisis, the U.S. enjoys unmatched sea power in the region, but Iran enjoys geographical proximity to the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s naval blockade nullifies that Iranian advantage by rendering irrelevant Iran’s geographical control of the Strait. An effective naval blockade will mean that the U.S. Navy, not the Iranian regime, will determine whether any ships enter or exit the Strait. A U.S. naval blockade can simultaneously help strangle Iran economically and remove Iran’s best arrow from its diplomatic quiver. There are, of course, risks to the U.S. that accompany a naval blockade. It presents the possibility of a naval clash between the U.S. and China, the latter of which relies heavily on oil exports from Iran and the Persian Gulf. It may pose even greater strains on America’s deteriorating relationships with other NATO countries, which also rely heavily on Persian Gulf oil. It also places our naval assets even more in harm’s way than they have been to date in the war. But a successful naval blockade may also cause NATO members, India, and perhaps even China to put pressure on Iran’s leaders to be more open to accepting America’s ceasefire terms, which include ending the enrichment of uranium at weapons-grade levels and returning the Persian Gulf to the free flow of international commerce. Perhaps the better historical analogy with which to understand Trump’s moves is the failed diplomatic effort to deny nuclear weapons to North Korea. The North Korean communist regime announced its intentions to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1994. After a decade’s worth of intense bilateral and multilateral diplomatic efforts to forestall North Korea’s acquiring a nuclear weapon, the rogue regime announced to the world in 2005 that it possessed nuclear weapons and the next year conducted its first underground test of a nuclear weapon. Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons has progressed on a similar path until Trump’s presidency. Several U.S. administrations attempted through diplomacy to persuade Iran to give up its effort to acquire nuclear weapons, but all such efforts, including the much-touted Obama administration’s nuclear agreement, failed. Trump understood that, which is why he withdrew the U.S. from Obama’s agreement. Since the 2016 campaign, Trump has repeatedly stated that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons on his watch. Someday, Trump’s enemies and critics will learn to take this president at his word. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Trump Confounds Critics Again When Generals Pray and Popes Object Is John Fetterman Channeling Scoop Jackson?

On Sunday night, President Trump posted a 334-word tirade on Truth Social denouncing Pope Leo XIV — the first American-born pope — as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” The attack came after Leo publicly criticized U.S. military actions against Iran, calling Trump’s threat to destroy an entire civilization “truly unacceptable.” Minutes after the rant, Trump posted a second image: an AI-generated picture of himself dressed in white robes, laying a glowing hand on a sick man as soldiers, nurses, and a praying woman looked on in apparent awe. The image was deleted the following morning. Trump later told reporters he thought it depicted him as a doctor. Every society eventually faces a quiet but revealing question: what happens when politics begins to look like religion? That question is no longer theoretical. The controversy is not merely a dispute about taste or optics. It exposes a deeper tension inside modern conservatism — one that cuts to the heart of what religious conservatives claim to believe. That the target of Trump’s attack was the leader of the Catholic Church, and the response was an image of messianic self-portraiture, made the sequence impossible to dismiss as political theater. It was a statement about the relationship between faith, power, and who gets to speak in God’s name. For years, many Christians on the right have argued that politics should be grounded in humility, moral restraint, and a recognition that no earthly figure stands beyond reproach. American political culture now rewards the opposite: personal loyalty, symbolic devotion, and the fusion of identity with political leadership. That bargain has been building for years. Sunday night is where it finally showed its face. Religious conservatives face a dilemma of their own making. To defend the imagery is to collapse the distinction between political allegiance and spiritual reverence. To criticize it is to risk alienating a leader many have treated as indispensable. Neither path is comfortable — but the choice itself is the point. Some prominent evangelical voices have quietly distanced themselves, careful not to name the problem directly. Others have offered enthusiastic endorsement, framing the imagery as spiritually meaningful rather than politically manufactured. Both responses are telling. The silence of the first group and the certainty of the second map exactly what conservative Christianity is currently willing to say out loud — and what it is not. A political figure can deserve admiration without deserving veneration. This discomfort is not incidental. The people most unsettled by this moment built their political identity around resisting exactly this impulse. It was the religious right that spent decades warning against the idol-making tendencies of secular culture — the substitution of political messiahs for genuine faith. They were right to warn. What they cannot seem to do is apply that same warning to themselves. The conservative tradition has long insisted on limits: limits on government, limits on power, and limits on the human tendency to elevate flawed men into untouchable figures. Those limits were not always applied selectively. When evangelicals mobilized against Bill Clinton in the 1990s, the argument was explicitly moral: character in public life mattered, and no political utility could excuse its absence. Earlier still, figures within the religious right expressed genuine unease about Ronald Reagan’s divorce and his distance from organized worship, even as they ultimately supported him. The earlier judgments were not always correct — but the framework existed. The instinct to hold power accountable to a standard beyond politics was once a feature of religious conservatism. It is now treated as a liability. That erosion has played out inside institutions. The Southern Baptist Convention spent years navigating internal fractures over how closely its public identity should track with partisan politics. Evangelical seminaries have watched faculty depart over questions that were once theological but have since become political litmus tests. Para-church organizations that built their reputations on prophetic independence have quietly repositioned themselves closer to partisan power. These are not isolated cases. They are symptoms of a movement that has been working out, in real time, what it is actually for — and arriving at answers that would have alarmed an earlier generation of its own leaders. A political figure can deserve admiration without deserving veneration. That distinction is not subtle. It is the entire foundation of a tradition that insists no earthly authority is ultimate. When that line dissolves, accountability becomes betrayal, and loyalty becomes a theological virtue. That is not conservatism. That is what conservatism was supposed to prevent. Politics will always attract loyalty. It will always inspire strong feelings and strong identities. But when politics borrows the language, imagery, and emotional weight of faith, it demands something more than support — it demands reverence. That is where a line must be drawn. Because the cost of silence here is not merely political. For religious conservatives, the cost is theological. A faith that cannot speak plainly when its own imagery is borrowed for political theater is a faith that has already made its choice. That cost compounds over time. Pastors who stay quiet train their congregations to read political loyalty as a spiritual virtue. Institutions that align themselves too completely with a political movement find, eventually, that the movement’s failures become their own. The credibility that religious communities spend generations building can be spent in a single electoral cycle. Silence is a choice too. And for religious conservatives, it may be the most consequential one left.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ READ MORE from David Sypher Jr.: The False Prophet of the Digital Right: What Nick Fuentes Really Sells The Group Chat Wasn’t an Anomaly — It Was a Mirror Bio: David Sypher Jr. is a conservative political commentator with articles in The Hill, Spectator World, American Spectator, and Human Events.