Politics Are Neocons Losing ‘Antisemite’ As a Blanket Smear? War hawks have long insisted that those who question American foreign policy have bigoted reasons. That may have come to an end. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images The conservative radio legend Mark Levin recently insinuated that President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, might be anti-Semitic. Witkoff is Jewish. Describing the “neocon element” in an interview with Breitbart, Witkoff said, “In their minds, anything that is of a military nature to be a solution to that problem, they have a bias towards that. They give no consideration whatsoever on what the consequences are on that.” Witkoff then added, “The neocon element believes that war is the only way to solve things.” Levin, who is also Jewish and a longtime advocate of neoconservative foreign policy, said of Witkoff’s remarks, “lol. The envoy talks like the fifth column isolationists. Nobody believes war is the only way. We wait with great interest to see the deal you’re negotiating with the warmonger Iranian terrorist regime.” Levin would then add in a repost of Witkoff’s remarks, “By the way, neocon is a pejorative for Jew. Unbelievable.” The Community Notes feature of X rightly gave Levin’s accusation proper context, “Neocon,’ short for ‘Neo-conservative,’ is a term for a political philosophy focused on active foreign policy to spread liberal democracy. While many Neocons have been Jewish, nowhere near all have been.” Calling someone, particularly someone who is Jewish, an antisemite because they prefer diplomacy to war is little different than Democrats who call Donald Trump a “white supremacist” based on, well, nothing really at all. The point is that “white supremacists” are bad, and therefore Trump is bad. For so many on the left, no further logic or reasoning is required. In this century and the last, neoconservatives have often accused anyone who opposed their hawkish agenda of being antisemitic. Whether or not these realist or restrainer figures were actually malicious towards Jews was always beside the point. The point is antisemites are bad, therefore anyone who opposes the neocons’ wars are bad. There are genuine antisemites who are also antiwar, just as there are genuine white supremacists who support Trump. But just conflating all of this to use as a junky verbal battering ram is not only untrue but dishonest. If this sounds dumb or simplistic, that’s because it is. But this was characteristic of the overall pre-Trump conservative environment that Levin came of age in and that shaped him, with the Bush-Cheney administration at the apex of the era. Putting Witkoff’s own Jewishness aside, there is literally nothing in what he said that could fairly qualify as antisemitism. Levin was simply using the same old smear tactic borrowed from the left that neoconservatives have long relied on, often successfully. But even a conservative voice as powerful as Levin has not made a dent on Witkoff or Trump’s larger MAGA movement. Witkoff is respected on the right and if he has something to say about the “neocon element” and the problems they cause, conservatives are going to listen. Which is probably part of what drives Levin mad. This would not necessarily have been the case even a decade ago. Neoconservatives have long seen themselves as gatekeepers. The neocon David Frum would write after Rand Paul won his first Republican Senate primary, “Is it that the GOP has lost its antibodies against a candidate like Rand Paul?” That was in 2010. Trump has just begun his second term. Has the American right entered a new era? Tucker Carlson wondered the same in a recent interview with libertarian activist and comedian Dave Smith. “If Mark Levin is calling the Trump administration antisemitic, Steve Witkoff, we’re at the end of something and the beginning of something new,” Carlson observed. He continued, “I almost called Mark when I saw it because I really, I know him, but I really love Steve Witkoff and I think his decency. I don’t agree with him and everything at all, but his decency is just palpable. I mean, it just comes through his concern for people. His reasonableness is just so obvious. And the effects of what he’s done have been so great. Great for America, great for the world.” “So I almost. I was so offended,” Carlson said, giving Levin the benefit of the doubt. “And then I thought, I’m not going to solve anything by calling Mark Levin and scolding him. Probably scream at me, but. But I did think, like, he’s not stupid.” He continued, “If you’re calling Steve Witkoff an antisemite on Twitter, like, you know, you’re losing. Right? Is that what that is?” Dave Smith did not disagree. Carlson would add, “So you have Mark Levin calling Steve Witkoff an anti-Semite. We’ve reached peak crazy, I mean, I think Witkoff is Jewish, right?”  “Peak crazy” is one way to put it. But for Levin or any other neoconservative who still stubbornly insists on equating the use of the term “neocon” with antisemitism, it got worse for them on Tuesday. Donald Trump said in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, “The so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.” The president continued, “The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation builders,’ neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Baghdad, so many other cities.” Dave Smith could not contain himself. “The other day Mark Levin responded to Steve Witkoff by saying ‘neocon is a pejorative for Jew’ essentially calling him an antisemite,” Smith posted on X. “Today, Donald Trump blasted neocons in his speech in Saudi Arabia. So, is Trump a woke right antisemite too?” “I bet these cowards won’t dare,” he added. For decades, the same people who helped craft and promote some of the worst foreign policy mistakes in American history, who still assume no responsibility and have faced zero accountability for their mistakes, and who, at one time, wore the badge of neoconservatism as an honor, decided that now that their term is so sullied, anyone who uses it must be a bigot.  “Isolationists” is another barb they have loved. “Unpatriotic conservatives” was another they invented. Straight up calling war critics “traitors” has happened. Yet blanket and usually baseless accusations of antisemitism against anyone who questions U.S. foreign policy has long been the favorite weapon of neoconservatives, and perhaps most effective. But is this over? Antiwar sentiment now flourishes on the right. Did the president just declare war on the neocons? Is what Trump said something we can discuss openly, now? Mark Levin, is Donald Trump “antisemitic”? The post Are Neocons Losing ‘Antisemite’ As a Blanket Smear? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs It’s Time for America to Walk Away Completely From Ukraine–Russia Each side is still convinced it can get more than is on offer. Credit: Alexander Lukatskiy President Donald Trump, along with much of his administration, is clearly frustrated with the slow pace of peace talks to end the Russo–Ukrainian War. Trump has, at various times, castigated both Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing to truly seek peace. Trump’s frustration has been matched by Vice President J.D. Vance, who has personally argued with Zelenskyy and recently said that Russia was “asking for too much.” Likewise, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spearheaded the idea that the Trump administration could walk away from mediating between the two sides. But since that time, Trump has sought to organize a meeting between Zelensky and Putin in Istanbul, and has even floated going there himself to oversee the talks, in a last-ditch effort to secure peace between two sides the administration seems to believe do not want it. The Trump administration’s desire for peace is understandable—but so is their belief that both sides are not seeking it. While some of the Russian government’s demands, such as the recognition of Crimea as Russian territory, are reasonable, others are complete non-starters. Among these is the amorphous “denazification” of Ukraine, which seems akin to demanding some sort of constitutional regime change in Kiev, something the United States likely would not sanction and which would not be accepted by Ukraine’s population. Likewise, Putin’s actions—such as bombing definitively civilian areas and, as Trump has discussed in private, killing children—do not indicate he is interested in finding peace. Unfortunately, this should not be a surprise. Russia is winning the war. Some voices in the West have tried to argue otherwise, or at least have tried to portray the war as a stalemate. While this was once true, it is no longer: Russia is slowly, but consistently, taking more land in Ukraine, inch by inch. Short of a miracle for the Ukrainian armed forces, there is no feasible way that most of the occupied territories, particularly the Donbas and Crimea, will ever leave Russia’s control. This, among other facts, is something the Ukrainian side has stubbornly refused to accept, which has also caused annoyance with Kiev in the Trump administration. Claiming that all of Ukraine’s land would be reconquered was once an understandable attempt at raising morale, but it has now become an albatross for peace talks. Crimea and the majority of the Donbas have been fully integrated into the Russian Federation. But Zelensky’s peace plans have completely ignored this reality. His 10-point “peace formula,” which he marketed for years, included the restoration of all of Ukraine’s conquered territories and Russia agreeing to be held accountable by international courts—two utter impossibilities. Zelensky’s newest plan, from earlier this year, was a response to the Trump administration’s aforementioned framework. While it dropped demands to get back all of Ukraine’s territory—though without accepting Russian control—it once again included an American-backed security guarantee. This was particularly galling, as practically every major foreign policy official in the Trump administration, including Trump himself, had repeatedly shut down the possibility of an American-backed security guarantee. Part of the Ukrainian government’s intransigence comes from political necessity. Zelensky has put himself in an impossible situation: Accepting the loss of about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory would effectively end his political career and, after years of promising total victory, could engender some sort of revolution in the capital. It will almost certainly create a stab-in-the-back narrative dominating the years to come, which could induce further political chaos in the country. Nor is Europe in a position to come to Ukraine’s aid if demanded by a security guarantee. The most Ukraine will get is the recently signed minerals deal, which Zelensky, correctly, has deemed not to be a true security guarantee. Yet Trump is not responsible for Zelensky having put himself in such a difficult political position, and is certainly not responsible for his political future in Kiev. Zelensky did heed Trump’s demand to meet with Putin in Turkey, although Putin did not. But even if Putin had, it is unlikely either side would have agreed to an end. Neither has reason to do so: Ukraine is not losing at a fast enough pace to jolt the Ukrainian establishment into seeking peace, and Russia is not winning at a slow enough pace to make them desire a quick end to the war. If Ukraine squints, they can still see a way to get back more land. If Russia squints, they can still see a way to burst through Ukraine’s defenses. Until one (or both) sides can no longer see such eventualities, neither will truly want peace. And while this moment most probably will eventually come, there is no way of knowing how or when; it could take months or years. And already, the war has been a huge distraction, eating up much of the energy and momentum of the first few months of the administration. This is likely what caused Rubio to make his initial threat of walking away. But the administration has yet to follow through on that threat, as the minerals deal signing and the constant updates about the pace of peace negotiations demonstrates. Peace may seem tantalizingly close, which could be a reason why the administration, though it has threatened to swear off playing a mediating role, is still keeping its foot half in the negotiating room. But it is abundantly clear that neither side is interested in truly ending the war. As a result, it’s time to walk away entirely so long as Russia and Ukraine remain unable to compromise and articulate a mutually acceptable vision for a settlement. The post It’s Time for America to Walk Away Completely From Ukraine–Russia appeared first on The American Conservative.

The following article, National Police Week: A Tribute to Our Law Enforcement Heroes, was first published on Conservative Firing Line. This National Police Week, we pause to honor the men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities. We remember the brave officers who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty, and we express our deepest gratitude to those who continue to serve with unwavering dedication. … Continue reading National Police Week: A Tribute to Our Law Enforcement Heroes ...

?? Bourkey with the truth! UTL COMMENT:- Beware - lots of TRUTH BOMBS ? and F-BOMBS ?!! Notice how the traffic has just gotten worse and worse and I look around me in the cars and I mostly see non-Whites?

Reiner Füllmich, my hero… he dared shining the light of truth onto EVIL. The BEAST fears detection more than anything else. Reiner Füllmich dared throwing down the gauntlet; EVIL stroke back hard. Reiner was way too naive and never really considered adopting a sound security concept for his protection. He has to pay a terrible price for this lèse-majesty.

A monumentous gig.

One of The Beatles' biggest influences.

The other side of alternative.

We begin this edition of the 5QT with a poll. Which perhaps necessitates an apology, because this column is highly skeptical of poll results. But seeing as though most pollsters are either leftists or are employed by them, polls can sometimes be taken seriously as an admission against interest. And with that, we have… 1. Very Sad Donkeys So here’s a poll that the AP, in conjunction with the University of Chicago’s polling center, released on Wednesday… In contrast, Democrats have become more pessimistic about their party’s future, the state of the country’s politics, and the country’s process for choosing political leaders. Only 35 percent of Democrats say they are optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party, down sharply from 57 percent in the July 2024 poll. About 7 in 10 Democrats are pessimistic about the state of politics in this country, up from 60 percent last summer. And 55 percent of Democrats are pessimistic about the way our leaders are chosen under our political system, up from last summer when Joe Biden was still in the White House. Yikes. The Republican numbers were a good bit better, but Republicans are never particularly happy about politics — if you like government, what on earth are you doing as a Republican?… Republicans have grown slightly more optimistic about the future of the Republican Party than they were last summer. In July 2024, 47 percent said they were optimistic about their party. Now, three months into Donald Trump’s second term, 55 percent are hopeful about their party’s future. While half of Republicans are pessimistic about the state of politics in the United States, that is down from 73 percent last July. And they have grown slightly more optimistic about the way our leaders are chosen under the country’s political system. The guess is that if House Speaker Mike Johnson can get the Big Beautiful Bill off the floor this week and over to the Senate, and if the RINOs in the Senate don’t gut the bill before they pass it, those GOP numbers will go up. And the Democrat numbers will plummet even more. This is actually a good thing. Today’s activist modern Democrat is someone who substitutes radical politics for religion, morality, and a positive social life, and when the Democrats are politically ascendant, they don’t stop and think of how they can make things better for the American people. Instead, they indulge in ever-greater messianic fetishes to satisfy their lust for imposing their will on their fellow man. (RELATED: ‘Get Laid’ and ‘Have Fun’: The Democrats (Still) Don’t Get It) If you don’t agree with that, then feel free to explain how we could possibly have gone from gay marriage to transgenderism over the course of a decade, or the utter madness of climate-change alarmism, or any number of utterly fringe policy initiatives they’ve allowed their party to be captured by. (RELATED: Democrats’ ‘Trans’ Intransigence) Or the suicidal idea of paying reparations for slavery, 160 years after it ended. More on that below. The point being that these guys need to be demoralized and despondent. If they are, perhaps some will turn away from radical politics and take up something more productive to fill their schedule. (RELATED: The Masochistic Democrats Hate You — And Beg You to Hate Them Back) Or if not, they’ll realize the current set of messianic causes to which they’re wedded are losers, and, so badly needing a win somewhere in their lives, jettison those in favor of more attainable things which don’t horrify the bulk of their countrymen. Either way, hopped-up Dems who think the great revolution is just around the corner are a disastrous thing, and that AP poll suggests there isn’t so much of that right now. Let’s be thankful for it. 2. Look How Awful This Is Have you seen James O’Keefe’s exposé about the Biden HHS and its eager placement of illegal immigrant kids with sex traffickers? This doesn’t need a whole lot of commentary. It just is. And it’s, well… HHS Whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas says she raised concerns about sending so many illegal migrant children “to the same address” “I was told, Tara, we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers” This is the HHS under the Democrat Party pic.twitter.com/8nH11LvpKl — Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 13, 2025 3. Doom-Spinning of an Economy Which Has Surprisingly Little Doom In It You don’t see a whole lot of reportage about the markets anymore, for some reason. And you don’t see a whole lot of reportage about the performance of the economy, either. It’s amazing the difference a few weeks will make, no? What reportage you do see has a lot of the typical elements. This…is…CNN… U.S. wholesale prices sank in April, logging their biggest monthly drop since COVID stifled the economy, as tariffs put a squeeze on profit margins, according to new data released Thursday. The Producer Price Index, a closely watched measurement of wholesale inflation, showed Thursday that the prices paid to U.S. producers dropped 0.5 percent in April from the month before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Hey, that seems pretty good. Weren’t we going to get big inflationary problems because of Trump’s tariffs? Economists were expecting monthly prices to rise in April by 0.2 percent and to slow to 2.4 percent on an annual basis, according to FactSet. A driving force behind the downward monthly swing was a 1.7 percent plunge in trade services, a category that measures gross margins for wholesalers and retailers. Although it’s a volatile category, the sharp downward swing in trade services indicates that companies’ margins are being eaten away by higher costs from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM U.S., told CNN on Thursday. “We are beginning to see the impact of trade policy filtering into the hard data in such a way that it’s impossible to deny that it is now affecting revenues and profit margins for firms,” Brusuelas said. Oh, right. Sure. But weren’t the expectations that those tariffs would be passed on to the consumer and, as a result, there would be tons of inflation? Guess not. So the importers are eating the tariffs? Those higher costs will likely start spilling over to consumers soon, he said. And the economy-powering consumers are already showing some signs of fatigue: Sales at U.S. retailers slowed sharply in April to 0.1 percent after a surge of 1.7 percent in March, when shoppers rushed to beat the slew of new tariffs. “Sharply?” From 1.7 percent growth to 0.1 percent, and it’s “sharply.” OK, I guess. Then CNN gives us this… Separately on Thursday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that “supply shocks” could force the central bank to keep rates higher over the long term. “We may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks — a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks,” Powell said. He noted that “inflation could be more volatile going forward than in the inter-crisis period of the 2010s.” On Tuesday, the latest Consumer Price Index data showed that overall inflation cooled further for the goods and services Americans commonly purchase. However, some economists pegged some of that softening to weaker demand. Trump’s bevy of tariffs is widely expected to make items more expensive in the months to come and drive inflation higher. Wait, here comes the fun part… On the surface, the April PPI report appeared to portray a welcome decline in key areas, notably energy and food — including a continued plummeting of egg prices, which dropped 39.3 percent in April after falling 21.3 percent in March. Excluding food and energy, which can be volatile, core PPI also showed some softness, largely due to the big negative swing from trade services: Prices fell 0.4% for the month and annual inflation slowed to 3.1% from 4%. So, much less inflation. (RELATED: Inflation Report Has Journalists Wiping Egg Off Their Faces) No, says CNN. Much MORE inflation! Despite the seemingly cool reading, tariffs are making their mark, Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, told CNN. “Goods prices are picking up,” he said. Stripping out food and energy, prices for goods have been steadily on the rise. After posting a 0.1 percent increase in December, that category rose 0.2 percent in January, 0.3 percent in February and March, and 0.4 percent in April, Rupkey noted. The 0.4 percent increase is the fastest monthly inflation for that category in more than two years, BLS data shows. “It looks like some of the fears of what is going to happen from these import tariffs is becoming a reality, and that is goods prices going up,” he said. “That’s a worrisome sign for inflation down the road, meaning it could be only a couple of months away.” This, from the same people who were just way off on the April numbers. There’s an interview with a guy from Walmart who says they’re about to jack up their prices because they can’t eat Trump’s China tariffs. Of course, while that might be true to an extent, and for a while, nobody really knows what high Walmart prices will do to Walmart’s customer base. Or, consequently, to Walmart’s supply chain, which is the whole point of the tariffs. These numbers they’re throwing around, though, don’t look much like the advertised catastrophe. We’ll have to see how it goes. But it’s not like you really want to take CNN seriously — on this topic or any other. 4. The Pfizer Election Manipulation We Already Knew Existed Is Now Pretty Much Proven It was obvious at the time that Pfizer held the rollout of their COVID vaccine until after the 2020 election, though that was denied as absurd. Just as obvious was the reason why: while then-President Donald Trump had made Pfizer and a few of the other drug companies filthy rich by throwing government money at the development of those ultimately-useless vaccines, Trump wasn’t going to force anybody to take Pfizer’s jab. Unlike Joe Biden, who was happy to ruin millions of lives in doing so. No sooner was the election over than Pfizer triumphantly announced they had the vaxx ready to roll. Now we know that wasn’t a coincidence, as though we didn’t already know it… HUGE New Information Suggests Senior Pfizer Executives Conspired to Delay COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Testing to Influence 2020 Election. One exec was so scared about this being investigated that he asked to be relocated to Canada! MASSIVE SCANDAL uncovered by @Jim_Jordan. pic.twitter.com/pZKLAz1Wmx — House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 15, 2025 No, it’s exceptionally unlikely anybody goes to jail over this. But I talked about Trump’s drug-price cramdown in Tuesday’s column, and in light of this, it’s pretty hard to give a fig about any complaints these guys might have over getting stomped by the federal government. (RELATED: Trump’s Drug-Price EO Should Have Happened Decades Ago) Mess with the bull, you get the horns, fellas. We’ll see how many Pharma Pets in the Senate, like Bill Cassidy, for example, wet their pants over the choice between sticking with Trump or following the Pharma path for the rest of the year when the budget and other bills come through. 5. The House’s Sweet Summer Child She has a name which sounds like it should come from an old 1960s hippie folk song, but that’s not who Summer Lee, Democrat from Pennsylvania, is at all. Not much peace or love with this nasty woman… REPARATIONS: Democrat Rep Summer Lee opposed allowing white refugees to resettle in the United States and now she’s introducing a bill that would require white taxpayers to pay black citizens trillions of dollars as reparations. Are you feeling generous? pic.twitter.com/DseHo1Rmyu — @amuse (@amuse) May 14, 2025 This isn’t going anywhere, obviously, but it’s glorious nonetheless. It’s one more spark to that racial powderkeg the Dems are irresponsibly playing around with, and that’s inherently dangerous except for the fact that even black people in America are dog-tired of all the racial crap the Democrats won’t leave alone. Pimping a reparations bill in 2025 is the absolute height of “out of touch.” 2025 isn’t 2020. You have no George Floyd, Summer — you have Karmelo Anthony. And nobody is interested. Between this idiocy and the likely ongoing conniption fit the race-hustlers in the Democrats’ political class are going to have over white South African asylees coming off planes, they’re going to cement the public’s perception that they’re the anti-white party. (RELATED: The Plight of the Afrikaners Is a Clarifying Moment for Western Civilization) Or, put the way Thomas Sowell put it years ago, they’re not interested in putting an end to racism but rather in putting it under new management. Which they’ve done. And everybody’s sick of it. So good luck with your bill, Summer. And thank your crack political consultants for their rock-solid advice in making this your brand right now. READ MORE from Scott McKay: The Plight of the Afrikaners Is a Clarifying Moment for Western Civilization Trump’s Drug-Price EO Should Have Happened Decades Ago Five Quick Things: Habemas Trumpam? The post Five Quick Things: America Needs Despondent Democrats, and We Have Them appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.