One fact for every US president (part 4)

"Panels of experts", "technocratic" government and "international investment" isn't fixing Islam.   The post Everything Wrong With the Gaza Peace Plan (VIDEO) appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

"Whom and what are we to believe today?” Not Dan Rather. The post Dan Rather, Who Tried to Rig Presidential Election With Time-Traveling Typewriter, Says It’s a “A Dark Day In The Halls Of CBS News” appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

Large parts of Kyiv were plunged into darkness in the early hours of Friday after Russian drones and missiles struck Ukrainian energy facilities, cutting power and water to homes and halting a key metro link across the Dnipro river. In the latest mass attack targeting the energy system as winter approaches, electricity was interrupted in nine regions and over a million households and businesses were temporarily without power across the country. In southeastern Ukraine, a seven-year-old was killed when his home was hit and at least 20 people were injured. In Kyiv, an apartment block in the city centre was damaged by a projectile, while on the left bank of the Dnipro that divides the capital, crowds waited at bus stops with the metro out of action and people filled water bottles at distribution points. “We didn’t sleep at all,” said Liuba, a pensioner, as she collected water. “From 2:30 a.m. there was so much noise. By 3:30 we had no electricity, no gas, no water. Nothing.” According to Ukraine’s energy ministry, over 800,000 customers temporarily lost power in Kyiv. Ukrainians are bracing for a tough winter, as the full-scale war nears its fourth anniversary. Russia has intensified attacks on the energy system in recent weeks, striking power plants and gas production facilities, and local authorities are struggling with the scale of repairs required. “They can’t demonstrate anything real on the battlefield… so they will attack our energy sector,” President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv. Calling for more support from allies, he said that Ukraine’s 203 main energy facilities needed air-defence protection. Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk met G7 ambassadors and representatives from some of Ukraine’s biggest energy companies to discuss how allies could help protect the country against further attacks and repair the damage. “The blow is strong, but it is definitely not fatal,” Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv. Ukraine’s air force said it had downed 405 of 465 drones and 15 of 32 missiles in this attack. Ukraine’s stretched air defences are no match for regular barrages on such a scale. According to Zelensky, Russia deliberately waited for bad weather to attack, and the inclement conditions reduced the efficiency of Ukraine’s air defences by between 20% and 30%. Russia said its overnight strikes were in response to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian civilian facilities. Ukraine regularly launches drone strikes against Russia’s military and oil installations, although they are generally on a far smaller scale. Kyiv says it wants to force Moscow, which started the war, to negotiate a peace deal in good faith. For many Kyiv residents, the day started with power cuts, disruptions in the water supply and transport delays Over 250,000 consumers in the capital were still disconnected from the grid late on Friday, according to authorities. “We had no power or water when I left my house. I can’t get to work because subway is not operating and buses are overflowing,” Anatoliy, a 23-year-old student, told Reuters. “I’m hoping for the best but I don’t even know how to reach the other bank (of the Dnipro),” he said, after spending the night in his hallway because of loud explosions. Get 40% off new DailyWire+ annual memberships with code FALL40 at checkout Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the assault was among the heaviest concentrated strikes on energy infrastructure and reported significant damage. Her deputy, Oleksiy Kuleba, said two million customers in Kyiv temporarily faced problems with water supplies. Ukrainian private energy firm DTEK said its thermal power plants had suffered significant damage but did not immediately provide further details. Hrynchuk said it was three years to the day since Russia launched its first large-scale attack on Ukraine’s power grid. “Today, Russia continues to use cold and darkness as instruments of terror,” she said on Facebook. (Reporting by Vladyslav Smilianets, Anastasiia Malenko, Yuliia Dysa, Gleb Garanich and Ron Popeski; Writing by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Kim Coghill, Michael Perry, Timothy Heritage, Aidan Lewis and Sharon Singleton)

It is, in fact, possible to win wars. I have spent my entire life watching the United States and the West lose wars, or at least not win wars. Initial victory, followed by gradual defeat or bizarre interventionism without the full force, weight, and commitment necessary to carry it through. What President Trump is demonstrating, however, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel, is that it is, in fact, possible to win wars. Let’s recall the timeline here. On October 7, 2023, the genocidal terror group Hamas invaded Israel’s borders and killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly Jewish, and abducted 250 Israelis and took them back to their terror tunnel hellholes. In those tunnels, Hamas amassed a vast arsenal of rockets, grenades, and small arms over the course of 20 years with the support and funding from nations in the region, including Iran, Qatar, and Turkey. There was also a serious possibility that Hezbollah was going to enter the war on the same day. In fact, Hezbollah started attacking with small rockets in the beginning and then gradually escalated. And, according to the military experts, Hezbollah was similarly genocidal and was a far better armed Iranian terror proxy based in Lebanon. Israel also faced down a continuing terror threat from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank. Syria was being used as a thoroughfare for Iranian arms for Hezbollah. The Houthis in Yemen were another Iranian-backed terror threat. And, of course, the Iranian government wasn’t merely spreading terrorism, they were also fast-tracking a nuclear weapons program. That’s where things stood two years ago. Now, two years later, the Middle East has turned completely upside down. Israel has completely decimated Hamas, killing its entire top leadership from Gaza all the way to Iran. Israel has destroyed Hezbollah’s efficacy and killed its terror master, Hassan Nasrallah. Its attacks on Hezbollah were so effective that the Assad regime in Syria completely collapsed. Judea and Samaria have been quieted by the work of the IDF during this time. Iranian proxies in Iraq went silent as well thanks to the Israeli Air Force. The Houthis in Yemen are sort of the one remaining outstanding enemy, and they’ve been thoroughly bombed. They are a nuisance, but they’re not an existential threat to Israel. And Iran’s nuclear program, the greatest existential threat to Israel, has been set back years, if not decades, thanks to the courage of the Israeli Air Force, and, of course, a timely, brave intervention from President Trump that led to an amazing mission flown by the United States Air Force. And now President Trump has brokered an amazing deal, one that seemed unthinkable not long ago. The release of the final 20 live Israeli hostages all at once, along with all the remaining bodies released. Israel maintains a secure posture in the Gaza Strip itself as a transitional plan toward a future without Hamas, supported by regional allies, including countries that one moment ago were sending cash and weapons into for Hamas to use, like Qatar and Turkey. The possibility of future Abraham Accords with countries like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are now on the table. So, here is the question for the West: How is it that this war was won? Because it’s hard to win wars. Well, the answer is the conventional wisdom was stupid — and it has been stupid for decades. And the decision makers here are ”out-of-the-box” thinkers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is someone who truly understands the nature of the Middle East and Middle Eastern history. But President Trump is the real difference maker here, because President Trump decided that America would no longer just go along with the 80-year-old slogans promoted by the Arabists at the State Department.  The conventional wisdom was that military action does not guarantee security in the Middle East. That is a lie. It was always a lie. It was always catastrophically wrong. In fact, every time Israel has provided for its own security, it was not through a peace deal. It was a peace deal after a victory.  Military action is the only guarantor of support and security in the Middle East. It was military action that removed every supporting pillar beneath Hamas’s feet. The conventional wisdom said the United States ought to play a weird, neutral role between Israel and its genocidal enemies. You saw this from Joe Biden. Kamala Harris talks like this all the time. Bill Clinton tried it until he realized that Yasser Arafat was totally uninterested in peace.  But this was the conventional wisdom. Was that, sure, Israel was a strong ally of the United States, but America had to play honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians. And it turns out that that was not just wrong, it was idiotically wrong. The Trump administration openly supported the IDF. They openly provided the weapons.  They openly provided the rhetorical support for Israel to win. And it was that that led to Hamas giving up the ghost and to Hamas, his allies, realizing that actually Israel was not going to be forced to simply accept the risk of its own survival.  The conventional wisdom said that if you threaten to kill terror leaders abroad, that’d be conflagrationist and terrible. That, too, was wrong.  Israel killed terror masters in Iran itself. Israel killed Ismail Haniya, the political leader of Hamas. And of course, it was the strike in Qatar that actually led to Qatar and Turkey deciding to press for Hamas’s ouster.  Israel then hit inside Qatar in an attempted strike on Hamas’s leadership. They missed, but the message was made clear: Israel would be willing to do it again.  And then the president essentially said, “Okay, you know what? We’ll come in. We’ll give a security guarantee to Qatar so this doesn’t happen again. But we need you to end this war. We need you to work with Turkey to stop all of this.” It was a carrots-and-sticks approach led by President Trump. President Trump understands the Middle East better than all the so-called experts. And, by the way, he understands the Middle East far better than the supposed neocons, the total interventionists pushing for ”Democracy in the Middle East.” Trump is not one of those. He also understands it better than the isolationists in his own party who wanted to reject Trump’s tempered and rational ”Peace through Strength” in favor of what might be called “Cowardice through Catastrophism,” the idea that World War III is lurking behind every corner — despite the fact that President Trump is the most rational purveyor of American force in modern American history. There was no shot that World War III would break out over one B-2 sortie over Iran. That was not going to happen because Trump was backing the IDF’s capacity to destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That was not going to happen. The catastrophism was nonsense and it was nonsense from the beginning. Get 40% off new DailyWire+ annual memberships with code FALL40 at checkout! Prime Minister Netanyahu, who soldiered through withering criticism both at home and abroad, of course, for the great crime of seeking victory over those who would destroy his country, deserves credit here. Huge credit, obviously, as Jared Kushner says, to the Israeli people who mobilized in an unprecedented way to defend their nation and their civilization, we’re talking about 45-year-old guys leaving four kids at home and their business to go fight in Gaza in the “Sherut Miluim,” the Israeli Army Reserve Service. And of course, huge props to the American people who provided Israel the support it needed to win, both in terms of material and mostly by making the right decision and electing Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. So, thank you to all the voters of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. It turns out that victory over genocidal enemies is indeed possible. What it requires is a smart strategy that bucks the conventional wisdom, a desire and willingness to win, and the perspicacity to dismiss people who promote either a starry-eyed millenarianism, in which every nation is going to break out into democracy someday, or a benighted conventional wisdom that fails every single time it’s tried.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, said that was dedicating the award to President Donald Trump “for his decisive support of our cause.” Machado, who has been targeted by the Nicolas Maduro regime in socialist Venezuela, was named the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and … her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” Machado said that the prize is a “recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans,” adding that Venezuela is relying on Trump and the United States to help the country “achieve freedom and democracy.” “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!” Machado wrote. On his Truth Social account, President Donald Trump shared a screenshot of a similar post from Machado. Earlier on Friday, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that the Nobel Committee “proved they place politics over peace” by not awarding Trump the Nobel Peace Prize. “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” Cheung added. “He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.” Get 40% off new DailyWire+ annual memberships with code FALL40 at checkout The deadline for this year’s nominations was January 31, just days after Trump had taken office for his second term. In recent weeks, however, there has been a chorus of world leaders arguing for Trump to receive the award after the president pushed numerous countries toward peace. The calls for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize culminated when he successfully pressured Israel and Hamas to agree to the first phase of his 20-point peace plan this week. Trump will likely be nominated again for the prize in 2026. Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize comes as she remains in hiding after the Venezuelan government claimed that Maduro won the 2024 election, despite evidence showing that Machado’s ally Edmundo González defeated the dictator at the polls. González was backed by Machado after the socialist government barred Machado from holding political office. In the lead-up to the election and in its aftermath, Maduro’s regime repressed dissent and jailed opposition leaders. Machado has been hiding out since January, and González is living in exile in Spain. In January, days before he was sworn into office, Trump praised Machado and González for “peacefully expressing the voices and the WILL of the Venezuelan people with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating against the regime.” The Trump administration has also placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro and increased sanctions on the country earlier this year after its fraudulent election.

Fourteen-hundred employees at the Internal Revenue Service will be laid off in a process initiated Friday, The Daily Wire has learned. The number is larger than anyone expected, with the IRS union filing a lawsuit to stop what it said it had “heard” might be 1,300 layoffs across the entire Treasury Department. The real number, an Office of Management and Budget official told The Daily Wire, is 1,400 at the IRS alone, plus more at other components of Treasury. The layoffs come as Democrats refuse to fund the government at all unless the Republican majority agrees to increased spending for non-citizens’ health care and other topics. That has resulted in a government shutdown, wherein employees are sent home and traditionally receive back pay one a deal is reached. The Trump administration has countered that if federal employees are going to be prohibited from working due to a shutdown, some will never come back at all – particularly those that staff agencies favored by Democrats. The IRS was targeted as a bloated agency that Democrats have used for political purposes, including targeting conservative nonprofits, the OMB official said. The official said the tax collecting agency spent $35 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style weaponry between 2006 and 2023, and advertised job postings that said special agents must be willing to use “deadly force.” The official said unnecessary and redundant employees would be targeted, with those focused on the prompt processing of tax returns protected. Still, cuts to the revenue-collection agency mean that Democrats’ efforts to increase government spending in the short term could backfire, with the ability to collect increased revenue diminished. Get 40% off new DailyWire+ annual memberships with code FALL40 at checkout Politico reported that layoffs are likely to also affect the departments of Interior, Homeland Security, Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. The government has been shut down for ten days, and the Senate failed to reach a deal Thursday night. The Daily Wire reported Friday that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Republicans held off on layoffs for 10 days to give Senate Democrats a chance to agree to agree to extend government funding at existing levels, but that now, “this gets real.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer countered, “Nobody’s forcing Trump and [OMB Director Russ Vought] to do this.” Related: ‘The Government Can Destroy Anyone’: How An IRS-Led Global Alliance Ruined An Innocent American Banker

'Suddenly and unexpectedly taken from us'

'Foreign-sourced equipment'