Hide the sharp objects—at least if you take Nicolle Wallace seriously. On Friday’s edition of Deadline White House, Wallace began by painting an apocalyptic picture of the situation in Iran. Grim enough to have Trump supporters reaching for the Lexapro—if they believed her. After laying out her bleak scenario, Wallace went a step further, warning of: “A full-scale global economic crisis that might actually be even worse than those headlines, and worse than we think.” Wallace ticked through her worst-case take on the news: inflation “surging” to a two-year high, gas prices spiking by 25 percent, and the specter of fuel shortages in Europe severe enough to trigger unrest—citing reports of protests in Ireland requiring military response. She warned that Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz could constrict global energy flows, disrupt summer travel, and send shockwaves through the world economy. She also cast the geopolitical picture as slipping out of U.S. control. Citing reports that Iran is favoring friendly nations while restricting others through the strait—and may even be charging tolls to tankers—Wallace suggested Tehran is turning a strategic waterway into an economic weapon, to America’s detriment. Nicolle Wallace: Iran Crisis ‘Even Worse Than We Think!’ pic.twitter.com/E8yKnnTA1K — Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) April 10, 2026 On the diplomatic front, Wallace portrayed Vice President J.D. Vance as stepping into a near-impossible role—entering high-stakes peace talks in Pakistan “in a precarious position,” tasked with ending a war he reportedly opposed from the start. And as President Trump threatened further escalation if negotiations fail, Wallace warned of the risks to “the men and women of the United States military”—a concern that tends to surface most prominently in the liberal media when it can be used to criticize Trump. For Wallace, not just a global crisis—but one in which even her own bleak portrayal wasn’t bleak enough. Here's the transcript. MS NOW Deadline White House 4/10/26 4:00 pm EDT NICOLLE WALLACE: Hi, everyone. It's 4 o'clock in New York on a Friday.  Donald Trump woke up today between a rock and a hard place. The rock came in the form of surging inflation and gas prices, and the hard place is the fool First Lady Melania Trump made out of his acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who brushed away the Jeffrey Epstein story as old news earlier this week.  First, the crippling economic news. Inflation surged to its highest levels in the United States in two years, because of the global energy crisis created by the war with Iran, March saw a record 25% jump in gas prices for U.S. consumers, hovering near $4 a gallon. If you wanted to go on a European vacation this summer, now there's this to worry about. Airports there are bracing for a jet fuel shortage if oil can't pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Over in Ireland, the Irish government had to call in the army today to quell protests over fuel shortages caused by the war with Iran.  It is a full-scale global economic crisis that might actually be even worse than those headlines, and worse than we think, because the prices of oil that we track don't fully capture the full scale of this disruption.  And there's no sign of relief right now either, thanks to the fact that despite the two-week truce, Iran is maintaining its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran is using it as a geopolitical and economic advantage. On that, the New York Times writes this, quote, Iran is giving priority to a trickle of vessels from countries that either trade directly with it or are not viewed as hostile to the Iranian government.  It's putting Donald Trump on the defensive. Trump wrote this, quote, there are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait. They better not be, and if they are, they better stop now, exclamation point.  Susan Glasser writes in the New Yorker that it is a failure on multiple fronts in terms of Donald Trump's objectives. Quote, Iran has not only retained control of the strait through which one-fifth of the world's oil and gas supply flows, it now asserts the right to charge millions of dollars in tolls to ships that wish to pass. A new status quo sanctioned by Trump that will enrich and entrench the theocratic government he started out the war wanting to topple.  With Trump's failures piling up, Vice President J.D. Vance is taking the reins. He's going to try to negotiate a high-stakes peace deal in Pakistan tomorrow.  But MSNOW reports that J.D. Vance enters Sunday's talks, quote, in a precarious position, hoping to negotiate a lasting end to a war in Iran that he never wanted. J.D. Vance has privately voiced opposition to the war for weeks to Donald Trump and top White House aides, even as the president has pursued an aggressive military campaign. That's according to two White House officials.  Hanging in the balance of these high-stakes talks are the men and women of the United States military. Donald Trump again threatened to escalate with the use of military force if the talks are not successful. He told the New York Post in an interview earlier today, if talks aren't going well in the next 24 hours, quote, we have a reset going. We're loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than what we used to do a complete decimation. Grammatical fix was me.  Donald Trump trying to reach a peace deal with Iran while his political and economic troubles pile up at home is where we start today. 

In Western Civilization, Christian ethics still, in some ways, dominate society. Murder is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Lying is wrong. Iran is dominated by Shiite Muslims who, at heart, embrace Taqiyya, or religious dissimulation, in ways Sunni Muslims tend to reject. It is why more must be done to Iran. Taqiyya, in practice, means lying to the infidel. The Hadith, or traditions of the prophet, says “war is deceit,” and commanders may use lies to advance their cause. The Iranian regime outmaneuvered the Obama administration with peace talks. To this day, Democrats insist Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, but Iran was clearly building a nuclear weapon. The regime lies to the West. Now, after less than two months of war against Iran, President Donald Trump has called a ceasefire. He appears to be the only person who has ceased firing in the Middle East. He says Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran says otherwise. He says Iran will give up their nuclear materials. Iran says otherwise. Given the practices of the Iranians, it is more than likely they will lie all the way to a mushroom cloud over some Western city. We have left Iran without an air force or much of a navy. We have destroyed, not decimated, much of the Iranian capacity to make war. But we have not ended their ability to make war. Iran will be resupplied by both the Russians and the Chinese. We have left their military command structure and political leadership in disarray, but it will be rebuilt. Iran is threatening to toll ships going through the Strait of Hormuz now. Before the war, Iran did not do that. A super tanker sailing through the Strait of Hormuz can hold around 2 million barrels of oil. 21 million barrels a day typically go through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is taxing each ship now up to two dollars per barrel of oil, which would amount to $42 million a day. That would generate in excess of $15 billion a year for Iran to rebuild its ability to make war. Many who ardently supported the war do not want to admit that returning to the status quo ante, with Iran now taxing ships going through the Strait of Hormuz is a loss to the United States. The cheerleading seems to have more to do with staying on President Trump’s good side and hoping he does more. He must do more. He cannot wind up like his predecessors, duped by an Iranian regime hell-bent on getting nuclear weapons. Iran’s theocratic leadership fundamentally believes they were put on this earth by Allah to wipe out the Jews and bring about the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic messiah. If you are a secularist who has a hard time believing faithful adherents of Jesus Christ who truly believe He rose from the dead, you will have an even harder time believing the Iranians believe this. But they really do and their entire regime is premised on it. They believe that to accomplish their divine mission, they must wipe out Israel. It is why the president must do more. To the extent the Trump administration had no endgame, doing everything possible to destabilize the Iranian regime must be it, if not outright regime change. The president did not have to pick this fight, but he did. He grabbed a tiger by its tail and let go without defanging it or declawing it. Iran will attempt to maul us. They believe they won this war. They believe they have no reason to back down. Ultimately, the administration can be proud of what they accomplished in less than two months. Iran is now cut off from its former Arab partners. Dubai is no longer a safe haven for money laundering. They have been set back significantly militarily and economically. But if they control the Strait of Hormuz, they will rebuild. If they keep their uranium, they will work to use it. There must be more done. This peace must not revert to the status quo ante with emboldened theocrats hell-bent on the apocalypse or we will be less safe today than we were before the bombing began.

Unsurprisingly, after First Lady Melania Trump’s statement on Thursday denouncing “lies” that she had a connection to Jeffrey Epstein, MS NOW’s Katy Tur Reports, guest-hosted by Antonia Hylton, framed Melania’s speech as a distraction, while Democratic strategist, Basil Smikle, said the statement was a “distraction” from the Iran War, which was a “distraction from the Epstein Files.” The Epstein-obsessed network has focused an inordinate amount of time on the Epstein Files releases and investigations as they hope to find a magical connection to Trump to end his presidency once and for all. Smikle made connections to multiple alleged distractions and said the President sent troops to fight to mitigate Epstein:  And it was kind of what we were saying in our earlier segment: it's a distraction from the war, which is itself a distraction from the Epstein files. So, if you wonder how much this president is entangled in all of this, it is so much that he's throwing everything out there for the press and bringing this country into significant economic and personal peril for the soldiers.   WATCH: MS NOW guest-host Antonia Hylton and guest Basil Smikle say the Melania Trump Statement was a distraction from the war, which was "itself a distraction from the Epstein Files. Hylton then seriously asked Smikle: "But now this is their best route out of it?" pic.twitter.com/7Pb4RuZelj — Nick (@nspin310) April 9, 2026   After Smikle got through his distraction escapade, Hylton called the statement “strange” and, seriously asked Smikle if that was the White House strategy: You're a strategist. You understand the game here. You really think this is some sort of maneuver here, as they see how angry Americans are about the war, angry about their material conditions and experiences at home. But now this is their best route out of it? About 15 minutes earlier, the first direct mention of Melania’s statement as a distraction came from Hofstra Law Professor James Samples, who claimed the Iran War went so poorly, the administration had the First Lady make a statement to distract from Trump’s “threatening of war crimes”: Antonia, things are going so well that a war that has bumped the Epstein investigation to the back page for the last five weeks is going so badly that the First Lady of the United States makes an unscheduled, impromptu statement about the Epstein investigations that the administration was so desperate to get out of the headlines, to get back in the headlines during an international armed conflict where 48 hours ago, the President of the United States, her husband, was threatening the destruction of a whole civilization. So, we are 48 hours separated between threatening war crimes and distracting from the threatening of war crimes and a colossal disaster of our own creation in the Middle East. Everything is a distraction from the Files, especially on MS NOW and CNN. Even in timeslots meant for hard news, MS NOW has constantly proven themselves to be an unserious network. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s Katy Tur Reports April 9, 2026 3:16:55 PM Eastern (...) JAMES SAMPLE: How are things going for the Trump Administration right now? Antonia, things are going so well that a war that has bumped the Epstein investigation to the back page for the last five weeks is going so badly that the First Lady of the United States makes an unscheduled, impromptu statement about the Epstein investigations that the administration was so desperate to get out of the headlines, to get back in the headlines during an international armed conflict where 48 hours ago, the President of the United States, her husband, was threatening the destruction of a whole civilization.  So, we are 48 hours separated between threatening war crimes and distracting from the threatening of war crimes and a colossal disaster of our own creation in the Middle East. And now we are burying a statement by the first lady about an investigation that the Department of Justice has so bungled that Pam Bondi, who one week ago was the Attorney General of the United States and who one week from now should be testifying before the House Oversight Committee, will not be testifying.  (...) 3:33:37 PM Eastern BASIL SMIKLE: Well, listen, I think the first lady is right. There should be - Congress should do more. And the Democrats want Congress to do more. It's the Republicans - and I go back to this all the time, and we talk about this. They have the keys to the building. The Republicans could do whatever they want to do, and they choose not to do it. To Stewart's point, in an earlier segment, we've abdicated so much of their responsibility to this imperialist president that nothing is going to happen and nothing's going to move.  And let me just say this, because it's been on my mind. We're about to automatically register 18 to 25-year-olds for a draft starting in December. Congress, the president, and his secretary of defense have decided this. They don't have the same willingness to automatically register people to vote, but they're going to make sure that there is a smoother path for people to go to war. So, they're focused on that, whereas the rest of us are actually focused on the economic feedback loop that we're in and the fact that we need to get to the bottom of what's behind these Epstein files, and what's behind the first lady coming out in this unscheduled way to talk about it.  And it was kind of what we were saying in our earlier segment: it's a distraction from the war, which is itself a distraction from the Epstein files. So, if you wonder how much this president is entangled in all of this, it is so much that he's throwing everything out there for the press and bringing this country into significant economic and personal peril for the soldiers.  So much so, because he's so concerned about what's in these files, presumably. And so if Republicans want to get - if they want to heed the first lady's advice, they need to stop a lot of this in its tracks. That includes the war and actually turn to the fact-finding and all of the investigations that actually get us to the bottom of the Epstein files. ANTONIA HYLTON: Yeah. It's this whole thing is incredibly strange, as you say, it was scheduled. We knew that something of this nature was on her calendar, but did not know exactly what it was. And in fact, actually, our colleagues here at MS NOW say a white house official immediately responded to MS NOW, saying that many folks inside the white house were caught off guard themselves by her statement.  You're a strategist. You understand the game here. You really think this is some sort of maneuver here, as they see how angry Americans are about the war, angry about their material conditions and experiences at home. But now this is their best route out of it? (...)

The "RNC Research" team on X drew attention with their profane reaction to a New York Times story still trying to make "fetch" happen -- that Trump is shedding "Ultra-MAGA" fans over the war in Iran. The headline deck was:  Once ‘Ultra MAGA’, Trump Supporters Fume About Iran on Truth Social A growing chorus of disaffected Trump supporters is sounding off in the replies to his posts on the social media platform he founded. RNC Research tweeted: "The f***ing losers at the Failing New York Times literally wrote a hit piece on President Trump citing a bunch of accounts with literally no followers as if it's actually a trend." Times reporters Stuart A. Thompson and Steven Lee Myers began:  The people logging into Truth Social each day tend to count themselves among the most ardent supporters of President Trump and his MAGA movement. In recent weeks, though, even some in the echo chamber have turned against his actions in Iran. Thousands of users on the social media platform, which Mr. Trump created in 2022, have responded to the president’s drumbeat of posts with a mix of frustration, disbelief and outrage. They have written that they feel betrayed by the expanding war in Iran and ashamed when Mr. Trump used an expletive on Easter to make demands of the Iranian government. Some were so perplexed by his military interventions that one declared they “make zero sense.” Right under this dark introduction, they show you that one of their examples, "Ultra_MAGA_King," has 92 followers.  They want this to sound like serious research: "An analysis by The New York Times of more than 40,000 comments on Mr. Trump’s posts showed the depths of the discontent over the war." And then more warnings:  The roiling sentiment reflects the challenging conditions facing the president and the Republican Party ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Mr. Trump recently recorded the worst approval rating yet during his second term. Right under this graf, by contrast to the last user, the account "AuthenticAmerican" has a whopping 173 followers.  But my favorite was the third one, after the Times duo warned "Mr. Trump drew strong rebukes for his expletive-filled post on Easter Sunday, which threatened to destroy the country’s power plants and bridges and was punctuated with a mocking 'Praise be to Allah,'” and the account pictured had only 19 followers! These are not "influencers"! They are tiny righties.  I'm not a fan of the Easter message either, but the elitist media are soooo desperate to find the next Bill Kristol or Charlie Sykes in the Truth Social crowd. That is, if Kristol or Sykes had 19 followers. 

Tens of thousands of people from across America traveled to Washington D.C. on January 23rd to participate in the largest annual pro-life demonstration in the world. But you probably didn’t hear about it, because Big Tech and the elitist media did everything they could to suppress their voices.  MRCVideo’s Justine Brooke Murray attended the March for Life to ask participants if their Apple, Google, MSN, or Yahoo News apps were showing any stories about the demonstration. Unsurprisingly, they were all omitted by the Big Four News Apps, just like every other story that the left finds inconvenient.  The media was too busy praising those “mostly peaceful” riots in Minneapolis, and turning their minivan military of middle-aged white women into martyrs for using their children as human shields to violently obstruct ICE agents.