This past month, saw the likes of MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough trash the “unrelenting bigotry” in Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, while CBS’s Ed O’Keefe inexplicably questioned when anybody has called the President “racist?” Media elitists like MS NOW’s Chris Hayes compared bombing Iran to 9/11 while the Washington Post eulogized Ayatollah Khamenei as a man with an “easy smile” and love of “poetry.” The Hollywood left got in their shots, too. ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel griped that Trump’s “angry” State of the Union speech sounded like a “Christmas message from the Grinch.” Kimmel also claimed Republicans were protecting pedophiles and rapists while attacking illegal aliens who are “raising your children.” The following are just a few of the most obnoxious outbursts from leftist journalists and celebrities over the last month:    Joe Scarborough Trashes Trump’s “Unrelenting Bigotry”   Scarborough on SOTU: Trump Did ‘Sh-- No Sane President Would Ever Do’ pic.twitter.com/wthja6ClcG — Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) February 25, 2026   “There are a couple things that I thought were extraordinary that you wouldn’t see in other State of the Unions, unless they were Donald Trump’s. The first, of course, was just the unrelenting bigotry, the lies, the attacking of one group specifically, the Somalis, Somali-Americans. That’s the sort of thing that, oh, you know, I’m not going to talk about fascism or Nazism. You just read history and see what type of regimes will pick one or two groups and blame all of America’s ills on those groups.”— Host Joe Scarborough on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, February 25.   Clueless Ed O’Keefe: When Has Anybody Called Trump Racist?   Clueless CBS Correspondent Ed O’Keefe to Karoline Leavitt: When Has Anybody Called Trump Racist? — White House Press Briefing, February 18. pic.twitter.com/EkpJmSkPI5 — Geoffrey Dickens (@GCDickens) March 6, 2026   CBS senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe: “Today in his statement about Jesse Jackson, the President said, ‘Despite the fact that I’m falsely and consistently called a racist by the scoundrels and lunatics on the radical left, Democrats all, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse along the way.’ Where or when does the President believe he’s been falsely called racist?”White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “You’re kidding, right?”O’Keefe: “No.” — White House Press Briefing, February 18.      Jonathan Capehart Compares Minnesota Protestors to the Underground Railroad   On PBS, David Brooks compares the Minnesota demonstrators to the Civil Rights Movement, "I was with a historian yesterday. And she said, learn from the Civil Rights Movement. Everybody should be studying the civil rights movement. That's what they did," while Jonathan Capehart… pic.twitter.com/bxzFqxaY4o — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 14, 2026   “In Northfield, Minnesota, they were dealing with ICE. And they were dealing with ICE in a very quiet way, not the whistles and the horns, but text chains, people who were observing, taking license plates, letting people know. I went to do something on Friday and the person who picked me up said—apologized for the vehicle and then said to me, I was—quote—‘underground railroading food all night.’”— MS NOW host and PBS contributor Jonathan Capehart on PBS’s News Hour, February 13.    On PBS: Trump Administration to Employ “Jim Crow” Strategy    Despite a clip of Karoline Leavitt saying ICE at polling locations is "not something I have ever heard the president" and "a very silly hypothetical question," Stohr claimed, "And we can use another historic analogy, which is during Jim Crow, the fact that police were often sent… pic.twitter.com/xl1fqtzmrU — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 7, 2026   Host Geoff Bennett: “This is a multifront strategy, legal pressure, DOJ demands, raids at the Fulton County election office. How do you see it?”Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr: “That’s exactly right. And we can use another historic analogy, which is during Jim Crow, the fact that police were often sent around polling stations in order to discourage people of color from casting votes, even though the Constitution was amended to specifically protect that right. The law won’t protect you if you don’t have government that is backing it up and actually flouting it. So all of this is from playbooks from the darkest times in our history.”— PBS’s News Hour, February 6.    Chris Hayes Compares Trump Bombing Iran to 9/11    Chris Hayes compares bombing Iran to 9/11, "there was one instance in my lifetime when we in America experienced death from above. September 11th, 2001... For us, that kind of violence is an anomaly. It is a once in a lifetime tragedy. For other people, in other countries, the… pic.twitter.com/Vhmm59sUY4 — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) March 3, 2026   “Gets far too easy to wave away the loss of human life. It’s priced in. It’s the cost of doing business. Remember, there was one instance in my lifetime when we in America experienced death from above. September 11th, 2001….For us, that kind of violence is an anomaly. It is a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy. For other people, in other countries, the terror is commonplace because, in part, of the kinds of war of aggression that Donald Trump just started.”— Host Chris Hayes on MS NOW’s All In With Chris Hayes, March 2.    PBS’s Reza Sayah: “A Bleak, Grim and Scary Day” for “People of Iran” “Yes, this was a bleak, grim, and scary day for the people of Iran, a population that has seen a lot of adversity over these past five decades, and this time the adversity they're facing was an attack by the world’s leading superpower, the United States of America and the regional power Israel, both of them nuclear powers, mind you.”— Correspondent Reza Sayah on PBS’s News Hour, March 2.    Washington Post Touts Khamenei as Man With an “Easy Smile” and Love of “Poetry” “With his bushy white beard and easy smile, Ayatollah Khamenei cut a more avuncular figure in public than his perpetually scowling but much more revered mentor, and he was known to be fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels, especially Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables.’...Some Iranians who knew Ayatollah Khamenei before he became supreme leader described him as a ‘closet moderate.’..After Trump lost the 2020 election, Ayatollah Khamenei said its chaotic aftermath, marked by Trump’s baseless fraud claims, illustrated ‘the ugly face of liberal democracy’ in the United States and made clear the country’s ‘definite political, civil [and] moral decline.’— Washington Post obituary for Ayatollah Khamenei, February 28.    Trump Has “Strongman Dictatorial Impulses,” Shows No Interest in “Promoting Democracy”  “We are talking about a President who is presenting himself as a liberator of, you know, the Iranian people, who himself is an authoritarian, who himself has these strongman dictatorial impulses, who has shown no interest in, you know, promoting democracy or freedom, who rightly lambastes Iran for slaughtering innocent protesters on the streets of Tehran and calling them terrorists who deserve to, you know, be killed for their actions; but then who uses the exact same rhetoric when it comes to his own people in places like Minnesota.”— Former CNN contributor Reza Aslan on MS NOW’s Iran live coverage, March 1.   Jen Psaki Dismisses SOTU Honorees as “Circus Entertainer Part”   WATCH: MS Now's Jen Psaki dismisses the acknowledgements of the U.S. Men's hockey team, victims of illegal aliens and awards to military heroes as "the circus entertainer part" of the State of the Union address. JEN PSAKI: As I was watching that, I was just thinking about the… pic.twitter.com/1svt9rpSeH — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 25, 2026   “Trump decided to double down on things that are hugely unpopular. I mean, to your point, it was like a three-part speech. There was the gross, violent pornography part of it. There was the circus entertainer part, where he was bringing out unrelated people and vignettes. And then there was a part that was policy-ish.”— Host Jen Psaki on MS NOW’s coverage of the State of the Union address, February 24.   Morning Joe Attacks ICE Co-host Joe Scarborough: “America - this is no place, as the judge said, federal judge said, for the secret police. This is no place for masked men in unmarked cars without license plates grabbing people off the streets. That seems to me to invite illegal and unlawful behavior from those who may not be members of the secret police for the federal government. But the fact that we have a secret police in the United States of America, I’m sorry, I’ve been around long enough to be able to say this freely, I agree with most Americans. That is un-American, isn’t it?...Terrorize communities, create distrust, and actually gun down Americans in the street. And gut funding for Medicaid, gut funding for our grandparents, gut funding for children, gut funding-”Co-host Mika Brzezinski: “And they’re building the internment camps.”— MS NOW’s Morning Joe, February 23.   David Brooks: Donald Trump is “Forcing Dehumanization”   David Brooks, noted "democracy is dying" doomsday prophet, laments, "We meet people trying to heal America, trying to build conversations. And it's just frustrating that all these people are doing this work around the country at the same time, day by day, there's a shredding from… pic.twitter.com/SwqPAG5tEY — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 21, 2026   “We travel around the country. We meet people trying to heal America, trying to build conversations. And it’s just frustrating that all these people are doing this work around the country at the same time, day by day, there’s a shredding from the top. And so there’s these forces of humanization that are trying to have a decent country, and then the shredding from the top is just a constant battle of forcing dehumanization.”— New York Times columnist/PBS contributor David Brooks on PBS’s News Hour, February 20.   Kathleen Parker: Trump Has “Taken a Page” from Hitler’s Mein Kampf “He’s [Donald Trump] still clinging again to the 2020 — we know it was a fully regular election he lost. And he can’t let it go because I think he’s taken a page from Mein Kampf, frankly, you know, the saying that if you say — tell a big lie often enough and repeat it, then people will believe it.”— Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker on PBS’s News Hour, February 6.    Don Lemon: “Our Democracy Can Be Gone In a Second” Under Trump  “We are watching an administration right now that treats the Constitution not as a covenant but as an inconvenience. That they don’t have to abide by. ‘This is inconvenient and this is getting in our way.’ It’s authoritarianism and we need to be careful because the very little that’s left in our democracy can be gone in a second – if it’s not too late already.”— Former CNN anchor Don Lemon’s speech at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, February 7.   Keith Olbermann: Trump is the “John Wayne Gacy of the Epstein Scandal”   Trump is the “John Wayne Gacy of the Epstein Scandal” — Former MSNBC/ESPN host Keith Olbermann on his Countdown podcast, February 26. pic.twitter.com/o7WBpsKUwH — Geoffrey Dickens (@GCDickens) March 6, 2026   “For Trump, this is no longer a question of malfeasance or graft or theft or impeachment. It is a question of how many dozens of crimes he is guilty of. On Epstein, on the Epstein cover-up alone. He is the Boss Tweed of the Epstein scandal. He is the Bernie Madoff of the Epstein scandal. He is the John Wayne Gacy of the Epstein scandal!”— Former MSNBC/ESPN host Keith Olbermann on his Countdown podcast, February 26.   ABC’s David Muir: Trump Is Going to Destroy the Planet and Kill You   Thus @ABCWorldNews sums up President Trump's repeal of the EPA endangerment finding: Trump gave up the power to regulate climate, he has rejected the science, and he will kill you pic.twitter.com/rX2iuMk0Lp — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 13, 2026   “Tonight, President Trump has repealed U.S. power to regulate climate in this country. The president officially rejecting the science. And what this now clears the way for. Critics tonight arguing this is not only dangerous for the environment but for your health.”— Anchor David Muir on ABC’s World News Tonight, February 12.     CBS Reporter Injects Climate Propaganda into the Nation’s Founding   Further proof that the Media Hall Monitors' breathless incantations of CBS News being "MAGA-aligned" is absolute nonsense: a Sunday Morning item linking George Washington's crossing of the Delaware with climate change pic.twitter.com/DpOYkNEcIl — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 15, 2026   Correspondent David Schecter: “So, it turns out, around the time Washington looked out on the icy Delaware, there were two important pictures coming into focus: One, the story of America; the other, the beginnings of climate change. And both continue to shape our world. I kind of like to think about George Washington showing back up in 2026 and saying-”Eric Steig, glaciologist: “What have you done?”Schecter: “This is pretty different!”— CBS Sunday Morning, February 15.     Jimmy Kimmel: Trump’s “Angry Speech” Like a “Christmas Message From the Grinch”   Jimmy Kimmel rants "It was an angry speech... It was like a Christmas message from the Grinch. Trump applauded the efforts of a World War II vet who liberated an internment camp, at the same time he is building new ones here in the United States." (1/4) pic.twitter.com/RcxwpfDzx7 — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 25, 2026   “It was an angry speech. The theme of tonight’s speech was all foreigners are murderers….He bragged about ending DEI. He bragged about kicking two million people off food stamps. It was like a Christmas message from the Grinch. Trump applauded the efforts of a World War II vet who liberated an internment camp, at the same time he is building new ones here in the United States.”— Jimmy Kimmel on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, February 24.   Republicans Are Protecting “Pedophiles” and “Rapists,” While Attacking Illegals Who Are “Raising Your Children”   After a clip of GOP Rep. Lisa McClain at a press conference lamenting, "And you know what the Democrats want to do? Let's release them into your communities. And let's celebrate the criminals. Let's villainize the ICE agents and celebrate the people who are raping your children,"… pic.twitter.com/jP9SbPxxtV — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 11, 2026   Rep. Lisa McClain: “And you know what the Democrats want to do? Let’s release them into your communities. And let’s celebrate the criminals. Let’s villainize the ICE agents and celebrate the people who are raping your children.”Host Jimmy Kimmel: “I think she meant to say raising your children? I mean, listen, could you imagine how ignorant these people are screaming about pedophiles and rapists while members of their own party seem to be doing everything they can to protect the pedophiles and the rapists in the Epstein files.”— ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, February 10.    Morgan Freeman: Trump Reminds Me of Nazi “Brownshirts,” He’s Leading Us “Down a Sh*thole”   Performing a dramatic reading of history for Lawrence O'Donnell on MS (DNC), actor Morgan Freeman pretends today's America is a constant reminder of "Germany in 1935." Under Trump, "we have somebody sitting in the White House who's leading us down a s--t hole." pic.twitter.com/p4ELocp0fO — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) February 28, 2026   “We have somebody sitting in the White House who’s leading us down a shit hole….I’m constantly reminded of Germany in 1935, what was happening there, the Brownshirts, those people that are marching through, particularly Berlin, rounding up people and putting them in box cars and sending them off. Now, this administration wants to build large detention centers and — for what?”— Actor Morgan Freeman on MS NOW’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, February 26.    Robert De Niro: How Can You “Love Our Country” Now?    Robert De Niro, speaking at the Resistance™ counterprogramming event, admitting he chokes on expressions of love for America. "I choke on that phrase, “we all love our country.” Because our country isn't so lovable right now. In the current climate, declaring love for our… pic.twitter.com/Df285ZOycx — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 25, 2026   “Tragically, we’re now in a country of by and for a handful of dishonest, greedy, and cruel authoritarians. So - love our country? Let me ask you: Can you love a country where our neighbors are shot down in the streets by masked government thugs? Can you love a country that denies healthcare for tens of millions of our fellow citizens? Can you love a country that ends contributions to sick and starving people around the world, causing hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, many of them innocent children?...The bottom line is that I feel betrayed by my country.”— Actor Robert De Niro at Defiance.org’s “State of the Swamp” event, February 24.

In Wednesday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, the eponymous MS NOW host went into another deranged monologue rant on the military operations in Iran with a call for Barron and Tiffany Trump to enlist to fight in Iran. O’Donnell also decided to take the moment to claim President Trump’s mind cannot handle the plans of a war, after an avoidance of former President Biden’s mental deficiencies for his entire term. He had a similar line in his Monday show where he compared Trump’s action in Iran to Hitler and implored for Barron and Donald Trump Jr. to go to Iran and fight, but in this new monologue, he went all in with comparisons of the six brave service members killed in Kuwait to the Trump family, as he claimed they are all seek to avoid military service and made directed attacks against Barron: The Trump family's flawless record of avoiding military service would be unremarkable if Donald Trump never started a war. But when your father starts a war, an illegal and unconstitutional war, and you are of the age that is eligible to fight and die in your father's war, what do you do? There is no suspense tonight about what Barron Trump will do. He will do nothing. In two weeks, he will have his 20th birthday party. It will surely be a lavish affair. None of his friends will show up in military uniforms. No one who Barron Trump has ever been in a classroom with is likely to have joined the military.   Lawrence O'Donnell once again called for Barron Trump to enlist in the military on his show Wednesday while exploiting the deaths of 6 US Servicemembers killed in Kuwait. This time he also added another Trump child to his list: Tiffany Trump. pic.twitter.com/FWtnkQ1pRJ — Nick (@nspin310) March 5, 2026   O’Donnell then decided to compare the President’s 20-year-old son to one of the brave service members killed:  Barron Trump will not be attending Declan Cody's funeral. Barron Trump, like every member of the Trump family, has never attended the military funeral of someone that they know who was killed in action. Like Barron Trump, Declan Cody was a college student, a sophomore at Drake University and an Army reservist from West Des Moines, Iowa. The next comparison went to Tiffany Trump as O’Donnell stated, “Tiffany Trump is 32-years old and eligible for military service in her father's war. No one in the Trump family will ever have any idea what it's like when they come and ring your doorbell.” O’Donnell exploitation of the dead service member is bizarre and outrageous. The comparisons to the Trump family just show his derangement to “get Trump.” His rampage continued with an insinuation of Trump being mentally unwell, which is ironic due to O’Donnell and much of the media's failure to cover the mental decline of Joe Biden during his entire term. Yesterday, Donald Trump said that his father, who was born in New York City, was born in Germany. Now think about that. Think about how lost that mind is. That mind that is supposed to be the mastermind of this illegal and unconstitutional war. O’Donnell's crazed obsession with the Trump family’s apparent need to enlist is an unhealthy reality for the nighttime host, especially since they have no real platform of response. Imagine the outrage if conservative commentators called on the Obama children to fight in their father’s military conflicts if they were old enough. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell March 4, 2026 10:01:02 PM Eastern LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: All four of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's sons served in the American military while their father was serving as Commander-in-Chief, leading this country to victory in World War II. It was unthinkable then, that a wartime president could have sons who would not serve in the military, like Donald Trump and his sons and daughters. Abraham Lincoln's son enlisted during the Civil War. No one expected President Lyndon Johnson's daughters to serve in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, before women were allowed full participation in military service. But President Johnson's son-in-law served in Vietnam.  The Trump family's flawless record of avoiding military service would be unremarkable if Donald Trump never started a war. But when your father starts a war, an illegal and unconstitutional war, and you are of the age that is eligible to fight and die in your father's war, what do you do? There is no suspense tonight about what Barron Trump will do. He will do nothing. In two weeks, he will have his 20th birthday party. It will surely be a lavish affair. None of his friends will show up in military uniforms. No one who Barron Trump has ever been in a classroom with is likely to have joined the military. Donald Trump has been quoted by his former White House Chief of Staff, saying that soldiers killed in combat are “suckers and losers.” What does that make a soldier who wasn't in combat and is killed? What does that make a soldier who was an IT specialist, who was never supposed to be exposed to anything more dangerous than a computer screen, who got killed in action, sitting in what was the safety of his office until Donald Trump started a war? Barron Trump will not be attending Declan Cody's funeral. Barron Trump, like every member of the Trump family, has never attended the military funeral of someone that they know who was killed in action. Like Barron Trump, Declan Cody was a college student, a sophomore at Drake University and an Army reservist from West Des Moines, Iowa. He was an IT guy, an Army IT specialist. He graduated from Valley High School in West Des Moines in 2023, and he was one of the first American military personnel killed in Donald Trump's war.  The others in the first group of names released were Captain Cody Khork, 35 years old, from Winter Haven, Florida. Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, age 42, from Bellevue, Nebraska. And Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor from White Bear Lake, Minnesota, who was 39 years old. Tiffany Trump is 32 years old and eligible for military service in her father's war. No one in the Trump family will ever have any idea what it's like when they come and ring your doorbell. Declan Cody's father, Andrew, said that the family began to get worried on Sunday when Declan stopped responding to messages from his duty station in Kuwait. (..) 10:06:18 PM Eastern O’DONNELL: Killed in the line of duty is always agonizingly tragic for the families. But when those door bells were ringing in World War II, at least the families knew what the soldiers were fighting for when they died. During the Vietnam war, the doorbell rang for 58,000 American families, and they were told how the soldiers they loved were killed. But they still have never been told why.  Donald Trump's reason for starting his unconstitutional and illegal war changes by the hour, just like everything else Donald Trump has ever tried to explain. And on this, the fifth day of Donald Trump's war, 47 United States senators, including one Republican, Rand Paul, voted to end his war, while 53 senators, including one Democrat, John Fetterman, voted to let Donald Trump continue to do whatever he wants to do with the American military.  Those senators did not specifically vote to authorize what Donald Trump is doing. They simply refused to vote to stop it, even though Donald Trump has not been able to explain to any one of those senators why he launched this war. You couldn't ask for more exhibitions of the vacancy and confusion of Donald Trump's mind during this war of his choosing, the mind that launched this war.  Yesterday, Donald Trump said that his father, who was born in New York City, was born in Germany. Now think about that. Think about how lost that mind is. That mind that is supposed to be the mastermind of this illegal and unconstitutional war.  (...) 10:08:25 PM Eastern At least he knows where his mother was born. And we're giving Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt here, because he never actually said the word Germany about his father. He said his mother was born in the United Kingdom and she was in Scotland. And then he said his father was born there, which could also mean the United Kingdom. But since he was pointing to the Chancellor of Germany, we assume he meant Germany because the Trump family is German.  They are from Germany, and they fled Europe before Donald Trump's father was born to evade military service. That is the Trump family heritage. That is why Donald Trump is an American citizen. That is why his father was born in America. Because Donald Trump's grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, fled Europe to avoid military service.  Another soldier killed in Donald Trump's war was identified tonight. 45 year old army major Jeffrey O'Brien from Waukee, Iowa. The question tonight is how many more? How many more Iranian civilian noncombatants will be killed? How many more Iranian protesters against the regime will be killed? How many more of those brave women in Iran who stood up to the dictatorship devoted to crushing them, will now be crushed and killed by Donald Trump's war? How many more American soldiers will be killed in Donald Trump's war? How many more doorbells will ring? And why?

President Donald Trump is just incredibly lucky. He kept rolling the dice on the economy and somehow the doom-sayers keep losing.  All the experts said his tariffs would drastically increase inflation; instead it went down. Democrats projected at the end of 2024 that "Mass Deportations Would Deliver a Catastrophic Blow to the U.S. Economy." It has not. This luck just has to stop at some point. Such is the weird attitude of Politico's economics correspondent, Victoria Guida. She thinks that the economic success of the Trump administration is based just on the sheer luck of making the correct gambles as reflected in the title of her Thursday story, "Trump Keeps Gambling With the Economy — And Getting Away With It." President Donald Trump has spent his second term turning risky economic gambles into a way of life. He has implemented sweeping global tariffs that have dramatically increased the cost of doing business across the world. He has sharply decreased the number of people immigrating to the U.S. He has pushed for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates under any circumstance, even though inflation has not entirely cooled. Guida seems a bit glum over all that economic "luck" that has come Trump's way. However, she does hold out some hope for that supposed luck to run out in the form of possible higher gas prices. And now, he’s launched an attack on Iran, a scenario that has long been the clearest and most direct threat to one of Trump’s favored political barometers: gas prices. The U.S. now finds itself in another acute economic risk situation — an assault that Trump has said could last four weeks or more. The conflict has led to a jump in oil prices, though not quite to worst-case levels, and markets have been jittery about the prospect of more expensive energy and higher U.S. federal debt, stemming from the cost of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. Add it to the catalog of ways Trump is living dangerously — and, so far, mostly getting away with it. Guida sure sounds bitter with that comment about "getting away with it." Perhaps he is "getting away with it" in the form of gas prices increasing but not as high as expected due to the Iran situation because of the "lucky" raid on January 3 in Venezuela which is leading to a lot of that oil entering the USA. But what about Biden's luck? When average gas prices were hovering around $4.00 for regular unleaded fuel around August 10, 2022, Guida co-authored a headline that the opposite of her new anti-Trump kvetching: “Gas is suddenly cheaper. That could help Biden.” Guida and her co-author Sam Sutton highlighted how the result would assist the “Lower gas prices” economic messaging angle for the Biden administration, despite the fact that overall consumer price inflation was skyrocketing 8.5 percent year-over-year at the time. Guida wrote two months after gas prices rose to an average of higher than $5 a gallon. More frustration from Guida over how the dire economic forecasts have not panned out as expected: In so many ways, that is the story of Trump’s economic stewardship up to this point. His disruptive policies have left some dents, including serious damage to his approval rating, but by the biggest readings of its health, the U.S. economy — measured by overall growth, the job market, the stock market, even inflation — largely keeps absorbing what he throws at it. Of course, the extraordinary amount of business spending associated with the buildout of artificial intelligence has also been a significant factor keeping the economy plowing ahead at a solid pace. But mostly, the U.S. economy is just a consumer-driven powerhouse that seems hard to crush. Disappointed much? The president himself is part of the reason for the resilience: GOP tax cuts are expected to provide a huge power-up to economic expansion this year by boosting refunds for individuals and offering immediate deductions for businesses making certain investments. And the administration’s deregulatory efforts have repeatedly driven stocks to new highs, which has helped increase the wealth of households invested in the market. You...you mean cutting taxes provides for economic expansion? Naw! It just gotta be the President's dumb luck again. The rest of Guida's story continues with this theme of lucky Trump making the right economic bets mixed with the barely suppressed hope from this partisan hack that the Iran attack situation could drive gas prices higher to the extent it could harm the economy and reverse Trump's run of supposed luck.

There is a particular kind of intellectual dishonesty that masquerades as principle and the American left has perfected it. It goes by either “international law” or “norms.” These phrases are invoked with religious fervor whenever the United States or one of its allies takes action in the world. They are conveniently forgotten whenever the enemies of civilization act. Watch the pattern long enough and the conclusion becomes unavoidable. The left’s commitment to international law is not a commitment at all. It is a weapon — one designed with the West in mind and aimed squarely at the United States. Consider what is happening now. Our military engagement against Iran has the usual coalition of academics, think-tankers, progressive politicians, antisemites and op-ed writers reaching for their pearls. “International law,” they scream. “The norms-based international order,” they wail. Many of them are calling the United States a “rogue nation” or a “state sponsor of terrorism” because the President of the United States decided it was time to end Iran’s regime of terror and quest for nuclear weapons. Where were these voices on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023? Hamas — a terrorist organization whose founding charter is a declaration of genocidal intent — launched the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. They crossed a recognized international border. They slaughtered over 1,200 civilians. They kidnapped babies, elderly women and young men at a music festival. They filmed it. They celebrated it. The international law crowd did not rush out that morning to denounce Hamas. There were no emergency seminars on the laws of armed conflict. There were no demands for immediate condemnation from the UN Security Council. There was, instead, a noticeable pause — followed, in many quarters, by attempts to contextualize the attack, explain Hamas’s grievances and pivot immediately to concern about Israel’s forthcoming response. There were also marches in the streets and on college campuses, cheering on Hamas. The norms held no power that day. The law said nothing binding. When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, it was — by any coherent reading of international law -- a textbook act of aggression. One sovereign nation invading another without provocation. Shelling apartment buildings. Targeting hospitals. Deporting Ukrainian children. The UN Charter exists precisely to prohibit this. The post-World War II order was constructed around the idea that this kind of naked territorial conquest was finished. Strongly worded resolutions and furrowed brows lecturing on international law did not stop Vladimir Putin. He laughed at the shattered norms and the carefully constructed legal architecture that the left treats as sacred scripture when the United States or Israel acts. International law, in practice, restrains only those who choose to be restrained by it. And the nations most likely to choose restraint are Western democracies. This is not an accident. Much of what passes for international legal consensus today was built in the decades after the Cold War, during a period of American dominance when the global left — including within American institutions — worked diligently to construct frameworks that would hem in American power. Treaties on the laws of war applied asymmetrically, where Hamas firing from hospitals is shrugged at, while Israel responding to it becomes a war crime. A UN Human Rights Council populated by nations with records that would embarrass a medieval warlord mock the very standards of international law the left insists are real. The architecture of international law was never neutral. It was designed to constrain the West while providing cover for everyone else. When the left screams about international law in the context of Iran — a regime that has spent almost 50 years funding terrorism, developing a nuclear weapons framework and calling for the destruction of Israel — they are not invoking principle. They are deploying a tool built to restrain the United States and Israel. Real principle would look like this: Outrage at Hamas for what it did and a willingness to say that international law means nothing if the most dangerous actors on earth face no consequences. Until the left applies its standards consistently, those of us watching are not obligated to take the standards seriously. They built a cage and labeled it “civilization.” But they only ever meant to put two nations inside it. But both, instead, are soaring unrestrained over Iran, liberating a people the left cares nothing about.

On Thursday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski’s former MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews was on the show to discuss the military operations in Iran, as Mika read Matthews' Substack article, “State of War,” which called Trump a ‘monarch’ because of his launch of strikes on Iran. The article also dismissed the veterans commemorated at the State of the Union, and suggested Trump had “passed out a monarch’s gifs.” Matthews' article first took issue with the honorary military medals presented by Trump to certain service members at the State of the Union and then derived into talk on the Iran strike process. Here’s how Mika read it: The State of the Union in which Iran was barely mentioned served, nevertheless, as this war's perfect predictor. He offered himself as this country's king and not a constitutional one. He passed out a monarch's gifts - Medals of Honor, Medals of Freedom, and other awards of the state as if they came from his honors list.  (...) Everything he did on Tuesday night, ceremonially, was a preview of what he did on Saturday. He took our country to war as if he were doing it as a king. Joe Scarborough then asked Matthews his full opinion on the Iran strikes due to his participation in the Jimmy Carter administration, which faced the disaster of the Iran hostage crisis.   During Thursday's Morning Joe, Chris Matthews, along with Joe and Mika, promoted the idea that Trump is a King, citing Iran and "monarch's gifts" at the SOTU. pic.twitter.com/mw6pcPnF0r — Nick (@nspin310) March 5, 2026   Matthews started the conversation with mention of the Texas Senate primaries, asking “who wants to be a senator today” before he headed into a tangent on Congress the Article I of the Constitution.  His tangent then connected back to Trump’s medal-giving, before he insinuated the only person that wanted war was radio host Mark Levin, and seemingly hinted that Trump did it on his request: The president was giving out medals and acting like they were just sitting there to applaud him. They had no role in war making or decisions about war. Don't Republicans think that Congress is Article I the constitution, that they have a role in making war? The only person I know pushing the war was Mark Levin on Friday night before we attacked. He was pushing for a big war. He wanted what he wanted and he got it. But I never heard a big debate in the United States Congress about this war. And I think it's incredible what we've gotten ourselves into. And it really comes back to the role of congress and the Article I of the constitution. I've been over in Vietnam teaching the American Revolution and “We the People.” Well, we the people didn't start this war. Unsurprisingly, Matthews ignored the clear worries of leaks from Congress regarding classified military information. In his close, Matthew defended the Carter administration when it came to Iran, and said Americans used to stand for monarchies as he started give a historical lesson: We put in a monarchy. What is that what America stands for, Monarchies? Yes, that's what we did. So to talk about democratizing. I'm not even sure anybody's talking about that yet. Are we going to democratize Iran after what we did in ‘52, sent them in the other direction? It's a tough one. All Chris Matthews had to do to find people who wanted the U.S. military action was speak to one of Iranian-Americans that have been seen in rallies across America in support of Trump’s actions, let alone the Iranian citizens who have bravely protested in their country, with many being killed in the process. They’re the ones who want to democratize Iran. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s Morning Joe March 5, 2026 7:09:10 AM MIKA BRZEZINSKI: And Chris Matthews, your latest piece on Substack is entitled “State of War.” And in it you write this:  “The State of the Union in which Iran was barely mentioned served, nevertheless, as this war's perfect predictor. He offered himself as this country's king and not a constitutional one. He passed out a monarch's gifts - Medals of Honor, Medals of Freedom, and other awards of the state as if they came from his honors list.  Trump spoke little, if at all, of the constitutional connection between the legislative branch and himself. Instead, he treated Republican senators and members of Congress as a studio audience, Democratic legislators simply as targets for personal abuse. Everything he did on Tuesday night, ceremonially, was a preview of what he did on Saturday. He took our country to war as if he were doing it as a king.” And Joe, questions about predicate and planning certainly emerge because there was nothing mentioned there about immediate threat. JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well and I think the administration would probably say nothing mentioned there because they wanted the element of surprise. And of course, when Israel gave them the intel that Khamenei and the leaders were all meeting together again above ground, they certainly moved things up.  Chris, you're a great person to talk to here for a couple of reasons. First of all, obviously you and many other people have great concerns about how we went to war. But secondly, you have a sense of history about Iran. You were in Jimmy Carter's White House when the Iranians stormed our embassy. When the Iranians, you know, were burning flags and shouting, “death to America”, as they have for years.  When the Iranians in ‘82, you were out of the White House, but you were then a columnist when the Iranians killed 240 Marines in Beirut and through all the other attacks. I'm curious how you're weighing all of this. Obviously, seeing the damage Iran has done to the world since 1979 and balancing that with your concerns about how this war was launched. CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yeah. Well, I think we have a couple of stories today. We've got the war in Iraq - in Iran, which is a real war. Obviously, we just - Mika went over just the amount of activity going on in this war. It's a war, a Department of War, appropriately named apparently right now.  But, you know, I keep thinking about the vote down in Texas and whether it's Paxton or it's Cornyn or it's Talarico: who wants to be a senator today, to what effect? That the United States Senate and the US Congress sat in that chamber of the House the other night on the State of the Union night, and, my God, they had no role. They were like a studio audience with an applause sign on. That's all they did.  The president was giving out medals and acting like they were just sitting there to applaud him. They had no role in war making or decisions about war. Don't Republicans think that Congress is Article I in the constitution, that they have a role in making war? The only person I know pushing the war was Mark Levin on Friday night before we attacked. He was pushing for a big war. He wanted what he wanted and he got it.  But I never heard a big debate in the United States Congress about this war. And I think it's incredible what we've gotten ourselves into. And it really comes back to the role of congress and the Article I of the constitution. I've been over in Vietnam teaching the American Revolution and “We the People.” Well, we the people didn't start this war. Listen to the polling right now about this war. Trump's getting about the same number on the war as he's getting on himself, which is in the 30s. It's not a popular war right now because the American people didn't get into it. They weren't even talked into it. So, it's an extraordinary situation in terms of the Constitution, our constitution. By the way, you asked about how this big fight with Iran began. Well, it didn't begin in ‘79. I was there as a speechwriter to the president. I know how it felt, it was terrible.  But it didn't begin in ‘79, it began in ‘52 when Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA went over there and knocked off their legitimately elected government with Mosaddegh and put in the Shah. We put in a monarchy. What is that what America stands for, Monarchies? Yes, that's what we did. So to talk about democratizing. I'm not even sure anybody's talking about that yet. Are we going to democratize Iran after what we did in ‘52, sent them in the other direction? It's a tough one.