Better in their words…

Where is Senator Lindsay Graham [and a few other people I know], who proudly stated:  “This [$X00 Million] is the best money we’ve ever spent.”  Don’t hold your breath waiting for him [or them] to retract and apologize for the corruption– that was known at the time. WH visit doesn’t exactly go as Mamdani hoped. Trump Always Wins [again].

Source: THE GREATEST SHOW ☙ Sunday, November 23, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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“An anti-Zelensky political coalition is coalescing as his allies are accused of enriching themselves while soldiers die on the battlefield.” The WEF’s dark demon, Klaus Schwab, was disabled, if not professionally destroyed, by relatively mild (but icky) allegations of flirting with female subordinates and lavishing corporate largesse on himself and his family. Nothing illegal. But this morning, the Times ran a brutal story headlined, “Zelensky Under Siege as Corruption Case Shatters Ukraine’s Wartime Unity.”

After last week’s drama, Zelensky’s closest circle of friends and political allies must be feeling like they’ve been shoved into a commercial washing machine set on “soiled.” Unlike Klaus, who was at least allowed a dignity-sparing, slow-motion resignation, Zelensky’s corrupt crew is facing lengthy prison sentences, midnight runs, extradition orders, angry mobs, pitchforks, tar, feathers, swarms of angry hornets, rattlesnakes in their boot, you name it.

Conspicuously absent from the Times’s story was any sympathetic word for Ukraine’s martial law administrator. “A sprawling investigation into a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme has implicated close associates of Mr. Zelensky, jolting the country’s politics back to life and weakening the Ukrainian president at home as pressure on the battlefield intensifies.”

It is already starting to sting. “Polls show that trust in Mr. Zelensky has fallen to close to 50 percent, after soaring to about 90 percent after the invasion,” the Times explained. “With the gloves now off,” it continued, “Mr. Zelensky’s critics are speaking in once-unthinkable terms, including accusing presidential allies of betraying the country.”

It was also once unthinkable —until about ten minutes ago— that the New York Times would ever unironically report negative polling about Ukraine’s Glorious Leader.

“Opponents who had long lain low are coalescing into the first major anti-Zelensky movement since the invasion began in 2022.” Balazs Jarabik, a former EU political adviser in Kyiv, told the Times, “The only way forward for Zelensky is essentially getting rid of everyone” on his wartime leadership team.

It’s a political bloodbath mirroring the bloodbath on the battlefield.

Ukraine’s hapless lawmakers have always done as they were told, because they want to continue existing in this mortal realm. But now, “an anti-Zelensky political coalition is coalescing as his allies are accused of enriching themselves while soldiers die on the battlefield.” The Times primly concluded, “Analysts say the movement coming together around corruption poses serious risks to Mr. Zelensky.”

It’s not just the Times. A new sense of skepticism for the corrupt Kiev regime is infecting all of corporate media— a very bad sign. For example, headline from yesterday’s Washington Post:

🚀 Social media junkies have been watching a sublime show this week. European leaders are loudly denouncing Trump’s plan. Zelensky is delivering brave speeches to Ukrainians vowing to resist unfair pressure to capitulate. Trump is dialing up the public pressure. Yesterday, the Washington Post ran another story headlined, “Trump says Zelensky can agree to peace plan or ‘fight his little heart out.’”

Countless versions of Trump’s alleged 28-point peace plan have been leaked to just as many media platforms. Talking heads chattered nonstop about each point, microscopically analyzing each proposal against alternative versions and excreting opinions faster than norovirus patients.

It is all a show. It is all fake. Fake and gay.

The serious negotiations happening —and that much we know for sure— are happening behind the scenes. Everything loudly delivered to the public —whether by Trump, Zelensky, EU leaders, Congressmen, etc.— is all posturing, propaganda, public negotiating, and preparing the political battlespace for whatever is coming next. In the fog of political war, we lack all awareness of anyone’s real position.

Remember: Zelensky is an actor. That is literally his job. He is acting.

🚀 The Times unintentionally made my point in an article published Friday, headlined, “Move Over, Netflix: Ukraine’s Corruption Investigators Bring the Drama.” I couldn’t have said it any better. “The anti-corruption videos,” the Times explained, “were rolled out on social media almost like a streaming series. They had cliffhangers, explosions, intrigue and a catchy title: Operation Midas.”

“The drama of the NABU videos seemed almost apt,” the Times mused, “for a country run by Mr. Zelensky, who rose to fame as an actor and whose chief of staff Andriy Yermak is a former movie producer.” Astonishingly, and maybe for the first time, the Times reminded readers that, “Zelensky’s biggest acting role was a satire of Ukrainian corruption called ‘Servant of the People.’” Cue irony.

The videos NABU released were polished and had high production values, including ominous background music, memes, cliffhangers, and dramatic cuts like “a montage of power stations, drones, blackouts, and explosions.” It was more like something halfway between a police procedural and a Michael Bay series on Amazon Prime Video.

In the U.S., even when a splashy indictment lands, we always get the same gray Department of Justice backdrop, a monotone prosecutor, and exhibits that look like they were printed at Kinko’s by a bored paralegal. Ukraine, by contrast, trickled out high-definition raids, drone fly-overs, and cash-pyramid glamour shots resembling a trailer for “Narcos: Kyiv.”

The Times practically agreed that the operation smells more like a psyop than a typical corruption prosecution:

The critical part of the puzzle media still refuses to admit, but starting now to hint at, is that Ukraine is slowly and inexorably losing a grinding war of attrition. “ Ukraine’s greatest problems,” CNN admitted in a story published this morning, “are more homemade, and couldn’t be fixed by any number of US tanks or missiles. Its military has a manpower crisis. Tens of thousands of soldiers went AWOL in the first seven months of this year alone.”

(Note: whenever a soldier is declared dead, Ukraine must pay the surviving family a large sum. But if they declare a soldier AWOL, it doesn’t count in the death statistics, and Kiev also saves a lot of money. Since they are as honest as the Ukrainian mud is deep, this perverse incentive probably has nothing to do with the sky-high AWOL figures. Just saying.)

🚀 Much excitement attended Russian President Putin’s dramatic meeting with President Trump in Alaska, with EU leaders experiencing excruciating FOMO and plaguing President Trump to distraction. And then … nothing. So it’s dicey to make any predictions about the Proxy War.

But this time it feels different. It is different. The public pressure on Zelensky —including from his stalwart allies in corporate media— is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. So we might rationally expect a different outcome.

There’s a cautionary tale here, too.

I often advise clients not to take unreasonable positions in negotiations. When the other party decides that there is no point in further good-faith dickering, they don’t just give up and go away. Instead, they try to find another way. They try to work around you. And the other way they come up with might just be something you really hate.

Zelensky (encouraged, no doubt, by his Western European buddies) took an unreasonably stubborn and unrealistic position in his negotiations with President Trump. It looks like Trump gave up, and decided to find another way to isolate Zelensky and make him accept a deal. FAFO.

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How about a quick lightning round of good news? There’s a lot of great stuff in the stack I haven’t been able to cover thanks to the week’s bonkers news cycle. Let’s catch up.

🔥 Yesterday, Axios reported a surprising story headlined, “Inside Trump and Mamdani’s surprising bond of convenience.” The two men enjoyed a surprisingly chummy Oval Office meeting on Friday, disappointing many of Trump’s supporters and confounding everyone else.

The lack of fireworks even annoyed Michelle. “I don’t understand why he’s didn’t throw that little communist across the Potomac,” she fumed (or words to that effect). Other conservatives probably feel similarly. “Many Republicans bristled at Trump sidling up to Mamdani, a democratic socialist,” Axios allowed.

The media, in particular, expected something … well … more dramatic from the meeting. And Trump knew it. During the meeting, the President told reporters, “For some reason, the press has found this to be a very interesting meeting. The biggest people in the world, they come here from other countries, nobody cares, but they did care about this meeting.”

My read is: Trump played the media like a fiddle. And he played Mamdani, too. The diminutive socialist had probably hoped for some ugly drama, drama covered in delighted detail by international media, that he could use to fuel his fundraising, and to show his supporters how bravely the little communist stood up to the world’s most powerful man.

But Trump surprised everyone by being cordial and polite. No drama. No story. No nothing. Sorry, Mamdani. Better luck next time.

📉 The conservative Center for Immigration Studies ran a great story this week headlined, “Foreign-Born Population Continues to Decline.” The CFIS reviewed the most recent survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and concluded that, “Based on the data released so far, the decline in the total foreign-born population is likely around -2.3 million between January and September of this year.”

Progressive critics complained that the BLS survey data was incomplete or missing context or something. But even liberal reporting seems to support the BLS figures. Ten days ago, NPR ran an unintentionally terrific story headlined, “‘We need to get out of here’: Trump’s immigration crackdown is quietly reshaping where immigrants live in America.” Run for it!

NPR’s article began with a personal interest anecdote about “E”, an anonymous Guatemalan illegal who lived in Tampa with her husband and teenage daughter (also border jumpers). They hastily moved to Michigan. But “she says she’d like to go back to Guatemala as soon as possible,” NPR reported coldly.

The family’s sudden move to a blue state was provoked because “under the leadership of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has embarked on one of the strictest immigration crackdowns in the nation,” NPR explained. For now, “the family has decided to leave Florida for a small town in Michigan,” where immigration enforcement is nonexistent.

“The Department of Homeland Security,” NPR added without argument, “claims 1.6 million immigrants have left the country voluntarily, what the administration calls self-deportation.” (I guess NPR can’t bring itself to use the phrase without attributing it to “the administration.”)

DHS’s figure was widely reported. ABC, late October:

Meanwhile, confounding critics, jobs continued to grow faster than experts can predict. On Thursday, CNBC ran a story headlined, “September report shows U.S. added +119,000 jobs, more than expected; unemployment rate at 4.4%.” Even better, wages are rising. “ Average hourly earnings increased +0.2% for the month and +3.8% from a year ago,” the article noted.

Progressive economists doubt the self-deportation figures because, they argue, we should see the large numbers of departing illegals vanishing from the job figures. What they aren’t willing to consider, though, is that job growth is so strong it swallowed up all the illegals who are no longer on the rolls.

The rising wages —good news on its own— support DHS’s self-deportation figures. Wages increase when labor demand increases. Demand increases when employers compete for a smaller number of workers. So. It’s working.

⚖️ On Friday, CNN ran a terrific Supreme Court story, headlined, “Supreme Court pauses lower court order that blocked Texas’ new congressional maps.” This news reversed a week of exultant media stories about how the Texas redistricting effort had been stymied by two 5th Circuit judges. “The new Texas map would have likely flipped five Democratic-held House seats to Republican next year,” CNN explained.

Welp. The maps are back. Justice Alito, who entered the temporary stay restoring Texas’ new maps, was brutal:

The 5th Circuit’s two-judge majority failed to hold Plaintiffs to their demanding burden. It disregarded that “when partisanship and race correlate, it naturally follows that a map that has been gerrymandered to achieve a partisan end can look very similar to a racially gerrymandered map.”

It failed to follow the strong presumption of legislative good faith, which directs courts to “draw the inference that cuts in the legislature’s favor when confronted with evidence that could plausibly support multiple conclusions.” It rejected the State Defendants’ powerful direct evidence of good faith: the unrebutted testimony of the mapdrawer, who “went district by district,” “sometimes line by line,” giving “political or practical —i.e., non-racial rationales— for his decisions at every step.”

And the majority excused Plaintiffs’ failure to provide an alternative map, a mistake that this Court has unequivocally held “would be clear error.”

The case continues, but in the meantime, Texas can continue to use the new maps for now. And the closer we get to the primaries, the less likely SCOTUS will be to change anything, because it would create chaos. Everyone expects the new maps to stick.

Thank Heavens for SCOTUS.

🔥 Yesterday, Reuters reported a story headlined, “Trump says he is ending temporary deportation protections for Somalis in Minnesota.” The TPS program for Somalis was launched by President George H.W. Bush in September, 1991. It isn’t working out well.

During the first six months of 2025, Minnesota paid out $61 million in taxpayer money for so-called “housing claims.” In September, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota announced criminal indictments against eight people, six of whom were Somali refugees.

“According to multiple law-enforcement sources,” Chris Rufo recently wrote, “Minnesota’s Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of ‘hawalas,’ informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of Al-Shabaab,” a Somalian terrorist group.

Minnesota quietly announced it will wind down the ‘housing program.’

This story is another example of what I described yesterday: citizen-discovered scandals, fueled by digital research and online virality, influencing government policy in real-time. It’s a new era.

🔥 ABC ran an Epstein story yesterday headlined, “DOJ again seeks release of Epstein grand jury material in Florida.” In what I called a brilliant move, in early summer, the DOJ had asked the Florida court to unseal the sealed Epstein records from his first conviction. The Obama-appointed judge saw the same thing I did and denied the request, where it sat until Congress passed the discharge petition.

Within hours of Trump signing the discharge petition into law this week, the DOJ returned to Florida and asked again, citing the new law as binding authority requiring the records’ release. DOJ also filed a similar motion in New York Court, in Epstein’s 2019 case, which had also been stymied by a different Obama judge.

It is starting to look like, once the Obama judges unreasonably frustrated the DOJ’s early Summer attempt to release Epstein records, the Trump team decided to take a different tack. Now, DOJ is back, bound by a bipartisan Congressional law and a 30-day deadline. If the judges slow-walk the new requests or worse, double down, the DOJ can blame the liberal judges for any delays. Win-win. (Or, TAW-TAW.)

Was this the plan all along?

Have a blessed Sunday! Thank you once again for your continuing loyal support, which is more important than ever. Meet back here again tomorrow, to crush more fake media narratives and enjoy an all-new, Thanksgiving-week roundup.

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