Monday’s Final Word

But I tell myself that I was doin’ all right, there’s nothin’ left to do at night but go crazy on tabs …

President Trump says Iran has made a “significant proposal” but it’s “not good enough,” as a diplomatic effort is underway to avoid a major escalation in war.

“They’re negotiating now and they have made a very significant step.” https://t.co/mRaIImn8rQ pic.twitter.com/9G1nuFaAYG

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 6, 2026

Ed: I wonder how “significant” this proposal actually was, and who’s doing the negotiating. I assume that we’re still engaging with Ghalibaf and not Pezeshkian, who’s unable to deliver on any agreement anyway, but I don’t think Ghalibaf would be more “rational,” as Trump put it in the same presser this morning.

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WSJ: Iran rejected a proposal from the U.S. and regional mediators to end hostilities for 45 days in exchange for opening the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump said he had seen Tehran’s counterproposal and it’s “not good enough” for a cease-fire, though he called it “a significant step.” Trump is set to hold a press conference Monday at 1 p.m. ET, and earlier said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that Iran “won’t have any power plants and they won’t have any bridges standing” if a deal to reopen the strait isn’t reached by Tuesday evening.

Israel said it had struck Iran’s largest petrochemical site and killed the spy chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the commander of a unit officials said was in charge of organizing attacks against Israelis and Americans worldwide.

Ed: Don’t take this rejection too seriously – yet. The Iranian regime routinely holds out until the eleventh hour on showdowns like this. They won’t make their best offer until tomorrow, when the deadline approaches. Trump made clear in the presser that he’s not going to take their offer as it stands now either, and regardless of whether the current regime leaders admit it, Trump and Netanyahu hold all the cards now. The deadline isn’t anything other than an ultimatum, and they know it. 

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Trump: “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. They are lunatics, and you can’t put nuclear weapons in the hands of a lunatic.” pic.twitter.com/zxkPzFq4ma

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) April 6, 2026

Ed: American presidents have made this policy clear for more than twenty years. Trump is the first to take action to enforce it. Now that he has, though, he’d better make sure that he succeeds in that enforcement. 

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Reuters: North Korea appears to be distancing itself from longtime partner Iran and carefully managing its public messaging to preserve the possibility of a new relationship with the U.S. ‌after the Iran war, South Korean lawmakers said on Monday, citing the spy agency.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said North Korea had not sent weapons or supplies so far to Iran since the conflict started on February 28, and did not issue public condolences upon the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed ⁠in air strikes, said lawmaker Park Sun-won who attended a closed-door briefing held by the NIS.

Pyongyang also sent no congratulatory message when Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was selected as the new supreme leader, Park said, citing the NIS.

While China and Russia had frequently issued statements on the conflict, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry had only issued two toned-down statements so far, consistent, the NIS said, with North Korea’s recent tendency to avoid direct criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Ed: The Protection Racket Media, Democrats, and western Europe have all pitched a fit at the use of real power to end the threat to Western interests. Everyone else is taking the proper lesson from it. Don’t be surprised if Kim seeks another set of meetings with his “Uncle Donald” when this is over. 

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Rubio: If Europe won’t allow us to use the bases we man and fund for their defense when we need them we ought to close them down and remove our troops from Europe. If they get attacked by Russia we can discuss whether or not we have the time to help. pic.twitter.com/qTk3v5DNYX

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 6, 2026

Ed: It’s one thing for our NATO allies to decline to participate in Operation Epic Fury. That’s disappointing but not an oppositional position. Refusing to allow us transit through their airspace and access to the bases we mainly fund and operate is a hostile position, and at some point, that’s enough to re-evaluate these relationships – and investments.

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WSJ: The U.S. and Israel have a set of targets lined up in Iran designed to cripple the country’s economy and ensure the regime’s recovery from this war is long and painful.

Israel is awaiting authorization from Washington this week to begin striking Iran’s energy facilities, an Israeli official said, potentially undermining output in one of the world’s major oil-and-gas producers. In a Wall Street Journal interview, President Trump said Sunday the U.S. was prepared to hit all of Iran’s bridges and power plants, creating enough damage that it would “take 20 years to rebuild, if they’re lucky, if they have a country.” …

Iran for now appears prepared to risk further economic pain as long as it can continue to inflict pain on its enemies, said Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran program at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

“They are ready to take the risk,” Zimmt said.

Even if Iran gives up control of the Strait of Hormuz, nothing will be able to get out of the Gulf if petrochemical and other energy facilities are seriously damaged, said Robin Mills, chief executive of Qamar Energy, a Dubai-based consulting firm.

Ed: If the US and Israel destroy their military-industrial complex including energy production, this regime or its successor will have to generate a lot of revenue to rebuild. They won’t be able to do that while still blocking the Strait, not in the long run, and they know it. This war has already set them back a decade or more at this point, and the next phase of the war may set them back closer to 60 years or more. The mullahs have been coasting on pre-revolutionary Western investment in infrastructure since Khomeini first arrived in Tehran. 

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Iran:

“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” pic.twitter.com/xj0n6Xc0si

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) April 6, 2026

Ed: Supposedly, the Iranian regime is telling their propagandists that they can keep the lights on. We’ll see whether that’s just bravado or delusional thinking in the next 24 hours, unless they throw in the towel and meet Trump’s terms.

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Ton Knighton at Tilting At Windmills: They should be defunded because they suck at their jobs, and the American taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for not just crappy journalism, but a profound bias that thinks everyone who isn’t them is an uncultured swine. …

Now, understand that I have no issue with them looking for the terrorist’s buddies in Lebanon. Finding out who this guy was and what made him tick—did he come here just to be a terrorist, or if he was radicalized here—is newsworthy.

But how do you cover a terrorist attack at an American synagogue without airing an interview with any of the survivors at all? That’s basic journalism. That’s the bare minimum that should be done.

NPR didn’t do that, and even their own public editor has a problem with it, which is great, but where was this outrage when it happened? That was weeks ago. It should have been addressed right then and there, and it wasn’t.

Ed: That’s not why NPR and the Center for Public Broadcasting should be defunded, although it IS a good reason to ignore them. The real reason to defund them is because we shouldn’t have government-funded media that competes with private media in open markets. Full stop. 

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The biggest problem the Democrats have is their inability to love America when they are not in charge of it. https://t.co/nxiNtZG9Bh

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) April 6, 2026

Ed: That’s good news for the GOP in this midterm environment, but there’s plenty of negative polling out there to counter it. For instance, Democrats are up six points in the RCP aggregate average on the generic ballot question. That’s the widest gap yet in this cycle. Stay frosty. 

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Ed: My understanding of the issue at hand wasn’t the conviction per se but the DoJ’s efforts to rescind them. I mainly objected to the prosecutions of Bannon and Navarro because contempt had rarely if ever been pursued in these cases by the DoJ. These cases were clearly political payback by the Bidenistas. In theory, though, congressional subpoenas are legitimate and enforceable. The Bannon/Navarro precedents did force the Clintons to show up, it should be noted. 

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Update: Jennifer Koonings is no longer employed with Inspire Mental Health Services.

Furthermore, Inspire has stated – “We do not tolerate this kind of treatment of any human beings” and “we were shocked by this behavior”.

Thank you Inspire Mental Health Services! https://t.co/X4ZFFHaEKS

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 6, 2026

Ed: I find it amazing that October 7 enabled nutcases like this rather than force them to hide their hatred. For that, we can blame the Left’s embrace of Hamas and anti-Semitism, part of their philosophical cleaving to nihilism and opposition to Western values. 

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Coleman Hughes at The Free Press: Ostensibly, Chain of Ideas takes aim at the “Great Replacement Theory” (GRT from here on out)—the far-right conspiracy theory that powerful (and often Jewish) elites are engineering mass immigration in order to replace white majorities with left-wing voters of color. This “theory,” if it even merits the word, can be traced back to a 2011 book by the French novelist Renaud Camus called Le Grand Remplacement; his way of framing mass migration—as a “replacement” of one people by another, or even “genocide by substitution”—has grown in popularity on the political right in the years since.

If Kendi’s new book were a send-up of the morons who chanted “Jews Will Not Replace Us” at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, then I’d be all for it. It doesn’t take long, however, to realize that this is not a book about GRT at all. It is instead a book that takes aim at immigration restrictionists in general—collapsing the distinction between normal conservatives and deranged conspiracy theorists. For Kendi, the list of politicians who subscribe to GRT—which is, Kendi writes, “a neo-Nazi theory”—includes former president Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, and of course, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “Any politician or theorist who articulates these renovated ideas, whatever their expressed ideology or party, should be described as neo-Nazi,” writes Kendi, for the avoidance of doubt. Yes, the leader of the Jewish state is, somehow, a Nazi.

But in attempting to explain how GRT has taken over the entire globe, Kendi ends up explaining nothing at all. Indeed, what Kendi calls “GRT” is actually just run-of-the-mill nativism—that is, the instinct to prioritize the interests of those born in a place over the interests of recent arrivals. It is nativism, not GRT, that unites, say, the president of South Korea and the prime minister of India—and indeed many politicians, given it is one of the most potent and universal forces in politics.

Given that nativism is a part of human nature, a thoughtful writer might tell us how to allow for its healthy expression while fighting its toxic excesses. Instead, Kendi condemns it wholesale—as if we can scold the parts of human nature we don’t like out of existence. 

Ed: As Hughes notes, Kendi has mainly vanished from the political/cultural environment after the collapse of his Boston University center, which spent $50 million on “anti-racism.”  It appears that he’s also lost his status as the voice of his generation in the meantime, and the reception around this new book suggests that the elites belatedly realized that Kendi is an intellectually bankrupt demagogue rather than the deep thinker they promoted him to be. 

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Sounds fishy/illegal. Will review! https://t.co/HDT4FJdGwK

— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) April 6, 2026

Ed: Mamdani isn’t keeping up on the developments around DEI. 

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Boy did I ever call this operation. Oh man. Now we get the drooling roll out concerning Luigi’s startling eloquence and thoughtfulness and soon the laundering of Luigi into an imprisoned deep thinker and writer.

Which means we’re getting a book.

Man is this transparent. https://t.co/LsaQG3CBnM

— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) April 6, 2026

Ed: The Left is a culture of death. It’s not a mystery why they make heroes out of backshooting, murdering cowards. 

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“Today” host Savannah Guthrie opened up about grief in a heartfelt message on Easter as the search for her 84-year-old mother Nancy continues.

“I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain, and yes,… pic.twitter.com/q1VQlKkrSU

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 6, 2026

Ed: Keep praying for the Guthries and their family and friends. As painful as this is, it’s a stirring testimony to faith in the Lord. 

Note: I am taking a couple of days off, but I will keep posting Final Words in the meantime.

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