Thursday’s Final Word

Thursday’s tabs have far to go …

ABBY PHILLIP: “Why was this not doable under President Biden?”

ABBY PHILLIP: “By saying that it’s sort of an acknowledgment Trump has changed that dynamic.”

Abby Phillip is surprisingly defending President Trump’s peace through strength foreign policy on CNN tonight. pic.twitter.com/YZcJBtR0AA

— Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) October 9, 2025

Ed: Biden had no credibility when it came to red lines. He — or the politburo running that administration — ran interference for Hamas and made it clear that they wanted to cozy up to the Iranian mullahs. Trump re-established American credibility on red lines and the defense of American interests. Without that, no deal would ever have been possible that didn’t amount to a surrender of Israel. And even this deal may not succeed, but at least Hamas figured out that the next step was bunker busters in Gaza City. 

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CNN: At multiple junctures, Trump has plowed ahead with his sweeping 20-point framework, bypassing reservations from both sides of the negotiations about some of its details.

Last month, after Israel made several revisions to text of the plan, some Arab leaders balked and asked the proposal not be made public, people familiar with the situation said. The White House released it anyway, and the Arab leaders got on board.

And when Hamas offered a response that stopped well short of fully endorsing each of the plan’s 20 points, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was wary of casting the reply as a victory. Trump viewed it differently, and told Netanyahu he was being negative, a person familiar with the call said. Within hours of receiving word from Hamas, he deemed the group “ready for a lasting PEACE” and ordered Israel halt its bombardment.

In each instance, Trump brushed aside concerns he believed could derail progress toward ending a war he’s grown tired of dealing with. By moving swiftly forward — even amid his allies’ misgivings — Trump hoped to generate the type of momentum that had mostly eluded him since he entered office eight months ago.

Ed: That’s part of the explanation. The other part of this, related to my comment above, is that Trump made clear that he had no intention of allowing Iran to execute its plan for regional hegemony. That matters to the Sunni states in the region; Biden’s desperation to revive the useless JCPOA with Tehran left the US with much less leverage, including with Israel. Netanyahu listened to Trump because he knew Trump had Israel’s back when it counted, and the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June proved it. 

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You, @Keir_Starmer , are completely inconsequential to anything happening on the world stage. You’ve proven yourself to be an impotent little man who has sold his country out to Islamic fundamentalists. Sit down. https://t.co/GMQ2mdR1qE

— Patricia Heaton (@PatriciaHeaton) October 9, 2025

Ed: Well said by Ms. Heaton. If it hadn’t been for Trump, this idiot and Emmanuel Macron would have incentivized this war to go on forever. Let’s hope neither have much influence on post-war Gaza. 

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Washington Examiner: Several high-profile antifa leaders have fled the country or are actively making plans to abscond overseas.

News of their escape comes after President Donald Trump designated antifa as a domestic terrorist threat and directed federal authorities to dismantle terrorism networks operating within the United States. …

Independent reporter Christian Peterson recently found the leaders of Rose City Antifa, the most notorious American antifa cell, holed up in Europe.

Caroline Victorin (née Gauld), one of the founding members of the Portland-based antifa faction, was discovered this week hiding with her husband, Johan Victorin, a Swedish-born activist and another Rose City Antifa architect, in the coastal town of Varberg, Sweden.

Ed: And we won’t miss them a bit. However, this does make Trump’s case that Antifa is actually a foreign terror organization much easier to establish, especially with “Dr. Antifa” still organizing and teaching at Rutgers remotely from Spain. That will make their cells in the US more vulnerable to charges. Thanks!!

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🚨 MUST-SEE: @BrandiKruse testimony at the Antifa Roundtable was straight fire 🔥

She admits to past Trump Derangement Syndrome, rips MSM, and calls out Antifa as terrorists. Watch every second! pic.twitter.com/Vzz7qS98p5

— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) October 8, 2025

Ed: Via the Daily Wire. This is a fun speech from Kruse, but an important one as well.  

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The Hollywood Reporter: In a blog post titled “Second Chances on YouTube,” the company outlined the program, which will apply to certain creators who had their accounts terminated. The platform’s community guidelines and terms of service will still apply.

“We know many terminated creators deserve a second chance – YouTube has evolved and changed over the past 20 years, and we’ve had our share of second chances to get things right with our community too,” the company wrote. “Our goal is to roll this out to creators who are eligible to apply over the coming months, and we appreciate the patience as we ramp up, carefully review requests, and learn as we go. Not every type of channel termination will be eligible.”

Notably, creators who take advantage of the program will not get their content or subscribers back, with the platform framing it as a “fresh start.” Creators will be able to reupload old content, provided it does not violate the platform’s community guidelines.

Ed: That’s nice, I guess, but most of these creators either lost their livelihoods or rebuilt on other platforms over the last five years of government-directed viewpoint censorship. Even for those who might benefit from this program, uploading years-old content does not make these creators whole, since the content is out of date and almost certainly useless except as an archive. The Biden Big Brother Censorship Regime and its partners — such as Google — did irreparable damage to people’s fortunes, and to the principles of dissent and free debate. 

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It is nothing short of miraculous the Trump administration is getting the Israeli hostages returned – and there is absolutely no chance in hell a President Kamala would have made it happen, or even attempted to make it happen.

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) October 9, 2025

Ed: There are a lot of things that a President Kamala couldn’t accomplish, such as securing the border, deporting illegals, taking out Iran’s nuclear sites, and much more. However, the problem is more basic: a President Kamala couldn’t have ‘presidented’ at all. The Biden Politburo would still be running the White House, as it did in the Biden years, as an extension of the Obama presidency. That’s why Democrat elites rushed to install Kamala rather than opt for an open convention that would have ended the Obama grip on power. And if you think that’s the actual threat to democracy, someone agrees with you … 

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Good to see him put aside political differences and thank Trump for this. Oh wait. https://t.co/l7nGdvoTai

— Chef Andrew Gruel (@ChefGruel) October 9, 2025

Ed: Quelle surprise.

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Daily Caller: SiriusXM’s Stephen A. Smith on “Straight Shooter” Wednesday told Democrats to stop accusing their opposition of being “a threat to democracy,” calling the claim hypocritical. …

“See, when I talked about voting for Kamala Harris, I wasn’t excited about her. And as far as I’m concerned, she didn’t earn it because she didn’t go through a primary. And the Democrats talking about ‘a threat to democracy’ — shut the hell up,” Smith said. “I don’t want to hear that because you didn’t care about that when you circumvented the democratic process to make sure that the vice president, the former vice president, would be able to bypass a Democratic primary and go straight to the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States.”

“You could have got Joe Biden out earlier, but you didn’t do it because you wanted her there because it was her turn. In 2016, when Hillary had competition, Hillary Rodham Clinton — oh, it was her turn,” he continued. “When Biden was getting smoked in the primaries before [Democratic South Carolina] Representative Clyburn came to save the day, it was his turn. That’s my problem with the Democrats.”

Ed: Well put. The whole “threat to democracy” line is not just absurd, it’s also a non-starter. Democrats screeched that line for two years, and all it did was get Trump elected with the first GOP popular-vote win in 20 years, not to mention a solid Electoral College victory. You’d think they would workshop a new approach, but … 

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Stop begging for the validation of a bunch of left-wingers on the Nobel committee.

It’s like thirsting for the approval of The New York Times.

They are irrelevant. Treat them as such.

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) October 9, 2025

Ed: I get where Bonchie’s headed with this, but I think this is a useful test that exposes the corrupt nature of the Nobel Committee. Trump has now stopped eight conflicts in nine months, which is eight more than Obama stopped before winning the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year as president. People aren’t hyping up Trump as much as they are daring Nobel to skip over Trump — and making the case about their corruption obvious. 

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Times of Israel: Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator over the ceasefire announced today, makes his first speech since the agreement was reached, confirming its terms and saying that the terror group received US guarantees that the war would end.

“We acted responsibly in relation to [US President Donald] Trump’s plan,” he says. “Today we announce an agreement to end the war, [see Israel] withdraw from the Strip and carry out a prisoner exchange.”

He says, “We received guarantees from the mediators and the Americans that the war has ended indefinitely.”

The later stages of the agreement, which call for Hamas to disarm and for Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza, have yet to be negotiated. But Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also said earlier today that Israel is not preparing to renew the war.

Ed: We’ll see. This is all contingent on Hamas abiding by and complying with all of the terms of Trump’s plan, including disarmament and relinquishing control of Gaza to a pan-Arab interim government. 

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Hi @MarkRuffalo & #Artists4Ceasefire

Why are you not celebrating the Ceasefire that you have been demanding since Oct 7th 2023? Could it be your Ceasefire narrative was as sinister as your Free Palestine/Genocide lie?

You are simply a terrorist simp, as is your Idiocracy. https://t.co/RsPBqfSTjt

— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) October 9, 2025

Ed: The Hollywood/entertainment elite didn’t want a ceasefire. They wanted the annihilation of Israel. “Ceasefire” was just their euphemism for it. 

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Some news! https://t.co/uefVRjpvn8

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) October 9, 2025

Ed: Congrats to Megyn! Success is the best revenge. 

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Ed: Please forgive me, but I just could NOT resist adding this today. Thanks to Texas Courtney for this one. And in case I’ve never made this clear, feel free to consider Final Word posts to be open threads. Elegy does a great job of teeing up conversations.

pic.twitter.com/Mkeq0yyEkP

— G (@stevensongs) October 8, 2025

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