Tuesday’s Final Word

Thinking about all the tabs that we read, and coming apart at the seams …

We all know that Alan Dershowitz would still be a Democrat if he wasn’t persona non grata at the Martha’s Vineyard Farmer’s Market.https://t.co/SAKYAelb6I

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) April 21, 2026

Ed: I wrote about this earlier, and had a more positive take. Christopher may be correct, but I think this is more principled than he credits, too. He’s persona non grata among his previous progressive friends because he stuck to his con-law principles and to his support for Israel. They dumped him for defending Trump as a client. Notably, they stuck with him during and after the Claus von Bulow trials. At any rate, if Dershowitz was interested in performative stunts, he’d have repudiated Trump and embraced the Bernie Bro anti-Semites. 

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Noah Rothman at NRO: Was the senator cheering on the ships that supposedly evaded the American blockade? Was he going for sarcasm, mourning the U.S. Navy’s inefficacy with a melancholy hint of self-satisfaction over having his skepticism of this war confirmed by events?

As political observers wrestled over these competing interpretations of Murphy’s remark, we at least learned that the senator was dead wrong about the facts …

So, sardonic or not, Murphy’s comments were not tethered to reality. Rather, he broadcast a propagandistic account of events that had not occurred — propaganda that advantages an American enemy in wartime. Moreover, had the senator or his communications team done their homework, they would have known they were boosting the signal on a claim retold by an unreliable narrator.

Ed: I suspect the reason why Murphy and his team didn’t “do their homework” is (a) they’re idiots, (b) they desperately wanted it to be true, (c) leapt on it for cheap political points, or (d) all of the above. I’m leaning toward (d). YMMV.

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Except that you were amplifying factually inaccurate Iranian propaganda with your tin-eared “sarcasm”, Chris. The sources you choose to lend credence to say a lot about who you are and where your allegiances liehttps://t.co/iazRB77Fty

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) April 21, 2026

Ed: Yep, it’s (d). Or could there be another reason? Jim Geraghty has a theory … 

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Jim Geraghty at NRO: Murphy wants the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination the way Gollum wanted its “precious,” even if he often ranks last or close to last in early polls.

Murphy isn’t yet a household name, and he’s not well known for any accomplishments as a senator, so the best path to the nomination he can discern is to be the most outspoken, most incendiary, most boundary-breaking Democrat in the field. …

The irony is that President Trump has, on and off, pursued the approach to Iran that Murphy said he preferred.

Ed: Well, if the nation ever feels the need for a bedwetting sap that gets suckered by third-world propagandists into defeatism, Joe Biden is still technically eligible for another term. 

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BREAKING: Senior UAE official Reem Al Hashimy rips into Iran.

“We’re everything that they’re not.

We used our oil wealth to build a powerhouse. They used theirs for nuclear programs, missiles, proxies.

We became a global player, they’re a pariah state.” pic.twitter.com/RLeBjpJYIQ

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 21, 2026

Ed: Point well taken, but these are two very different forms of Muslim emirates. The UAE focuses on commercial success within the framework of its religion, the application of which is relatively strict outside of the specific areas in which they promote Western tourism and business connections. The mullahs of Iran want a global conflagration to immanentize their Twelfther eschaton, so to speak. And they nearly succeeded at it, too.

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David Harsanyi at WashEx: The senator now contends that his response was merely sarcasm and that “Trump’s bungled mismanagement of this war” isn’t “awesome.”

I’m skeptical because I’m aware of Murphy’s history. Even if we accept the best framing of his reaction, the senator is shilling for the Iranian regime. The post in question relies on an unverified claim offered by Iranian propagandist Ali Vaez. Maybe 26 Iranian ghost ships have slipped by the U.S. blockade, or maybe not. We’ll find out. But Murphy could not have known whether that was true when he spread the claim. 

And when I contend that Vaez is a regime-booster, I don’t mean that he holds exotic views about terrorist regimes. I mean that Vaez is literally a conspirator. 

“As an Iranian, based on my national and patriotic duty,” Vaez wrote to the Islamic regime’s foreign minister in 2014, “I have not hesitated to help you in any way; from proposing to Your Excellency a public campaign against the notion of [nuclear] breakout, to assisting your team in preparing reports on practical needs of Iran.” 

Ed: And Murphy fell for it, which again is a very good argument for (d). The UAE certainly knows better. 

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Can you give me one “Free Palestine” advocate, one college campus quad, one musical icon, anyone in hollywood not named @PatriciaHeaton, A Democrat beside @JohnFetterman – advocating for these Muslim women? Hello @springsteen? Hello @U2? Hello sanity? https://t.co/ZmqpCwatwR

— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) April 21, 2026

Ed: How about Chris Murphy? Maybe he can ask his trusted source Ali Vaez. Or maybe Murphy thinks this is “awesome,” too. 

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Matti Friedman in The Free Press: As a longtime denizen of bookstores in Western countries, I knew that almost any shop would carry a few titles about the evils of Zionism and Israel, a venerable genre on the Marxist left. But this time I saw a change: The Gaza war had inspired a proliferation of these titles so intense that they now filled much of a shelf. I noticed the same phenomenon in other bookstores in other cities, where there were suddenly more “Gaza” and “Palestine” books, it seemed, than books about the rest of the entire Arab world combined. Humanity now inhabited a new age, according to one title, The World After Gaza. According to another, The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth. There was Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, and Palestine and Feminist Liberation, and many more examples in the same vein, with more soon to be published. A new literary genre had been born.

The Gaza war has been fought a two-hour drive from my Jerusalem home by people I know, and has claimed the lives of several of them. For me, reading the back covers of these books left the impression of a genre related to the actual territory of Gaza as the Dune novels are related to the actual NASA space program. At the same time, it wasn’t fringe work. Among the practitioners were authors who have recently won a National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and additional accolades.

After reading more in subsequent months, I came to think of the genre as “Gazology.” By this term I don’t mean the study of the real territory of Gaza, or of the terrible human tragedy caused by the Hamas offensive of October 7 and by the Israeli response in the war that followed—vast tracts of Gaza destroyed, tens of thousands of civilians killed along with tens of thousands of combatants, and aftershocks across the Middle East. Gazology is not reportage, and most of its practitioners are not in or even near Gaza or Israel. This is a Western literary genre with its own rules, tropes, and goals.

Ed: It’s fanfic for anti-Semitic terrorism. Be sure to read it all, even though it’s depressing as hell, because Friedman will probably be proven correct. 

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This lady:

– spent 4 years targeting providers of free and cheap services (e.g., Amazon Prime)
– spent 4 years dutifully working for Biden on whose watch inflation almost hit 10%, but who argued it was “transitory”
– is getting shouts out from Warren, who overran Biden’s admin… pic.twitter.com/rI5SHaB7hT

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) April 21, 2026

… with her handpicked minions (i.e., Warren was totally responsible for all this).

So, uh, affordability my ass! 2028 Dems should run away from Khan and Warren as fast as their legs can carry them…

Ed: No one connected to the Biden Regency should get off the hook from questions about Biden’s dementia and the cover-up of it. That includes Khan. And Warren, for that matter. 

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Campus Reform: A Catholic university in California has selected Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi as its 2026 commencement speaker despite past disciplinary action taken against the lawmaker by Catholic leadership over her abortion stance.

Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont announced that Pelosi will deliver the keynote address at its May 2 commencement ceremony, according to a university NDNU commencement announcement press release.

The university stated that it is “deeply honored” to host Pelosi and highlighted her decades of public service in Congress. The announcement confirmed that Pelosi will address graduates during the May 2 ceremony.

Ed: There has been a decades-long push to secularize Catholic education at all levels. Some schools resist it better than others. It’s insane that we have Catholic institutions celebrating politicians who worked explicitly on behalf of abortionists. 

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Among Catholic priests who were ordained in the late 1960s:

68% describe their theology as progressive.
16% said it was conservative.

Among priests ordained in the last few years:

2% describe their theology as progressive.
84% said it was conservative. pic.twitter.com/t4LzLEYdKR

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) April 21, 2026

Ed: Literally everyone I know in the Catholic community recognizes this, especially the older priests. Young people want transcendence, not social clubs, and eternal life rather than cocktail parties. 

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Free Beacon: A former paid scribe for an Iranian state-affiliated newspaper now works for a U.S. media watchdog group known for producing a “media bias” chart that rates liberal outlets as more reliable than conservative ones.

Meisam Zamanabadi, an analyst with Ad Fontes Media, spent a large part of his career as an editor at Iranian state-run media outlet Hamshahri, a Tehran-run newspaper controlled at the time by then-mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—now speaker of the Iranian parliament and chief regime negotiator.

Ad Fontes, which the influential Poynter Institute has praised as fair and “easy to understand,” is cited by institutions like Cornell University as a good option for news consumers to evaluate media bias.

Ed: I bet Chris Murphy subscribes to Ad Fontes. This is precisely why the entire ‘fact check’ and ‘media watchdog’ industry is worthless. It’s run by people with axes to grind, and the bastions of Academia accredit them for their narrative maintenance rather than their intellectual honesty. 

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Triggered Democrats FREAK OUT when I tell them these IRAN quotes were said by Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, & Joe Biden, and NOT Donald Trump 🤣 pic.twitter.com/iXePcYcAD9

— Kaitlin Bennett (@KaitMarieox) April 21, 2026

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