Israel Can’t Believe Trump’s Total “Capitulation” in Iran Deal

Israel is reportedly in a state of shock over President Trump’s recently signed memorandum of understanding with Iran, which allows Iran to retain their ballistic missile arsenal, lifts sanctions, and admonishes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by calling for the termination of all military operations in Lebanon.

“It’s a bad agreement in which the Americans are paying with cash, and got, at the maximum, a letter of intent,” former Netanyahu adviser Yaakov Amidror told The New York Times. The Times of Israel’s editor, David Horowitz, called it a “catastrophic capitulation.” Israel’s Channel 12 news correspondent Nir Dvori even likened the deal to a “diplomatic Oct. 7.”

“Iran came out stronger, and I believe is now the regional hegemon,” former Israeli deputy national security adviser Chuck Freilich said. “They stood up to the U.S., the global superpower. They can have missiles, and there’s nothing in the agreement about the nuclear issue except [that] we’ll talk about it. This is an Iranian victory over the U.S. and Israel.”

Ensuring Iran is defenseless and economically crippled has been a priority for Israel for years. Trump’s recent deal all but assured that won’t happen. In the last 48 hours alone, the president has defended Iran’s right to have ballistic missiles, suggested that they should have the right to use nuclear power just like its neighbors, and criticized Israel for its deadly strikes in Lebanon—all which are points within the deal. And while it’s still unclear whether this is a temporary rift or a complete heel turn, this MOU endangers Israel’s long-term goals of a disarmed Iran and an occupied Lebanon.

President Trump’s deal with Iran is getting pushback from Republicans in Congress.

Senator Bill Cassidy, who lost a primary election to a Trump-backed opponent last month, said in a post on X Wednesday that “Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave.

“Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal,” Cassidy wrote. “Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped. This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Senator Ted Cruz tried to thread the needle of bashing the deal while minimizing blame toward the president.

“What has been released so far suggests that, unfortunately, the president is getting, I think, very poor advice when it comes to this deal. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea,” Cruz told Ben Domenech at the Daily Wire Wednesday. “Under the terms of what’s been released, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion will flow to the ayatollah immediately before they make even a single nuclear concession.”

Retiring Senator Thom Tillis said to The Hill that the deal was not a good return for the costs of the war with Iran.

“You got to do the balance of accounts: A hundred billion roughly, maybe more, spent today, 13 dead, 365 wounded, injured, our partners in the Middle East bombed, they’ve had casualties. There’s got to be a lot of return on that,” Tillis said. “We set out by saying we were going to drive down to zero their nuclear capability. Now we’re equivocating on that. We said that we were not going to make the mistake that Obama did by sending them a plane full of cash. I got to reconcile the numbers there.”

Some Republicans in the House were more blunt when speaking anonymously. The terms of the deal contradicted the talking points that the White House asked its Republican allies to use, Republicans told Politico.

One House Republican said the Trump administration was “lying to some degree” about the peace deal.

“The president didn’t mean to, but he effectively acknowledged he lost the war. It’s no longer worth the economic price. This is the way out, as ugly as it is,” another House Republican told the publication.

“He promised total surrender. And here it is,” a third House Republican said.

With all of this pushback to the deal, one wonders if Republican-controlled Congress will try to pass legislation to constrain parts of it, such as preventing taxpayer funds from being part of the $300 billion reconstruction fund promised to Iran. But most of them will probably fall in line as the midterms approach.

President Trump shared a letter favorably comparing him to Adolf Hitler, Atilla the Hun, and other murderous leaders, just hours after signing his controversial memorandum of understanding with Iran at the Versailles Palace in France.

Trump shared a post on Truth Social, attributed to “Presidential Historian Dave King.”

“Donald Trump is, without question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known- by a long way. Historically, powerful people were characterised by brutal conquest and the fear that they instilled in the populations that came under their influence. Common names that would come to mind are Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamburlaine, Napoleon and, more recently, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin,” read the letter. “The overwhelming difference between each of the above when compared with President Trump is their lack of global reach. Their power was limited to restricted local areas (even though some of these areas were quite large in a local context). They had nowhere near the control over modern logistics, manpower, technology, and the global economic muscle that President Trump can enforce.

“Hitler repeated Napoleon’s mistake in Russia. Mao and Lenin had access to immense power within the Chinese and Russian populations and some of their satellite states. They maintained this power through fear and authoritarianism. But, they lacked the economic and technology resources of the new industrial power, the USA, which resulted in the Cold War and prevented them from ever having a meaningful global reach,” the letter continued. “Additionally, President Trump is the first leader to be willing to use that power on a global scale. That makes him by far the most powerful person that has EVER walked this planet.”

Trump took no issue with these hagiographic comments, even as they directly linked him to the likes of Hitler, Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, and more. “Sounds good to me!” he wrote above the post. Unsurprisingly, our 80-year-old president is happy about being compared to Hitler if it is in reference to how much power he has.

The reviews are rolling in, and it’s clear that Vice President JD Vance’s new book, Communion, is not the next Hillbilly Elegy—not even close.

Ten years after Vance released his bestselling book that was made into a major motion picture, he has released Communion, a reflection on his late-in-life conversion to the Catholic faith that has already earned a meager 1.27 stars on Goodreads. Apparently reading it is painful.

“I got a colonoscopy on Friday,” Ginny Hogan wrote for The Cut. “If only that were the least pleasant experience of my last week. But no, that would be when I pulled an all-nighter on Monday reading Communion.”

“Vance’s hypocrisy alone makes Communion nearly unreadable,” Hogan wrote.

“You don’t need me to tell you this, but he is not a good Catholic,” she wrote. “A good Catholic would never support [Donald] Trump’s hateful immigration policies, cruel Medicaid cuts, hatred toward trans children, and unnecessary foreign wars.”

Hogan also criticized Vance for how he managed to say so much about second lady Usha Vance, “without saying anything at all.”

“Vance came to fame on his writing talent, and all he could muster to describe his wife of 12 years were ‘beauty’ and ‘intelligence.’ JD, ask ChatGPT for some synonyms! Be romantic,” Hogan wrote.

The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim wrote that the book suffered from “egregious sloppiness.”

Swaim found that Vance oversimplified complex issues and misunderstood research he cited. “Whether Mr. Vance’s error arose from laziness or dishonesty or something else, I don’t know, but alas it typifies the low regard he has for people who profess views he dislikes,” he wrote.

The Atlantic’s Alexandra Petri similarly called out Vance’s frothy phrasing that seemed to lack any understanding of his source material. “Here’s Vance’s gloss on the Book of Job and the problem of suffering: ‘We are like golden retrievers trying to understand how an iPhone functions.’ Well, the Book of Job left me troubled, but that golden-retriever analogy has fixed things!”

And Christopher Howse, for The Telegraph, wrote that Communion simply “lacks the raw impact of Hillbilly Elegy.”

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville may not be eligible to run for governor in his home state, according to a lawsuit filed in state court Wednesday.

Tuberville, a former college football coach, is being accused of failing to meet the eligibility standard for state residency as outlined in Alabama’s constitution. Candidates have to live in the state for at least seven years in order to be eligible to run. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say that Tuberville has “usurp[ed], intrude[d], into or unlawfully holds or exercises a public office.”

Tuberville sold all of his property in Alabama as of 2023 but has since claimed that he lives in a 1,500-square-foot property, which originally listed only his son and wife on the deed. Meanwhile, Tuberville’s wife was working as a real estate agent in Florida. He also voted in Florida in 2018.

Earlier this month, Tuberville’s gubernatorial campaign released tax documents claiming to prove that he has lived in the state since 2018, but critics such as Ken McFeeters, another Republican candidate, say that they don’t prove anything, claiming they aren’t accurate.

“I want his wife to tell me, with a straight face, that she lives in a one-bathroom house with her husband and adults and guests,” McFeeters told AL.com. “A woman like that is not going to share a bathroom.”

Those documents were enough for Tuberville to fend off a residency challenge from McFeeters to the Alabama Republican Party. The party’s 21-member steering committee ruled in Tuberville’s favor Sunday, saying he met the state’s residency requirements.

“We looked at it with the facts. The contest was unsuccessful. And Coach Tuberville will be our nominee for governor,” said the chair of the state Republican Party, Scott Stadthagen.

But this new lawsuit, assuming it goes to trial, will open up Tuberville’s records even further, and could result in new information coming to light in the discovery process. The public will find out if Tuberville is actually a Florida man.