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Sunday, May 17, 2026

Links - 17th May 2026 (1 - Donald Trump)

Meme - Mark Hamill: "No one is above the law" *hero Luke Skywalker*
Mark Hamill @MarkHamill: "We have now arrived at the "arresting judges" level of fascism" *Recluse Jake Skywalker drinking Blue Milk*1/2

OAG Special Attorney Alina Habba on X - "🚨 Today my office has charged Congresswoman McIver with violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 111(a)(1) for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement."
Rep. Eric Swalwell on X - "A RED LINE has been crossed. Trump is prosecuting his political enemies in Congress. This is just the beginning. We must take whatever we’ve done before to show dissent and go ONE RUNG HIGHER. And save your bullshit documents on this, Alina. You’ll need them when you testify."
Nobody is above the law - unless that helps the left wing agenda

Cynical Publius on X - "The great sin of Donald Trump is that in his second term he rejected all of the "experts" and brought in outsiders to fix the havoc and damage wreaked by the "experts."  And golly gee do the "experts" hate it.  At this point we have a cadre of failed "experts" doing everything they can to sabotage the vitally necessary reform of their sins.  Pretty much everything happening in American politics today can be understood through this prism."
Trust the Experts! Even when they are wrong

Mostly Peaceful Memes on X - "What’s clear from the Maduro raid and today’s strikes is that forever wars were a choice."
William Wolfe 🇺🇸 on X - "The fact that a billionaire real estate playboy who liked to slap his name on steaks and wine has proven to be a better diplomat and military strategist than every other politician and foreign policy expert over the last 30 years is such a damning indictment of the DC establishment I honestly don’t know how they recover."

The Shiny Theory of Trump - "It just seems there has always been a peculiar intellectual contortion that has become fashionable in certain corners of political commentary, and it goes something like this: Donald Trump is both an evil mastermind capable of deceiving tens of millions of Americans while simultaneously being an easily manipulated simpleton, led around by the nose by any sufficiently clever foreign leader with a compliment and a map.  It is, one must admit, an impressive feat—less of logic than of acrobatics.  On Mondays, Wednesdays, and alternating weekends, Trump is cast as a near–comic book villain: a man so cunning he bent an entire political party to his will, hijacked institutions, and hypnotized a voting bloc the size of a large European nation. His opponents speak of him in tones usually reserved for master tacticians or criminal geniuses. Democracy itself, we are told, barely survived the encounter.  Then on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and whenever a foreign policy disagreement arises, he is suddenly recast as a gullible rube—an orange-tinted marionette whose strings are pulled by whichever world leader last flattered him over dessert. Benjamin Netanyahu turns into the Trump Whisperer and mentions something about legacy, and Trump, we are assured, charges headlong into war like Tamatoa chasing a shiny object. One begins to wonder: which is it?... The explanation offered is usually psychological. Narcissists, we are told, are uniquely vulnerable to flattery. This is presented as though it were a kind of master key—insert compliment, turn gently, and out falls foreign policy but this, too, is a comforting simplification. It allows the critic to avoid a more unsettling possibility: that decisions—right or wrong—might be made from a framework they simply disagree with, rather than from manipulation or incompetence.  It is much easier, after all, to believe that one’s opponent has been fooled than to accept that he acted deliberately."

Senator Mazie Hirono on X - "Donald Trump is not, never will be, and has never been a king. #NoKings"
MAZE on X - "Thus no need for No Kings protests. Thank you for this. Greatest self own ever."

Fox News on X - "BEHIND THE PROTESTS: Fox News investigation reveals 'No Kings' demonstrations backed by network of 500 organizations, many tied to socialist and communist groups."

Polling USA on X - "Fox News is surprised that protests organized by communities are, in fact, organized by communities"
Clearly, if organisations support right wing protests, that shows they are inorganic, inauthentic and astroturfed. But if organisations support left wing protests, that shows that they have deep and widespread community support

Cynical Publius on X - "You know, if all those old hippie Democrat white women had not aborted all their babies, they could be spending their Saturdays enjoying their grandchildren instead of protesting imaginary kingdoms."
julie finds hope on X - "You know, I have 5 children and have time to protest with my grandchildren Who are also smart enough to know the emperor has no clothes"
Cynical Publius on X - "You drag your grandchildren out as political props for a wholly fabricated fantasy protest? That is the most evil thing I have heard today. Shame on you."

DK🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸 on X - "White No Kings protester tries to explain why there aren’t many Black people there… and it goes off the rails:  She says:  "Black people are afraid to be arrested… they can’t afford lawyers… they can’t afford time off work."  She then adds:  "A lot of Black people don’t have IDs… they don’t drive… they don’t have cars."
Full exchange:
Interviewer:   "Why do you think there’s not a lot of black people here?"
Protester:  "Because a lot of them are afraid of being arrested. And they don’t wanna get arrested. They can’t afford it. They can’t afford the lawyers. They can’t afford the time off from work. And they’re afraid."
Interviewer:   "Do you think black people are less likely to protest because they’re afraid of getting arrested?"
Protester:  "Yeah, I do. Because they know they’ll get arrested more than white people."
Interviewer:   "What about voter ID laws? A lot of people say that suppresses the black vote."
Protester:  "Yeah, because a lot of black people don’t have IDs. They don’t drive. They don’t have cars. They use public transportation."
- Terrence K. Williams"
Left wingers are so racist

Meme - Sauron: "We're in trouble, Saruman. These last few months, Aragorn has continued to deport Easterlings and eliminate the leaders of the Haradrim. Our supporter base is dwindling."
Saruman: "I've got it, Sauron! Let's hold yet another "No Kings" march!"
Sauron: "The first two didn't accomplish anything, but why not? It's not as though the Orcs have anything better to do."

The Open-Book Test the Experts Keep Failing - "Most of the foreign policy intelligentsia thinks of President Trump as a clown. His stances on NATO in 2016 brought out the “professional” soothsayers—those paid to know things the rest of us “normies” aren’t even supposed to consider. They have their “I love me” walls filled with degrees, certificates, and, in some cases, military awards and medals. They catalog overseas postings, thousands of speeches delivered at important conferences attended by important people. They sit on corporate boards, land administration positions, and enjoy sweet sinecures at think tanks, universities, and even CNN and MSNBC—writing editorials meant to convince the rest of us that we should stand in awe of their prowess.  And yet their conclusions often follow the classic line from H. L. Mencken:      “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”  Right now, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the former real estate developer from Queens is exposing a large portion of this credentialed expert class as fools and court jesters.  Trump has always seemed to conduct what amount to open-book tests for the foreign policy class, who approach global problems much the way my granddaddy taught me some people approach debt. He used to say the only people who never worry about how much debt they carry are those who never intend to pay it back. All they care about is whether they can make the monthly payment to keep the party going. That mindset seems eerily familiar today. We are told we never should have attacked Iran because negotiations would have worked—even though nearly 50 years of negotiations failed to gain a single inch. Iran hid nuclear development from feckless UN monitors and inspectors, and for those who insist they couldn’t have done so, the fact that enrichment reached 60% tells the real story: they never stopped when they said they stopped.  In this scenario, the only real “win” is for those who draw funding, status, and prestige from keeping the party going. They were never going to propose an actual solution. Like the Obama and Biden approaches, the strategy amounted to little more than continuing to send money and hope for better behavior. We saw how that worked out. It likely helped fund the October 7 attacks in Israel and other terrorist activity around the world.  And despite these open-book tests, the failure rate has approached 100%. Perhaps the problem is that all the books were wrong. First NATO, then Ukraine, then the drug interdictions at sea, then Venezuela, then Iran I—which revealed that Iran had been sold what amounted to bargain-bin North Korean, Chinese, and Russian technology that couldn’t stop a paper airplane—and now Iran II... Russia has failed to accomplish in three years in Ukraine what the American military demonstrated it could do to Iran in three weeks.  The experts—and the nations that relied on them—were wrong.  Now Trump has suggested that countries benefiting from an open Strait of Hormuz should take part in securing it. The United States and Israel are doing the heavy lifting; they are simply asking Europe for assistance. But Europe—and increasingly the United Kingdom—has become something like the “sick man” of the modern era: a once-dominant power that has grown accustomed to American protection over the past eight decades. Their response has been reluctance, preferring not to be involved—even as they continue to rely on the stability others provide.  That reluctance masks a harder truth. It is not merely that they do not want to help—it is that they cannot. The continent that once colonized much of the known world and built the foundations of Western civilization now struggles to defend itself, much less project power abroad. There is also a cultural divide. Many in Europe view Americans as hopelessly unsophisticated—too blunt, too forceful, too willing to act. Yet beneath that disdain lies dependence, and beneath that dependence, resentment. They need American strength, even as they criticize it. Trump, for all his unconventional style, is operating in that reality. He is playing the role of global sheriff not because he relishes conflict, but because too few others are willing—or able—to step into the role. Most would prefer endless discussion to decisive action.  But Americans are growing tired of underwriting global security while being treated as an afterthought."

Meme - FischerKing @FischerKing64: "Focus on the '27 year prison sentence.' Democrat politicians and media figures are talking openly about the 'need' to pursue legal remedies against current Trump officials. They want to throw them away for 27 years too - for nothing."
ALX @alx: "BREAKING: Brazilian Tyrant Judge Alexandre de Voldemort has blocked U.S. State Department Official Darren Beattie from visiting Former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27 year prison sentence."
Damn Trump threatening to prosecute his political opponents! He's a Threat to Democracy, which is why to save Democracy, there needs to be a coup to depose him!

What If Trump Actually Wins? - "It seems to me that most political commentary today operates on a very short timeline. Democrats and much of the media have already decided that the immediate consequences of an action should be treated as the final consequences, especially if the action has anything to do with Donald Trump. The conventional wisdom is almost reflexive: war means chaos, intervention means disaster, and initial instability inevitably leads to endless instability.  But that kind of thinking is shallow.  It is what economists and strategists would call first-order thinking.  First-order thinking focuses only on the most immediate and obvious consequence of an action. Second-order thinking asks the more difficult question: what happens next if the mission succeeds? It forces us to follow the chain of events forward rather than assuming the first ripple in the water tells us the entire story. Consider two events that critics have predicted will inevitably end in catastrophe: the U.S. capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and the ongoing military confrontation with Iran. Much of the commentary surrounding both events has been nearly unanimous in one respect. According to the experts and the talking heads, everything will go wrong.  But what if it doesn’t?  What if the operations actually achieve their stated objectives? What if success produces exactly the kind of cascading positive effects that second-order thinking predicts?  Start with Venezuela.  The removal of Nicolás Maduro represents far more than the arrest of one corrupt strongman. His regime has been a criminal enterprise built on narcotrafficking, repression, and the systematic destruction of one of the richest countries in South America. Venezuela’s collapse was not caused by a lack of resources; the country sits on some of the largest oil reserves in the world. Its tragedy was the presence of a corrupt regime sitting on top of those resources and looting them while the population starved. When a regime like that is suddenly removed, the effects begin to ripple outward. Political prisoners walk out of cells. Political factions begin maneuvering for legitimacy. Economic reforms that were impossible under a cartel-state suddenly become conceivable. If a post-Maduro transition stabilizes even modestly, the second-order consequences could include restored oil production, economic recovery, reduced refugee pressure on neighboring countries, and the collapse of a narcotrafficking hub that has poisoned the Western Hemisphere for decades.  Now apply the same second-order lens to Iran.  The first-order fears are obvious and widely discussed: escalation, regional instability, rising oil prices, and the possibility of a wider war. Those concerns are real, but they are not the only possible trajectory.  Suppose the strikes achieve their strategic objectives. Suppose Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is crippled to the point of extinction and the regime’s military capabilities are severely degraded or destroyed. The second-order consequences begin immediately.  Iran’s network of proxy militias—from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen—suddenly finds itself operating without the same financial and logistical backing. Regional powers that have spent decades cautiously balancing against Tehran would find themselves in a dramatically improved strategic position. Countries already drifting toward cooperation—Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Israel—could accelerate that alignment.  In other words, deterrence would be restored. The Middle East has often been stabilized not merely by diplomacy but by the clear demonstration that certain lines cannot be crossed without consequence. A regime that has spent forty-five years exporting revolution and sponsoring terror might suddenly find its ability to do so sharply reduced.  There is another possibility that receives far less attention. Authoritarian regimes are frequently far more fragile than they appear from the outside. Military humiliation has a way of accelerating internal political fractures. Elites begin calculating their futures. Rival factions maneuver for advantage. Protest movements that once seemed hopeless begin to find oxygen. History has shown this dynamic many times.  None of this is guaranteed, of course. History also offers plenty of examples where intervention produced new chaos rather than stability, but the opposite possibility—the one almost never discussed in today’s commentary—is that decisive action can sometimes remove the source of chaos rather than create it.  That is what second-order thinking forces us to consider.  The real question is not simply what happens tomorrow.  The real question is what the world might look like five years from now if the gamble pays off – and I’m not sure it is a gamble, even though the Democrats and media see it that way. I think President Trump sees it as a calculated risk with a huge payoff for the entire world. Based on my observations, I believe one of the most dangerous mistakes in geopolitics is assuming that the future must always look exactly like the past."

Meme - 0Hour1" "This photo has the leftists crying"
"A Classic Franklin Story. Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists *turtle firing RPG at boats from helicopter*"

Andy Ngo on X - "As revenge for the U.S. arresting Nicolas Maduro, leftist writer Seth Harp posted the name, photo, and biographical details of a purported Delta Force commander he believes led the operation. The post went viral.  But Harp identified the wrong military member, putting an international target on the man. Harp defended his actions, saying he can leak "classified material" because he claims to be a reporter."

Werner Zagrebbi🇦🇿 on X - "The New York Times reports that 12 of the ~1500 January 6 rioters have reoffended in about a year's time—calling it a "crime spree". The recidivism rate of the J6ers is 0.8%. The average 1 year US re-arrest rate, by contrast, is 43%. funny how that works"
Hunter Ash on X - "It’s hard to find the exact stat “how many Americans are convicted of a crime in a given year,” but the best estimate is something like 1-3%. So the pardoned J6ers are probably slightly less criminal than the general population. And the NYT calls this a “crime spree”"
It's only a heinous crime if you oppose the Regime

C3 on X - "Want to see a Judicial Coup? Court injunctions:
Biden: 14 in 4 years
Clinton: 12 in 8 years
Obama: 12 in 8 years
GW Bush: 6 in 8 years
Trump: 170 in 4 years and 10 months.
The Judiciary is filled with Leftist activists just like schools. Impeaching corrupt judges is a must."
The fact that so many of them get overturned is the really telling bit

Meme - Harry Sisson @harryjsisson: "Amazing. President Biden just announced that he will invoke the Higher Education Act to bypass the conservative majority on the Supreme Court and their terrilole ruling. He's fighting for student debt relief and won't give up this battle."
Harry Sisson @harryjsisson: "Trump is actively defying a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling against him. This is authoritarian crap. We are in constitutional crisis."
Nobody is above the law - unless it pushes the left wing agenda

Tom Elliott on X - "Comey indicted Martha Stewart & Mike Flynn for far less than this. And Comey's behavior is far worse since he was lying in service of wiretapping the Trump campaign, the results of which would be used to try swaying he 2016 election, and later sabotaging the first Trump Administration. Hatching a fake narrative to set the NatSec state against the duly elected president is as scandalous as it gets."
Glenn Greenwald on X - "The Netflix documentary on Martha Stewart documents how Comey abused his power for careerist aims by prosecuting her for "false statements" in a preposterous case. The prosecution of @GenFlynn was even worse: driven by deceit, political ends, and the most trivial accusations."

DataRepublican (small r) on X - "So how was J6 going to end in overthrow?   Let me explain why J6 alarms your class so much.   It’s projection, nothing more. Your side has spent years engineering color revolutions abroad, so J6 resembled the final phase to you... crowds overrunning a key building to unseat a leader. Except that didn't actually happen.   Plus this time you weren’t in control, so you responded with overwhelming force, prosecuting participants in DC juries molded by NGOs that emphasize "social justice" over evidence.   You cannot describe the actual mechanism through which J6 would have actually resulted in a coup or insurrection, because there was no planning at all involved. Unlike in actual color revolutions.   Now let me explain what real-life sedition looks like.   Sedition starts years before, with allowing foreign NGOs to flood your country and condition your security forces into deflecting. That is exactly what the Seditious Six were doing. That is exactly what the "No Kings" protests are doing. The Trump administration called it out as a color revolution for a good reason.   You won't even blink an eye at the enormous amounts of foreign Communist influence involved in the protests that you so eagerly support. But you will accuse @lecternleader  of treason just for posing for a picture with a lectern."
dale on X - "Well said. Note also how the J6 committee criminally destroyed their own records… Unbelievable."

TMK on X - "Here's a list of all republicans arrested under the Joe Biden administration:
Donald J. Trump Waltine “Walt” Nauta Carlos De Oliveira Stephen K. Bannon Peter K. Navarro Thomas J. Barrack Jr. Matthew Grimes Rudy Giuliani Mark Meadows John Eastman Kenneth Chesebro Sidney Powell Jenna Ellis Scott Graham Hall Shawn Still David James Shafer Cathleen “Cathy” Latham Jeffrey Clark Trevian C. Kutti Robert David Cheeley Harrison William Prescott Floyd Stephen Cliffgard Lee Ray Stallings Smith III Michael A. Roman Misty Hampton (a.k.a. Misty Ann Hampton / Emily “Misty” Hayes) Kelli Ward Tyler Bowyer Nancy Cottle Jacob “Jake” Hoffman Anthony Kern James Lamon Robert Montgomery Samuel Moorhead Lorraine Pellegrino Gregory Safsten Michael Ward Boris Epshteyn Christina Bobb Allen Weisselberg Michael McDonald Jesse Law Jim DeGraffenreid Durward James Hindle III Shawn Meehan Eileen Rice Kathy Berden William “Hank” Choate Amy Facchinello Clifford Frost Stanley Grot John Haggard Mari-Ann Henry Timothy King Michele Lundgren Meshawn Maddock James Renner Mayra Rodriguez Rose Rook Marian Sheridan Ken Thompson Kent Vanderwood Steve Bannon  Tina Peters George Papadopolous
Plus 1265 J6 Defendants
Here's a list of all democrats arrested under the Donald Trump administration:  0"
The cope is that this shows that Republicans are corrupt and Democrats are innocent

Trump administration official physically assaulted at UNGA by 'deranged leftist,' White House says - "she was walking down the hallway at the UN when a woman began berating her and shining a bright light in her face. "It was very disorienting," the official said. "Once I took a step back and regained my footing, it didn’t stop. I realized what was happening. I realized I was being yelled at and that the light was also a recording device."  The official tried to get away from the woman who was screaming derogatory and pro-Palestinian comments at her as she followed closely behind. The official said the woman called her a "fascist" and a "Nazi."   "The insults changed to specific insults," the official said, telling Fox News Digital that she went into the women’s bathroom to get away, but that the woman kept following her.  "Her yelling turned into screaming—hyper-aggressive insults," the official said.   The official tried to hide in a bathroom stall, but told Fox News Digital that the woman was pushing and trying to get into the stall. Once the official was able to close the door, the woman put the camera over the door of the bathroom stall to continue filming the official and screaming.  The official waited for the screaming to stop, and exited the stall, hoping the woman had left, but the woman was waiting for her at the door, and continued to follow her into the hallway, continuing to yell at her and shine the light in her face. Eventually, the official was able to get away."
Proof that Donald Trump incites violence and should be impeached

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