March 3, 2026

ANDREW STILES: Exclusive: Graham Platner’s Crisis PR Handbook Hints at Trouble Still To Come.

Graham Platner is once again struggling to explain why he’s not a Nazi despite getting a Nazi tattoo and repeatedly associating with Nazis on the internet. Days after Platner accidentally promoted a post by an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, Jewish Insider reported that the U.S. Senate candidate from Maine accidentally appeared on a YouTube program hosted by a different anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and said he was a “longtime fan.”

On Monday, Semafor reporter Burgess Everett found a “defense guidance” packet at a campaign event, instructing volunteers on how to respond if asked about Platner’s demonstrated fondness for Nazi symbology and other anti-Semitic content. “He did not know the meaning at the time and covered it once he learned about it,” the packet provides as a sample answer to questions about his Totenkopf tattoo, the “death’s head” symbol adopted by Holocaust perpetrators. Promoting the anti-Semitic influencer was a whoopsie that the campaign corrected “once the issue was realized.” It could happen—and keep happening—to anyone.

The Washington Free Beacon pounced upon learning that Platner’s campaign had assembled a crisis communications playbook for downplaying the candidate’s recurring Nazi-adjacent scandals.

What follows from Stiles is satire – or is it? Speaking of which, perhaps Platner should deploy the Mel Brooks crisis PR handbook. The 1963 comedy album, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks at the Canne Film Festival kicked off thusly (audio available at the Wayback Machine):

CARL REINER: Ladies and gentlemen, we are at the Cannes [pronouncing it “Can”] Film Festival here in Lower Italy. And we are going to meet some of the producers, directors, and stars of the films that are being exhibited here for the annual competition.

First, I’d like you to meet the German representative from Nartsi? Narsi? Narzi? From the Narzi Film Company! Herr Adolf Hartler. Good afternoon, Herr Hartler.

MEL BROOKS: Heil Hartler! How are you?

REINER: Now, this is a strange name. It’s Narzi Films.

BROOKS: Yes, we… well, we… well…

REINER: That doesn’t have anything to do with Nazi, does it?

BROOKS: No, are you kidding? They are our worst enemies. We are against them. We always were! Are you kidding?

* * * * * * * *

REINER: Sir, sir, you’re wearing your bathing suit, I noticed.

BROOKS: Yes, yes.

REINER: And as you scratched your head, I noticed a little “SS” tattooed under your arm. What does that mean?

BROOKS: Oh, oh, oh, well, wait! That’s the Simon Says!  Umm, umm, Simon Says, We played that on the beach. I’m the captain of the Simon Says team! And that’s where we get SS from! I’m serious about the game, I love it, and so I had myself tattooed, “Simon Says!”

REINER: How did you feel about the motion picture, Stanley Kramer’s motion picture, Judgment at Nuremberg?

BROOKS Unfair!

REINER: Why did you consider it unfair?

BROOKS: Well, because he didn’t tell the whole truth. What was the picture about? Really about a misunderstanding, really, wasn’t it? I mean, look, you have, you send people to camp, don’t you, in the summer? We sent a few people to camp. I don’t know what the whole fuss is about! Sent some nice people to camp…mostly in the summer!

I’m pretty sure Brooks and Reiner thought they were recording a comedy album, not a how-to guide for campaigning for the Senate.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

IF YOU HAD ANY DOUBTS ABOUT MOSSAD, THE IAF, OR WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY GET TOGETHER…:

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green

T. BECKET ADAMS: Death to the ‘fact check’ — Kill it with fire.

If we’re eliminating whole categories of journalism — which certainly seems to be the case for sports reporting — can we also do away with the “fact check” genre?

It has always been a silly gimmick, the idea that there should be a separate vertical dedicated solely to fact-checking (checking the facts is already the main goal of journalism). But even as ill-conceived as the concept is, nothing could have prepared us for how farcical the genre would eventually become.

Take, for instance, the fact-checks following President Trump’s State of the Union address last week. Naturally, the speech was full of inconsistencies and outright falsehoods. Every such address is. What’s funny, from a media perspective, is the suffocating pettiness of the media fact-checkers and their weird fetish for playing the pedant.

“The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended,” Trump said. “It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot, and our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before.”

Associated Press fact-checkers were on it.

“To be clear,” the AP fact-check reads, “the American Revolution started the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared independence in 1776. It ended Sept. 3, 1783.”

It’s as if we in the press are trying to make the public hate us.

Fact check: Hate the media even more than they do now

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

Posted at 12:58 pm by Stephen Green

DEMAGOGUES AND SIMPLETONS DON’T CARE ABOUT EVIDENCE: Yes, the Trump administration is very friendly to Israel, and treats Israel as an important ally rather than a burden or quarrelsome recipient of US charity, as under Obama or Biden. But no, Israel (and the so-called Israel lobby) doesn’t control US policy, and indeed Trump has defied Israeli preferences on many occasions, as Max Abrahams notes:

Posted at 12:54 pm by David Bernstein

BUT THE MONEY SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN SPENT: NYC never opened 25 planned preschools despite demand surge — and may not have even known one existed.

Roughly 20 planned early childhood education centers in the Big Apple mysteriously sit idle as demand surges for universal pre-K and 3K seats close to home, The Post has learned.

More than 25 of 47 3K “initiative projects” at sites first earmarked under former Mayor Bill de Blasio are still unlisted on the official NYC MySchools directory — despite costly construction contracts, rent payments to private owners and official Department of Education signage posted outside some “phantom” schools.

The list of leased shell sites includes a converted Brooklyn warehouse on the Columbia Street waterfront — where nearby young families face waitlists of more than 100 students for a nearby seat, parents told The Post.

Exit quote: “If we’re paying for the school to be built and it already exists, it’d be great to be using that school.”

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

AND AGAIN: Israel bombs Iran’s top mullahs as they count votes for next supreme leader.

The Israeli air force struck a top Iranian meeting on Tuesday where Tehran’s senior clerics had gathered to select a replacement for slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to multiple reports.

The Assembly of Experts, made up of 88 top clerics, were together in the holy city of Qom when an airstrike hit their building overnight, the Times of Israel reported.

The strike came just as the mullahs were counting the votes to appoint the next supreme leader, according to Fox News.

It remains unclear how many members of the assembly were attending the vote when the building was hit.

Unverified video and pictures from Qom allegedly show the building that housed the Iranian leaders in complete ruins following the blast.

The strike came just as the Israeli air force deployed around 100 fighter jets to drop more than 250 bombs on a “leadership complex” in Tehran, located north of Qom.

Faster, please:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMM:

They must feel at least some sense of safety against the Mullahs’ security forces. That right there is a yuge change.

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S AMAZING HOW LONG TEHRAN HAS GONE WITHOUT FEELING KARMA, AND HOW WILLING THE LEFT IS TO FORGET THAT:

I’m kidding about the second part. There’s nothing amazing about anything awful the Left does or says.

Posted at 11:56 am by Stephen Green

VDH: Trump’s Way of War.

Has President Trump introduced a novel way of waging Western war against America’s foreign enemies?

We saw glimpses of it during his first term, when he eliminated Iranian general and terrorist kingpin Qassem Soleimani and ISIS terrorist grandee Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In the former case, he preferred hitting the cause rather than the effects of Iranian terrorism in Syria and Iraq, while making it clear that he had no intention of striking the Iranian mainland and entering into a tit-for-tat “forever war.”

In large part, he was successful. Iran never quite replaced the venomous Soleimani. And despite tired threats, its performative art responses did not kill any Americans, and they were seen by Trump as venting and not worth a counterresponse.

In the case of the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump likewise went after the catalyst of ISIS terrorism. But he also bombed ISIS into near nonexistence in Iraq, since, unlike Iran, it lacked the financial and material resources of a state sponsor of terror, and it had no independent ability to make weapons or finance its terrorism.

In 2018, Trump probably killed more Russian ground troops (more than 200?) than America had during the entire Cold War, with his furious response to the Wagner Group assault on a U.S. Special Operations base near Khasham, Syria. Yet the defeat of Russian mercenaries also led to no wider conflict.

In these three cases, Trump successfully portrayed his antagonists as the unprovoked aggressors, employed overwhelming force to eliminate them, and declared them one-off occurrences with no need to punish the ultimate source or sponsor of the aggression with further force, and he was largely successful in limiting subsequent attacks on American installations.

In Trump’s second term, he widened his doctrine of “preventative deterrence” with operations to remove Venezuelan communist strongman Nicolás Maduro, along with two separate bombing campaigns against Iran.

While the second Iran operation is now in progress, it may resemble the earlier two in a number of facets.

There’s nothing novel about America waging punitive expeditions, going all the way back to the Jefferson administration.

Trump merely revived a lost art, and well.

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green

MERDE:

Not antiwar, just on the other side, to coin an Instaphrase.

Posted at 11:25 am by Stephen Green

EAST BOUND AND DOWN:

Well, that’s one way to price the new risks.

Posted at 10:54 am by Stephen Green

HMM: Paramount Won’t Sell Cable Networks After WBD Merger, Touts ‘Incredible Footprint’ Of Combined Linear Business.

“We believe in the assets we’re buying, and there’s no plans to divest or spin off a package of cable assets at this time. And, in particular, we actually think, given the brands that Warner Bros. is bringing to Paramount, there are a lot of opportunities to think about all the different aspects of what they can do, both on the linear side and the digital side … So that’s our plan right now,” said Gordon.

Expressed another way: “We believe that many of our linear channels have incredible brand that can be reinvigorated for a streaming and digital world.”

Pressed on whether there were any assets at all that feel non-core and could be divested to reduce leverage, he said, “No. Very simply, we have no divestitures planned at this time.”

Comcast recently spun out most NBCUniversal cable networks into a new stand-alone public company called Versant. WBD was planning to do the same in its previous agreement with Netflix by separating its programming assets into another company called Discovery Global.

The deal Netflix inked with WBD last December was just for the Warner Bros studios and streaming assets. Warner terminated that deal last week after receiving a superior offer from Paramount, which is buying WBD in its entirety.

Maybe there’s some life left in cable… or maybe Paramount has other plans for its new cable properties.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green