Middle East

This week, the world was reminded of the deep and abiding evil that has wormed its way to the center of Palestinian nationalistic culture by the news that the Bibas family – a mother, Shiri; a 4-year-old boy, Ariel; and his 9-month-old brother, Kfir – who had been kidnapped back to Gaza on Oct. 7 had in fact been murdered.

There are only three things certain in life: death, taxes, and the BBC having to issue a correction after publishing a bit of Hamas propaganda.

On Wednesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s third press briefing mostly centered around two wildly different issues of transgenderism and the future of the Gaza Strip (especially in light of President Trump’s Tuesday claim the U.S. would take it over). And, as she’s done, called on a wide swath of reporters from legacy liberal networks to our friends in conservative…

On Wednesday’s CBS Mornings and CBS Mornings Plus, there was a sense of anger, disbelief, and shock at President Trump’s bombshell declaration Tuesday that the U.S. would oversee the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip. Between interviews with White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and then former Obama and Biden official Samantha Vinograd, CBS suggested U.S. involvement was not…

Reacting Wednesday on NBC’s Today to President Trump’s bombshell proposition Tuesday that the United States should take over the Gaza Strip to make it the Riviera of the Middle East, chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel decried this as having elicited “shock and horror” from Middle East leaders and argued a Trump administration rebuilding the terrorist state “would be the —…

In the first the first White House press briefing of President Donald Trump’s second term, Press Secretary Karoline Levaitt made clear from the onset of the 46-minute-and-36-second briefing things would be different inside the Brady Briefing Room. Along with the opening and closing statements made famous by Kayleigh McEnany, Leavitt announced seats for new media and called on 21 different…

On Thursday afternoon, the great Steven Nelson of the New York Post put more meat on the bone regarding reports bumbling, fumbling, stumbling White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre barred national security advisor and spokesman John Kirby from speaking to reporters about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal because she didn’t want arguably the only adult in the Biden…

Wednesday afternoon brought us the final Biden White House press briefing and, by her own count, the 306th featuring the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. It featured Jean-Pierre emotionally patting herself on the back, plenty of unanswered questions (mostly stemming from the monumental Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal), the final Jacqui Time, and even Jean-Pierre doing her own…

CBS’s 60 Minutes put together a piece on Sunday about the 13 U.S. government officials who have resigned in protest over the role the country has played in helping Israel battle Hamas. Throughout the report, viewers were left to conclude that the best way to fight terrorism is to surrender to it and that terrorists should run U.S. foreign policy because our decision to help Israel…

As the Trace Adkins song goes, you’re going to miss this, you’re going to want this back. Deep down, that’s surely the way at least some feel about the bizarre, entertaining, meandering, only occasionally informative, and stammering White House press briefings in 2024 under Karine Jean-Pierre. With part one having covered 10 moments from January to May, this blog contains the second 10…

Egregiously biased online “credibility” arbiter NewsGuard rates several right-leaning U.S. media outlets as less reliable than several state media outlets from tyrannical foreign powers Qatar, communist China and Russia.

It is proof of the power of our faith that the spirit of Christmas prevails over all the reasons for cynicism. I'm thinking now of Psalm 40:4 where we read: Fortunate is the man who has puts his trust in God and has not turned to the arrogant and to those who stray after falsehood. Regarding "the arrogant and those who stray after falsehood," take the case of the International Criminal Court,…

There’s no doubt at least some of you out there will miss the antics, hardballs, stumbles, and throwdowns that came to define Karine Jean-Pierre’s 2024 at the White House Briefing Room podium. With over 70 blogs from our press briefing tag to choose from and the topics ranging from the economy to foreign policy to Biden’s mental slippage, Jean-Pierre and the press corps made it difficult for…

In this final year of the Biden presidency, the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre provided a litany of verbal stumbles and word salads when under tough questioning from Fox’s Peter Doocy, Jacqui Heinrich, Edward Lawrence, and even from liberal legacy outlets. Thankfully for her, there were also times when she had assists from the press corps in peddling the left’s preferred storylines (to hide…