Tab comes up, it’s Tuesday evening …
Finney: Are you saying the people protesting at No Kings were wasting their time??@ScottJenningsKY: I don’t really care whether they do it or not. Listen, you guys spend your time however you want. It’s a free country. Not a monarchy.
Oof. 😂 pic.twitter.com/rTtIPOT19o
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) October 21, 2025
Ed: They don’t care about the monarchy. They want anarchy. That’s what Antifa tries to create, and that’s what the SDS remnants wanted out of these demonstrations.
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Matt Taibbi: The Democrats generally maintained that decisions to skip over houses featuring Trump signs or signs about guns were legit and safety-based. Republicans blasted FEMA workers for comparing Trump voters to “vicious dogs” and suggested instructions like “Per leadership no stop Trump flag,” and “Trump sign, no contact per leadership” were indicative of a wider problem.
A year later, the Privacy Office of the Department of Homeland Security is releasing a review of that episode, the broader issue of using disaster relief work to collect political intelligence on voters, and the potentially withholding of benefits from some with the wrong beliefs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new administration found more than just one “isolated incident,” describing violations of the Privacy Act of 1974, which with a few exceptions bars collection of information about First Amendment-protected speech, like political signage. Most tellingly, though, DHS investigators found — in a near-exact parallel to trends in pro-censorship programs — that a lot of the political controversy surrounding FEMA aid grew out of the vague way in which the agency’s Disaster Survivor Assistance Field Operations Guide was written.
The Field Operations Guide instructed FEMA workers to “Remove yourself from the situation if you feel threatened” when dealing with “hostile” individuals, the only problem being, as the new report notes: “The Disaster Survivor Assistance Field Operations Guide does not define the term ‘hostile.’”
Ed: Remember the House committee investigation into the weaponization of government? This should be an adjunct of that probe. Be sure to read it all from Taibbi, and if you have the wherewithal, to subscribe to his site as well.
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Jon Stewart and Bernie Sanders agree: The Democrats own the shutdown, and they did it to “protect subsidies for an insurance marketplace that funnels $800 billion a year into the pockets of insurance companies.” pic.twitter.com/8PcwrcpBI7
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 21, 2025
Ed: At least these two clowns are being honest about it.
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The New Republic: Graham Platner, an upstart Democratic candidate running to challenge Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins, reportedly acknowledged that his skull-and-crossbones tattoo is a Nazi military symbol.
Jewish Insider reported Tuesday that an acquaintance of Platner’s had heard the former Marine refer to his chest tattoo as “my Totenkopf,” a German term referring to a specific skull and crossbones symbol used by a branch of the Nazi SS military that has since been resurrected by white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In a statement to Jewish Insider, Platner said that he “absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if” he knew the tattoo resembled the Nazi symbol, and he was “already planning” to have it removed.
Ed: Kudos to TNR for covering this. The story at Jewish Insider appears to be paywalled, which is an unfortunate decision, but TNR has the gist of it out in the clear. Why did TNR cover it? Democrats in Maine still have plenty of time to deny Platner the nomination, and it’s clearly in the best interest of progressives there to ensure that happens. In fact, it’s in everyone’s best interests.
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Graham Platner today: pic.twitter.com/7pxIS7u6jY
— Liz Mair (@LizMair) October 21, 2025
Ed: I swear I was thinking of the same thing. Christine O’Donnell may not have been the best choice for nominee in the 2010 Senate cycle, but I still think she got unfairly smeared as a nutcase. She didn’t tattoo herself with Hecate, after all.
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Joe Concha at WashEx (via Instapundit): So what were these protests really about? What was the goal? That’s about as clear as mud, because the whole theme of No Kings, as if we live in a country ruled by one, makes zero sense.
Trump was duly elected. In the Electoral College, it wasn’t even close over Kamala Harris (312-226). He won the popular vote as well. He can’t run for a third term. And if Trump were actually a king, protests would not be permitted.
We’re hearing that these protests will hurt Trump, but his numbers keep going up during a government shutdown that Democrats are responsible for. The RealClearPolitics average of polls has him at 45.4% approval, which is higher than Obama’s at this stage of his second term (43.7%) and George W. Bush’s (39.7%). Compare that with the Democratic Party, which stands at just 34.7% approval.
Ed: Concha called No Kings “the Seinfeld of protests: a show about nothing.” I have always thought that the self-deprecating description offered by Jerry Seinfeld was inaccurate. It was a comedy of manners, mainly universal, but it some ways tied to its time. No Kings is a tragedy of manners; it takes the snobbish disgust of the progressive elite to the working class and populists to an activist level that damages the fabric of our body politic. It’s darkly amusing in its way, but not funny in any sense of levity.
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Trump on his possible meeting with Putin in Hungary:
I don’t want to have a wasted meeting.
We have not made a determination. pic.twitter.com/bXBIPyFayq
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) October 21, 2025
Ed: I didn’t get a chance to write about this today, but the quiet collapse of the promised Putin-Trump summit suggests that the Russians didn’t want to cooperate in peace … yet. One has to wait and see if the Ukrainians end up with the Tomahawks they want.
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Axios: ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reports in “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America,” out next Tuesday, that Hunter Biden was furious with former President Obama for taking President Biden’s hand to lead him off the stage at a Hollywood fundraiser last year. …
“I almost jumped up on the stage and said, ‘Don’t ever f–king do that to the president of the United States again — ever,” Hunter Biden, still furious months later, told Karl in one of their extensive interviews.
The younger Biden insisted his dad was simply taking some time to acknowledge the crowd. “I knew that that was going to be a meme,” Hunter recalled. “That really, really, really, really pissed me off.”
Ed: I call BS. Hunter is trying to rewrite history. Biden had frozen on stage and was not moving at all. He wasn’t greeting anyone; his head and his hands didn’t move at all, and the exit music was playing. Here’s the clip.
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Ed: Tell me another fable of Sharp As A Tack®, Hunter.
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Looks like Senator Schumer and I have found some common ground here …
As I have repeatedly said, I will not negotiate under hostage conditions. Reopen the government now. pic.twitter.com/2h3bpOUNdj
— Leader John Thune (@LeaderJohnThune) October 21, 2025
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It does not appear this meeting is in the cards anytime soon
White House official: “The administration’s position hasn’t changed. We will not have policy conversations while the Democrats are holding the American people hostage. Reopen the government” https://t.co/Y9UgvWvazY
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) October 21, 2025
Ed: Good. Why let Schumer off the hook? It’s also good to see Thune and the White House on the same page. Keep up the pressure, and don’t change the subject by changing the filibuster.
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.@POTUS on meeting with Schumer and Jeffries: “I would like to meet with both of them, but I set one little caveat: I will only meet if they let the country open. The people want to go back to work.” pic.twitter.com/YBDtHX5WDl
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 21, 2025
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Free Beacon: Hamas conspired with Qatari-funded news network Al Jazeera to downplay dissent within Gaza and avoid coverage that could damage “the image of the resistance,” according to documents recovered from the strip and released by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
Hamas, for example, instructed Al Jazeera to avoid using terms like “massacre” to describe a Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile strike in Jabalia, Gaza, that landed in a refugee camp. Al Jazeera’s “newsroom management” agreed to the directive, the documents show. Hamas also attempted to establish a direct line to Al Jazeera’s office in Doha—where Qatar also houses Hamas terrorists—”to promote coverage in emergency situations and allow Hamas’s military wing to send real-time instructions on what to broadcast and what to embargo,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
Ed: What a friend we have in Qatar, eh?
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White House Construction Crew Finds 1,357 More Cocaine Stashes https://t.co/3Oel3OlWu1 pic.twitter.com/F2yZhs48Wk
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 21, 2025
Ed: Let me know when they find Hoffa.
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