April 11: The Edge Lords

Xi fires top military official; Vietnam cracks down on China; RFK vows to identify the source of autism spike

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The Big Story

Note to readers: Today’s Big Story is a guest post from Tablet contributor Lee Smith

Joe Rogan’s podcast yesterday featuring Douglas Murray and Dave Smith talking about the Middle East conflict (among other topics) failed to move the needle in either direction—at least not on any of the subjects the “debate” was purportedly about.

The pro-Israel camp was unmoved by Smith’s emotional petitions on behalf of Palestinian civilians. Those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause were unconvinced by Murray’s arguments about experience-based knowledge, with many criticizing what they took to be Murray’s message that only experts should speak their minds.

Murray stumbled on a key issue regarding reporting when he upbraided Smith for not visiting Israel or Gaza. I generally agree that it’s a good idea to visit a place you write about, and the fact is that there are thousands of reporters who have spent lots of time in Gaza and Israel and have spoken to lots of people there, and who see it just as Smith does. Indeed, very few journalists under the age of 50 who have covered the conflict for Western media—from the Associated Press to El Pais, the Guardian to The Washington Post—do not believe the same things about Israelis and Palestinians that Smith does.

What’s interesting here is that Smith and other podcasters who boast of ostensibly provocative takes insist that they’re unveiling dangerous truths the media doesn’t dare speak about for fear of upsetting powerful forces. But the self-styled dissident podcasters’ “edgy” takes are mere repackaged establishment wisdom that they generate in consort with one another.

“There’s just no way to get rid of Hamas without it being replaced by more Hamas or a Hamas-like group,” Smith tells Murray, on the inevitability of resistance against military force. “It’s General McChrystal’s ‘insurgent math.’” Citing the premise of Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine is strange. Smith is famously, and rightly, critical of the United States’ failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the only people who think the retired four-star general was right to spend American lives and money cheaply by prioritizing the hearts and minds of people who wanted to kill Americans are West Point faculty; think tank experts scattered across Washington, D.C.; and family and guests gathered around the Thanksgiving table at the Bush ranch.

Even the role Smith and Rogan play is an establishment category—a comic who is not just a jester, but a gimlet-eyed and idiosyncratic observer of current events celebrated for relating sardonically to his young and disaffected audience. It’s Jon Stewart, but for right-wing audiences.

So what, exactly, is happening here? Call it the wages of Russiagate.

Starting no later than December 2016, the American media began collaborating with U.S. spy services in an unprecedented effort to topple the president of the United States. The media had long tilted left and thus earned the disdain of the right, but using leaks of classified information to interfere with the government’s administration made the media, in the eyes of the right, an enemy institution. The media’s complicity in subsequent anti-Trump operations—from the special counsel investigation to the two attempts on Trump’s life—plunged half the country further and further into doubt, despair, and even paranoia. After all, with the Jan. 6 arrests and prosecutions, it became clear the Joe Biden White House and its media auxiliaries were aiming not just at Trump, but at his supporters as well. Grandmothers, veterans, and clergy were being rounded up for exercising their First Amendment rights. The press cast them as insurrectionists and reported favorably about children who turned their insurrectionist parents over to the police. Under those circumstances, who could you trust?

That’s the environment the new right-wing media—these podcasters—inherited.

One option would have been to approach audiences knowing that since these Americans have gone through hell, many of them all but broken, they need their faith restored. To move forward, they need to know true things about the world, their communities, and themselves, or we will be lost as a nation. In short, it’s the media’s job to help them believe again.

But that is not the choice the podcasters made. Rather, consciously or not, they saw the right—their audience—as easy marks, made even more vulnerable with additional doses of fear and panic and falsehood. You have no control over your own country or even your lives, they tell their listeners, sometimes daily. Trump has no control over the government, they say over and over. Neocons are driving us to war with Iran, and thousands will die, they posted again and again. The reason Smith and others are disguising establishment talking points as new right wisdom is to herd their audiences into the pen the left built for them.

—Lee Smith

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The Rest

→Chinese President Xi Jinping has axed the number-two military official in the People’s Liberation Army, Gen. He Weidong, in what is called the most dramatic act of his military anti-corruption campaign, according to the Financial Times. The firing marks the first time a general has been removed from that post in six decades. Weidong was third in command of the Chinese military and a member of the Communist Party’s politburo. Xi’s decision comes six months after he vanquished another member of the Chinese Central Military Commission, Miao Hua, for “serious violations of discipline,” but Weidong’s dismissal is said to be a more serious affair aimed at preparing the PLA for real military combat. “This shows how serious Xi is about stamping out corruption in the military,” said Neil Thomas, an expert on elite Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Our senior policy analyst believes Xi simply needs to lock in support as “turbulence,” due to the trade war with the United States and other matters, approaches, as the upcoming midterm party congress approaches.

→Looking to avoid the full wrath of President Trump’s tariffs at the end of the 90-day pause announced earlier this week, Vietnam is “prepared” to crack down on Chinese goods being shipped to the United States through its territory and will tighten controls on sensitive exports to China, according to Reuters. The offer was made as U.S. officials such as White House trade adviser Peter Navarro have been warning about Chinese goods being sent to the United States with “Made in Vietnam” labels. Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Ho Duc Phoc met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday to discuss ways that Vietnam can avoid the paused 46% tariff that Trump announced on “Liberation Day” when it goes back into effect. Vietnam, a country heavily reliant on exports, hopes to get duties reduced to between 22% and 28%. The chart below demonstrates how Vietnamese exports to the United States rose in tandem with its imports from China:

→Senate Democrats are escalating their allegations that President Trump’s Wednesday tariffs pause was evidence that the administration engaged in insider trading, according to Washington Examiner. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Chuck Schumer (NY) led the charge calling for an investigation into the matter, urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into whether Trump knowingly manipulated the market. Shortly before the pause on tariffs, Trump said on social media that it was a “GREAT TIME TO BUY,” ending the announcement with the letters DJT, which are the president’s initials and the stock ticker symbol for Trump Media and Technology Group Corp., the operator of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.

→Quote of the Day

We’ve got a long list of things that we’re investigating, election integrity being one of them. We have evidence of how electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time, and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes. Which drives home the importance of your mandate to bring back paper ballots across the country so that voters can have faith in the integrity of our elections.

That’s National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard in yesterday’s White House cabinet meeting revealing that her office has discovered that U.S. voting machines are subject to hacking and manipulation, meaning that manipulating election results wouldn’t be impossible.

→Also at yesterday’s cabinet meeting, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to identify the cause of the rising rates of autism in the United States by this September, according to Reuters. The answer to this question has stumped scientists for decades, even as autism rates have steadily increased since 2000. Kennedy’s promise fits within President Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission, composed of Kennedy and other officials, which is tasked with examining the rates of autism, asthma, and the overprescription of ADHD medication for children. Kennedy told Trump that he believes that “something artificial” is causing the spike in autism rates during the meeting. Kristyn Roth, chief marketing officer for the advocacy group Autism Society of America, said that Kennedy’s use of the term epidemic in regards to autism rates is “incredibly irresponsible” but didn’t explain why she finds it such a disconcerting use of language.

→The House passed a bill related to one of the Republicans’ key issues for this year yesterday: Designed to ensure only U.S. citizens can vote in U.S. elections, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAFE) Act would require applicants using the federal voter registration form to provide documentary proof of citizenship in person at their local election office, according to Newsweek. This is the second time Republicans have attempted to pass the SAVE Act; last year it passed the House before failing in the Senate against Democratic opposition. With a narrow Republican lead in the Senate, passing the bill through may still prove difficult, especially given that progressive groups like the Brennan Center for Justice (a substantial recipient of Open Society funding, per InfluenceWatch) warn that the law could lead to widespread voter disenfranchisement, citing the fact that 9% of Americans don’t have IDs. Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle said this bill would force Americans into a “paperwork nightmare,” as if getting an ID is somehow the hardest task one could imagine doing. Four Democrats voted for the bill: Reps. Jared Golden (ME), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA), Henry Cuellar (TX), and Ed Case (HI), according to Democracy Docket.

→File this under “stories I wish I’d never read”:

The New York Police Department is seeking a man who allegedly sexually assaulted a dead person aboard the R train in downtown Manhattan yesterday, according to AMNY. According to the NYPD, the yet-to-be-identified individual had sexual contact with an “unconscious and unresponsive” adult male, later discovered to be deceased, before fleeing the train on foot in an unknown direction. The picture of the suspect is below. Obviously, contact the authorities if you see him.

→Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill yesterday making it illegal for Coloradans to buy, sell, and manufacture certain types of semiautomatic firearms without passing two background checks, obtaining a permit from a local sheriff's department, and completing a firearms training course certified by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, according to CBS News. The law places Colorado among the states with the most restrictive gun laws. The restrictions will apply as of August 2026. Colorado state Sen. Tom Sullivan, who co-sponsored the bill, was the father of one of the children murdered at the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2013 during a screening of The Dark Knight Returns. The Colorado State Shooting Association plans to block the law, saying the intensive restrictions infringe upon Second Amendment rights.

→The Supreme Court on Thursday told the government to take steps to return a Salvadoran migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom it had wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, according to The New York Times. Garcia was one of the migrants deported to El Salvador in March under the suspicion that he was a member of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13. In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Garcia’s wife insisted that her husband had never been affiliated with any gangs. Garcia, a sheet metal worker and father of three, fled to the United States at age 16 after MS-13 extorted his family in his native country, tried to indoctrinate him, and threatened to kill him, according to the Associated Press. He was at one point accused by Maryland police of being a gang member, but he denied the accusations. The White House called Abrego Garcia’s deportation an “administrative error” earlier this week but claimed it lacked the authority to bring him back from El Salvador.

→Video of the Day

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett (TX) suggested that deportations were causing the rising costs of groceries in an interview with CBS News host Major Garrett yesterday. And that’s not all! Last weekend, during an appearance at the 125th anniversary of Grace Baptist Church in Connecticut, she suggested that the country needs illegal immigrants because “we are done picking cotton.” Someone get this woman a TV show.

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