Category: The Washington Free Beacon
Harvard Professor Calls Out University’s ‘Exclusion Of White Males’ In Scathing Public Resignation
‘Admitting a white male was ‘not happening this year”
Trump says if Iran ‘kills peaceful protesters,’ the US ‘will come to their rescue’
President Donald Trump said early Friday morning that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
Trump added that “we are locked and loaded and ready to go” in the post on his Truth Social network, which went live just before 3 a.m. Eastern time.
‘Trump should know that intervention by the US in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the US interests.’
Trump’s warning came hours after reports that at least six people have been killed after nearly a week of protests in Iran over grim economic conditions there, CBS News reported.
More from CBS News:
Iran has been plagued for years by staggering hyperinflation, fueled by Western sanctions imposed over the hardline clerical government’s nuclear program and backing for militant groups across the region.
Videos and photos from Tehran and other cities posted on social media have shown protesters marching through streets from early this week, often chanting anti-government, pro-monarchy slogans and sometimes clashing violently with security forces.
In an apparent bid to quell the unrest, Iranian authorities have acknowledged the economic concerns and said peaceful protests are legitimate, but suggested that foreign powers — usually a reference to Israel and the U.S. — are behind subversive elements fueling violence on the streets.
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Ali Larijani — a former speaker of Iran’s parliament and now the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council — said Friday on social media in reaction to Trump’s remarks that “Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” CBS News reported.
Larijani added that “the people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism” and that “they should take care of their own soldiers,” according to the news network.
The “soldiers” remark appeared to be in reference to U.S. military forces in the Middle East in range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, CBS News added.
Ali Shamkhani — an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut,” the news network reported.
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” Shamkhani added in a social media post, CBS News said.
Prior to Trump’s Friday morning post on Truth Social, the U.S. and Israeli governments issued statements supporting the Iranian protests, the news network said.
“The people of Iran want freedom. They have suffered at the hands of the Ayatollahs for too long,” Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a Monday X post. “We stand with Iranians in the streets of Tehran and across the country as they protest a radical regime that has brought them nothing but economic downturn and war.”
More from CBS News:
Tension between the U.S. and Iran escalated this week on the heels of a visit to the U.S. by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has campaigned his country’s close allies in Washington for decades to take a tougher stance on Iran.
After meeting with Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday, Mr. Trump said he had heard that Iran could be attempting to rebuild its nuclear program following the unprecedented U.S. strikes on its enrichment facilities in June. Mr. Trump warned that if Iran did try to rebuild, “we’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them. But hopefully that’s not happening.”
Iranian President Mahsoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday said Tehran would respond “to any cruel aggression” with unspecified “harsh and discouraging” measures, the news network added.
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Which way after Trump? ‘Strong Gods’ may offer the solution
Where do we go after Donald Trump?
The question has divided the right. When it comes to charting the correct course, a book published during the president’s first administration is timelier than ever: R.R. Reno’s “The Return of the Strong Gods.”
‘The perverse gods of blood, soil, and identity cannot be overcome with the open-society therapies of weakening,’ writes Reno.
MAGA 2.0?
One faction of the right appears keen to continue delivering on the promise of Trump’s “Golden Age” by leaning further into a muscular and nationalistic conservatism.
Liberal interlopers and other ideological refugees with forward operating bases situated right-of-center have been working ardently to politically neutralize this camp ahead of the 2028 election, smearing, for instance, some of those in Vice President JD Vance’s orbit as “woke right.”
Such liberal saboteurs are right to be fearful of this camp, as its dominance — affirmed by a Vance win — would signal the MAGA movement wasn’t a sprint but a marathon.
Libertarian libs
The second camp, whose potential champion in the 2028 primary field appears to be Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is keen both to act as though the populist upheaval of the 2010s hadn’t irreversibly changed the game and to slink back onto the rhetorically conservative, libertarian-minded side of the liberal coin.
This is the politics that has purchased cultural and economic deregulation, a ruinous series of foreign entanglements, a demographic crisis, and a low-trust society marked by an anemic sense of “we.”
The old guard in both parties — those who’ve long railed against and/or sought to undermine the MAGA agenda — would doubtless regard the success and empowerment of this camp as a godsend.
Early polling data provide strong indications, however, that there is little appetite among likely Republican primary voters for a return to a George W. Bush-era style of Republican leadership. The reason is perhaps best explained in a book first published six years ago.
Weak loves vs. strong gods
In “Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West,” R.R. Reno, a political philosopher and editor of First Things magazine, discusses both what was behind and what is ahead of the recent nationalist and populist uprisings in the West.
The book, which Reno has touted as an “essay in the politics of imagination,” is an engrossing elaboration on an article he penned years earlier detailing the full-spectrum campaign spearheaded by classical and progressive liberals after the Second World War to “disenchant and desacralize public life” and to produce an “open society” wherein the “strong gods” — the “objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies” — could inevitably be neutralized and/or replaced by “weak loves” such as relativism, diversity, and tolerance.
Reno suggests that the reasoning behind this project of societal opening and weakening was that earlier in the 20th century, strong gods had supposedly rendered the masses easily manipulable by demagogues and set the stage for those totalitarian regimes that warred against humanity.
The general theory of society underpinning the postwar consensus became, according to Reno, “characterized by a fundamental judgment: whatever is strong — strong loves and strong truths — leads to oppression, while liberty and prosperity require the reign of weak loves and weak truths.”
RELATED: Conservatives face a choice in ’26: realignment or extinction
MediaProduction via iStock/Getty Images
Making monsters
This, Reno insists, was a catastrophic overreaction.
In their campaign to water down dark loves, the war-traumatized liberal elites of yesteryear also watered down the powerful loves and intense loyalties that hold Western civilization together and supply a sense of belonging, purpose, and solidarity — such as family, nation, religion, and transcendent truth.
Reno notes that this campaign not only produced a dysfunctional society but incubated some of the very dark loves it was meant to destroy.
“The perverse gods of blood, soil, and identity cannot be overcome with the open-society therapies of weakening,” writes Reno. “On the contrary, they are encouraged by multiculturalism and the reductive techniques of critique. In its present decadent form, the postwar consensus makes white nationalism an entirely cogent position.”
“We cannot forestall the return of the debasing gods by reapplying the open-society imperatives. False loves can be remedied only be true ones,” adds Reno.
‘A language of love’
While the postwar liberal regime enjoyed great success in producing monsters and in disenchanting, disorienting, deracinating, and rendering homeless those guns-or-religion deplorables for whom America’s detached elites still brazenly express contempt, its success karmically set the stage for a popular yearning for anchorage, belonging, and a sense of “we,” which in turn prompted a rejection of the postwar consensus.
That rejection has manifested in various ways but most clearly in the rejection of the open society and its possessing forces of weakening that occurred on Nov. 8, 2016.
During his first term and again over the past several months, Trump has pursued reconsolidation and protection as opposed to deregulation and openness and delivered significant results along the way.
Those who’d seek to steer the right back toward the open society and sell voters on a rebrand of the postwar consensus stand a better chance of sweeping waves back into the sea.
While well-positioned to lead, those in the first camp may nevertheless want to heed Reno’s caution about the open society: “This project cannot be opposed solely on political grounds, as if nationalism alone can overcome the ‘destiny of weakening.’ We need strengthening motifs across the board.”
“Our task, therefore, is to restore public life in the West by developing a language of love and a vision of the ‘we’ that befits our dignity and appeals to our reason as well as our hearts,” wrote Reno.
“We must attend to the strong gods who come from above and animate the best of our traditions. Only that kind of leadership will forestall the return of the dark gods who rise up from below.”
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Top 5 funniest Trump moments of 2025
President Donald Trump has secured a spot as one of the most iconic figures in American history. While many of his significant political actions are certain to be remembered, so will the countless clips and memes throughout his time in office.
Here are the five funniest Trump moments of his second presidency so far.
5. Making plastic straws great again
In the early weeks of his second term, Trump signed the “number one trending” executive order ending the “forced use” of paper straws across the country.
During the signing, Trump quipped about the ineffectiveness of paper straws, noting they “explode” in drinks, rendering them useless and often frustrating to drink from.
“We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump said. “These things don’t work. … On occasion they break, they explode. If something’s hot, they don’t last very long. Like, a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation. So, we’re going back to plastic straws. I think it’s OK.”
“I don’t think that plastic is going to affect a shark very much as they’re munching their way through the ocean,” Trump added.
4. “Everything’s computer!”
Trump shared a unique friendship with serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose many business ventures include Tesla. These electric cars that were once one of the most iconic and prevalent vehicles in Silicon Valley quickly became associated with Musk and Trump’s political alliance.
In support of Musk, Trump had several Tesla models shown at the White House, where he candidly reviewed a Tesla vehicle himself.
“Oh wow, it’s beautiful!” Trump said as he stepped into the Tesla. “Wow. That’s beautiful. This is a different panel than I’ve — everything’s computer!”
3. Trick-or-treat
Trump recreated one of his most iconic moments during Halloween, when the White House hosts an annual trick-or-treat on the South Lawn, where the president and the first lady hand out candy to children.
In 2019, one of Trump’s funniest unscripted moments was when a child in an inflatable Minion costume came to the White House for candy. Trump, unsure of where to hand off the candy bar, made the executive decision to place it on the Minion’s head, producing one of the most meme-able moments of his first term.
Trump re-created this interaction in 2025 when a child dressed as Marshmello, a DJ who wears a marshmallow-shaped mask, came through the line. Just as he did in 2019, Trump opted to set the candy bar on the flat top of the marshmallow, sending the trick-or-treater on his way.
2. Autopen presidency
As Trump works to solidify his legacy after his second term, he has taken it upon himself to spruce up the White House grounds with a new ballroom, a paved patio in the Rose Garden, and touches of gold pretty much every place he can.
He has also made sure to commemorate those presidents who came before him.
One new feature at the White House is Trump’s hall of presidents, featuring an array of gold-framed presidential portraits alongside a walkway overlooking the Rose Garden. Trump cleverly added his own flair to the commemorative walkway, featuring a framed photo of the autopen between his 45th and 47th presidential portrait, memorializing former President Joe Biden’s autopen scandal.
1. The N-word
Trump has always had a flair for the dramatic, often echoing the showmanship of his reality TV days. Love him or hate him, he knows how to capture a crowd’s attention.
In one of his funniest and most underrated political speeches of 2025, Trump delivered an edgy punchline in an address to military brass in Quantico.
“It was really a stupid person that … mentioned the word ‘nuclear,'” Trump said during the address.
“I moved a submarine or two … over to the coast of Russia, just to be careful, because we can’t let people throw around that word,” he continued.
“I call it the N-word,” Trump added. “There are two N-words, and you can’t use either of them.”
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The Scientist Who Saw It Coming
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