Author, columnist, speaker
Iran Knows That the Clock Is Ticking
By Robert Knight
Americans have a very short attention span, especially when it comes to their pocketbooks and political leadership.
Some of this is built in.
The Constitution requires an election for the entire House every two years, for president every four years, and Senate elections for six-year terms that are staggered so the entire upper body is never on the ballot at the same time.
While this arrangement guarantees that voters don’t have to wait long to right the ship of state if they think it’s foundering, it gives American foreign policy negotiators a huge disadvantage with their international counterparts, especially totalitarian regimes.
The timeline for President Donald Trump and his administration is quite different from that of the Iranian ayatollahs who still control their country’s government, and apparently, the Strait of Hormuz, plus remaining stocks of uranium.
Mr. Trump and the Republicans are looking at a congressional election less than five months away. The speed at which gasoline prices fall may well determine who controls Capitol Hill.
The Tehran regime, like the Chinese communists in Beijing, has no expiration date. They can afford to wait out the Americans.
Against this backdrop, the administration announced a peace deal with Iran that leaves in place the current regime, allows it to start selling oil again, and supposedly opens the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic.
In return, the Iranians have yet again agreed not to work toward acquiring nuclear weapons while implausibly insisting they never had such a program.
Iran has promised to negotiate for another 60 days, all the while rebuilding its supplies of missiles, drones, anti-aircraft devices and other military equipment.
They seem confident that Democrats and the media will undermine support for renewed U.S. military action against them when they inevitably cheat.
While this is going on, the Trump administration has warned Israel to stop bombing Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, who have been sending missiles into northern Israel for years.
If Canada, Mexico, or Cuba were sending missiles daily into the United States, do you think we’d agree to leave them alone?
Every election, we’re told, will be the most important in our lifetimes. It’s not hyperbole.
Think what you will of Republicans, who often inexplicably fumble the ball, such as the Senate’s seeming inability to pass the SAVE America Act to safeguard elections, but the Democrats have morphed into an outright anti-American socialist party.
Democrats are devoted to open borders, sexual anarchy, confiscatory taxes, wealth redistribution, a growing anti-Semitic component, and a steady supply of lunatics like James Talarico, their “six genders” Senate candidate in Texas, and Graham Platner, the Nazi-tattooed, woman-abusing communist in Maine.
Democrats elected Marxist mayors in major cities such as New York and Seattle, and soon in the District of Columbia, along with prosecutors who side with criminals instead of victims.
The party is united by white-hot hatred of Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, the president’s unabashed narcissism fuels it. From putting his name on the Kennedy Center to proclaiming that the America 250 celebration on the National Mall will be a “Trump rally,” he feeds the “no kings” nonsense.
While it may be fun for him, it’s hurting the Republicans’ chances of retaining Congress because it rubs many independents the wrong way.
Instead of dismissing concern over high gas prices, Mr. Trump needs to remind Americans that inflation was worse under President Joe Biden, and that a single 10-megaton blast from an Iranian missile in the New York area would kill up to 12 million people. That’s why he bombed Iran in the first place.
The stakes are enormous, which is why the Trump administration has been negotiating with a figurative gun to its head. Hurry up and get gas prices down. If not, you’ll turn the country back over to the party of people who pollsters have revealed to despise America.
On so many levels, the second Trump administration has been a return to sanity and good government. It would be disastrous to see it undone.
The alternative to the Iran deal is to go back to bombing Tehran into the Stone Age, which apparently is far more difficult than what we’ve been told. Maybe they’re getting bad intelligence?
In any case, once again, it seems the very soul of America is on the ballot this November.
A Democratic takeover of Congress would produce more impeachments, hamstring the administration, and set the stage for the 2028 presidential election.
A Senate led by now-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, would attempt to reverse popular GOP reforms such as stopping illegal immigration, unleashing America’s energy industry, cutting taxes, uncovering massive welfare fraud, and securing religious liberty in the face of LGBTQ-inspired totalitarianism.
It would also doom the president’s judicial nominees.
The larger problem is that federal elections matter too much. The government was never supposed to be this big, reaching into everyone’s lives in ways unimagined by the Founders and even by the American people just a few generations ago.
But here we are, and Republicans had better sharpen their message and remind voters about what kind of country they want their kids and grandkids to grow up in.
The Iranians aren’t the only ones who want to fundamentally deconstruct America.
Illustration by Linas Garsys in The Washington Times.
Beware of the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
By Robert Knight
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear appears to be readying for a presidential run in 2028.
The telegenic Democrat was on a speaking tour last year in early primary state South Carolina. In September, he has a book coming out entitled, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” a reference to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
His publisher summarizes it this way: “By regrounding faith in compassion and kindness, he believes we can start to heal as a country.”
Compassion and kindness are God-given, but I thought we were in the midst of healing from the nightmare of the Biden years, with its promotion of atheism, illegal immigration, sexual anarchy, and attacks on Catholics and pro-lifers.
Mr. Beshear, like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, identifies as a Christian and a moderate and gets priceless media cover while supporting the Democratic Party’s radical social and economic agenda.
In 2023, for instance, he tried to block a state bill protecting minors from “gender affirming care.”
The law prohibits doctors from subjecting gender-confused teens to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible, disfiguring surgeries.
The law also bans males from competing on girls’ sports teams. Most people think this makes sense.
Beshear insisted that such a law “would hurt kids and their families” and violate “parental rights.”
He claimed there was no evidence of widespread harm. To which I would say one butchered child is too many and that evidence of harm is voluminous, including the growing number of suicides and trans-related violence.
On the same day of Mr. Beshear’s veto, both houses of Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode it. Naturally, a federal judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, issued an immediate injunction halting enforcement. The case is still in litigation.
A year earlier, Ms. Jennings, one of President Donald Trump’s few clunker appointees, struck down a Kentucky law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks and requiring medical oversight for abortion pills.
Gov. Beshear also vetoed that bill, and the legislature overrode him.
In South Carolina, which went for Mr. Trump by 30 points, Mr. Beshear emphasized his Christian faith while boasting that he was “a proud, pro-LGBTQ+ governor.”
This is a stance that ignores Jesus Christ’s clear restating of God’s creation of male and female and God’s marriage-based sexual morality from Genesis.
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Beshear said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.” How about protecting them from quacks who sterilize them and turn them into lifetime medical cases?
By the way, politicians love to haul out the term “children of God” like a magic amulet. The Bible says we’re all created in the image of God, but that we’re not children of God unless we believe in Him and submit to God’s authority. Until then, we’re on the other team, and I don’t mean the New Jersey Devils.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,” John 1:12 says. If we’re automatically children of God, we wouldn’t need to be, as Jesus said, born again.
Anyway, Mr. Beshear is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing. Democrats have become quite adept at using Christianese and buzzwords to fool people. President Barack Obama often gave biblical scholars heartburn over his misappropriating Jesus’s words to justify sexual sin and confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico is battling hard-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. Like Mr. Beshear, Mr. Talarico touts his Christian faith while cleaving to a radical agenda.
“He delivers left-wing orthodoxy in centrist packaging and fights Christian nationalism with Scripture,” the Wall Street Journal explains.
If you’re a patriotic Christian, he’s talking about you and your family as a threat to America.
Much of his rhetoric revolves around Marxist class envy, such as, “Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.”
During remarks opposing a bill protecting kids from transgender treatments, he said, “Jesus never once condemned transgender people.”
Well, Jesus didn’t need to, and He welcomed all repentant sinners. The Hebrew Scriptures are crystal clear on sexual morality. Sexual confusion is the province of paganism, which historically often involved child sacrifice as well.
Any comparison to the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Democratic Party inferred by readers at this juncture may not be coincidental.
In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Talarico said, “Christian nationalism is dangerous. … When politicians use the Bible to push division and hate, they’re not following Jesus; they’re using His name for their own agenda.”
This is classic projection, accusing your opponents of exactly what you’re doing.
At the University of Texas on Feb. 6, Mr. Talarico said, “I’m a Christian progressive. I believe the Gospel is inherently radical—it challenges the powerful, lifts up the poor, and calls for justice in every sphere of life.”
When progressives talk about “justice” they mean “social justice.” This is envy, disguised as compassion and politicized to enable governments to redistribute income and rewrite society’s moral code.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter / The Washington Times.