Welcome to the RedState Weekly Briefing — where we take a quick look at the week’s most viewed stories in case you missed any of them. What do you suppose caught people's attention in this latest whirlwind week? Grab a cup of coffee (or something stronger if you're so inclined), and sit down with this 21st Century Weekend Edition of your favorite (online) publication — here we go!
#1 - Ben Shapiro's Wild CNN Appearance Exposes the Psychosis of the Left — by Bonchie
Kasparian starting her commentary with "I totally reject," only for her to totally reject reality, is about what you'd expect. I understand that she hates Israel and loves Middle Eastern terrorists, and don't kid yourself, that's undergirding all of what she says there, but that doesn't mean she's entitled to her own statistical facts. Whatever she thinks about the various wars in question, some of which I also opposed, the spending on those has been dwarfed by the ongoing expenditures of domestic entitlements. As Shapiro notes, it was actually after 2008 that the national debt began to skyrocket. Spending in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to that, but they were not the driver of it.
Again, I don't want to seem as if I'm defending George W. Bush's spending habits because they set a bad precedent, but when you talk about the national debt in 2025, blaming "wars in the Middle East" is like running up $10,000 on your credit card and then claiming you'd have been fine had you just not gone to Wendy's that one time. We have to deal with the actual facts and figures that exist today, and we could quite literally cut out our entire defense budget and still be in debt due to entitlements. Never mind the economic costs we'd pay if Russia and China were able to dominate the global sphere.
#2 - Classified Navy SEAL Mission Leaked to Damage President Trump Harms National Security Instead — by streiff
The real target here is President Trump. The NYT story starts with the premise, "The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law." I think there will be an attempt to equate this mission with the destruction of a drug cartel boat (Trump's Attack on Drug Cartel Is 'Illegal' and 'Murder' According to Very Smart People – RedState) and make Congressional notification an issue. The NYT also labels the dead North Koreans as civilians without any evidence. I think the evidence presented in the story points toward the dead men being military. North Korean civilians don't meander about in boats in the dead of the night. They don't wear wetsuits. They don't jump in the ocean in response, possibly, to a surface disturbance. And they, statistically, shouldn't show up in the middle of a SEAL operation.
All of this is creating a narrative that Trump is a lawbreaker, that he authorizes the murder of civilians, that he's impulsive and likely to lead us into a war, and that he has a total disregard for "how we've always done it."
#3 - Brainwashed Leftist Is Offered 1-Way Ticket to Communist Country of Her Choice—the Result Is Fabulous — by Becky Noble
The whole disturbing display took place on a recent episode of Jubilee Media's "Surrounded" series. The premise of the show is to have one person debate a dozen others who disagree with them. This particular episode featured Patrick Bet-David, host of the "PBD Podcast," and what appeared to be 20 or so burgeoning socialists/communists. Bet-David begins to spar with a young woman named Allannah. Bet-David offers up what most people attempting to carry on a rational debate with another would do; he gives statistics. The stats he gives are the GDPs of both North and South Korea. Allannah's response, "Are we judging countries based on GDP and not what they value for our humans..." At this point, she trails off, but it won't be the first time she has no answer but to speak over Bet-David.
Bet-David then lays a hard truth on her, saying, "If you lived in North Korea, you wouldn't be able to do what you are doing right now. You wouldn't have a voice." He tries again to compare the GDPs of both countries, but Allannah is not interested. She begins to blather on about how South Korea is:
"...owned by like five companies, in total, the entire country. You think that's something to live by? If you aren't employed by the top five companies, you are practically unemployed in that country. I'm not going to be free in a country like South Korea, where I'm only employed in five companies, or no job."
#4 - Ilhan Omar Challenges People to Dig Into Her Financial Records, Immediately Regrets It
Regardless, it's really not a good idea to snarkily accuse others of "disinformation" and tell them to go search through your finances if they end up revealing the opposite of what you claim. In this case, Omar is trying a rather dumb and transparent sleight of hand because when you do check her public financial disclosures, you find that she's worth at least $6 million. The way she tries to handwave that away is by suggesting her husband's money is not her money.
I'm not sure how it works in Somalia, but in America, that's not how marriage works. Omar is obviously privy to the cash her husband, Tim Mynett, brings in, given the lifestyle she and her crazed daughter live. Here's the thing, though. One of his company's biggest benefactors is Omar's campaign.
#5 - Monumental Media Malpractice: CBS Deceptively Edits Sec. Kristi Noem Interview — by Ward Clark
Sometimes, the legacy media's bias is so open, so shameless, that it's jaw-dropping. It's been this way since the Nixon years, when we watched on cumbersome tube televisions (as the youngest, I was always the kid who had to get up and change the channel) as the news programs took an almost gleeful tone at President Nixon's troubles. The rise of the internet just made matters worse; while we got some balance with the rise of the alternative media, like this site, the legacy media abandoned any pretext of objectivity.
Case in point: Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, on Sunday, appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation," and they did an absolutely shameless edit of her statement about the illegal alien, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
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