On Coexisting with Supporters of October 7

By Seth Mandel

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

 

Harvard Law professor Stephen E. Sachs raised a good question on social media yesterday, and one that American Jews in particular might be contemplating.

 

On the news that New York’s first lady Rama Duwaji liked social media posts supporting the mass slaughter of Jews on October 7, Sachs responded that Duwaji’s actions ought to be considered “incompatible” with “membership in polite society.” (In addition to her social media activity, I and many others would add Duwaji’s and Zohran Mamdani’s feting of anti-Semitic agitator Mahmoud Khalil.)

 

And he’s right. But he was also right when he added that, unfortunately, these days “[y]ou can have rooted for Oct. 7 and still be a public figure, a fancy professor, etc.” The challenge, then: “We have to figure out how to act in a world where this is so.”

 

I think this expresses a fundamental aspect of navigating the post-October 7 environment, in which an erstwhile-accepted taboo was obliterated from the social compact overnight. Not everyone is affected by this, and not everyone who is affected by it feels worse off. Hence the imbalance that descended upon America two and a half years ago, when Jews were made to understand that our acceptance in society is conditional here too, and that many key institutions have rescinded that acceptance already. Most of all, it’s just a strange feeling to know how many of the people you interact with would be unmoved if you were to go up in flames right in front of them.

 

Essentially, October 7 became the kind of dividing line that made a lot of Jews understand history.

 

So it’s a useful question to ponder: How should we act? After all, not only must we maintain precisely the values we did before, but we also should work toward returning society to a place in which support for October 7 is brings public shame. What follows are a few guidelines.

 

First, Jews must not permit our own beliefs to be diluted by a society that makes excuses for pogroms. Nor should it temper our own criticism of October 7. Fact is, October 7 should be a red line for all civilizations, and it must remain a red line for us. We should not hesitate to state and restate that fact—that unqualified condemnation of that day is a basic human litmus test—even in front of those who justify Nazi barbarism. Especially in their presence, perhaps. We do not accommodate, out of misguided politesse, those who think our children deserved to be burned alive.

 

Second, and this goes for non-Jews just as much as for Jews: Use October 7 as a barometer for political, ideological and moral hypocrisy. Not because we’re looking for “gotcha” moments, but because it is impractical to remain unaware of who can be trusted in public life. We know, for example, that people who travel in the same circles as Duwaji and her husband Zohran Mamdani are not interested in protecting women from sexual assault, and that when they sign on to such campaigns it is because they are lying. We know that when they falsely accuse Israel of child murder it is because they support the murder of the children of Israel. Another example: The war began with Hamas carrying out the largest massacre at a music festival in recorded history. Musicians and artists who ignore this and instead parrot the propaganda of those who carried out the massacre do not believe in artistic expression; they only believe in dogmatic political expression. Indeed, they support regimes that would abolish the arts entirely.

 

Third, do not “trade” for condemnation of October 7. Do not dignify someone’s attempt to say “if you want me to condemn October 7, will you condemn [some random perceived crime they want you to falsely equate with October 7]?” October 7 is not something to be bartered away to some bad-faith ideological actor. October 7 is not an opening bid in some negotiation. Take it or leave it.

 

Finally: Punish people politically for their refusal to recognize the barbarousness of October 7. Just add it to any public figure’s civic record. This isn’t holding a grudge, it’s just more practical politics. People on the wrong side of October 7 are expecting to benefit from some sort of statute of limitations—or the limitations of human memory. Instead, let’s help them remember.

Germany’s Chancellor Shows the Advantage of Moral Clarity

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

 

Spain has reportedly downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel. Per Reuters: “Spain permanently withdrew its ambassador to Israel on Tuesday as a ​diplomatic standoff worsened between the two countries ‌over Spain’s opposition to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.”

 

At some point, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government is going to run out of ways to petulantly express its opposition to the democratic West.

 

The U.S.-Iran conflict is not like Israel-Gaza in that it doesn’t pit the U.S. against Europe. There are some countries on the continent, like the UK and France, that don’t love President Trump’s enthusiasm for punishing the Islamic Republic but that nonetheless don’t make a scene about it. But Spain—well, you just can’t take Spain anywhere, can you.

 

Sanchez’s problem is with Trump first and foremost, but he can’t go full-throttle against the United States. So he’s doing the diplomatic equivalent of unfollowing Trump’s friend because he’s angry at Trump. Welcome to the junior high cafeteria.

 

Spain’s relations with Israel were already on ice because of Sanchez’s impulsive decision to recognize “the state of Palestine” last year. But the UK and France did so as well, and Israel managed to stay on speaking terms with those two allies.

 

That’s mostly because those two countries matter.

 

There is, of course, a third way: the path taken by Germany. Chancellor Friedrich Merz does not refrain from criticizing Israeli government policy, but neither does he allow those disagreements to send him into a toddler tantrum. Israel’s plan to allow construction in the Jerusalem area known as E1 is, Merz said yesterday, a “big mistake.”

 

He added that such construction would amount to “annexation moves,” and that his foreign minister will convey the same message to his Israeli counterparts when traveling to Israel.

 

To repeat: when traveling to Israel. The German government is not going to boycott the Jewish state over a policy disagreement. Because in the grand scheme of things, Merz knows who the good guys are and who the bad guys are—and the mullahs in Tehran aren’t the good guys.

 

In a different address, Merz was heckled by anti-Zionist protesters. He was unfazed: “The federal government I lead will never leave any doubt about where we stand. We stand with Israel.” After being interrupted again, he shot back: “Let me tell you one thing. I will do everything in my power to combat anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic of Germany wherever it occurs, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that this country remains a country where Jews can move about freely and openly.” He then pointed to a group holding a pro-Palestine poster and said: “And if those for whom you’re holding up this banner lay down their weapons, then the conflict will be over within 24 hours, ladies and gentlemen. That is the root cause and not the state of Israel, which is fighting for its existence and its right to live in freedom.”

 

There is, to be fair, a bit of intellectual consistency to Spain’s handling of its relations with Israel, at least as compared to France and the UK. Spain understands that Hamas and Iran are one. (Germany understands this as well.) That these are set pieces in a larger war. That there is something funny about running interference for Hamas and then denouncing Iran.

 

In fact, to take it one step further, the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran are legitimate responses to October 7, when Iran’s subsidiary invaded Israel and carried out the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Those attacks included the murder of dozens of Americans. Another Iranian proxy then killed three U.S. service members in Jordan.

 

And yet, France and the UK opposed Israel’s counteroffensive against those who carried out the massacre but are more supportive of strikes against those who financed and armed the ones who carried out the massacre.

 

Germany doesn’t have that problem, because under its current government Berlin has remained morally consistent: The terrorists and their nuke-pursuing masters are the bad guys. Sometimes Israeli actions come in for criticism from Merz, but never does he abandon the alliance of democracies for the axis of authoritarians who are currently also trying to smash up Europe with Iranian missiles. Moral clarity has the advantage of being easy to explain, even to pro-Palestinian protesters.

It’s Not Too Late for Influencers to End the Groyper Grift

By Caroline Downey

Thursday, March 12, 2026

 

Dear young men: No, the Jews are not to blame for your problems.

 

The so-called groypers — those who believe that Israel is a manipulative puppet master that pulls America’s strings to advantage itself at our expense — continue to make inroads with the male youth of the Republican Party. It’s not just an online phenomenon. At the antisemitism symposium hosted by National Review and the Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday, I noted that the College Republicans of America, an organization that has over 300 chapters nationwide, just appointed a groyper as its new political director. That a Nick Fuentes stan was tapped for the role suggests that the conspiratorial thinking about the Jewish state and its people is not confined to X.

 

As PragerU influencer Shabbos Kestenbaum mentioned on our panel, the anxiety about the future that is shaping groyper-esque sentiment among Gen Z — whether it’s being priced out of the real estate market or struggling to afford health care — is real. The problem is that they’re misidentifying the culprit.

 

“They’re saying the reason you can’t get ahead in life, the reason you can’t leave your mom’s basement, the reason you won’t have a successful relationship, the reason you keep working two to three jobs is ‘something something the Jews’ and ‘something something Bill Ackman’ and ‘something something AIPAC’ and ‘something something Bibi,’” Kestenbaum said.

 

And a growing number of young people, not just on the left but also on the right, are falling for it hook, line, and sinker. The groypers like to hide behind a banner of “America First,” as though they are the arbiters of what’s truly American. You see, they just want to shut down the border, deport illegal aliens, stop sending money abroad, and focus on American domestic prosperity!

 

I think the Founding Fathers gave us a pretty good idea of what America means, and anti-Jewish bigotry was not included in that vision. Further, the groypers’ villainizing of the Jews, as Kestenbaum suggested, is simply lazy, illogical, and a losing argument in dire need of refuting.

 

To suggest that success is impossible in America because of a Jewish cabal distorts not only the truth but our very understanding of meritocracy in this country. America offers abundant opportunities. Some people do well because they’re in the right place at the right time, but getting ahead is still largely a function of grit, patience, and determination.

 

There’s no small amount of self-interest at play here as well for influencers fanning the flames. If I, as a traditional conservative, declared on X tomorrow that it was the Jews all along, I would go viral and probably gain many thousands of followers. If I kept up that drumbeat, there’s a good chance that at some point I’d have a large audience for a new show and would be rolling in revenue.

 

The fact is that social media increasingly seems to reward transgressive, shock-and-awe content. And the oldest hatred in the book, once taboo in American life after the horrors of the mid-20th century, fits the bill perfectly. Grifters hungry for fame and fortune are going to continue to capitalize on the anti-Israel narrative.

 

That is, unless influencers and others in the public square band together and vow to put this to bed for good. This is a herculean task because, as my co-panelist and Daily Wire contributor Gates Garcia said, “we’re fighting the algorithm.” It’s hard to compete with hyperstimulating rage bait that’s designed to prey on your fears about the future and sidestep your critical thinking. But it’s a crucial task, and one that should be taken up by anyone who truly cares about this generation of young men.

 

Groypers are looking for an easy answer that can explain it all. But as with most things in life, it’s not that simple. Many factors have converged to make life harder for young people. Government meddling in various industries, especially housing and health care, have exacerbated the affordability issue — though Democrats want to prescribe more of the same. Radical feminism obviously overcorrected for women’s lack of freedom in society, and one result has been to punish many young men in college (DEI, Obama Title IX witch hunts) and to turn women away from relationships and family, things that young men still greatly desire.

 

But speaking as a Gen Z woman with two Gen Z brothers, I believe that young men deep down don’t actually want politicians to grovel to them. They need tough love and to be told that they are the masters of their own destiny, and that’s because they were so lucky to be born in the freest, greatest country in the world.

 

Maybe I feel differently than my peers because I was in the special situation of having much older parents, one born in 1940 and another in 1955, who both achieved great careers after starting from nothing and who instilled in me the importance of hustling and persistence amid adversity. I feel sorry for young people who never got such a humbling view of American history and its major challenges over the decades.

 

Gen Z’s criticisms of Baby Boomers are fair only in the sense that they cashed in on progressive government’s interventions in housing (as any rational actor would), which turned it from a necessity into a speculative and lucrative asset class. Gen Z is bitter that they won’t be able to build equity quite as easily because of the high barrier to entry. Fine. But older generations dealt with hardship, too, whether it was trying to get a job during Jimmy Carter’s stagflation in the 1970s, as my mother did, or getting deployed to fight in Vietnam, as my dad was.

 

“Make something of yourself; don’t fall into this pit of despair,” was Kestenbaum’s message to young men, and I agree.

 

Young men feel bad for themselves right now, and no doubt there have been forces working against them for decades. But there is no Israeli/Jewish bogeyman. They need to resist the edgelord escapism and remember the uplifting wisdom of Charlie Kirk, who didn’t entertain this doomer ideology. “Get married. Have children. Build a legacy. Pass down your values. Pursue the eternal. Seek true joy.”

Under the Jewish Spell

By Abe Greenwald

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

 

Tucker Carlson went on Megyn Kelly’s show to claim that Jews practice witchcraft on gentiles. They’ve cast spells on people like Mike Huckabee (Carlson’s example) to gain their sympathy and support. Ironically, Kelly nodded along mechanically, as if she were being mesmerized by Carlson. Of course, robotic deference to anti-Semites is her new business model.

 

Accusing Jews of sorcery and dark magic is an ancient and enduring aspect of anti-Semitism. The idea has been passed down from the Egyptians to the Romans to the early Christians to the Middle Ages to the fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Nazis to the Jew-haters of the 21st century. Carlson echoes Ilhan Omar, for example, who tweeted in 2012, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel."

 

It's one of the things that separates anti-Semitism from other prejudices. Jews are hated, in part, for having otherworldly powers. There are all sorts of interesting historical and sociological reasons for this phenomenon. For millennia, Jews lived among non-Jews as a separate people with their own religious rituals. And despite their refusal to worship the gods of others, Jews have not only survived an endless string of punishing horrors; they’ve thrived in every profession and intellectual or artistic pursuit.

 

What’s more, they’ve seen the fulfillment of God’s promise in the creation of the modern State of Israel.

 

It’s hard for people to grasp the unique and miraculous story of the Jews without appealing to the supernatural. Those who marvel at it may determine that we really are God’s chosen. Those who resent it cling to fantasies about devilish sorcery and so on.   
   
There’s an additional psychological factor behind the anti-Semite’s claim that Jews cast spells on people. It’s that they, the Jew-haters, can’t quite account for how they’ve become so entranced by the subject of the Jews. They sense in their own single-minded obsession something beyond their will to control. Anti-Semites see themselves falling into a maze in which Jews are hiding around every corner. Their fixation becomes indistinguishable from possession. Carlson, Omar, Candace Owens, and all the rest are, in fact, bewitched by Jew-hatred.

 

Anti-Semitism is undoubtedly a curse. Just look at what Jew-haters become: delusional, paranoid misfits unable to cope with the world as it is. To devote one’s life to hating Jews is to ensure one’s own endless misery. And for this burden, the anti-Semites must blame the Jews themselves. The only way they can do that without admitting to their own wretched state is to project their demons onto philo-Semites and supporters of Israel. Thus, Mike Huckabee is adduced as a victim of Jewish wizardry.

 

Now, take a look at Carlson—red-faced and ranting in an eternal tantrum—and take a look at Huckabee—the very portrait of a contented soul with a blessed life. I have no doubt that the supernatural plays a lead role in the story of the Jews. And God is evident not only in our survival. Just consider what He does to those who hate us—and what He does to those who call us friends.

White Progressives Still Don’t Get Black Voters

By Christian Schneider

Thursday, March 12, 2026

 

The internet is both ephemeral and eternal. Websites and memes erupt into popularity, only to disappear as quickly as they came. But these paint splotches of fleeting greatness remain online forever.

 

A perfect example is Christian Lander’s masterpiece of a website, Stuff White People Like. Begun in 2008, it paid mocking tribute to a very specific breed of wealthy, white progressive who savors Wes Anderson movies, loves to wallow in bad memories of high school, and brags about not having a TV. Eighteen years later, all of it still rings true.

 

Some of Lander’s brilliant entries (“Knowing What’s Best for Poor People,” “Awareness,” and “Diversity”) were prescient of the post–George Floyd era, with many white progressives still seeking to be absolved of their white guilt.

 

(Lander notes that white people care about “diversity” but “only as it relates to restaurants.”)

 

But perhaps Lander’s most astute observation was that white people take pride in “being an expert on YOUR culture.” This serves as “a reminder that they are not racist, which also makes them feel terrific.”

 

Nowhere is this cultural tourism more evident than when liberal whites try to explain the positions of black Americans. Using nothing but stereotypes gleaned from obnoxious podcasters and cable news guests, liberals plow headfirst into issues with the full belief that African-American voters will have their backs, unaware that no monolithic “minority” position exists.

 

This was never more glaring than following Floyd’s death, when young, liberal whites sprinted to support the “defund the police” movement. Yet black Americans never put their running shoes on to join the parade of insanity. A 2022 Gallup poll showed that 81 percent of blacks in America supported police retaining or increasing their presence in their communities. It is, after all, black Americans who disproportionately live in the areas with the highest crime, and they want the police there to make their lives more livable.

 

Further, in one 2022 Pew poll, 70 percent of black Democrats listed “reducing crime” as a priority, while only 34 percent of white Democrats agreed. Similarly, black Democrats were much more likely than white Democrats to prioritize issues like “defending against terrorism” (68 percent to 44 percent), “reducing the budget deficit” (50 percent to 21 percent), and “strengthening the military” (40 percent to 15 percent). Black Americans were also far more likely to prioritize “dealing with immigration” (43 percent to 26 percent).

 

Did John McCain give a speech years ago at the Source Awards that we all missed?

 

Of course, nowhere is the white liberal obsession with race more prevalent than on American college campuses. For years, progressives have argued that racial diversity is paramount to the university experience, while conservatives have argued that intellectual diversity makes for a more robust student body.

 

If a recent study is to be believed, however, not only can you have both these types of diversity; the former may actually stimulate the latter.

 

This week, researchers at the Tommy G. Thompson Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison released a survey of the school’s faculty, and it told us what we already knew: that the number of self-described liberals on the faculty (70 percent) dwarfs the number of faculty members who consider themself conservative (9 percent).

 

But buried in the numbers, one finds that it is the white faculty members who drag the professoriate to the left. “Faculty of color are not more liberal than white faculty,” the study reads. “In fact, they lean slightly more conservative.”

 

One explanation for the non-white faculty leaning more to the right is that the category includes Asian employees, who tend to be more conservative. But the study’s authors ran the numbers with Asian faculty members removed, and even then they found that “there is no evidence that white faculty are more conservative than other non-Asian faculty; if anything, white faculty are still estimated to be less likely to be conservative.”

 

So if you want more ideological diversity, it makes sense to provide more racial diversity.

 

For progressives, these embarrassing errors in divining what black Americans think can be corrected by simply asking racial minorities what they think, rather than listening to snotty rich white kids at Black Lives Matter protests throwing projectiles at cops.

 

The trouble is that learning to talk to black voters isn’t white liberals’ strong suit: One 2018 study from researchers at Yale and Princeton showed that white liberals, far more often than white conservatives, “downshift” their language when interacting with blacks, talking to them in a simpler, more patronizing way than they would to other groups. (Conservatives simply think that telling black friends how much they loved the movie Get Out will earn them credibility, failing to understand that this is the entire point of the film.)

 

Yet if liberals listened to black citizens and took what they were saying seriously, they would find, for instance, that black adults (68 percent) are slightly more likely than the general public (60 percent) to say that a person’s gender is determined by their biological sex. They would learn that while Democrats scream that voter ID requirements will disenfranchise minorities, 75 percent of blacks support such requirements. Large majorities of black parents support school-choice programs for children, and minorities have expressed far more desire to start their own businesses than whites. Capitalism for the win.

 

Lander’s website was from a bygone era, where you could make jokes on the internet without people plotting to take a flamethrower to your home. But it remains Tom Wolfean in how it captures the radical chic rampant among early 21st-century progressives.

 

The lesson to liberal whites is simply this: Treat everyone the same, and understand that amid the current tumult, you are not the story. In the end, race-baiters like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo may have a point: White people really are the problem.

What’s Gone Right in the Iran War?

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

 

For decades, the United States and its allies have been gaming out what a full-scale war against the Islamic Republic of Iran would look like. As recently as 2020, in the immediate aftermath of the airstrike that neutralized Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani, mainstream and center-left media outlets summarized the forecasts of American war planners. Their conclusions were sobering.

 

In a war that the Iranian regime sees as existential, Tehran could be expected to pull out all the stops. “Iran’s vast network of proxies” would be activated. American and European civilians would be targets, as would vulnerable U.S. military positions in Iraq and Syria. “Sleeper cells” would carry out attacks against soft targets in Europe and Latin America. Hezbollah would roar to life in Lebanon, raining missiles down on Israel. Terrorists would target American diplomatic posts as far afield as West Africa and Southeast Asia. Crippling cyberattacks against Western-oriented governmental and commercial interests would cause major financial disruptions. Bombs, mines, missiles, drones, and fast boats would complicate U.S. operations in the Strait of Hormuz, putting all maritime traffic to a halt for the indefinite future.

 

The war would escalate quickly, probably necessitating the introduction of a massive ground force to topple the regime. Overmatched in conventional engagements with U.S. forces, the Iranian military and the IRGC would dissolve into a deadly insurgency. By the end of combat operations, up to 1 million on all sides of the conflict, including civilians, would die. Iran’s cities would be in ruins, compelling the West to commit untold resources to Iran’s spotty recovery. “Those who survived the conflict will mainly live in a state of economic devastation for years and some, perhaps, will pick up arms and form insurgent groups to fight the invading US force,” Vox reported. A civil war would follow the regime’s collapse, precipitating a massive refugee crisis and creating pockets of instability inside Iran in which transnational Islamist terrorist groups would thrive.

 

A cursory survey of the opinion landscape on this, the eleventh day of that very conflict, suggests that lay observers of this war have already concluded that something like the worst-case scenario is unfolding before our eyes. It’s not.

 

To date, U.S. forces alone have conducted strikes on at least 5,500 Iranian targets, according to Admiral Brad Cooper, in accordance with the American military’s objective in this war: eliminating Iran’s capacity to “project power” across its borders. America’s operational tempo is accelerating while Iran’s is in retreat. The Iranian ballistic-missile launch rate is down 92 percent from the first day of hostilities. U.S. forces have entombed much of Iran’s stockpiles in their underground “missile cities.” U.S. drones monitor from the skies the cities that it hasn’t hit, striking them only when they observe Iranian activity. In addition, over 60 percent of Iran’s missile launchers have been disabled.

 

The Iranian navy is off the chessboard. According to Cooper, 60 vessels have been struck, sunk, or rendered useless to the enemy, including all four of Iran’s Soleimani-class warships. At least 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels have been destroyed. Ten of Iran’s 18 air bases have been hit and rendered inoperable. The U.S. maintains, if not air supremacy, superiority in the skies over Iran. The Iranian air force is a non-entity, as are its air defenses. As was the case in Venezuela, Russian and Chinese technology has proven unequal to U.S. capabilities, allowing the U.S. to transition away from the use of exquisite stand-off munitions (long-range missiles launched from a safe distance) toward cheaper, more abundant, precision-guided gravity munitions.

 

Iran’s leadership caste is dead or scattered. Its command and control is disrupted, as evinced by episodes in which the IRGC struck civilian targets in the Gulf states that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian promised would no longer be targeted. The succession of Mojtaba Khamenei to serve as supreme leader after his father’s death exposed cracks in the leadership, some of whom reportedly believed that the title should not be hereditary. And the captive Iranian people remain the Islamic Republic’s most fearsome enemy. The regime’s message to the people is, explicitly, that anyone who takes to the streets in support of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign will be killed.

 

In any conflict, the enemy gets a vote. And in this campaign, Iran’s strategy has been to spread the pain of this war around to its Gulf neighbors, lashing out wildly at civilian, diplomatic, and military targets alike. The war games anticipated this, too, assuming that the region would absorb enough damage to ensure its neutrality. Instead, the region united against Iran. Additionally, the expected effort to close off the Strait of Hormuz and put unendurable pressure on global energy consumers has succeeded in engineering a spike in the price of oil.

 

But in 2019, energy-sector analysts assessed that even a days-long disruption of traffic in the Strait combined with disruptions to the production capacity of other Gulf producers “could potentially send oil to $300.” While we’re hardly “weeks” into these expected disruptions, the prices of Brent crude oil (light, sweet crude highly desirable for refining) have not yet approached their all-time high: $147 per barrel in July 2008. Much has changed in the intervening years, including the fact that “the shale revolution has turned the U.S. into a net exporter of petroleum and major exporter of liquefied natural gas,” the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip observed. “That means the hit to consumers is offset by a boost to producers.”

 

Of course, this war has been accompanied by unanticipated challenges. There is tension between the U.S. and Israel over its targeting priorities, including oil infrastructure such as fuel depots. Those are legitimate targets (the IRGC exploits Iran’s energy sector), but those strikes are contributing to price instability in the oil market. While Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities have been severely degraded, it continues to deploy low-cost drones against targets in the Gulf region. The United Arab Emirates has absorbed most of this fire, although UAE officials contend that they maintain a 90 percent interception rate.

 

And then, there are the factors beyond the control of U.S. and Israeli tacticians. Moscow is reportedly providing Iran with targeting information that partially counteracts the loss of Iran’s radar systems. That information is helping Iran to target U.S. radar and interceptor systems throughout the region. U.S. officials now acknowledge (on background) that the pathological mistrust of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in the Pentagon led Defense officials to reject the procurement of Kyiv’s tried and tested anti-drone munitions.

 

Disruptions to the oil market are putting significant pressure on Washington, and Iran’s oil exports have continued to flow despite U.S.-Israeli efforts to throttle this crucial IRGC revenue stream. Iran is targeting regional desalination plants in an attempt to create a humanitarian catastrophe. The United States and Israel are taking casualties, each of which is deeply regrettable and saps Western resolve to continue this fight to its finish. And the Iranian regime has not collapsed. Not yet, at least.

 

Contrary to some embarrassing rhetorical contortions in Washington, this is a real war, and real wars rarely go according to plan. This conflict is no exception. But the pessimistic assessments of the war encouraged by over-caffeinated observers on social media are unwarranted. Some perspective is in order, and that perspective would lead any honest spectator to conclude that the facts on the ground do not warrant the catastrophism that prevails among the groundlings on social media and within the press corps.

Clown Shoes

By Nick Catoggio

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

 

You can tell a lot about a man from his shoes.

 

Women in particular seem to think so, as dating advice for men that comes from the opposite sex reliably includes exhortations to make sure your footwear game is on point. When I asked one of my editors this morning whether she pays attention to a man’s shoes on a date, she said no—unless he’s wearing sneakers, which is a red flag. Or conspicuously nice shoes, which is a green flag.

 

So, yes.

 

I’m invested in the idea because I’ve become a shoe guy in middle age, probably for the same reason that I’ve become a watch guy. As one’s looks decline, the urge to compensate by decorating oneself with shiny nonsense increases. Wear nice shoes and a nice timepiece, and others are less likely to notice the glare reflecting off your scalp or the fact that your facial skin is starting to slide downward like that of a Nazi who just opened the Ark of the Covenant.

 

Shoes are also a respite from the political muck I’m forced to wade through every day to find material for this newsletter. We all need pleasant diversions from the end of the American experiment; mine is playing with the customization tool on Carmina’s website.

 

Imagine my delight, then, as I conducted the daily muck-wade through political news earlier this week and stumbled across a story about the president’s interest in footwear.

 

Donald Trump is also a shoe guy, it turns out. (Sort of. More on that in a moment.) He’s so much of a shoe guy, per the Wall Street Journal, that he’s begun gifting footwear to everyone from Cabinet members to distinguished White House guests like Jew-baiting demagogue Tucker Carlson. “Marco, J.D., you guys have sh—y shoes,” Trump reportedly told his secretary of state and vice president during a meeting in December before asking them for their sizes.

 

Soon enough, each man was decked out in a new pair from Florsheim, the boss’s brand of choice. They’re not alone. “One Cabinet secretary has grumbled that he had to shelve his Louis Vuittons, according to people who heard the complaint,” the Journal reported.

 

Louis Vuittons cost north of $1,000. The Florsheims the president is foisting on his cronies typically run $145. And in multiple cases, it appears, the sizing is off to a comic degree: Recent photos of Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speak for themselves.

 

You can tell a lot about a man from his shoes. What can we tell about these men from theirs?

 

Trump doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.

 

I’ll say this for the president: He’s enough of a shoe guy to have avoided truly egregious crimes against good taste here. (For once!)

 

His team is wearing oxfords, the appropriate choice to accompany a suit and tie. He steered clear of hideous Frankenshoes, which pair a dress-shoe upper with a chunky rubber sneaker sole for comfort. And he didn’t get suckered by steeply priced but poorly made fashion-house footwear that commands an exorbitant premium based on brand name alone.

 

If you’re going to skimp on quality, you should save a buck in doing so. That’s what he did by opting for Florsheim.

 

Being gifted shoes by the most powerful man in the world and opening the box to discover Florsheims is like being gifted a watch, expecting it to be a Rolex, and finding a Daniel Wellington instead.

 

It makes sense that Trump would be attached to the brand, though. He’s a creature of nostalgia, and back in the day Florsheim was a pillar of quality American shoemaking. When my mother took me shopping for shoes as a kid, she looked for Florsheims. When adult men of that era went looking for something beautiful, stylish, and buy-it-for-life durable, they landed on Florsheim Imperials in shell cordovan. Those shoes were so well made that you can find them today on eBay, decades old yet often looking brand new, still worth hundreds of dollars second-hand.

 

Like America itself, the Florsheim of 2026 is not the Florsheim of Donald Trump’s, or my, youth.

 

Most production moved overseas years ago to Cambodia, China, India, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, per the company’s Canadian website, making its wares an odd choice for a protectionist “America First” White House. (Icing on the cake: Florsheim’s parent company is apparently suing the administration over tariffs.) A quick search of its current catalog reveals nothing available in shell cordovan. The price tag alone should have clued Trump into the fact that Florsheim ain’t what it used to be: There’s no such thing as high-quality American-made footwear priced at less than $150, and any real shoe guy would know that.

 

“Maybe he knows and he’s just cheap,” you say. Maybe—but, given that he’s squeezed $1.4 billion and counting out of his courtiers since returning to office, I’m inclined to believe he’d be willing to pony up a little more than $145 for decent shoes. My guess is that he simply doesn’t know better. He thinks Florsheim is still the Florsheim of 1975 (when $145 was top-dollar for a solid pair of kicks) and that he’s doing his deputies a favor by making them swap out their Louis Vuittons for this husk of a brand.

 

That’s him all over. He thinks he knows things and then ends up looking ridiculous when his assumptions meet reality. He thought a decapitation strike on Iran’s leadership would cause the regime to cave in or quickly sue for peace. Wrong. He seems to have thought Gen. Dan Caine’s pre-war warnings about America burning through its air-defense munitions could safely be ignored, trusting that the world’s greatest military would find some easy way to counter the asymmetric threat from Iranian drones. Wrong. He obviously thought that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open once U.S. and Israeli jets were poised to punish Iran from the sky if regime goons dared to close it. Oh so wrong.

 

Now he has J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio wearing shoes that cost less than some Nikes because he thought their previous pairs—which in all probability were better than Florsheims—were comparatively “s—y.” Wrong.

 

The Trump Cabinet doesn’t have its act together.

 

When I asked my editor why she notices nice shoes on a man, she compared it to him wearing a clean, unwrinkled shirt. It’s not the shoes per se that make an impression, it’s what they say about his basic competence and whether he’s worth investing in.

 

Is he clean? Well-groomed? Capable of putting together an outfit? Is he willing to make an effort to present himself well and possessed of the discernment needed to succeed at the task? Showing up to a date in a T-shirt and Vans signals low energy, poor taste, or both. Showing up in a crisp OCBD and pair of Alden 975s in Color 8 suggests a man who has his act together. (Emphasis on “suggests.” I own both and rarely have my act together.)

 

The fact that Trump and his Cabinet can’t dial in on something as simple as shoe-sizing doesn’t scream, “We have our act together.”

 

Sizing shoes is trickier than it sounds, in fairness, especially in an age when most purchases are made online with best guesses about fit instead of in store after measurements. Even if you aim for reliable sizing by doing most of your buying from the same brand, it’s easy to end up confounded by the variety of “lasts” (i.e,. foot shapes) manufacturers use for their models. Scroll through Carmina’s menu of lasts and see how confident you are that you’d nail a fit on the first try, bearing in mind that rolling the dice on an order there will easily run you $500 or more.

 

It’s easy to miss the mark on sizing. But, being a sentient adult, I’ve never missed so badly that I ended up looking like a 6-year-old wearing my dad’s shoes, which is how Rubio and Duffy look in their footwear.

 

I don’t think stupidity is to blame for that, though. I suspect it’s something worse.

 

It’s not that Rubio and Duffy don’t know their shoe size. Nor is it that Trump’s gophers are incapable of placing orders in the correct size at Florsheim, a task that a reasonably intelligent chimp could be taught to carry out. My guess is that, whenever the president asks his toadies what size they wear, they deliberately inflate the number to impress him with how big their feet supposedly are.

 

No joke: According to the Journal, at the same December meeting at which Trump asked Vance and Rubio about their shoes, he reportedly observed, “You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.” In an administration of postliberal cretins consumed with “strength” and machismo, what more humiliating admission could there be than telling the boss you’re not well-endowed?

 

Below the ankle, I mean.

 

Thus it was that Rubio, a man who stands 5-foot-9 or 5-10 and whom the president once famously derided as “Little Marco,” reportedly told Trump he takes a size 11.5 shoe. And for some reason, instead of quietly swapping out the gifted pair for an appropriately sized replacement from Florsheim, the secretary of state evidently feels obliged to walk around in them. (Is he afraid the president will make him take them off to check the size?) If I were Volodymyr Zelensky looking to buy some goodwill from the White House on the cheap, I’d airlift a set of tongue pads and orthotics to the State Department immediately.

 

Cabinet members wearing wrong-sized shoes on purpose is what happens in an outfit that doesn’t have its act together. Already so far in the war, which is less than two weeks old, the administration has been surprised by Israel’s choice of targets, by the sudden spike in oil prices last Sunday night, by Iran’s decision to attack its oil-producing Arab neighbors, and of course by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Yesterday Sen. Chris Murphy emerged from a classified briefing claiming that the White House had no plan to reopen the strait, one of the most foreseeable and economically ruinous consequences of the conflict.

 

That smells like Democratic hyperbole—until you read the reporting today about how grim America’s tactical options have become. One source told Reuters that the U.S. might need to take control of Iran’s coast somehow before oil tankers can safely resume transit, as there are too many ships bottled up and too few U.S. vessels available for military escorts through the strait to solve the problem. Even if escorts were feasible, The Economist notes, they’d be fabulously expensive and would proceed too slowly to avert a major oil supply shock.

 

Oh, and if a tanker is attacked and its cargo spills out into the Strait, that alone could impede commercial traffic for months.

 

When you’re stalled in a gas line this summer, wondering how you ended up there, think of Marco Rubio parading around in his dad-sized shoes at the president’s behest.

 

Trump’s Cabinet is too cowardly to resist his stupidest ideas.

 

Still, if we’re searching for a grand lesson from l’affaire Florsheim about how this administration operates, there’s an obvious one I’ve overlooked.

 

It may be that the president’s deputies understand that Florsheims are trash, that he’s foolish to gift them something as size-sensitive as shoes, and that they look like dopes all wearing the same model of ill-fitting footwear. The problem isn’t that they don’t have their act together. The problem is that they’re part of an authoritarian cult of personality and that such things are governed by very particular rules.

 

Never be the first to stop clapping for the leader; never tell him his idea to wing it in a war that could wreck the global economy is stupid; and never tell him “no thanks” when he hands you a pair of shoes. Rubio et al. aren’t wearing their Florsheims because they lack taste or because they enjoy the feel of sliding around on a midsole that’s two sizes too big. They’re wearing them because they’re cowardly suck-ups who are afraid to tell their boss no.

 

“It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them,” one White House official candidly told the Journal of Cabinet members’ habit of donning their shoes around Trump. Everything is a loyalty test in this third-world political culture, apparel very much included. From the famous MAGA cap to Republicans’ blue-suit-red-tie solidarity attire outside one of Trump’s courthouse appearances to the ear bandages at the 2024 Republican convention to the Florsheim mafia in the West Wing, the president has always cultivated visual displays of devotion to accompany the rhetorical slobbering.

 

Not all examples of his Cabinet feeling obliged to egg on his dumbest impulses are as trivial as bad shoes, though, needless to say. “Inside the administration, some officials are growing pessimistic about the lack of a clear strategy to finish the war,” the New York Times reported on Tuesday. “But they have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.” Those two sentences could be airdropped verbatim into any news report about the Kremlin officials’ attitude toward Vladimir Putin with respect to Ukraine.

 

Cowardice explains why we might soon be paying $12 a gallon for gas and why the most powerful people on Earth are wearing footwear that even casual sartorial hobbyists wouldn’t be caught dead in. And so it’s pointless for anyone to offer the president and his team recommendations on how to improve their shoe game, which is about blind obedience far more than it is about shoes.

 

Although, because I know a little something about the subject, I feel obliged to try.

 

Do better.

 

There are a few obvious alternatives to Florsheim for those who want something made in the USA. and don’t want to wear crap.

 

One is Alden, widely regarded as the last great American shoemaker and a favorite of Twitter’s Menswear Guy. I own eight pairs, five in shell cordovan and one in “rare” Ravello shell that isn’t part of the company’s regular catalog. Aldens would cost Trump anywhere from $700 to $1,000 per pair, and he might have to wait a while for his order, as production is frequently backlogged, especially for handsewn models. But I suppose he could call up the factory and threaten to tariff them if they don’t expedite his purchase.

 

And before you say “he can’t tariff an American company,” let me remind you it’s his belief that he can tariff any ol’ thing he wants.

 

The problem with Alden (besides the price) is that it’s a standard of Ivy League style and this administration despises the Ivy League, as Ivy League graduates Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth frequently remind us. So the president could opt instead for Wisconsin’s Allen Edmonds, another heritage American brand whose iconic “Park Avenue” cap-toe oxford would fit right in inside the Oval Office. I have it in—what else?—shell cordovan and wear it to weddings.

 

Allen Edmonds is famous for offering shoes in virtually every size that a human foot can realistically be. If you like seeing Rubio in kicks that are two sizes too long, imagine the joy of watching him waddle around in shoes two sizes too wide. “Size 11.5—triple E, sir. I have serious girth.”

 

If I wanted to spend Allen Edmonds-level money on a shoe, though, I’d opt for Grant Stone. They’re known chiefly for boots, of which I have three pairs (two in cordovan, one in kangaroo), but their loafers are very popular with shoe guys and they’ve built out a nice catalog of oxfords and derbies. They’re American-owned and the quality is excellent; the only catch is that they’re made in—gulp—China.

 

Then again, that may be where the Florsheims are coming from.

 

In that case, if the White House is willing to dispense with “buy American” altogether, I’ve got the perfect suggestion: Vass.

 

Vass shoes are comparable in price to Allen Edmonds and Grant Stone yet are handmade, a preposterously good value that’s made them famous among shoe nerds. How do they manage it, you ask? Well, they’re based in comparatively affordable Budapest, Hungary—ground zero of Western postliberalism thanks to the ur-Trump, Viktor Orbán, who’s fighting for his political life at the moment. Nothing would be more sartorially appropriate for the president and his Cabinet as it goes about wrecking the constitutional order than outfitting everyone in pairs of “Budapesters” from Vass. It would be like giving all of their feet a fashy haircut.

 

If our clowns are going to wear shoes, they should at least be good ones.