Sherman R. Frederick/Properly Subversive

What Donald Trump has done in bringing peace to the Middle East is something along the lines of Arthur drawing Excalibur from the stone. Not that you’d know that by reading the “smart” journalists at the New York Times.

Sherman Frederick

Columnist Maureen Dowd pooh-poohs Trump’s accomplishment, saying he’ll never get the Nobel Peace Prize because he“seems oblivious to the paradox of enforcing peace abroad and disrupting it badly at home, of soothing violence overseas and inflaming it here … The contradiction is hard to square.”

No, what’s hard to square is Ms. Dowd failing to muster an ounce of grace to acknowledge the achievement and her journalistic obliviousness to the dark coup launched on Trump by the Democratic Party.

In 2016, Donald Trump’s political opponent for president, Hillary Clinton, and the president at the time, Barack Obama, conspired to falsely accuse him of collaborating with Russia to win the presidency.

It was a complete fabrication, now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Morally untethered Democrats in government power used the full weight of their agencies to slow the Trump Revolution and jail their political opponents. It worked to the extent that it cost Trump momentum in his first term and contributed to the loss of his re-election bid in 2020. That spawned a Biden Administration run by former Obama attack dogs who then proceeded to unjustly attempt to bankrupt and jail Trump to keep him out of the race in 2024.

Trump won big in 2024, and now that Trump 2.0 is in full swing, the receipts for those bad deeds are in full public view. Some call it a revenge tour. It’s more like a pissed off Wyatt Earp returning to Tombstone in the movie of the same name.

Trump’s taking on the people Maureen Dowd and her “smart” journalist pals have defended so vigorously over the years. They have been unmasked in word and deed as the real enemies of the state. We saw the latest damning installment of this last week when documents surfaced showing that Biden’s DOJ unconstitutionally spied on U.S. Senators.

Trump is not stealing democracy in America; he’s restoring it and exposing those who damn near pulled off the coup of the century.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who also tries to diminish Trump’s role in the Gaza deal, stands trapped in the same tar pit of Trump despair as Dowd.

He writes: “As I said, just stopping this terrible Gaza war — if it holds — is worthy of praise and the stuff of wonderful headlines. But seeing this whole plan through would be the stuff of history and Nobel Prizes. And getting Trump to realize what made him effective in the Middle East — governing by addition, not division — would actually make him so much better a president at home. That would be the stuff of miracles.”

Whoa, Tom.

By “governing by addition,” do you mean we should excuse the lawfare unleashed by Obama, Clinton, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and a host of other bad actors in 2016?

Failing to account for wrongdoing is the clear and present danger we now face.

Friedman and Dowd both exhibit a moral indifference to all this, which is why they now must portray the Gaza peace deal as a one-off, lucky 50-foot bank shot that won’t last.

That’s not what this deal looks like. He’s changed the dynamic by being tough with both the Arab World and with Israel. Trump’s put together a coalition of partners that has an excellent chance at achieving lasting peace in the Middle East.

He’s pulling Excalibur from the stone.

Look, no one has to do a deep-bend genuflection to Trump. All I’m sayin’ is a little honesty would be nice.

In Case You Missed It

  • Rossi Ralenkotter, a veteran tourism official who played a pivotal role in shaping modern Las Vegas, died last week after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.
  • For those who like to keep track of who is a responsible leader and who is not, Nevada’s two Democrat senators, Catherine Cortez Mastos and Jackie Rosen split on whether to shut down the federal government. Masto voted for keeping the government open, and Rosen voted to shut the government down.
  • Miriam Adelson was namechecked by Donald Trump at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, for her role in his Middle East strategy. Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is a Republican megadonor.

(Sherman R. Frederick is a longtime Nevada journalists and a member of the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame. You can read more from him at shermanfrederick.substack.com.)