TABLET MAG
Who’s the Boss?
Lee Smith
March 23, 2026

The podcasters and senior Trump administration officials who attached themselves like parasites to the president to draw power from him because they have no power of their own are losing in Iran. They’re losing because they have no influence over Trump or his MAGA base, which supports the campaign to stop the terror regime’s nuclear program, by anywhere from 82% to 95%. They’re losing because they lost the argument over Israel on the ground, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving to be America’s greatest wartime ally since Winston Churchill held off the Nazis until Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought America into World War II. And since the anti-Trump resistance is losing like Iran is losing, also like the Islamic Republic, they’re emptying their arsenal in scattershot fashion in the hope that they’ll hit something to ward off total defeat for at least one more day. READ MORE

FREE PRESS Coleman Hughes: The Myth of the All-Powerful Israel Lobby The idea that the most powerful country the world has ever known is being puppeteered by a country the size of New Jersey—and by a group that collectively accounts for 0.2 percent of the world’s population—is an extraordinary claim. You would expect overwhelming evidence. In reality, there’s little to substantiate it. Criticize America’s foreign and domestic policy as much as you want—there’s plenty to criticize. But don’t blame it on Israel or its supporters. The centerpiece of this narrative is a historical claim: that Israel got the United States into the Iraq War. In reality, Israel’s prime minister came to the White House to caution President Bush against invading Iraq, warning that it would empower Iran, Israel’s real enemy. Bush listened politely, then ignored him and invaded anyway, because American presidents make their own choices, for good and for ill.