People looking for an emergency brake on the wildest excesses of the Trump administration are breathing a sigh of relief. The “blue tsunami” happened in the midterms. There are reasons for hope. One especially bright spot: Ohio, where Dr. Amy Acton beat out Vivek Ramaswamy and will make history as the state’s first Jewish governor.

But everyone committed to democracy must also understand what the mainstream media doesn’t explain: Anti-democratic dangers are growing on the left, too. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have called for the end of our democratic form of government. They used the tsunami to usher in a wave of extremists.

With great power comes great responsibility. (A lesson taught across the centuries and popularized by Stan Lee in Spider-Man.) Everyone who helped bring in this new Congress has a moral obligation to demand Democrats limit the power of the bigots in their midst. Both major parties must purge their worst elements.

The media is inundating us with claims about the electorate, demographics, and voting blocs. But news giants have a long history of getting those claims wildly wrong.

In the new episode, I sift through the claims to find the facts. Have we entered a “new era,” as the media claims after just about every election — even the off-year ones?

Plus:

• Abdul El-Sayed uses his victory speech to lie. Unlike the media, I fact-check him.

• The New York Times’ willfully ignorant headline ignores indecency.

• Rep. Haley Stevens faces death threats.

• Jon Stewart delivers an antisemitic attack on her fiancé, Jason Turkish.

• And the real new political battle is not Democrats vs. Republicans.

Have thoughts, questions, and concerns about the election? See news stories that need fact-checking? Share them with me in comments or messages. I’ll answer a bunch in the next episode. 🇺🇸

JL

Now comes the tsunami of preposterous punditry in the media.

For people who still see the race between the two parties as good vs. evil, it’s either a fantastic or terrible day, the opposite of two years ago. But the big-picture political story in America is no longer about the parties. It’s about democracy vs. extremism. Far-right and far-left activists have united.

I’m banging out a quick episode on the initial coverage. That means piecing through tons of data, headlines, reports, and more, to fact check. Paid subscribers: send your thoughts, questions, and examples of the worst hot takes you see!

See you tomorrow.

-JL

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Heading into today’s elections, Democrats have virtually everything in their favor. There’s the sheer math in the Senate, where Republicans are defending 22 seats but Democrats only 13. The Republican president is unpopular. And the opposition party virtually always cleans up in the midterm races for the House of Representatives. (Obama called 2010 a “shellacking.”)

So it would be surprising if there isn’t a “blue wave” or even “blue tsunami.” Still, I’ve warned about predictions and the media’s inability to stick to what it knows for certain.

I can confidently predict what news giants will do: use the day’s results to make sweeping statements about where Americans stand in general. They do this every time. The hot takes virtually always fall apart under fact checking — either immediately or months later when better data comes in. Exit polls are notoriously unreliable when numbers are close.

Case in point: Following the 2024 elections, the New York Times gave notorious liar Peter Beinart prime real estate in its Sunday edition to present an argument that was demonstrably false.

For a powerful reminder of what elections really tell us, listen to my interview with Chad Peace of the Independent Voter Project. He called out media coverage of the 2025 elections.

“Why don’t they talk about the raw number of people that actually decided? What they’re suggesting to their audience is like this big wave of everybody woke up and wanted to be a socialist today. It wasn’t like there’s this massive change (from) how people felt four years ago… A rejection of the status quo is what you’re seeing in a lot of these returns. And yes, an engaged, funded, ideologically-based movement can capture a relatively small amount of the electorate and create significant political shifts.”

The big question, as always, is who will show up. Midterms have notoriously low turnout.

Anger is currently the biggest driver. Many people want to stick it to the other party more than they want the candidate they’re voting for. It may feel good in the moment, but it’s the rage cycle getting us into this mess.

A few more notes:

• The New York Times blindly reported on a letter allegedly from Michigan “Jewish leaders” supporting El-Sayed. No one checked it. Lots of first names only, and “Jack Mehoff.”

• Democratic leaders secretly acknowledge an El-Sayed victory will endanger Jews across the country, Dan Senor reports.

• Democrats usually decry sexism, but now they’re insisting Haley Stevens must be unstable or under the control of her Jewish fiancé. I replied to her here.

• LGBTQ+ activists are supporting the most anti-gay, transphobic voting bloc and destruction of the only safe haven in MENA:

This week’s episode will come later in the week than usual, because I’m aiming to fact check the initial post-election coverage. Be sure to subscribe so it pops up in your feeds.

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This morning, Democratic leaders are doing all they can to discredit one of their own: Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan. She dared to stand against the party’s most dangerous, far-left Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed. So she’s not only persona non grata, but the subject of rumors that she’s unhinged or untrustworthy. (I don’t hyperlink to such drivel, but it’s plentiful.) Many of the people pushing these rumors praised her until yesterday.

CNN is helping by playing up a Sunday night interview with Stevens. She didn’t come across as a polished politician. Instead, she came across authentically — as a woman who dared to do the right thing and is now in the cross-hairs of murderous activists. Her own party is handing her over to them. Of course she’s not sure what to say.

The Michigan Democratic Party announced that she is no longer a part of their organization. So there’s room in today’s Democratic tent for people who support Islamist terrorism and the antizionist hate movement (AZHM), but not one person who stands against the man who would lead that hate movement in the Senate.

CNN is just one of the outlets responding with a historic level of hypocrisy. The same news giants that praised Republicans for standing up to Trump are now on the attack against Stevens. It’s like a journalistic apocalypse. Any commitment to truth, fairness, and sensibility are gone.

On Sunday, Stevens did what I called on her to do in the Wall Street Journal: she withdrew her endorsement of El-Sayed in the Senate contest. She chose to go a step further and announce that she’s voting for his opponent, Republican Mike Rogers.

Other prominent Michigan Democrats have made the same decision. As I explained previously, for all of Rogers’ problems, his movement is not slaughtering, raping, and beheading people or carrying out terror attacks.

The movement El-Sayed aligns with is doing all those things. The Global Terrorism Index warns that Islamo-leftism is on the rise. Terror killings in the West have nearly quadrupled. This isn’t an opinion. Note to the media: Facts exist.

El-Sayed remains the front-runner. While he has long led the polls, he’s using Stevens’ move to claim underdog status. If he wins tomorrow’s elections, the hate-mongers who support him will feel emboldened. If he loses, they’ll blame imaginary Jewish (“Zionist”) powers pulling strings.

We know this because they’re already saying so. On social media, someone sent me a post by an AZHM activist vowing a “reckoning” either way. This is how anti-democratic, antizionist hate mongers operate: heads I win, tails you lose.

Amid all this, Democrats are taking no responsibility for choosing horrible nominees. People screaming about the balance of the Senate or the threats of Trumpism need to get clarity on why Trump won in 2024. People are over the crazy excesses of the left.

El-Sayed might win over a majority of people who show up to the polls in Michigan, but of 12 U.S. political figures in a recent poll, he was America’s most unpopular politician.

The solution is not to deliver people to the Senate who, like El-Sayed, take funding from terror-linked groups. The solution is not to call legitimate criticism of El-Sayed “Islamophobic.” The solution is to stop rewarding extremists in the primaries.

JL

P.S. See my reply to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer here.

At the beginning of this year, Maine Democrats were excited. Republican Sen. Susan Collins is up for re-election, and deeply unpopular. They knew they had a strong chance of dethroning her. But then, Graham Platner won the state’s Democratic primary — and turned out to be so disastrous and disturbed that he had to drop out.

In Michigan, Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is retiring. It’s a midterm election under an unpopular Republican president, so Democrats should have a relatively easy time holding onto his seat. Yet the winner of the Democratic primary, Abdul El-Sayed, is so dangerous that even prominent Michigan Democrats are supporting his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. They’re no fans of Rogers, but they know that El-Sayed is far worse. (See my Wall Street Journal column.)

Both Democrats beat out capable, sensible primary opponents. They didn’t win by offering better solutions. They won by weaponizing grievance, feeding falsehoods to their base, and stoking raw outrage against the other side.

If you’re facing candidates you don’t love, you’re in a lot of good company. Americans in general are increasingly fed up with the candidates and both major parties. How is this happening?

It’s not politics as usual. In the new episode, I break down what the data shows, and explain how we’re trapped in a vicious cycle — driven largely by the media. If we don’t get ourselves out of it, the country could fall apart. We’re already losing a sense of national identity.

In the exclusive graphics below, made just for They Stand Corrected, you’ll see the hard data on the new force shaping politics. Also ahead: why the conventional wisdom on primary voters is wrong, and how their emotions are being manipulated.

First, look at how

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One of the most consequential races is in Michigan. Tell everyone you know in the state why even the most committed Democrats should vote against Abdul El-Sayed, or just leave the race blank. Blind party loyalty is as dangerous on the left as it is on the right.

Many Americans have argued that Republicans should reject Trump. The same goes for Democrats rejecting far-left radicals. El-Sayed supports the world’s largest hate movement and refuses to even acknowledge the existence of Islamist antizionist terrorism.

Party-line voting is no longer the answer. In placing their own interests over that of the country, the parties are tearing the nation apart. We don’t have to let this happen.

It’s no wonder Independents are now nearly the U.S. majority.

JL

P.S. Catch up on the latest episodes wherever you listen.

Voters shouldn’t have two bad choices. But in many cases, they do. In the new episode, I dig into why this keeps happening. The media plays a major role. (A transcript will follow for paid subscribers.)

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Sometimes, that means voting for the lesser bad. That brings us to the Senate race in Michigan. The Republican there, Mike Rogers, has done bad things. But he’s a far better choice than Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. A growing chorus of prominent Democrats are saying so.

Jason Turkish, fiancé of El-Sayed’s former opponent Haley Stevens, is one of them. The Washington Post quotes him discussing the dangers of El-Sayed:

“When he says ‘genocide’ over and over again, when he refuses to condemn an ad that says Jews are to blame for the price of bananas, he makes my community less safe.”

Comparing anti-democratic movements

Rogers, the Republican, is no perfect candidate. He has warmed up to election skeptics whom he once rejected. However, election deniers are not going around slaughtering, beheading, and raping people. They’re not launching terrorist attacks. They’re not shooting random people at events.

January 6, 2021 was a traumatic event for the United States. But our democracy survived it, and we’re coming up on nearly six years since it happened. Our elections remain intact.

The antizionist hate movement (AZHM) that El-Sayed aligns with is doing all of that around the world. Its violence includes attacks not only in the United States, but in Michigan itself. This isn’t a matter of opinion.

So it seems rational to vote against El-Sayed. Democrats who want a sane party should make its extremist candidates unelectable.

David Kramer was Stevens’ campaign chair in the primary race against El-Sayed and served as finance chair for Sen. Elissa Slotkin. He told Jewish Insider:

“It’s become clearer to me that Abdul is certainly not moderating at all, and I think really becoming more extreme and more dangerous… I have lots of issues with Mike Rogers, and I’m not even willing to use words like ‘support.’ But I’ve made peace with voting for him because I do think that he at least does care about Jews being safe and participating in public life, and he seems to know the difference between an enemy of ours in Iran and an ally of ours [in Israel].”

People who get “news” from the New York Times and other left-wing outlets have no sense of how dangerous antizionism is. AZHM activists are blinded by seething hatred, and divorced from reality. See my response to a deluded Pod Save America host here.

El-Sayed has led the race consistently in polls, and is favored to win. If he does, he’ll become the leader of AZHM in the Senate. If Rogers manages to win, then Michiganders and the rest of us should work to ensure that he returns to where he once stood, speaking out against January 6 and election denial, as he did in an op-ed at the time.

I don’t live and vote in Michigan. But in a time of massive media failure, clarity is desperately needed. Tell everyone you know in Michigan that if they care about building a better future, they should prevent the rise of El-Sayed.

JL

P.S. Latest on Instagram:

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The Midterm elections are largely being driven by so-called “double haters” — voters who can’t stand either major political party. Their numbers have exploded in the past few years.

It’s part of a larger trend. Americans are increasingly fed up not just with the parties, but also with candidates and incumbents. In the process, the country is losing a sense of national identity. New figures prove it.

This same problem is echoing across the Western world. These democracies are losing cohesiveness. That shift weakens societies, opening up big opportunities for anti-democratic nations.

Why is this happening? In the new episode, I explain what the media won’t. We’re trapped in a cycle of negativity, driven largely by the media itself.

It’s propelled by Iran, Qatar, Russia and China. All these nations have found that the mainstream media will present their propaganda as fact, as long as it’s dressed up in the right pseudo-progressive language.

Shameless, openly antisemitic attack ads, like the one from a PAC backing far-left Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, are part of this phenomenon.

How did the media become a driver of so much bitterness and division? On the political podcast Face Forward, I was asked about how the media plummeted to its current state. What went wrong? Why don’t interviewers seem to know what they’re talking about? And how are politicians using this to gain power? I share a chunk of that interview in the new episode.

Also today, I answer your questions. Subscribers ask for the best sources to refute the geno-lie and demonstrate Israel’s unmatched steps to protect civilians in Gaza. And a subscriber points out something I should mention about El-Sayed’s opponent Mike Rogers. (Paid subscribers can submit questions via the comments or by messaging me within this newsletter.)

Plus:

• Why news giants can’t be trusted to cover elections in Israel

• The new models for supporting independent journalism

• How to schedule one-on-one or small-group Zoom meetings with… me!

• And how we can all come together to clean up the media’s mess

The ad, from El-Sayed’s big supporter Cenk Uygur, tries to blame the tiny Jewish state for the cost of bananas in America. (Yes, the entire idea is bananas, and the puns basically write themselves.)

It argues that Americans can’t afford food because the country has to help Israel kill Palestinians. It’s classically antisemitic, incendiary propaganda.

The same news organizations that pilloried Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for a terrible ad against his opponent are running cover for El-Sayed on this one. When they even acknowledge its existence, they do so in a way that simultaneously helps El-Sayed and hides the truth.

Take the New York Times’ headline “El-Sayed Campaign Distances Itself From Group’s Ad Critical of Israel.” A lot is wrong with this. First, in AZHM, the antizionist hate movement, any amount of bigotry can be written off as simply “critical.”

And second, El-Sayed has refused to reject the ad’s substance. If he did, it would be hypocritical, since the candidate himself makes these false arguments all the time — with help from the media. News giants have spent so many years lying about Israel that people don’t know basic facts:

• The United States has spent incomparably more money helping Ukraine fight Russia than helping Israel fight Islamist terrorists in this war.

• Virtually all (soon to be all) the money spent helping Israel defend itself is spent here in the United States, not overseas.

• The U.S. saves huge sums of money by helping fight Islamist terrorists in the Middle East, reducing the extent to which they spread their tentacles here.

Meanwhile, Uygur, the man behind the far-left propaganda outlet The Young Turks, will surely continue to be invited onto major news networks as an “analyst” with valuable opinions to offer. The same agencies that have evicted people for bigotry against other groups will keep presenting him as a reasonable voice.

Uygur is also the uncle of the media’s favorite streamer, the far-left radical Hasan Piker. He gave Piker his big break in the media. Uygur routinely blames Israel for everything bad, including the U.S. attack on Venezuela.

A Prominent Democrat Defects

In one piece of good news, some voters seem to be waking up to the dangers of El-Sayed. JI reports that “proud Democrat” David Kramer will vote for El-Sayed’s opponent Mike Rogers.

Kramer served as campaign chair for Rep. Haley Stevens, who raced against El-Sayed for the Democratic Party’s Senate nomination. (See my column about this race in the Wall Street Journal.)

JL

P.S. A new episode comes out tomorrow. Catch up on episodes now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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In the latest episode, I explain how the Los Angeles Review of Books killed an interview with author Shai Davidai because the editors believed lies and distortions about him in the media. The editors didn’t offer or request changes; they just decided to blacklist Shai altogether.

Writer Melissa Uchiyama, who wrote the piece for the prestigious journal, joined me to divulge what happened. Listen through the link above, or wherever you get podcasts. Read that interview here:

Rather than letting Melissa’s interview with Shai die on the proverbial vine, I offered to publish it, lightly edited with her approval.

Interview with Shai Davidai, ‘Radical Moderate’

By Melissa Uchiyama

“A mere five days since the October 7 Massacre, the place looked nothing like itself… Silently facing their classmates [who] celebrated the worst massacre of Jews in more than eighty years, they cried, hugged one another, and whispered words of comfort. Visibly distraught, they struggled to process the sheer magnitude of the massacre while forced to simultaneously confront a new battlefront right in their own backyard. With each passing second, their silence became almost audibly heavy.”

That was the scene. Two lawns, two very different experiences. Enter mohawk, tattoos, black T-shirt, jeans and boots: Shai Davidai’s edge does not exactly hint at moderation. It was this (now former) Columbia Business School professor whose voice cut through the drumming and haze of a university as he called out the rhetoric of Hamas on campus. While Jewish students and professors were threatened and bullied out of segregated campus spaces, and professors held classes in the non-Jewish, non-Zionist encampment on the quad, Davidai turned on his live feed and spoke.

In the new book American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities, he explains what transpired. Originally begun as a letter to his son, it reads as partial memoir, partial history class, and a plea for critical thought.

American Intellectual Antisemitism shares how universities like Columbia allowed extremist ideas to take root and move from intellectual study to standard thinking, and then, violent action. He shares how a radical ideology planted into the curriculum seeped into the student body’s collective brain, normalized discourse, the media, publishing, and the streets.

This is how an anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah atmosphere not only took hold at Columbia, but swept through Ivy League and other universities. It shows up in syllabi, posts by professors expressing jubilation at the violence towards Jews and Israelis on Oct. 7th, and in clubs and activities.

I spoke with Davidai, an Israeli-American, about his writing style, editorial choices, and why he thinks long-form materials are so important in this era.

Shai: I hope it comes off as a concise and flowing narrative, because I take pride in writing as an art. I don’t want people to think this is just a textbook about antisemitism. It’s not. It started off as completely a memoir because it was a letter to my son. Slowly, some of the memoir-ish pieces came out. Now, it’s an amalgam of memoir and exposé, which is like my personality. I can talk about very serious stuff with a lot of knowledge, but on eye-level. I hope I’m not lecturing anyone; that’s not my goal.

Also, this isn’t just about Jews or Israel. It’s about anti-Americanism and opposition to Western liberal values. I think we all benefit from those values, and we need to be vigilant when they are being contested.

Melissa: Why do you call yourself a radical moderate?

Shai: When people see me without engaging with me, they often try to put me in a bucket, and ask, “Where does this person fit in?” You know, “He’s got tattoos, a Mohawk sometimes. He raises his voice, and sometimes he curses too much. He’s a radical.” But if people read what I write or just listen to what I say, they’ll say, “Oh, that’s a very moderate stance.”

The problem is that people think that you’re either a radical or a moderate, two different things altogether. You have your attitudes, your beliefs, and then you have your methods. My beliefs and values are very, very moderate. But I sometimes engage in more radical methods of getting them out there. We tend to assume that if you’re non-violent, that means you have to be silent. If you’re peaceful, that means you don’t stir things up. But sometimes in order to maintain the peace, you’ve got to stir things up. In order to be non-violent, you have to raise your voice to point at the violence -- especially the violence that pretends that it’s not.

Melissa: How do you regulate and test your moderation, especially when emotions run high?

Shai: I keep testing myself to see how moderate I am. If I feel like I’m moving a bit towards the right, I expose myself to the left talking points. When I feel myself veering too much to the left, I expose myself to the right talking points. As long as I’m angering both extremes equally, I know that I’m in a right position.

It was a moment on October 12th, 2023, at Columbia’s first protest, where I saw hate and what it can lead to. I vowed that I am never, ever going to hate. That forces you to be moderate, because hatred is anger.

Melissa: In a book focused on anti-Jewish extremism, what was your rationale in not omitting extremist acts committed by Jews or Israelis?

Shai: I knew that if I’m going to write about extremism or hate, it’s not going to be about just one side. It was important for me to have that in there. A lot has been said and written about me, most of it without engaging with what I’ve actually said and written. I tell people, “I don’t need you to love me. I don’t need you to have any judgment of me. But if you do, I’d rather you first engage with what I write and what I say.”

I’m sure I’m going to have my critics. Who doesn’t have critics? In addition, the last 80 pages are just references because I want to give people the opportunity first to fact-check me. Part of critical thinking is being critical about the person saying you should be critical, and also to delve deeper. Even in a 300-page book, you can do only so much. I don’t want people to treat this or any other book as gospel. I do want them to engage more deeply with the issues.

I don’t want this to come out as this is the professor that knows everything. I researched a great deal, and was shocked. There’s so much information, misinformation and disinformation, and our lives are busy. I put on the hat of a professor, reading everything and then summarizing, so people can learn from it.

Melissa: What was the aim in supplying the whole text of that first live, viral video?

Shai: I wanted people to see that my fight was never against the students. From the very beginning, it’s about this idea. Unfortunately, I was correct that ideas don’t stay contained, especially extremist ideas whether they are anti-Israel, anti-Palestinian, anti-Western, or even anti-Asian. They end up getting a life of their own and inspire real violence and aggression.

Melissa: You call Columbia a lab of terror apology. That is a strong indictment on an esteemed institute of learning.

Shai: One of the things academics tend to claim is, “We’re not taking a position. We’re just asking questions, just examining this.” Obviously, when you only examine something from one direction, you’re inherently taking a position and making a statement. When it comes to what I name “a laboratory for terror apology,” it didn’t start off with flags of Hamas. It started off very, very subtle. Each brick or step in the experiment was asking, “Will the world accept this? How does the world think about this?”

I don’t believe someone wakes up one day and says, “I hate Jews or Israelis, and I’m gonna support terrorism.” You slowly get to that point by first building a worldview based on basic ideas. It’s easy to dismiss social media or universities or an op-ed in a mainstream newspaper. But when you realize the underlying thought processes, ideologies, and ideas, you see the problem.

Melissa: Why do you tout long-form materials?

Shai: Whether podcasts, films, or books, long-form forces you to engage. When it’s something short and snappy, only bullet points and talking points, you might internalize what you’re told, but you’re not really engaging or asking, “What do I think about this?” I’ve noticed when my wife Yardenne and I listen to long-form podcasts, a lot of times we stop, have a little conversation, then continue.

It also forces us to slow down. Part of being a radical moderate, and definitely part of critical thinking, is slowing down and realizing, “I don’t have to have an opinion about everything.” When I do have an opinion, however, I need to make sure that it’s a founded opinion – that I’ve really thought about it. What happens now is the complete opposite.

Melissa: You became a public figure through a piece of media that exploded, so to speak. What’s lost when everything we consume or create becomes short and immediate?

Shai: A lot of stuff that I put out is short and snappy, because you also need to get people’s attention. But that creates people who have strong opinions without a lot of thinking behind them. You know how when you watch a movie from the ‘60s and ‘70s, it can feel painful? It’s not because the movie has changed, but because we’ve lost that muscle. We must engage that muscle to keep using it.

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If you’ve ever written or read a book, this episode is for you. It’s the story of how different parts of the publishing world are colluding to exclude truth-tellers.

Authors who stand up to hatred are having trouble getting published. But that’s just the beginning. When they do manage to get published, the rest of the literary establishment shuns them.

Prestigious “book review” publications hold enormous influence. The reviews they publish signal to readers which books are worth purchasing. And they signal to mainstream media which authors to pay attention to.

In recent years, these sites have been refusing to cover books from authors fighting against the biggest hate movement of our time, AZHM (the antizionist hate movement). Instead, they publish laudatory articles in support of that hate movement.

This all came to a head in recent days. Author Shai Davidai has an important new book titled American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities. A former Columbia professor, he heroically took up the fight against pro-terror radicals on campus. As he discussed in an interview with me, the media has misrepresented him throughout this experience.

Writer Melissa Uchiyama pitched an interview with him to the Los Angeles Review of Books, a powerhouse publication. (The Los Angeles Times once called it a “cultural force.”) They said yes. She’s written for them before, so she knows the kind of pieces they expect. But when she turned it in, the Review canceled it altogether.

She offered to make changes, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They regretted greenlighting an interview with Shai at all.

Joining me in this episode, Melissa reads from the internal emails. She talks through what this means for the literary world. (You’ll hear how The New York Times played a pivotal role.) It’s a window into how propagandists are overtaking the book-publishing ecosystem with help from the mainstream media.

Transcript

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Obama Exposed

Last week, I broke down some of the lies former President Barack Obama packed into his Belfast speech, and how he chose an epicenter of the antizionist hate movement (AZHM) to rewrite history. The response to that newsletter was big.

In the new episode out today, I go much further. It’s time to set the record straight and show why Obama is in no position to lecture on the Middle East. Included in this episode:

• The redacted 911 call: His government tried to hide the reasons an Islamist terrorist slaughtered 49 people and wounded 58 at the LGBTQ+ nightclub Pulse.

• The term he refused to say: Obama bent over backward to avoid calling Islamist terrorism by its name, even when confronted by a Gold Star mother.

• The African terror reality: Even as Islamists slaughtered and kidnapped Christians across Africa, including children, Obama still refused to say what was happening. Now, a new study shows that the problem has risen.

• The coup he tried to disguise: Speaking to the U.N., the then president attempted to paint an Egyptian military coup in democratic terms.

The Literary Blackout

Then, we dive into a hidden, massively influential force shaping our culture that I have not yet covered on this show: prestigious book review journals.

These sites signal to news giants which authors should be amplified and which should be frozen out. So when these journals are poisoned by a hate movement, there are broad repercussions across the entire mainstream media landscape.

That brings us to Shai Davidai, my guest in Episode 123.

He has an important new book out, titled American Intellectual Antisemitism. Writer Melissa Uchiyama pitched an interview with him for the Los Angeles Review of Books, and got a yes. But once the piece was finished, the editors killed it.

Why? Because they believe false and distorted claims about Shai that were published in the New York Times. Melissa joins me on today’s episode to divulge what happened and explain what this institutional bias means for publishing and free thought.

“What will be left of the literary world? It’s just a barren place where only one idea can live.”

I obtained the interview that the LA Review of Books spiked, and will publish it here in this newsletter. Be sure to subscribe.

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Also discussed in this episode:

• My latest Wall Street Journal column on Rep. Haley Stevens and political hypocrisy

• Why Christiane Amanpour’s exit from CNN and PBS illustrates the mainstream media’s dangerous obsession with creating “stars”

• How genuine democracy actually takes root—and why rushing into elections produces disaster

JL

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The nonpartisan initiative pulls directly from primary government data to track what’s happening with your tax dollars — with zero punditry, endorsements, or predictions.

It has its own Midterm Elections Hub, and entire sections about the economy, crime, immigration, education and more.

Facts don’t change just because an election cycle gets loud. Having the baseline data in your hands lets you audit the claims politicians make. Subscribing takes 10 seconds, costs nothing, and delivers clear, accessible information. What’s not to like?

JL

P.S. A new episode comes out tomorrow. Be here!

There’s a natural desire to see some people as larger-than-life icons. News agencies routinely play into that, extolling certain high-profile journalists as symbols of all that is good and true.

For many years, that’s been the case with Christiane Amanpour, my former colleague at CNN. Now that she has announced a plan to depart from both CNN and PBS, worshipful reporting by the mainstream media has begun (I don’t link to this drivel, but it’s plentiful). The coverage ignores her record of promoting and platforming propaganda.

Presenting journalists in a hagiographic way is particularly harmful to society. Seeing entertainment figures as icons doesn’t necessarily hurt people. But telling the public to put blind trust in certain individuals as truth-tellers is dangerous.

Here are just some of Christiane’s recent journalistic disasters, which I’ve covered:

• Lying about global intelligence on Iran (Episode 62)

• Platforming anti-Israel propagandists who masquerade as “documentarians” (Episode 40)

• Praising Qatar’s propaganda giant Al Jazeera as a source of “truth” (Episode 11)

Late last year, amazingly, she apologized for an outrageous falsehood about Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Does this mean ignoring her good work? No. But if CNN, PBS, and other news agencies were designed to provide only the truth, these disasters wouldn’t have taken place. And in covering her departure, the media should present her real record — good, bad, and ugly. (Here, I focus on what the media refuses to acknowledge.)

In a recent interview with the political podcast Face Forward, I explained how TV news went awry by seeking to create “stars.” Journalism should be structured entirely around the simple equation: Truth = Facts + Context. Instead, networks made a desire for on-camera personalities their chief goal. It has never succeeded, and news agencies are losing audiences.

But inside news agencies, a handful of personalities collect massive, multi-million dollar paychecks every year, while most other employees barely get by. These figures are also given societal megaphones to spread messages far and wide in interviews with other news outlets and on social media.

They could use all that power to fight for truth. Instead, they generally focus on maintaining their own “brands” to keep the cash rolling in and the power firmly in place. It’s addictive.

Meanwhile, by leaving CNN just weeks after Skydance brought CNN and CBS under the same corporate roof, Amanpour fuels the media's lazy obsession with framing network shifts as purely partisan. Commentators are eager to claim these legacy brands are bowing to political pressure and supporting Trump. Reality disproves this. But newsrooms ignore their own systemic decay.

America deserves better. We need a revolution in the news world. A system that exists to cut through all the noise and spin, and tells you about concrete reality. Join me in showing the media that They Stand Corrected.

The congresswoman who wrote to me seems confused. I reported that she called out a hate movement beautifully, yet endorsed one of the movement’s loudest, most dangerous activists in a Senate race. Her response:

“Are you asking me to ignore or avoid a core tenet of our democracy because I disagree with the person who won?”

This is the story of U.S. politics run amok, and a race that could elevate a lying, terror-denying member of AZHM (the antizionist hate movement) to an extremely powerful position. It’s about a principle Hillary Clinton voiced just days ago, the enduring lesson of Watergate, and what we all deserve from the media.

Here’s what Rep. Haley Stevens wrote me, in full,

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At a time when anti-democratic, antizionist, pro-Islamist terror forces are overtaking so much of global politics, former President Barack Obama had a choice. He could set the record straight, or make things worse. He chose the latter. During a speech at Queen’s University in Belfast, he poured gasoline all over a raging fire.

You wouldn’t know this from the mainstream media, which is refusing to correct the many lies he managed to pack into just a few minutes. Here are some highlights:

“They took land off people and they were excessive. And those people understandably said, ‘This is injustice and I want my land back.’”

Holy lord. Everything is wrong with this. The actual history starts with Jews having their land stolen by empires, including the Arab-Islamist one, which included mass slaughter, rape, and enslavement.

Obama also seems blissfully unaware of the Arabs who fled in hopes that Arab nations would kill all the Jews, leaving their homes and possessions for the taking upon return. And as Seth Mandel explains at Commentary:

Obama also offered up this:

“Jewish people, for millennia, were oppressed, discriminated against, killed. Europe was responsible for much of it. They understandably sought a refuge.”

“Much” of it. Who else was responsible? No mention of the Arab Islamist world, across centuries. No mention of the massive number of Jewish people who had to flee the hell of living in Arab and Muslim nations when they launched pogroms in the 1930s and 40s.

Then there’s this pearl of wisdom from Obama:

“The citizenry of Israel has to rethink, to reimagine, how are your children and grandchildren going to live in this region? Are you just going to be behind walls and wipe out everybody around you, or are you going to find some just way of defending yourself while still acting in an ethical, moral way?”

The cognitive dissonance is astounding. Israel has no desire to wipe out other peoplehoods — just to survive. The People of Israel (Am Yisrael, a.k.a. Jews) don’t believe in forcing anyone to be like us.

Obama massively expanded bombings, bungled ‘Arab Spring’

The United States is not surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction. Yet Obama vastly expanded bombings in the Middle East. “There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush,” according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The media should report this every time Obama condemns Israel for how it fights Islamist antizionist terrorists. (NPR’s morning host Steve Inskeep once went after me personally on X for asking about this.) Obama also proudly took credit for, and ran for re-election partly on, the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden.

Obama’s cluelessness about the Middle East led him to historic failure amid the so-called “Arab Spring.” Looking at giant crowds assembling in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, he insisted that they just wanted democracy. The square was actually a site of mass rapes, and part of a structured effort by supporters of Islamist terrorism to seize control.

Obama ignored warnings from people who know much better than he did. Israeli leaders accurately told him that those protests could lead to a rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, the pro-terror movement that spawned Hamas. That’s exactly what happened. The crowds managed to topple the military government, and the Brotherhood came to power.

Then, the military took back control of the country — and Obama pretended it was somehow not a coup. He recognized that government. The media gave him a pass on the hypocrisy then, just as it’s doing now.

When it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, Obama has no leg to stand on. The pretense that he’s in a position to lecture Israel is an act of massive egotism and cultural supremacy. Choosing to do so in Northern Ireland, a Western epicenter of the antizionist hate movement (AZHM), shows that he has no interest in truth or justice.

Catch up on latest episodes:

JL

P.S. Find a gift link to my new column in the Wall Street Journal here.

The Wall Street Journal has published my op-ed accompanying the latest episode of They Stand Corrected. Read it in full via this unlocked link.

I start off by praising Rep. Haley Stevens for showing moral clarity in calling antizionism what it is: a hate movement. Yet she has also endorsed fellow Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who would lead that hate movement in the Senate.

When I called her out on this act of placing party over country, she responded to me by citing a supposed “core tenet of our democracy.” That makes no sense.

This column also highlights some moments in history in which people did the right thing by putting country over party.

JL

P.S. Latest on Instagram:

In the new episode out today, I pose a question: Does our democracy demand that a politician endorse a leader of a hate movement simply because they’re from the same political party?

The simple answer is: obviously, no. But try telling that to people who are so caught up in partisan thinking that they sacrifice basic principles.

This is the story of Rep. Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat who responded to me following a recent episode. It’s also the story of how a “party over country” mentality is damaging our society and burying the truth. Along the way, we hear from Hillary Clinton and a presidential historian. And we hear deafening silence about this from the media.

A couple of episodes back, I highlighted a viral clip of Stevens. When an antizionist agitator harassed her and called for her death, she stood her ground and called antizionism what it is: a hate movement. It was a refreshing moment of moral clarity.

But Stevens has also endorsed a candidate who would lead that hate movement in the Senate. After losing the primary to Abdul El-Sayed, she threw her support behind him. When I called this out, she wrote me, “Are you asking me to ignore or avoid a core tenet of our democracy?”

Huh? Today, I break down that defense, the mentality it speaks to, and the deafening silence from the media. Mainstream news giants love to publish and broadcast calls for putting “country over party.” But when an egregious case of party-first allegiance happens on the left, they give it a pass.

Also in this episode:

• A merger puts CNN and CBS under the same corporate umbrella. Here’s what to expect.

• How the media builds a Tower of Babel: We revisit an episode on transgenderism, feminism, and Zionism

• What to send to news executives to show them that They Stand Corrected

JL

P.S. On Instagram? Join me.

Millions of good people around the world would rather be focusing on other things. They want to contribute even more than they already have to the best human pursuits — science, technology, education, the arts, etc. But the world’s largest hate movement keeps pulling them away. They have to stop what they’re doing to go fight it.

In my own little way, I’ve experienced this. When I launched They Stand Corrected, I figured correcting the media on Israel and Jews would be part of it, but also expected to do a lot of episodes about right-wing lies.

Over the past three years, lies from the antizionist hate movement (AZHM) have grown bigger, overtaking mainstream news agencies. So I’ve had to focus more on fighting these blood libels.

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So many people have similar stories. Shai Davidai was teaching business ethics and named one of the “best 40-under-40 MBA professors.” Then Columbia turned into a pro-terror hellhole, and he took it on.

Adam Louis-Klein was studying anthropology in the Amazon when his entire academic community turned toxic. Now he’s off fighting hate as well.

Jonah Platt had a successful career in entertainment, including a starring role in Wicked on Broadway. Now he’s taking on antisemitism, fighting Hollywood’s fear machine. Author Alyssa Rosenheck is an expert in design and photography. When her industry got eaten up by AZHM, she used her voice to fight it. The list goes on.

People of conscience everywhere are doing this. Take Chico Muya, who is trying to educate people in a world filled with screaming AZHM activists.

As I prepared the latest episode, I thought about what the right metaphor is. What signifies a dark, bloodthirsty force that sucks the lifeblood of everything good? Who represents the fight against it? Duh.

The good news: Sunlight kills vampires. By spreading facts, we let the light in.

Activists addicted to supporting his every move can’t see what really happened with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week. He proved what we can think of as The Law of Hate Movements: Their members always end up attacking each other. When all you share is a blind rage based on lies, you have no true “solidarity.”

So of course Mamdani was booed and berated by antizionists. Nothing is vile enough for them.

He tried to please them. His October 7 statement was so repugnant and heartless that it was rightly called “evil.” He didn’t even use the words “Jews,” “terrorism,” “Islamist,” or “antisemitism.” But the AZHM (antizionist hate movement) hordes want much, much more.

Mainstream media reports depict Mamdani as facing criticism from “both sides.” But the reality is best summed up by Seth Mandel at Commentary:

“Too sadistic for the Jews, not sadistic enough for the Palestinians—this poor guy just can’t please anybody.”

The lesson here is important. It’s the same one that made a recent story about a Massachusetts lesbian bar go viral. The site that wants to “cancel” Lady Gaga for being “Zionist” has devolved into an infighting, performative disaster, with activists trying to out-victim each other.

To those of us who are sane and see what’s happening, it can sometimes feel like we are a shrinking group. And to some extent, we are. Most people are weak enough to give in to popular hate movements. But those of us who stay committed to the fight for truth have a kind of bond that really is unbreakable. That will outlast all of these other movements as they descend into chaos.

People who come together here are closer than ever. That includes people across all kinds of differences. We don’t end up in shreds because we have truth on our side.

If only the media showed people that.

JL

P.S. On social media? Join me on Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, Facebook, and X.