{"id":2699322,"date":"2026-11-05T15:50:01","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T20:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-wall-street-journal-pretends-to-not-understand-j-d-vance-or-iran\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T15:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T20:54:11","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-wall-street-journal-pretends-to-not-understand-j-d-vance-or-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-wall-street-journal-pretends-to-not-understand-j-d-vance-or-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street Journal Pretends To Not Understand J.D. Vance Or Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-wall-street-journal-pretends-to-not-understand-j-d-vance-or-iran%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2699322&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Wall Street Journal criticized Vice President J.D. Vance for saying the Iran war cost Republicans, arguing he signaled weakness to Tehran. This piece counters that Iran already knew Americans opposed the war and that Vance revealed nothing new. The real problem, it says, is the administration\u2019s poor political dialog-promising a quick, painless conflict-and the Journal\u2019s evasions on immigration, where media framing turned routine enforcement into alleged cruelty while some proposals amount to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-dhs-expands-temporary-amnesty-for-3-4k-sudanese-nationals\/\" title=\"Biden&#039;s DHS Expands &#039;Temporary&#039; Amnesty for 3.4K Sudanese Nationals\">de facto amnesty<\/a>. Honest politics needs transparency; Vance\u2019s frank remark should be discussed,not denounced.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Sometimes you can watch an argument wind through a topic like a river creating oxbows, taking care to divert around the points that don\u2019t help. The Wall Street Journal has just done exactly this, offering what reads like a third of an editorial about Vice President J.D. Vance and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JDVance\/status\/2118004988433641835\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">his election postmortem<\/a>. If you <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/jd-vance-iran-war-2026-midterms-e3509fe1?st=aYPpQt&#038;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">read the editorial<\/a>, notice what they don\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmid the rubble on the morning after the election, JD Vance posted a mini-essay on X.com to pin the defeat entirely on the war in Iran and suggest that ending it is a political necessity,\u201d the editorial board wrote. \u201cBy doing so in public, Mr. Vance signals desperation to Iran\u2019s regime, undermining his boss at a critical moment in the war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But top Iranian officials have access to an elite geopolitical intelligence technique, known to experts as \u201creading stuff on the Internet,\u201d and they were already <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2026\/10\/08\/iran-conflict-remains-deeply-unpopular-as-many-americans-expect-it-to-go-on-for-months\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">aware of all that<\/a>. <\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>\n<div>\n<p>         <span>Image Credit<\/span>Screenshot       <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>They could spend 10 minutes every morning with Google News over their first cup of coffee and understand that ending the unpopular war is a political necessity. Vance didn\u2019t crack open a safe to show off the previously hidden crown jewels. Like the Soviet ambassador <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=buRP_2XAQys\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">says<\/a> in <em>Doctor Strangelove<\/em>, \u201cOur source was the New York Times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Armed with the shocking and deeply buried secret that Americans don\u2019t like high gas prices, the Iranians are now empowered to manipulate the negotiations: \u201cBut to post it on social media is to tell the Iranians they now have the upper hand in nuclear and Strait of Hormuz negotiations.\u201d The premise fails if literally any Iranian owned a computer with a web browser before the exact moment Vance posted. The mullahs have set a tone in their response to the war, and their frequently absurd confidence isn\u2019t a sudden response to a new message. <\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The process of the US&#8217;s collapse has accelerated.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (@MKhamenei_ir) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MKhamenei_ir\/status\/2117970619077976541?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 4, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>They\u2019ve been doing the \u201cDeath to America\u201d thing for a while, and have developed a certain consistency of perception. They embody the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketingsociety.com\/the-library\/playing-chess-pigeon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">old joke<\/a> about playing chess with a pigeon: They <em>always<\/em> think the enemy is desperate. No one in Tehran leapt out of his chair this week and shouted, \u201cTheir vice president just revealed that the war is unpopular! This changes everything!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Federalist was unable to get a comment on the Journal\u2019s editorial from the vice president\u2019s office, but former Vance adviser Steve Cortes told us that the editorial made a \u201cpatently absurd\u201d argument. The Iranian leadership, Cortes said, is \u201cdangerous and even evil, but they\u2019re not stupid.\u201d They already knew the war was unpopular among Americans, because they can read. The vice president, Cortes told The Federalist, is thinking about America and America\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n<p>Rendering the choice binary, go to war \/ don\u2019t go to war, the Journal evades the enormously important question of <em>how<\/em> the Trump administration went to war. Whatever you think of Colin Powell, his view that Americans have developed a habit of sending the military to war without assuring that <em>the country<\/em> regards itself as being at war was not wrong. Powell <a href=\"https:\/\/adst.org\/2021\/11\/colin-powell-kuwait-and-the-gulf-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">argued<\/a> that the United States shouldn\u2019t go to war without a clear military objective and a view of what the end will look like: Why are we doing this? How will we know when it\u2019s over and we\u2019ve won?<\/p>\n<p>But the president didn\u2019t open the war with a message to Congress or a primetime address to the nation. He didn\u2019t <em>explain<\/em>. And the administration and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/we-rely-on-stupid-people-trump-blasts-bolton-mcmaster-over-afghanistan\/\" title=\"\u2018We Rely On Stupid People\u2019: Trump Blasts Bolton, McMaster Over Afghanistan\">people giving advice<\/a> to the president have made the ridiculous choice to continually underplay and dismiss the whole thing: No big deal, over in a jiffy, pay it no mind. Gas prices, they\u2019ve said over and over again, will be a little high for a couple of weeks. <\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<div lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>Marc Thiessen didn\u2019t just claim the Iran war would be easy-peasy, he also lied about gas prices and their political effects for the last nine months.<\/p>\n<p>Thiessen claimed gas prices would barely go up, then claimed they\u2019d go up but only for a few weeks, then said gas would obviously\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/UCoMJGpbsF\">pic.twitter.com\/UCoMJGpbsF<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2014 Sean Davis (@seanmdav) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/seanmdav\/status\/2118365699546476701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 5, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThis\u2019ll be over by August, by the end of August. And we\u2019ll have two months before the midterm elections for gas prices to come down and for Americans to sense victory.\u201d That wasn\u2019t true, and you can\u2019t honestly discuss the war as a political topic without taking on this point. The Journal simply doesn\u2019t. They slide around the failures in political communication without deigning to mention them. That choice doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n<p>Special notice is needed here for the maneuvers the Journal attempts around the topic of illegal immigration and the enforcement of immigration laws. Looking at voters, they say this: \u201cFifty-eight percent also say Trump immigration enforcement went too far.\u201d After a four-year period in which the southern border was wide open and somewhere north of 10 million unvetted people walked across it, <em>what does this mean?<\/em> Can they define an alternative version of immigration enforcement that would be perceived as going <em>just far enough?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What happened in 2025 and 2026 was that Democrats and the media acted out an information operation in which the ordinary enforcement of immigration laws, which are not a new invention of the second Trump administration, became cruel and extreme acts of kidnapping. That rhetoric was always complete nonsense, and it\u2019s embarrassing to accept that framing at face value. During the Obama administration, CNN embedded with ICE agents for a long story about their important work:<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A day with ICE in the so-called \"Sanctuary City...\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JUXTqyH54ww?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Ten years later, they\u2019re pretending that ICE arrests are a shocking new development that amounts to bizarrely aggressive state kidnapping. We all need to stop playing along with this calculated fearmongering.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the Journal writes, \u201cMr. Vance set up a straw man by warning against \u2018establishment\u2019 calls for \u2018amnesty\u2019 that no Republican is calling for.\u201d But this is make-believe around the performance of pretending to use different words. In a message that several other Republican members of Congress <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonsun.com\/campaigns\/republicans-immigration-trump-states\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">echoed<\/a>, Republican Florida Rep. Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar called on Trump to give illegal immigrants \u201ca dignified life in this promised land.\u201d See, that\u2019s not <em>amnesty<\/em>, that\u2019s just a permanent waiver of immigration laws that lets people who entered the country illegally stay here forever.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A Message to President Trump on Immigration | Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pu6vDq23W1E?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Honest politics, if such a thing is possible, starts with openness and clarity. The Iran war and its domestic effects are unpopular, and at the very least offer a warning about making the case for war to Congress and the nation. There are lessons to be learned. It\u2019s sort of baffling that we\u2019re still trying to start learning lessons about going to war in the Middle East. But it\u2019s not bad news that an elected official said what he thinks, so we can consider his argument and discuss it. That should be regarded as normal behavior.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at &#8220;Tell Me How This Ends,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a paraphrase of the passage you provided:<\/p>\n<p>The author says the Wall Street Journal\u2019s take on Vice President J.D. Vance reads like a lengthy editorial that meanders around key points. It suggests Vance\u2019s post-election claim-that the Iran war was the defeat\u2019s main cause and that ending the war is politically necessary-shows desperation to Iran\u2019s regime and undermines the administration. But Iranian leaders, who monitor global news online, already know the war\u2019s unpopularity; Vance\u2019s post didn\u2019t reveal any hidden truth, and their confident stance isn\u2019t new.<\/p>\n<p>The piece argues that Iran has long assumed Americans dislike high gas prices and wouldn\u2019t be jolted by Vance\u2019s online remark. Tehran isn\u2019t reacting to a new message; their posture reflects a longstanding view that the U.S. is the desperate party. The Federalist couldn\u2019t obtain comment from Vance\u2019s office, and an ex-adviser says the Journal\u2019s argument is patently absurd-Iran is dangerous but not stupid, and they already know public opinion. Vance\u2019s aim, Cortes says, is to consider America\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n<p>The article accuses the Journal of reducing a complex war decision to a binary choice-go to war or don\u2019t go-while ignoring how the Trump administration actually got us into the conflict and what victory would look like. Powell\u2019s warning about requiring a clear objective and endgame is cited as still relevant, but the president never properly explained the war or its purpose, instead downplaying it and promising only brief spikes in gas prices.<\/p>\n<p>The piece also critiques the Journal\u2019s handling of immigration and enforcement. It notes that a majority of voters think immigration enforcement went too far, labeling the question as if border enforcement had been extreme during open-border years. The author contends Democrats and the media conducted an information operation that cast normal enforcement as kidnapping, arguing that such framing is nonsense and that coverage of ICE during the Obama era showed important work was being done.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, the author accuses the Journal of dodging accountability and recasting immigration policy to fit a partisan narrative, rather than engaging honestly with why these policies exist and how they\u2019re applied<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":2699323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/over-by-august-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[3823,35138,32490,32171,32878],"class_list":["post-2699322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-iran","tag-j-d-vance","tag-media-bias","tag-political-commentary","tag-wall-street-journal"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/over-by-august-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2699322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699326,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699322\/revisions\/2699326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2699323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2699322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2699322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2699322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}