ConInc Cracks: Israel, Controlled Opposition, and Trump’s Narrative Grenade

President Trump’s latest comments about Israel were easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. They were buried in a Daily Caller interview, tossed in almost as a side note: Israel, once the most powerful lobby in Congress, no longer carries the same weight. Twenty years ago, he said, it was unthinkable to speak a bad word about Israel and survive in politics. Today, the taboo is breaking down.

I would argue it was actually a whole lot less than 20 years ago. Something incredible is happening.

“Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing,” Trump told the Daily Caller. “Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t, you know, I’m a little surprised to see that.”

Emphasis mine. Even the headline of the Daily Caller article should make people say, “wait, what?”

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Acknowledges Israel Is Losing Control Of Congress

And it’s losing it in the court of public opinion, which means a lot of people’s work is, well, working. The Jerusalem Post is also covering the story.

It was the kind of remark Trump slips in with a grin, leaving the rest of us to figure out whether it’s a breadcrumb, a warning, or simply an observation–a concept he has addressed directly and one I explored concerning COVID and the jab yesterday. But one thing is undeniable: the narrative deployments he unleashes is changing the landscape on every single topic he chooses, and that includes America’s love affair with the political State of Israel.

Because Trump didn’t just say Israel’s influence is fading. He made it obvious. He leaned into the previously unchallenged narrative, allowing others to take the narrative and run with it in the public sphere. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

“They had total control over Congress.”

Let’s take a quick look at the fallout, a development that should not be a surprise if you’ve been reading things like our work on conservative controlled opposition, such as Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro:

• Infowars: Owen Shroyer, one of Alex Jones’ most recognizable talking heads, walked away suddenly after nearly a decade–his breaking point allegedly being Jones’ accusation that he was too anti-Trump. That isn’t a “minor rift.” It’s a crack running through the whole foundation.
• TimCast: When Alex Stein dared to bring Epstein-Israel connections into the conversation, the meltdown was immediate. Suddenly, even your best conservative pixelated friends, they of the supposed “uncensored internet,” were scrambling to find the exit button. Or simply to gaslight.
• Turning Point USA: Charlie Kirk went on stage with James Lindsay earlier this summer, citing petitions demanding Lindsay be canceled. Kirk, as always, played the part of the brave free-speech defender, but the context matters: Lindsay has spent two years trying to brand any Trump supporter critical of Israel as the “Woke Right.”
• 

Not that Mr Lindsay has any idea who I am, but I have followed him and know that he would call me a part of said “Woke Right.” Many of you as readers might have done the same. Well I ask you now, what is breaking in the way of “news” concerning Israel and its relationship both with the US and the world? Are we still woke? Are we still wearing tinfoil hats? You know this is actually nothing new just because Trump said what he said, right?

Many of you have seen the ruse for a long time, have not needed pixelated voices on the screen to tell you when you have permission to think what you think, and I commend you for that. I thank you.

And I thank and commend you because you refuse to miss the bigger point in all of these interweaving stories that none of us can possibly have a full handle on, a practice we need more Americans to stop missing: that these “conservative” warriors aren’t just fading by accident. They’re being exposed.

And yes, Charlie Kirk is in that number. Just wait. Or maybe you’ve already recognized it.

ConInc has always thrived on carefully curated boundaries–what you’re allowed to question and what’s off-limits. They trick well-meaning conservatives by siding with them on things like gender and Cracker Barrel, but mislead where it counts. The entire dynamic–both sides of the rift–is run by the same in-the-shadows empire that have worked so hard to hide behind their evermore recognizable layers of plausible deniability.

Levin can rant about Marxists while not telling you who those Marxists actually are. Kirk can rally students about free speech and trick the uninitiated. Shapiro can filibuster on inflation or antisemitism and try to sneak in that the JFK files really don’t matter. But raise your hand as a free-thinking, not-paid-off American thinker and raise questions about Israel–and suddenly you’re a hated enemy equivalent to the hated left or worse, on the “Woke Right.”

It is so satisfying that that term never took root. It is so very satisfying that Mr Lindsay’s wild efforts to make it stick is eventually what tanked him.

Trump, regardless of his ultimate end goal, is changing all of that. He is changing the narrative–and he’s changing it on everything. He has long leaned into the subservience to Israel, exaggerated it, made it painfully obvious. And in doing so, he depended on the American people to take over the narrative, to actually push back against such allegiance to a foreign power.

He cracks the façade by making himself look bad.

And more than that, he is doing something that many people think is a bad thing but isn’t. He is fracturing MAGA away from just a new version of the tribe mentality–the binary trap I am constantly warning about.

The numbers seem to prove it:

[Journalist Reagan] Reese noted that a March Pew Poll found that 53% of US adults had an unfavorable view of Israel, compared to 42% in 2022. She went on to tell Trump that, additionally, half of Republicans polled by Pew now view Israel unfavorably.

Of course on the flip side of that you still have people who believe that the current State of Israel is the same as the Old Testament Israel, which is creating one part of the fracture.

HIM 101 | ISRAEL ≠ ISRAEL: Zionism, Genesis 12, and the Heresy of the DUAL COVENANT (YouTube)

The fracturing is not an accident–it’s a generational shift accelerated by Trump’s willingness to say the quiet part out loud–by using the incredibly brilliant war tactic of “entering the illusion” of your enemy.

Trump’s “weaves” as he calls them aren’t just meaningless asides–they are tools of narrative warfare, pure and simple. He doesn’t just dismantle things directly all the time; he quite often short-circuits them by turning their own illusions against themselves.

That brilliance in the tactics of the Art of War is what both intrigues and frightens me about the man.

In other words, a lot of folks out there are angry with Trump for supporting (only in appearance?) Israel to such a degree. That is where the MAGA fracturing is coming into play. But a lot of other folks out there interpret Trump’s gushing as an over-the-top, make-it-painfully-obvious invitation to push back on him, purposely so, and ultimately to grow the pair necessary to actually start questioning what is going on with Israel’s influence on our country.

Even though their “friends” on the electronic screen tell them not to do that.

(And remember, as I’ve been saying, don’t make the mistake of falling unquestioningly into one of these two tribes either, even though they are different. But that is a digression concerning Trump too big for today’s piece).

The base question remains the same, and the response to it is spreading in conservative circles. Why prop up someone like Lindsay in the first place, if not to police the boundaries of acceptable dissent? His entire shtick–slapping the “Woke Right” label on Trump-aligned Israel critics like myself–is or was designed to corral the base back into the pen–and crucify those who dared challenge the new alt-narrative, which if you think about it, has simply become the new mainstream conservative opposition, something very much akin to what Fox News started as years ago.

It’s all psychological warfare disguised as multifaceted, political commentary.

It’s disguised behind the assumption of freedom of speech–and it isn’t.

So here’s the irony, and it’s beautiful in its simplicity. Trump didn’t need to dismantle ConInc with a bulldozer as he did the likes of CNN and MSNBC. All he had to do was lean into a narrative people were getting sick of in the first place. Trump knew there would be pushback–particularly because he simps so hard and most people just take it at face value– but he also knew that the force he’s gathered behind him over the last ten years would be too strong for the whimpers.

Let MAGA fracture. Good. We don’t need the two-tribe system to simply change its face. We need a total overhaul from the ground up–and we need to actually shine a light on the true binary in the shadows.

And if Trump is the real deal, then yes, he is the national hero this country has needed for a long time.

(Let’s just hope he’s not the bigger carnivore in a Jurassic World film).

Trump is breaking ConInc, pushing them ever so meticulously into the same irrelevance as our favorite leftist talking heads. And in the process, he’s forcing a reckoning the alt-gatekeepers can’t contain, and a challenge to all Americans to fight for something that is True.

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Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Forgive me for my own part in all of this. Forgive those who have knowingly pushed lies on the American public. May we all repent in time.