Don Surber comments as only he can on this week’s media offerings.
ITEM 1: The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall is a green, ugly mess each April that undergoes an expensive cleanup because Obama turned it into a sewer.
In 2012, Obama got the bright idea to spend $34 million to get the water from the Tidal Basin instead of the city. This would save taxpayers for the 30 million gallons the National Park Service paid for the city water.
The savings? $300,000 a year. It would take 130 to 150 years to pay back the $34 million spent.
ITEM 2: Obama also decided to treat the water with green technology instead of chlorine. The only thing green is the algae atop the water.
The era of Obamunism ended. Trump’s spending $2 million this year to really clean it and paint the bottom Old Glory Blue, which is another of 47’s tribute to 250th.
ITEM 3: The Mirror said, “Trump ‘tried to use nuclear codes but was stopped by military chief.’”
Were those the nuclear codes Matt Drudge said Trump stole and hid at Mar-a-Lago? Andy Rooney wants to know whatever happened to them.
ITEM 4: NBC reported, “Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., who made history as the first black chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, has died, his office said in a statement Wednesday. He was 80.”
He’s right up there with Thomas Forrest, the first white chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
ITEM 5: Breaking 911 tweeted, “The mayor of Haikou, China, who reportedly accumulated about $4.5 billion during his career and was found with 13.5 tons of gold and 23 tons of cash in his apartments, has been sentenced to death.”
You load 13 tons, what do you get? A show trial and sentenced to death.
ITEM 6: CNN reported, “Individuals with a cervix are now recommended to start cervical cancers screening at 25 and continue through age 65, with HPV testing every five years as the preferred method of testing, according to a new guideline released by the American Cancer Society.”
That was 6 years ago. Hopefully the Pronouns Panic is ending and CNN will stop dismissing women as a uterus. Otherwise, celebrate International Individuals with a Cervix Day next March.
ITEM 7: The Daily Mail reported, “Top 10 wealthiest U.S. suburbs revealed and one state dominates the list.”
It’s not West Virginia.
ITEM 8: Wall Street Apes tweeted with video, “Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell announces the start of a new LA Project. Democrats are creating free parking lots for California residents to park and live in their RVs.”
In West Virginia, we call them trailer parks.
ITEM 9: Citizen Free Press tweeted, “Detroit officials beg people to stop stealing fire hydrants.”
Don’t look at me. I got mine on eBay.
ITEM 10: Asra Nomani tweeted, “Hung Cao and his family fled the communism overtaking Vietnam, making a new home in northern Virginia. He learned English from Mr. T and the A Team on TV and rose through merit to graduate from the first class at Thomas Jefferson HS for Science and Technology, later America’s No. 1 high school, becoming a decorated war fighter and join parents in the fight to protect merit for the next generations at his alma mater.
“Now he is America’s new Secretary of the Navy.
“He is the A Team.”
I love it when a plan comes together.
ITEM 11: CNBC reported, “Virginia judge blocks redistricting referendum result that boosted Democrats’ election hopes.”
Welcome to lawfare, communists. Judges overturned constitutional amendments in California. One banned using taxpayer money on illegal aliens. The other banned gay marriage.
ITEM 12: The Last Refuge reported, “The DOJ indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center for wire fraud, money laundering and false statements [Indictment Here], confirms long-held suspicions that Democrat-aligned activist groups have been financing racism, hate mobs and political violence.”
The smeller is the feller.
ITEM 13: Belgian MEP Kris Van Dijck said, “I have a big problem about how the United Nations works at this moment. The Islamic Republic of Iran was nominated to a U.N. committee shaping policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention. How is that possible?”
Just think of the United Nations as the world’s SPLC.
ITEM 14: John Solomon reported, “Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and new supreme leader of Iran, is reportedly set to receive a prosthetic leg and plastic surgery after he was wounded in a U.S. airstrike early in the war, the New York Times reported.”
Plus there is the situation with his Obama-ectomy—wiping his slate clean of his days at the YMCA.
ITEM 15: Alec MacGillis tweeted a quote from a New York Times story, “Sheryl Cowan, 57, was making $272,000 a year as a senior VP at a U.S.A.I.D.-funded nonprofit when she was let go at the end of March 2025. Last month she had an online interview for a $19-an-hour job managing a Penzeys Spices store in Falls Church, Va.”
Shows she was overpaid.
ITEM 16: Well, it is not like Cowan killed anyone.
Longshot (@ngprecision) tweeted:
Kate Puzey was murdered in 2009 after she reported that a Beninese teacher contracting with the Peace Corps was raping his students.
Cowan, the Peace Corps director in Benin at the time, failed to preserve her anonymity.
Grok: “The X post (from @ngprecision) correctly identifies Sheryl Cowan as the Peace Corps Country Director in Benin in 2009, when Peace Corps volunteer Kate Puzey was murdered. Puzey had reported that a local contractor/teacher (Constant Bio) was sexually abusing children at a school where he worked. Cowan had promised Puzey that her identity would be kept confidential when the report was investigated and the contractor was terminated—but that anonymity was not preserved. Puzey was killed (throat slit) shortly afterward, and her family publicly blamed a Peace Corps error for leaking her role, which they said directly contributed to the murder.”
And now you know the rest of the story.
ITEM 17: Zero Hedge reported that three weeks after Bloomberg News celebrate the company, “Pierre Andurand’s largest hedge fund (and when it comes to Andurand, the word hedging is a catastrophic misnomer), plunged about 52% in the first half of April, wiping out all of its first quarter gains and then some made on bullish oil bets at the start of the Iran war.”
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, wipe out!
ITEM 18: Eyal Yakoby tweeted, “The Pope condemns the Iranian regime for the mass slaughter of Iranians.”
Axelrod must have shown him the internal polling.
ITEM 19: RFK Jr. told Congress, “They charged us $6,000 a month for that hospice patient. How did we detect them all? Because the patients never died.
“Hospices in Los Angeles—we’ve shut down 500 of them. We have not gotten one call from a congressperson or one call from a patient. Why? Because those hospices did not exist.”
Why did we shut down hospices that miraculously kept people from dying?
ITEM 20: The New York Times reported, “The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What if They Could?”
They can by giving their lives to Jesus.
ITEM 21: California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter said she would “fight” the Trump administration after she was asked if truck drivers should be able to read English.
Watch out, Donald or she’ll pour scalding potatoes on your head.
ITEM 22: CNBC reported, “Porsche AG [will] sell its 45% stake in supercar brand Bugatti Rimac, fully exiting the joint venture that houses the iconic brand.”
The company needs cash after losing tons of money on EV and a freaky ad campaign that dropped its sales.
Porsche forgot its customer base—rich old men who want to pick up hot young chicks.
FINALLY, we are not alone in resisting the media spin—cyclone is more like it—on Operation Epic Fury. Mark Dubowitz tweeted:
If you’d told me a few years ago this is where we’d be on Iran, I’d have said you were high:
1. Nuke program set back years. Enrichment and reprocessing gutted, weaponization sites destroyed, Fordow inoperable, Natanz in ruins, a generation of senior nuclear scientists eliminated.
2. Ballistic missile program crippled. Monthly production down from 100 to near zero. Roughly half the regime’s missiles and launchers destroyed. The IRGC Aerospace Force commander who ran the missile enterprise dead.
3. Air defenses devastated. American and Israeli airpower dominating Iranian skies, with strike aircraft operating over the country with near impunity.
4. Full economic warfare. Not just OFAC sanctions anymore, but military pressure layered on top: naval blockade, near-zero oil exports, choked imports, wrecked steel and petrochemical sectors, triple-digit inflation, and a currency that is effectively worthless.
5. Regime decapitation. Khamenei dead. Larijani dead. Hundreds of senior IRGC, intelligence, military, and Basij commanders dead including the IRGC commander-in-chief, the armed forces chief of staff, and the Aerospace Force commander. Mojtaba Khamenei inheriting a hollowed-out regime with no supreme authority and a gutted command structure.
6. The region turning on Tehran. Gulf states shutting down the sanctions-busting, money-laundering, and financial escape routes the regime has relied on for years. No Arab capital willing to throw Iran a lifeline. China and Russia providing limited support.
7. Proxy network shattered. Hezbollah and Hamas heavily degraded. Houthi political leadership taking direct Israeli strikes. The “Axis of Resistance” and “ring of fire” are now more slogans than real threats.
8. Syrian corridor severed. Assad is gone. The new government in Damascus is actively blocking Iranian arms transfers to Hezbollah: arresting smugglers and publicly declaring Syria will no longer serve as a transit corridor for Tehran’s terrorists. The land bridge to the Mediterranean that took decades to build is effectively closed.
9. Lebanon pivoting west. With Hezbollah battered and resupply choked, Israel and Lebanon have opened direct peace talks for the first time since 1983, aimed at a permanent agreement and Hezbollah’s disarmament. Beirut now asserting that the Lebanese armed forces alone are responsible for national defense. This is a direct repudiation of Hezbollah’s “resistance” claim. TBD.
10. Deterrence exposed as a bluff. Four direct attacks on Israel—April 2024, October 2024, June 2025, March 2026—failed to impose strategic cost and instead triggered heavy retaliation. Iran couldn’t even use Syria as a launchpad.
11. Economy hollowed out from within. Power shortages, water crises, factory shutdowns, pension unrest, and mass protests. Nationwide demonstrations erupted in December 2025 after a year of economic freefall, with bazaaris, oil workers, and truckers, the regime’s traditional support base, joining strikes across all 31 provinces. Running out of oil storage space. Fuel shortages. The worst crisis since 1979.
12. Scientific and technical brain drain. Beyond the nuclear experts, Iran has lost a generation of irreplaceable expertise in missile design, centrifuge engineering, and weapons development. The survivors are harder to recruit and easier to deter.
13. Naval power decimated. The regular navy shattered, IRGC navy taking growing losses as CENTCOM moves to reopen Hormuz.
And against all of this: the regime forced to play its Hormuz card at its weakest possible moment when the U.S. has options instead of when we didn’t: namely, Tehran with nuclear-armed ICBMs, 10,000 ballistic missiles, a Chinese- and Russian-built military, hundreds of thousands of attack drones, a fully operational terror network, and hundreds of billions of dollars to harden its economy.
That’s the strategic picture. It’s extraordinary. Much more to do but I can’t comprehend how much has been achieved.
We have had the technology for decades. We now have leadership that can and will use our power. Chairman Xi bet on America having nothing but traitors like Mark Milley running our military.
Xi bet wrong.
You can subscribe to Don’s Daily Substack Here.
This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA