“Everything popular is wrong." - Oscar Wilde
Brooklyn, NY
Joined June 2016
- Tweets5K
- Following1.4K
- Followers1.6K
- Likes13.2K
Max Shifrin retweeted
Mr. Vice-President,
Please allow me to present a different perspective.
The problem was not the Iran War. It was the cease fire.
If you start a war, you need to win it and finish it – otherwise don’t start it.
This war should have been over six months ago, with the Strait of Hormuz wide open and oil flowing. The second and third tiers of Iranian leadership should have been destroyed, and we should have supported the pro-western forces who could have taken leadership. We stood on the brink of a new, more peaceful Middle East - and then we blinked. We had a chance not only to deny Iran nuclear weapons, but to get rid of the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism.
Instead, we had a cease fire, which was followed by months of will we or won’t we finish the job. Every day was a different message. There still is. Is the war over? Is it about to begin? No one knows. There is confusion and inconsistency.
In June 2025, America was not involved. This was an Israel vs Iran issue.
No one forced the United States to attack Iran then, or in February of 2026. It was a decision made by President Trump. In my opinion, it was the right decision.
Once the decision was made, we should not have stopped until the regime fell. But instead, you negotiated a cease fire that didn’t last, didn’t work and left us in no man’s land, with higher prices and our troops still deployed.
Our troops could have been home, the Navy returned to its bases, a peaceful regime in place , new alliances forged, and gas prices below $3.00 a gallon.
No, Mr. Vice President. It’s not the war. It’s the so-called cease fire.
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Max Shifrin retweeted
What a weasel this guy is
He has no problem throwing Trump under the bus, but won’t say a single bad thing about Tucker
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Max Shifrin retweeted
1) The war in Iran was going great until you guys convinced the president to stop.
2) MAGA has nothing to stand on when it comes to affordability; you were pushing tariffs from the jump.
3) If voters wanted America First, why did they vote for Democrats over MAGA candidates?
A lot of people are totally oblivious to what this movement is ultimately about.
Israel, and America’s alliance with it, is simply one of the most effective targets if your goal is to undermine the West and remake the geopolitical landscape.
That alliance makes America enormously powerful, and America’s adversaries know it. They’ve poured enormous resources into undermining it, including by spreading propaganda designed to turn Americans, particularly young Americans, against Israel and the alliance itself. And they’ve had considerable success.
This doesn’t end if we cut aid to Israel or diminish AIPAC. The hostility toward Israel is, in significant part, rooted in a much broader anti-American, anti-Western ideology. Israel is simply the most convenient target, not the ultimate objective.
Max Shifrin retweeted
A fantastic analysis.
Republicans are going to have a terrible night, and the simple reason why is that Trump has put up perhaps the worst *performance* this term of any president in a century or more.
Remember that he entered with an actual mandate: the House and Senate, a popular vote victory and a swing-state sweep, and 6-3 Supreme Court. Democrats were afraid enough to vote for mild but real immigration restrictionist legislation in the Laken Riley Act. Everyone wondered how far the "Vibe Shift" would go.
Trump managed to turn that into essentially zero durable wins whatsoever. He personally *hates* the very idea of legislation, the notion that he would have to spend time going back and forth with Congress, learning details and making compromises. So he simply didn't do it! He didn't make a compelling case for abolishing the filibuster. He didn't try communicating clearly to the public in support of popular bills to get to 60 votes. He just decided not to do it at all.
So they passed an unpopular tax cut, some funding for ICE, and a sop to the crypto industry, and that was basically it. Least productive Congress in decades, due to the tastes of one man.
Trump adopted one of the worst macro policies we've ever had: high deficits, high tariffs, and attacks on central bank independence. We managed to pay higher interest rates while still having high trade deficits AND weakening the dollar. Just a total failure.
On immigration, perhaps THE signature issue, Trump essentially min-maxxed effectiveness and backlash. Instead of trying to leverage the political moment for new laws and a self-deportation agenda (that is, walling off the economy to remove the benefit of irregular presence in the US), he opted for a maximally aggressive approach. The administration spent attention, funds, legal manpower on stunts like deporting random people to Salvadoran prisons with essentially no due process. ICE and Border Patrol were encouraged to be aggressive and confrontational, which helped contribute to the shooting deaths of American protestors. It turns out, that's extremely unpopular!
What about the approach of going after employers? The obvious vector? Trump hated that idea! He repeatedly has said he doesn't want to target businesses (especially farms) that use large amounts of illegal labor. This is just an incomprehensible position. Instead of charging a few dozen businessmen and removing the incentive for millions of illegal workers to be here, you arrest people off the street one by one at the cost of thousands of dollars in manpower per each, while their crying wives and kids post TikToks about it.
Upshot on immigration: electoral strength turned into a crippling electoral weakness in exchange for deporting maybe 6% of the illegally present population.
The tariffs were a total shitshow. Embarrassing rollout, no underlying theory of action at all. No targeted focus on key industries. Our country tariffed products we can't grow. We tariffed *inputs* of our own valuable exports. The schemes and amounts changed constantly, sending the stock market reeling and presenting scenes of chaos to the world.
Trump's messaging throughout has been generationally bad. While facing nearly 2:1 unpopularity, he spends his days posting AI slop, saying he'll rename New Mexico or invade allies, among other bizarre remarks. He brags about a ballroom and a pool repainting while gas hits records. At no point has he ever attempted any kind of message discipline.
Then there are the deeply unpopular attacks on rule of law, his "game-recognize-game" pardons for all manner of scammers and criminals, the crypto schemes that he and his family engage in, the evilly conceived and embarrassingly executed legal attacks on Comey, Jerome Powell, and others. With his monthslong stand on NOT releasing the Epstein files, he became maybe the first president ever to stake out a 99-1 issue on the 1% side.
That's not even getting into Iran, DOGE, his candidate recruitment choices, or countless other things. Simply put: Trump has managed to royally screw up virtually every single facet of his presidency. It's been undeniable, voters have noticed, and there's really no escape from it. This is what the GOP base chose in early 2024, and this is the world they're living with now. Where they handed the reins of history to a fat, vain, washed-up old man and let him drive.
Congratulations to the Democratic Party on successfully consolidating the Piker-Fuentes voting block.
There's something about the anti-Zionist movement that's uniquely hostile to not just its opponents, but to discourse itself. No meaningful engagement with the substance of arguments. Just vitriol, ad hominems, and emotional manipulation. That's not how you persuade people. That's how you bully people into submission.
This wolf comes as a wolf.
Max Shifrin retweeted
.@DavidAFrench has some tough love to share on @MSNOWNews re: #MISEN👇
"This is someone who is not a tent-expanding choice by the Democrats; I'm sorry, he just wasn't."
"When you go with someone who is not the American mainstream, ideologically, as much as other people, you are risking the size of your tent. I'm sorry, but that's just what is happening."
"Democratic Primary voters did something different in Michigan than they did in most other states, and that's why some of these traditional red states are in play."
"That did not happen in Michigan. They went with the most left-wing candidates in the Democratic Party."
"Hurt people hurt people, which is a remarkable thing to say about someone who was trying to massacre children."
A lot of people are pretending there’s nothing unusual, controversial, or downright concerning about Abdul el-Sayed’s positions. Not his mother’s affiliations or some college op-ed, but his own words, on the campaign trail, that a lifelong Democrat could reasonably consider disqualifying, even in a race against a Republican.
Max Shifrin retweeted
I’m not American, I don’t live in Michigan, and I have no stake in the midterm elections. I’m not rooting for anyone. But as someone who knows the geopolitics of the Middle East and has been writing about peace for the past 20 years, I have to point out the manipulation here.
What Abdul El-Sayed is doing here in this clip is creating a framework in which any territorial compromise becomes impossible. There is no way to achieve a lasting political solution between two peoples, both indigenous to the land, without substantial and painful compromises on both sides, including territorial partition.
This kind of rhetoric only lays the groundwork for more bloodshed and endless war. I understand that it has become politically fashionable, a way to win votes in American elections. But it is bad news for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Max Shifrin retweeted
If Israel was “bombing Gaza indiscriminately”, why did those indiscriminate bombs kill under 2% of women, 6% of men, but “discriminate” against
100% of these generals? Could it be the IDF was, in fact, as discriminating as it’s possible to be in an urban warzone?
Generalocide.
These are Sinwar’s generals—Mohammed Deif, Marwan Issa, Ahmed al-Ghandour, Ghazi Abu Tama’a, Mohammed Odeh, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, Ayman Nofal, Rafa Salama, Raed Saad, Mohammed Shabaneh, Hakem al-Issa, Bassem Issa, Raed Thabet and Mohammed Sinwar—laughing as they planned their war to destroy Israel.
Israel killed them all, and all their allies, up to Nasrallah and Khamenei. They failed totally.
Max Shifrin retweeted
Wild that during an indiscriminate bombing campaign, the IDF accidentally managed to take out all of Hamas’s leadership. Are these the unluckiest dudes ever or what?
By the way, each and every one on this picture is dead and confirmed dead by IDF and Hamas
Named as they sit from lower left side through the center and then down to the lower right side:
1. Ayman Nofal – 17 October 2023 (airstrike in Bureij refugee camp; confirmed by Hamas and IDF)
2. Izz al-Din al-Haddad – 15 May 2026 (airstrike in Gaza City; confirmed by IDF and Hamas sources)
3. Mohammed Odeh – 26 May 2026 (airstrike in Gaza City: confirmed by IDF and Hamas sources)
4. Ghazi Abu Tama’a – 10 March 2024 (airstrike in Nuseirat with Marwan Issa; confirmed by IDF; Hamas confirmed later)
5. Ahmed Ghandour – 26 November 2023 (announced by Hamas during early fighting; IDF confirmed)
6. Marwan Issa – 10 March 2024 (airstrike in Nuseirat; confirmed by IDF on 26 March 2024 and later by Hamas)
7. Mohammed Deif – 13 July 2024 (airstrike in al-Mawasi, Khan Yunis; IDF confirmed 1 August 2024; Hamas confirmed 30 January 2025)
8. Raad Saad – 13 December 2025 (airstrike in Gaza City; confirmed by IDF and later by Hamas)
9. Mohammed Shabana – 13 May 2025 (airstrike under Gaza European Hospital in Khan Yunis with Mohammed Sinwar; confirmed by IDF/Shin Bet and later by Hamas)
10. Hakam al-Issa (Hakham Muhammad Issa al-Issa) – 28 June 2025 (airstrike in Sabra, Gaza City; confirmed by IDF/Shin Bet)
11. Bassem Issa – 12 May 2021 (killed during Operation Guardian of the Walls / Sword of Jerusalem)
12. Raed Thabet – 28 March 2024 (killed by IDF forces during Shifa Hospital operation; Hamas confirmed 30 January 2025; some sources cite ~18 March)
13. Mohammed Sinwar – 13 May 2025 (airstrike under Gaza European Hospital in Khan Yunis; confirmed by IDF and later by Hamas)
14. Rafa Salama (front/center, facing Deif) – 13 July 2024 (same al-Mawasi airstrike as Deif; confirmed by IDF the next day and later by Hamas)
Max Shifrin retweeted
.@NoahCRothman on CNN NewsNight on the polls that show more Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis: "There’s been a very effective propaganda campaign."
Rothman on the prospect of the expanded representation in the Knesset by Israeli Arabs in the wake of the election in Israel: This demonstrates that "Israel is as bad at genocide as they are at apartheid. Can these Israelis just get anything right?"
Rothman: "For example, one of the results that we’re seeing tonight is a profound outpouring of Arab vote. What we’re looking at is, we’re just talking about exit polls, as you said, but possibly up to eighteen MKs from the Arab population. Inside Israel, demonstrating that Israel is as bad at genocide as they are at apartheid. Can these Israelis just get anything right? And yet, you hear very often about how Israel is an apartheid state. You hear it from the mayor of New York City, you hear it from the activists in the DSA. The Arab voters who just voted in 18 MKs probably don’t agree. That’s the sort of thing that we get, that graph. That’s the sort of reason why we have these conceptions about the Netanyahu government. And by the way, if Eisenkot becomes prime minister, you will see no change in the perception of this country from those who have been demonizing it for the last three decades..."
Max Shifrin retweeted
Missing some context here.
There was, in fact, a political party in Israel that long embraced the possibility of a Palestinian state. That was the Labor Party. But then the second intifada happened, the Palestinian Authority abandoned any pretense of democracy, and Hamas was elected in Gaza, killed off the opposition — and then, well, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering more than 1,200.
Had the Palestinians, at any step along the way, accepted the Jewish state, and embraced self-rule, they would, no doubt, be in a very different place today. They might even have a state.
But because Palestinians can’t push past their hatred of Israel, because so many of their “supporters” insist on viewing them as toddlers and encourage that hatred (financially and otherwise), they remain confined to a quasi-permanent liminality. Which is awful for Palestinians but very useful for those who wish to use them as a cudgel with which to bludgeon Israel.
Max Shifrin retweeted
For my latest, I quoted El-Sayed's exact statements that match the 'grocery' ad that everyone agrees is anti-Semitic. Just to be clear that you cannot find one acceptable and the other beyond the pale: commentary.org/seth-mandel/t…
Max Shifrin retweeted
I have spoken out against anti-Muslim hate in the Michigan Senate race. I will speak out just as loudly when the target is Jewish people.
Let me state a little-known fact: ISRAEL GETS LESS THAN 0.1 PERCENT OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET. That’s less than one tenth of a percent!
But there is an ad running that tells voters they can’t afford groceries because the United States gives so much money to Israel. In reality, the United States spends money in and on countries all around the world – but this ad singles out the Jewish state. The ad is as dangerous as it is dishonest.
You can disagree with how the United States spends money abroad. But telling hungry families that the Jewish state is the reason they are suffering is wrong and shameful.
Blaming Jews for people’s problems is an old story. Anybody who has read the last century of history knows where it leads. It is a dark pathway.
This ad is anti-Jewish hate and should come down immediately. Abdul El-Sayed should denounce it today.
Max Shifrin retweeted
FACT: The annual funding Israel receives from the US amounts to less than one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget. Less than 1/10th of 1%.
FACT: That annual funding would cover only a few hours of federal health care spending. A few hours.
Yet politicians who specialize in scapegoating would have you believe that Israel is responsible for America’s affordability crisis.
Like every form of scapegoating before it, it is a dangerous lie.