Opinion
By Jeff Childers
9/30/25
Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Enjoy September’s last day, since October begins at midnight. Your roundup today includes: historic, world-shaking Middle East developments almost completely ignored by corporate media; historic YouTube settlement to Trump for censorship roils progressives; and fake school superintendent and 24-year illegal alien has an eye-popping resume that also unearths voter fraud.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
🚀🚀🚀
One of the most important and historic foreign policy developments of the second Trump Administration tumbled into the media’s shredder yesterday. Domestic coverage was about as useless as a milk bucket under a bull, so we travel instead to the BBC’s story, headlined, “Trump’s Gaza plan is a significant step – but faces fundamental obstacles.”
In a joint press conference yesterday with controversial Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump announced a 20-point peace plan to resolve the contentious war in Gaza, which in one week achieves its second bloody anniversary. “This is a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the greatest days ever in civilization,” President Trump said without any hyperbole. “Let’s call it eternal peace in the Middle East.”
Although the proposed deal remains just that —only a plan, for now— it is already a historic accomplishment for the peacemaking president. Specifically, nearly every Muslim nation on Earth has already agreed to or endorsed the plan (with Hamas and Iran being the lone holdouts). For example, Trump cited endorsements from many nations: Saudia Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Even the Palestinian Authority said it “welcomed” the plan.
The package promises an immediate ceasefire, hostages (dead or alive) home within 72 hours, and thousands of Palestinian prisoners to be freed. Gaza, in theory, would be handed over to a technocratic caretaker government under the watchful eye of a new Board of Peace chaired (naturally) by Trump himself, with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair already penciled in as a sidekick. Hamas would be offered amnesty if they disarm and exile if they don’t, while a US-Arab stabilization force would move in to keep the peace. A gusher of aid money, high-tech reconstruction contracts modeled on other Gulf mega-development projects, and a shiny special economic zone dangle as carrots, with Israel’s security perimeter and the threat of “finishing the job” looming as the sticks.
Finally, the plan sets a goal (albeit undefined) of eventual Palestinian self-determination.
On paper, at least, it’s the most ambitious Middle East framework since the Abraham Accords from Trump’s first term. In practice, it’s equal parts blueprint, bluster, and high-stakes poker.
🚀 Critics immediately pounced like starving wildcats on the lack of agreement by the terror group Hamas, which has already roundly rejected the idea of laying down arms and surrendering its government. But Trump warned that, if the terrorists running Gaza refuse to cooperate, “Israel would have the absolute right and our full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.”
If Obama had rolled this out, the corporate media would have treated it as a major foreign policy moment: front-page spreads, prime-time roundtables, and gushing comparisons to Camp David or Oslo. You’d have seen breathless coverage of the “visionary pivot,” endless profiles of Tony Blair’s role, and earnest speculation by panels of experts about whether this was the first step toward a Nobel Peace Prize.
Instead, U.S. corporate media’s tone has been muted almost to the point of inaudibility: where it was reported, the plan is skeptically framed as “principles” rather than as a breakthrough, described in the most general and unflattering terms, treated like a Trump vanity project, and tucked neatly away behind breathless government-shutdown stories.
Still, despite lacking final detail or Hamas’s support, it remains the most ambitious single proposal since Oslo. “Some European leaders think it’s the biggest thing they’ve ever heard,” Trump said. “They called just to find out: was it just a rumor? Or is it actually done?”
🚀 The next steps are clear as Gazan mud. But obviously, Trump’s team (Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff) has done a massive amount of work behind the scenes for months gathering all the agreements from the other Muslim countries and lining up Tony Blair’s involvement. The entire time, the media never caught a glimpse.
Once again, we see the evidence of the Trump Administration’s astonishing discipline and operational security. Despite so many countries and leaders being involved— it still didn’t leak. Trump’s people didn’t use preemptive trial balloons to gauge public response. No “anonymous officials with knowledge” primed the New York Times or the Washington Post (which is probably why they’re madder than mules chewin’ on bumblebees).
In short, Trump has effectively replaced the entire State Department with two guys in the back room.
🚀 Trump’s breathless pace —ending six wars in seven months, and now dropping a full-fledged Gaza framework with unprecedented global Muslim buy-in— makes the usual machinery of diplomacy look like a Potemkin village. For decades, the UN and Foggy Bottom have hosted countless swanky summits, produced reams of resolutions, shuffled legions of diplomatic envoys, generated astronomical quantities of “roadmaps” binders, and spent trillions on “peace,”
all while conflicts continued smouldering.
Then along comes Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff, and suddenly, ceasefires, prisoner swaps, and even “eternal peace in the Middle East” are done deals or at least plausible talking points. Trump is making peace look easy. It’s like he saddled up his white stallion and rode out kicking butt and taking names— without firing a shot.
It raises the uncomfortable suspicion that the old, beastly system wasn’t actually designed to solve conflicts so much as to manage them indefinitely— with bureaucrats’ and NGOs’ careers, budgets, and influence all depending on the wars never actually ending. If Trump’s two-man diplomacy shop can pull off what a multi-billion-dollar bureaucracy couldn’t, it’s less a miracle than an indictment.
Hilariously, Trump’s framework doesn’t cut out the UN entirely, but rather demotes it to a role of glorified caterer. The globalist institution that switched off Trump’s teleprompter will be reduced to running convoys of flour sacks and bottled water. Under the plan, the UN will basically become the hired help: they’ll deliver the bread and rice, while all the decision-making and governance —via the new Board of Peace (chaired by Trump) and a U.S.–Arab stabilization force— will handle the actual politics and security.
If you wargame this proposal’s chances by historic standards —by United Nations standards— it has zero chance. Decades of previous “frameworks” and “roadmaps” have collapsed under Hamas rejection, Israeli coalition fractures, or regional spoilers. If you put it on a Vegas board, the default odds are failure.
But since Trump iced out the massive UN bureaucracy and went directly after the economic incentives of the Gulf states, having gotten support negotiated and dialed in before announcing the terms, it looks like something altogether new. Democrats and the European left will oppose the plan for any reason they can think of, but Trump ran rings around them by lining up support before they even knew the plan was in the works.
If Trump’s team showed this kind of diplomatic finesse and operational security to get the plan in place thus far, who wants to bet against their plan to get it over the finish line?
If Trump really can end the Gaza war, I won’t promise “eternal peace in the Middle East,” but it would defuse what’s become a global tumor— metastasized into every parliament, city council, campus quad, and late-night comedy monologue. World leaders from Ottawa to Osaka have been tripping over the same stumbling stone, forced to pick a side in someone else’s century-old feud.
So yes —call it ambitious, call it brash, call it hyperbolic— but world peace might not be that extravagant a claim after all.
🔥🔥🔥
Yesterday, CNN ran an utterly delightful story headlined, “YouTube to pay $24.5 million to settle Trump lawsuit.” TAW.
Yesterday, lawyers for President Trump and Google (YouTube’s owner) filed a joint notice of settlement in federal court. YouTube will pay President Trump $24.5 million as compensation for suspending his account after January 6th, 2021.
The agreement requires YouTube to pay $22 million to Trump’s Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit supporting national renewal projects like the planned White House State Ballroom, and another $2.5 million to conservative organizations like the American Conservative Union.
It is just the latest in a string of settlements from media companies. So far this year, Meta/Facebook stroked a check for $25 million, and Twitter/X coughed up $10 million. That’s on top of settlements from ABC ($15 million) and 60 Minutes ($16 million). It amounts to nearly $100 million total.
So far.
Yesterday, Trump announced the latest settlement with Google on Truth Social, saying, “This MASSIVE victory proves Big Tech censorship has consequences.”
In related news, last week YouTube announced it would reinstate all accounts that were banned for violating pandemic-era rules meant to curb “misinformation,” including 2020 “election denialism.” In its announcement, YouTube grudgingly conceded, “we value conservative voices on our platform and recognize that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse.”
Now they tell us.
You and I might not be getting $25 million, but still. We’re getting payback. It took four years, but the media companies are finally paying real money for allowing the Biden Administration to pressure them into censoring Americans. It’s some justice.
🔥🔥🔥
Yesterday, the New York Times caught up to a breaking story, running its tentative submission below the extremely understated headline, “Iowa Superintendent Arrested by ICE Loses State License and Is Placed on Unpaid Leave.” He was a DEI specialist, of course.
Until late last week, “Ian Andre Roberts,” if that is his real name (he’s from Guyana), was the superintendent of Iowa’s largest public school district since 2023. His salary was $300,000 per year (plus generous benefits like a $600/month car allowance). Corporate media described him as a “champion for racial equity.” He checked all the boxes.
Now, he’s in jail after attempting to flee. Which is especially funny since Roberts allegedly is also an Olympic sprinter. Now we know how he honed his running skills.
I suppose, technically speaking, “Dr.” Roberts is still the Des Moines superintendent. He’s not been fired. On Friday, the school board voted to put him on paid leave, reversing themselves yesterday at a “hastily scheduled” emergency meeting, wherein they swapped the fake superintendent’s status to unpaid— but only after massive pushback and the State of Iowa having promptly revoked his teacher’s license.
Social media lit up with outrage and astonishment as easily accessible facts emerged. Well, the facts were easy to find for everyone except Des Moines’ lazy school board members, who stubbornly continue to insist that they did their full due diligence when hiring Mr. Roberts in the first place.
Mr. Roberts is an illegal immigrant who’s been roaming the country at will since 1998. In that time, he’s acquired a driver’s license, an online degree, a social security number, a series of increasingly rewarding superintendent positions, several criminal convictions, at least two settlements for sexual misconduct, and oh, he has voted Democrat for nearly two decades.
Roberts had also successfully dodged an ICE removal order since it issued in May, 2024. (Removal orders are considered final following a 90-day appeal period.) In typical understated form, the Times noted that, “What happened with his immigration status in the intervening quarter-century remained unclear.” Nor was it clear “how, if he did not have work authorization, Dr. Roberts had managed to land jobs in Maryland, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.”
Democrats were also outraged, but predictably, for a different reason.
Des Moines students are planning a walkout today. Over the weekend, hundreds of Democrat protestors turned out at the ICE detention facility where Roberts is currently providing superintendent services to the other detainees. Democrats chanted “free Dr. Roberts!” and demanded his immediate release. It was unclear whether the protestors were Des Moines parents or even knew who Roberts was. “Free Dr. Roberts” t-shirts went on sale on Saturday, but supplies are limited.
A survey of BlueSky posts shows that the libs stopped yammering about Dr. Roberts two days ago, presumably because it was becoming increasingly clear the superintendent was a Guyanese con artist, and Democrats’ ability to claim he’s being deported “for no reason” faded away like Nigerian princes after the check clears.
Locals are questioning how, as an illegal with a checkered background, Mr. Roberts could have been hired for such a prominent position in the first place. Calls for the entire school board to resign have already begun. The Des Moines Register reported that Roberts’ attorneys are now seeking to reverse his 18-month-old removal order, but “immigration lawyers have said any immigrant arrested after a judge ordered him deported would have an extremely limited chance of remaining in the U.S. with weapons offenses alleged.”
While trying to flee ICE agents, Roberts was caught with a gun, a large knife, and $3,000 in cash. Illegals may not possess firearms.
Just how moronic is the Des Moines school board is a local issue. A much more important national question is how could Roberts have been illegally voting for so long? And how on Earth, as even the Times wondered, did he get a long string of jobs that all required intensive background checks? Don’t count on there being any good answers.
But the good —if not great— news is that, after 24 years of scamming taxpayers, Ian Andre Roberts is finally returning to Guyana. While I regret the wreckage this self-inflicted wound leaves behind in the district, I must admit: This is what I voted for. How about you?
Have a terrific Tuesday! Haul yourself back here tomorrow morning, for another delicious and intellectually nutritious serving of Coffee & Covid’s essential news and commentary.
Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠
Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florid
