Five Quick Things: The Glorious Return of the 5QT | The American Spectator

October 9, 2025

I know, I know. It’s been a while since we did one of these. I always start off with the idea that I’ll write a Five Quick Things column on Thursdays, but lately I keep finding topics that demand a full column’s worth of coverage instead.

And I could absolutely do a full column on our first topic, because Oh, My, Lord…

1. The Katie Porter Gubernatorial Campaign Has To Be Performance Art. It Can’t Be Real.

I looked it up and found out that Jason Clarke, who played Jerry West in the HBO sports drama Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty and Teddy Kennedy in Chappaquiddick, as well as lots of other prominent film and TV roles, is Australian. I had no idea.

Clarke is a very good actor.

He comes to mind because with Katie Porter emerging as the Democrats’ leading candidate for governor in California, I’m wondering whether Clarke is actually playing a new role.

I’m wondering if he’s playing Porter.

You can’t unsee this…

Two people, one man and one woman, indoors.

Yes, of course you’re right. They’re not the same at all.

He’s prettier than she is.

Still, it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’re all being trolled here and that Porter isn’t actually a real politician but rather some sort of put-on, or a LARP. Like we’re being Borat’ed.

CBS News Sacramento reporter Julie Watts had to feel that way, you’d think, after this utterly bizarre interface with Porter…

That isn’t actually the height of crazy where Porter is concerned. There’s this…

Katie Porter says her 12 year old daughter was crying on election night because Trump won and asked her,

“What if I get r*ped and I need to have an abortion?”

This woman is obsessed with abortion. pic.twitter.com/vkloDmnC30

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) October 9, 2025

And there’s this…

WOW. Leaked video of Democrat CA Governor Candidate Katie Porter yelling at a staffer to “GET OUT OF MY F*CKING SHOT!”

THIS is who Democrats want as their next governor???pic.twitter.com/IaTz4sZxN4

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 8, 2025

Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. That’s why I can’t shake the theory that this is a massive joke we aren’t quite in on yet.

I’ll believe just about anything about the Katie Porter cavalcade at this point, but what I’m not going to believe is that this is a serious campaign that will culminate in her winning that gubernatorial election in the country’s most populous state.

No way. Even as crazy as the Democrats are, and even as crazy as they are in California, they’re still human beings. And this character is way too bizarre and repulsive for human beings to agree to be led by her.

2. Hakeem Jeffries Is Not a Master Debater

I don’t know why they keep calling him Dollar-Store Obama, when he’s much more obviously Temu Obama.

Either way, the Democrats’ House Minority Leader is not Barack Obama, like he wants to be.

And while the government shutdown drags on based on the apparent delusions of Hakeen Jeffries’ confederate in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, that the Democrats’ position gets better every day, Jeffries is making it clear that isn’t true.

Because Jeffries is all over the TV every day. And this is not a place where Hakeem Jeffries does his best work.

I don’t know if there is such a place, but it’s not on TV.

For example, this exchange with Joe Kernan on CNBC was nothing short of a disaster…

🚨 BREAKING: Hakeem Jeffries was just EMBARRASSED for holding the government hostage…holy smokes. This was bad.

CNBC: “There was an ELECTION. Republicans were able to pass the Big Beautiful Bill. To then say, ‘We don’t like that, so we’re gonna shut down the government until… pic.twitter.com/wlcxytaZC6

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 9, 2025

But as bad as that was, the altercation Jeffries had with a fellow New Yorker in the Capitol, in front of several cameras, was worse.

Bars late at night are full of combative drunks with more rational arguments than “You’re embarrassing yourself right now,” with no backing for the statement. And yet this was Temu Obama’s stock line, delivered over and over to Lawler, who never lost his cool despite Jeffries’ nonstop insults.

It ought to be noted that what Lawler presented to Jeffries, a bipartisan bill (which usually means terrible, and certainly is in this case) signed onto by four House Democrats, which would blow billions of dollars out of the Treasury’s doors to fund subsidies for broken, skyrocketing Obamacare premiums. It isn’t something that should pass, and Lawler needs to make it go away rather than waving it around.

But that’s how bad Jeffries is. He got de-pantsed in the halls of Congress by a RINO after being de-pantsed on CNBC.

And this, after Jeffries spent last week whining about “racism” in response to President Trump trolling him with sombrero memes.

The exchange with Lawler was related to that, by the way. It’s Jeffries’ style. It’s something I talked about a couple of columns ago — attempted victimhood. Lawler was trolling him with the Obamacare subsidies bill and trying to create a sound bite, so it’s not like there was particular good faith in the opposition, but what’s Jeffries’ first move?

Insults and provocations. Rather than attempting to persuade, to conciliate, to discuss, and to reason, he immediately begins berating Lawler in a way calibrated to invite a nasty and belligerent response.

He’s trying to incite Lawler to take a poke at him because when Lawler does that, Hakeem Jeffries now gets to play the victim.

That’s the culture he comes from. It’s the Democrats’ culture. And it’s why they’re incapable of either winning the shutdown or stepping back from it.

This is going to take a while.

3. The Gaza Peace Is Nice, Assuming It Lasts

A lot of people, including what seems like most of Israel, the whole Republican Party, and even John Fetterman, are now voicing support for the prospect of giving Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize now that Trump has managed to get Hamas to sign on to a cessation of hostilities in their war over Gaza. (RELATED: Blessed Is the Peacemaker)

Give @realDonaldTrump the Nobel Peace Prize – he deserves it! 🏅 pic.twitter.com/Hbuc7kmPt1

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 9, 2025

Supposedly, Hamas is going to release the remaining Israeli and American hostages, or, where appropriate, their remains, by Monday.

I’m conditioned to regard all of this with a lot more caution than optimism.

I really hope this ceasefire sticks. The Israelis deserve a little peace and quiet. And this war has created far, far too much anti-Israel sentiment in the West and even here. (RELATED: Empty Words From Western Allies)

But the pattern is that, yeah, there will be peace. For a little while. Until some suicide bomber blows up a bus full of Israeli schoolkids, or a small army of terrorist commandoes crawls up out of a hole in the ground to slaughter the inhabitants of a kibbutz.

And then the Israelis will be right back at it again.

Hamas isn’t going to stick to a peace deal with Israel. They’ll go to ground, and then they’ll sabotage it.

For the Israelis, though, this is at least a little respite from war and slaughter, so they’ll rightly celebrate what is justifiably seen as a victory.

And then somebody gets to go in and try to rebuild Gaza. What a nightmare that will be.

4. Commietown, Madmanitown

I love AI. Lord help me, I love it so.

Without AI, beautiful smartassery such as this would never reach full blossom. And the memeification of one Zohran Madmani — er, Mamdani — could not be complete. (RELATED: Mayor ‘Madman’ Mamdani Will Do More Economic Damage Than 9/11)

I offer this…

5. One Hell of a Review of Blockbusters at BizPAC Review

As you may know, Blockbusters, the new Mike Holman novel, is now available in paperback at Amazon. The Kindle version will follow this weekend.

But the reviews are starting to come in, and this one was pretty darned awesome…

Over at The American Spectator, senior editor Scott McKay is doing something almost unique these days: he’s serializing his political novels.

It isn’t a bad fit, as unusual as it is. Since its founding, TAS has been a publication priding itself on witty social commentary and pull-no-punches political satire. That they’ve now posted three of McKay’s Mike Holman novels in one small chunk after another, in advance of their release on Amazon, isn’t really a surprise.

It might be a well-kept secret, though. And that’s a shame, because the Holman stories are a hoot.

The latest, “Blockbusters,” which just published on Amazon, is a rollicking satirical thrill ride that skewers Hollywood’s excesses while delivering a timely message about reclaiming American culture. As the third Mike Holman novel, it follows McKay’s lead character, an intrepid journalist who earned the moniker “the world’s greatest newsman” through multiple adventures described in the first two novels, as he dives into a bold new venture.

Namely, saving Western culture, one bite at the time.

Holman, with resources heaped on him by his old college roommate and mega-billionaire industrialist Pierce Polk, aims to disrupt the entertainment industry using old-fashioned cultural perspective and cutting-edge AI tech. The story crackles with sharp dialogue, larger-than-life characters, and plot twists that keep you turning pages late into the night.

And along the way, McKay crafts a not-altogether-implausible scenario in which the media oligopoly dominating the entertainment industry, and particularly with respect to film and TV, implodes into something… different, if not far better.