The film was about as faithful to the subject matter as its namesake was to Jacqueline, but some of JFK’s scenes were riveting:
Donald Sutherland (a.k.a. “Mr. X”): “Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?”
Let’s hijack Sutherland’s advice for the latest mystery that has D.C. tongues wagging: Yesterday, someone leaked a private conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
And because America and Israel are allies in a hot, active war, this breach is especially egregious. If America and Israel cannot communicate openly, candidly, and freely, logistical cooperation breaks down. Confusion sets in. The risk of friendly fire grows.
This means that more Americans will die.
But the leak appears to be legitimate: The Daily Mail was among the first to break the story, which Axios also confirmed.
The Daily Mail: JD Vance in Tense Call With Benjamin Netanyahu as He Rips Israel’s PM for Selling ‘Easy’ Iran War to Trump
JD Vance confronted Benjamin Netanyahu in a tense phone call, accusing the Israeli leader of being overly optimistic about the chances of regime change in Iran.
The Vice President told the Israeli leader on Monday that many of his predictions about the war which he had sold to Donald Trump had not materialized.
Despite the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hardline factions have tightened their grip on power and the regime remains firmly in control.
Axios added more insight:
Why it matters: Vance has already had multiple calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, met Gulf allies about the war and been involved in indirect communications with the Iranians. He’s expected to be the top U.S. negotiator in potential peace talks.
Vance was highly skeptical of Israel’s rosy prewar assessment of how the war would unfold, and currently expects the war to continue for another few weeks, according to U.S. and Israeli sources.
[…]
Behind the scenes: White House officials started suspecting that some in the Israeli government were trying to smear Vance after a difficult phone call on Monday between Netanyahu and Vance.
- In the call, Vance mentioned that several of Netanyahu’s predictions about the war had proved far too optimistic, particularly when it came to the prospects of a popular uprising to topple the regime, according to an Israeli source and a U.S. source.
- “Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements,” the U.S. source said.
- The day after that call, a right-wing Israeli newspaper owned by GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson reported that Vance had yelled at Netanyahu over the issue of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
- Multiple U.S. and Israeli sources said the story was erroneous, and Vance advisers suspected it was leaked by the Israeli side. An Israeli official denied Netanyahu planted the story, and said his office had actually denied it when approached by reporters at multiple outlets.
To paraphrase Sutherland’s three questions:
Why was this leaked? Who benefits? And who had the power to leak it?
For some Internet sleuths, the trail of leaks seems to point to “someone” within Tucker Carlson’s orbit — with the Daily Mail journalist who helped break the story, Phillip Nieto, the biggest red flag.
NEW:
Tucker Carlson’s former employee Phillip Nieto @nieto_phillip who he leaks stories to at the Daily Mail just published a story about an alleged phone call that @JDVance had with @netanyahu.
How does Phillip know about the phone call between the VP and Netanyahu?
Who… pic.twitter.com/pWxic9ahjE
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) March 27, 2026
As with all things Loomer, her detective work combined facts with fantasy: There’s no record that Nieto was Carlson’s direct employee, but he was a reporter at the Daily Caller for about two years, and Carlson cofounded the Daily Caller. Nieto was also employed by Fox News from 2022 to 2023, leaving two months after Carlson was fired.
Does this mean that Nieto is Carlson’s puppet — and will publish whatever Carlson demands? It’s possible: Leaking stories to “safe” and “friendly” reporters is the oldest trick in PR. It’d be malpractice NOT to do it.
Then again, his employment history might also reflect the very small size of the conservative media landscape, where overlap is unavoidable.
Loomer was correct about this part: Nieto did write the “exclusive” of the now-debunked story of Tucker Carlson being detained in Israel — a story that 100% came from Carlson’s camp.
NEW:
Turns out the author of the @DailyMail story about Tucker Qatarlson getting “detained in Israel” today (which was a lie) is Phillip Nieto @nieto_phillip, who used to work for @TuckerCarlson!
Tucker planted the story with his former employee and made up a lie about how the… https://t.co/ML6NzlTdUB pic.twitter.com/ZAfpjOu2CD
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) February 19, 2026
How do we know it came from Carlson’s camp? Two reasons:
First, disseminating this fake news story wasn’t in Israel’s interest; Israel was the “bad guy” in Nieto’s report, whereas Carlson was the brave, fearless reporter who couldn’t be intimidated. (Most of the time, you can tell who leaked what by determining who benefited from the leak.)
Second, Nieto actually admitted that it came from Carlson’s side:
Conservative podcasting titan Tucker Carlson said he and his staff were detained in Israel on Wednesday following an interview with Donald Trump‘s ambassador to the country.
Carlson exclusively told the Daily Mail that shortly after the interview, Israeli officials confiscated his passport and hauled one of his colleagues off to an interrogation room.
‘Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room and then demanded to know what we spoke to Ambassador Huckabee about,’ Carlson told the Daily Mail. [emphasis added]
But most of the rest of what Loomer wrote was pure conjecture.
I’ve scanned Nieto’s LinkedIn profile, his MuckRack profile, his Fox Business bio, and his Campus Reform bio, and found no confirmation that he was ever a producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight. Given that Carlson’s show was #1 in cable news, if Nieto did contribute to its success, he’d probably tout it.
It’s entirely possible he worked at Fox News without working with Carlson.
Then again, Nieto was a Tucker Carlson fanboy as far back as 2019, when he was a freshman at Loyola Marymount University, where he wrote the op-ed, “Tucker Carlson Did Nothing Wrong.”
Furthermore, there’s an unmistakable link between Carlson and Vance: Vance hired Carlson’s son, Buckley, to work on the veep’s communication staff, which would, presumably, keep him in the loop of Vance’s communications. If Nieto has access to one Carlson, it’s not unreasonable to assume he has a relationship with the other.
Verdict: Large plumes of smoke; no definitive fire.
Removing Nieto’s leading role — or lack thereof — let’s reexamine the Vance-Netanyahu diplomatic leak. Here are your three potential culprits:
- The United States leaked it (most probably, someone close to Vance).
- Israel leaked it (most probably, someone close to Netanyahu).
- A third-party leaked it (most probably, someone hostile to the U.S.-Israeli war alliance).
Which of these three suspects seems the most likely?
Axios suggested that Vance blames Israel: “Vance advisers think some in Israel are trying to undermine the VP, possibly because they find him insufficiently hawkish. Israeli officials deny that.”
So, this theory goes, Israel preemptively tarred-and-feathered Vance as soft on Iran to prevent him from reaching a peace deal — because Israel wants to continue to bomb the heck out of Iran. The goal of the leak was to hobble negotiations.
Is it possible? You betcha!
But I also think it’s unlikely because Axios’ reporting seemed awfully schizophrenic. For example, Axios claimed that Vance’s camp believes “foreign agents” (hint, hint) were responsible for leaking Iran’s preference for negotiating with Vance:
The intrigue: Administration officials suspect foreign agents of spreading the word that Iran wants to negotiate with Vance.
- Vance adviser Andrew Surabian said on X that a CNN report to that effect was evidence of “a coordinated foreign propaganda op.” Surabian didn’t say it was Israel.
- An administration official told Axios, referring to the narrative that the Iranians see Vance as inclined to cut a deal and get out: “It’s an Israeli op against JD.” There’s no evidence of such an Israeli operation.
Yet that’s an odd thing to blame Israel for, since the same Axios report claimed that a Trump “senior administration official” told ‘em the exact same thing:
Vance’s seniority in the administration and his well-documented opposition to open-ended conflicts overseas, White House officials say, make him a more attractive interlocutor for the Iranians than [Steve] Witkoff and [Jared] Kushner, who oversaw the two previous rounds of failed talks.
- Partly for those reasons, Witkoff recommended Vance as lead negotiator.
- “If the Iranians can’t strike a deal with Vance, they don’t get a deal. He’s the best they’re gonna get,“ a senior administration official said. [emphasis added]
Additionally, this leak hurts Israel in critical ways:
- It shows daylight between the U.S. position and the Israeli position — and that’s NOT what you want in a wartime partnership.
- It could turn Vance — the most likely GOP presidential nominee in 2028 — against Israel. (And with the Dems already steadfastly anti-Israel, that would be a serious problem for the Jewish State.)
- It fuels gossip of MAGA divisions, which adds stress to the U.S.-Israeli alliance.
- If Vance/Trump decide Israel can’t be trusted, Netanyahu’s influence will be greatly diminished. It’s a self-defeating strategy.
- The leak makes Israel look like warmongers.
But y’know who benefits the most?
The pro-isolation/anti-Israel faction of the Republican Party, which includes influencers like Tucker Carlson. It amplifies the narrative that Israel “tricked” Trump into attacking Iran — that American troops are dying in “Israel’s war” — and that the Jewish State is a selfish, bloodthirsty, unreliable “ally.”
(It also benefits Iran, since the anti-Israel influencer bloc, the GOP isolationist bloc, and the Iranian regime are, effectively speaking, all on the same side. Strange bedfellows, indeed.)
If the leak came from Vance, it’s especially striking, since the vice president has been so reluctant to condemn antisemitic influencers, including Carlson, but would come out swinging against Israel. (Interpret that however you’d like.) Even after a full year in Trump’s cabinet, Vance’s worldview remains an enigma: Nobody’s entirely sure if he’s a Trumpist, a Carlson clone, an isolationist, or something in between.
Perhaps tellingly, whereas many conservatives condemned Carlson’s ultra-aggressive inquisition of Mike Huckabee, America’s ambassador to Israel, Vance wasn’t one of them:
Vice President JD Vance has watched clips of the Tucker/Huckabee interview. “It’s a really good conversation,” he said, that’s “necessary for the right.”https://t.co/PqVm5p6gFQ
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) February 27, 2026
Let’s revisit our JFK-inspired three questions: Why was this leaked? Who benefits? And who had the power to leak it?
The answer to the last one is the easiest: When the prime minister of Israel and the vice president of America have private conversations, our options are limited because access is limited. (The White House line ain’t a party line, you know.)
Unless their communications were hacked, the leak either came from the Israelis or the Americans.
As for why and who, there are no smoking guns — but there is a whole lot of smoke. Big, thick plumes. Enough to elect a new pope.
And most of the smoke, I’m afraid, is coming from the vice president’s direction.
One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First: It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battlelines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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