Fishing for clout
James Fishback, a Republican primary candidate for Florida governor, is promising to institute a 50 percent tax on all income derived from the adult-content site OnlyFans if he’s elected. How he thinks this will get him elected is a mystery to Cockburn, as OnlyFans has a lot of fans, and also Florida doesn’t have a state income tax.
“Hey @SophieRaiin, Pay up *or* quit OnlyFans,” the candidate tweeted at one of the site’s top earners. “As Florida Governor, I will not allow a generation of smart and capable young women to sell their bodies online.”
Fishback may be something of a poor moral messenger. A Florida school district “cut ties” with Fishback, who ran an organization called Incubate Debate, after he “initiated a romantic relationship” with a 17-year-old student and faced allegations that he harassed her after they broke up, a charge that Fishback has denied.
The odds that Fishback will win the primary are not quite zero, as he’s running against Congressman Byron Donalds, who’s dogged by insider-trading and proxy-voting scandals. Yet Fishback seems to be doing everything he can to lose, generate outrage, or both, calling Donalds, who is black, “By’rone” on X – as in “By’rone wants to turn Florida into a Section 8 ghetto.”
“All By’rone does is call me a racist,” Fishback tweeted. “How original.”
These are just the latest attention-seeking stunts Fishback has pulled as he seeks virality. Previously he made a series of jokes about Vivek Ramaswamy not wearing shoes or knowing how to use a fork. He also donned a Nick Fuentes hat and posted a video with the caption, “It’s okay to be white,” a popular slogan among white-nationalist groups. Some departure from his time as a Free Press contributor and Bari Weiss fan!
Florida’s primary is in August. The state will have to wait until then to send its fish back.
On our radar
TOUGH JUSTICE Four top Justice Department officials have quit over Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon’s not to investigate the ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week.
TRUMP AND TONY President Trump will be interviewed by new CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil during his visit to Detroit today.
FIGHT THE POWELL Global central bankers issued a statement in support of Fed chair Jerome Powell as he faces a Justice Department probe.
Clintons in contempt
Spare a thought for the “real” victim of the Epstein scandal: former president Bill Clinton. Ol’ Bubba is fighting the prospect of appearing before the House Oversight Committee for a grilling over his long-standing ties to ephebophile financier Jeffrey Epstein (a fate that his successor, President Trump, has managed to sidestep). Now, he and his wife Hillary have had it: in a letter to Oversight chairman James Comer, the Clintons write, “Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is the time.” They are refusing to comply with the congressional subpoena and will therefore face contempt proceedings.
In an unorthodox response to the committee, the Clintons reel off a laundry list of the Trump administration’s transgressions and criticize Comer for failing to dedicate committee time to them.
“You claim your subpoenas are inviolate when they are used against us yet were silent when the sitting President took the same position, as a former president, barely more than three years ago,” the Clintons write. They also lambast Comer for not subpoenaing Attorney General Pam Bondi, given her failure to release the full Epstein files, as she was compelled to by an Act of Congress.
“We have tried to give you the little information we have. We’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific,” the Clintons continue.
Is the attempt to compel the Clintons to testify nakedly partisan? Of course – what did you expect from Congress, balanced oversight?
Crash Yang wallop
Comedian Bowen Yang may want to beg for his job back at Saturday Night Live after wading into the slimy waters of online politics last week. During the “I Don’t Think So Honey” segment of his podcast Las Culturistas, Yang’s cohost Matt Rogers told their listeners “don’t waste your money” sending contributions to Jasmine Crockett’s Texas Senate campaign. Yang added, “I must agree… money is hard enough to come by,” though he certainly didn’t mean for himself.
The internet hit back hard, and by the weekend Rogers and Yang were left apologizing. Yang said he “should not have cursorily weighed in on this” and that he would talk about politics “more responsibly” in the future.
But Crockett’s campaign is doomed. Why should Yang, who’s also expressing views such as “I regret supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016” and “Gavin Newsom sucks,” change his tune to appease people such as TikTokker Hope Giselle, who said that Rogers and Yang’s comments were “structurally violent?” Cockburn doesn’t think so, honey.
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