The White House and Department of Homeland Security are making hay out of the DHS “Worst of the Worst” database, posting links to it throughout the week as evidence that ICE’s actions in Minnesota are justified. President Trump also held up printouts from the database during his Tuesday marathon presser. But Cockburn has been playing a different game with the database: filtering villains not by state of residence, but by country of origin.
Of note: none are from the United Arab Emirates, or from Belgium, (which, unlike the UAE, refuses to join President Trump’s Board of Peace). There are only three Greeks but seven Israelis, including a burglar with the piquant name of Jack Shlush (which, Cockburn guesses, comes after Jack Frost).
Australia has a few, including one Darcy Wedd, convicted of identity theft, fraud by wire, money-laundering remarks and fraud. Remind Cockburn never to play poker with him. There are 12 pages of Chinese nationals, 12 pages of Haitians, 813 pages of Mexicans, a few dozen Somalis, 36 Britons and five Irish nationals, including the sinister Evelyn Corcoran, convicted of “Homicide-Willful Kill Family-Gun.”
As for the 10 “Italians” in the database, clearly Pelligrino Piscatelli (Larceny, Fraud) is from the Old Country, as is, we assume, Giuseppe Di Fede, both arrested in Florida. But Katerine Ramirez, Whitney Guzman and Abel Aguero Batista? That’s-a not Italian! As for Austrian Andrei Dogar, arrested in Hawaii for sexual assault: when will he realize Vienna waits for him?
On our radar
TO THE MAX Two House Democrats are requesting permission to visit Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, to investigate claims of preferential treatment.
AI CAN’T BELIEVE IT The White House has been criticized for using AI to alter an image of a protester being arrested, in order to give the impression that she was crying.
AFGHAN HOUNDING President Trump’s comment that British forces stayed “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan has prompted outrage in Europe, with British PM Keir Starmer branding the remark “insulting and frankly appalling.”
Gotta get the bread and milk
And now, Donald with the weather:
Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States. Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain — WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???
Our glorious leader returned from snowy Switzerland last night to a city bracing for impact. DC, and the eastern United States, are expecting their heaviest snowfall in a decade this weekend. The city’s denizens have been responding with the sober resolve of a Hegseth holiday party – stripping the shelves of DC’s whitest supermarkets bare.
For all the bleating in DC, it’s worse elsewhere: you could be joining the “ICE Out of Minnesota” school strike cum work strike at 2 p.m. CT in Minneapolis, as encouraged by Representative Ilhan Omar, where it’s going to be a balmy -6°F.
Cockburn’s tips for the cold weather? Practical footwear with good tread, for your stagger home from the bar. Pappy Van Winkle to warm your innards once you get home – and something good to read by the fire in case the power goes out…
A media newsletter about the media newsletter about media newsletters
In the Substack era, Cockburn has heard one common gripe: if only I didn’t have to subscribe to so many different newsletters, and could read the scribblings of the writers I care about in one place. In Cockburn’s youth, this was called a magazine – you can still buy them, apparently. But what if you have a special interest, these newsletters are on different platforms and some are, shock, behind a paywall?
Step forward One Sheet, the new media newsletter from Mediaite that summarizes what’s in all the other media newsletters, which launched Wednesday and earned a New York Times write-up – so traditional!
“A recent sample letter included tidbits culled from subscription-only newsletters like Puck and Status; popular Substack writers like Emily Sundberg; conservative sites including NewsBusters; and old-line generators of media news like Page Six and the Columbia Journalism Review,” writes the Times’s Michael Grynbaum.
Aggregating the best media stories in one place to make them more accessible to readers sounds like a helpful idea in theory. There’s just one problem: the Mediaite newsletter, by founding editor Colby Hall, is paywalled at $8 a month.
This is proving contentious with some of the small-business owners whose newsletters are providing the source material: Emily Sundberg’s FeedMe posed their readers a poll question: Do you think this is a) Slimy b) A great traffic driver c) What is Mediaite? At the time of writing, “Slimy” has a majority of 54 percent.
Other media maestros are more zen about the prospect. “I don’t think it costs that much or takes that much effort if you care about media to skim a few newsletters. That said, I’ll happily take the link,” Semafor Media’s Maxwell Tani told Cockburn.
And some conservative outlets seem pleased that Mediaite’s viewpoint diversity is stronger than Politico Playbook’s. “It’s safe to say we’re the site liberal journalists want to pretend doesn’t exist, but we know they know we’re here, so I’m glad more people will have to contend with our analysis,” Curtis Houck of Newscasters told Cockburn. “I know Colby and the Mediaite team will often have a different take on the big media stories of the day (looking at you especially, Tommy Christopher!), but we’re used to it and glad to be the opposing view, with sober, thought-out analysis from our team of analysts. Perhaps some will view us in a different light.”
Cockburn is enthused that in such exciting times, the attention of the Fourth Estate is focused where it matters: inward.
Subscribe to Cockburn’s Diary on Substack to get it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.
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