Cockburn’s Diary

Cockburn was surprised to find out that Madame Secretary has found a new line of work — Broadway producer. Hillary Clinton, along with fellow Broadway mogul Lin-Manuel Miranda, hosted a fundraiser for President Biden on Wednesday night at a presentation of Suffs, a musical about the women’s suffrage movement and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The show apparently first opened in 2022 where it received middling reviews and had a short run. The New York Times review called it “all work and mostly no play.”  So Cockburn finds himself wondering — who asked for this?

Is Bud Light alpha again? The roughnecks at the Teamsters Union announced a boycott of Molson Coors this week, in solidarity with striking workers of the Local 997. They issued a flyer urging people to not buy brews such as Coors Light, Miller Light and Yuengling, as well as Topo Chico Hard Seltzer. In organizing the boycott, the Teamsters point out that “there are alternative beers available from model employers, such as products brewed by Teamsters at Anheuser Busch” and lists them... including the recently troubled Bud Light.

Candace Owens’s watch at the Daily Wire has ended. The news came in the form of an X post from Wire CEO and Lady Ballers star Jeremy Boreing this morning: “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship.”  “The rumors are true — I am finally free,” Owens tweeted shortly after, along with a plug for her Locals page, a link to a site where you can donate her money and a pledge of more to come.  The separation comes shortly after Owens said she’d “stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” making her exit a big win for trans rights. As they say en France, quand on vient pour la reine, il ne faut pas la manquer.

In 2015, hackers accessed the user data of Ashley Madison, a website that helps facilitate clandestine romantic affairs. The logins of millions of users were leaked. Politicians, reality TV stars and ordinary people just trying to cheat on their spouses were exposed. To this day, the database remains searchable on a series of websites, such as Ashley.Cynic.Al and CheckAshleyMadison.com.  Many of the people whose emails were in the hack have since gone on to illustrious careers, happy to know that their 2015-era obscurity saved them from embarrassing revelations and awkward conversations. Cockburn confirmed this week that the old realtor email of Congresswoman Nancy Mace was found on one such database. Now, there could be an innocent explanation for this.

NBC anchors play with traffic Spotted: NBC News anchors Chuck Todd and Hallie Jackson furiously waving cars under a parking garage gate after the State of the Union address. Cars started to pile up at a broken pay station before an enthusiastic Jackson, who hosts Hallie Jackson NOW, yelled down the ramp for everyone to line up bumper-to-bumper so they could follow each other out before the gate closed in between cars.  “I feel bad,” Jackson lamented as one car missed the cutoff. Joe Biden uses human shields to avoid Pelosi: source Never fear, “Uncommitted” voters. It turns out Joe Biden may have more in common with Hamas than previously thought.

The biggest drama coming out of CPAC last week comes courtesy of a woman who wasn’t even admitted. Amanda Moore is a freelance reporter best known for going “undercover” with the MAGA movement. She found herself denied entry to the event, as one of the “propagandists” singled out by ACU chairman Matt Schlapp, along with reporters from HuffPost and Mother Jones. Instead Moore sat in the lobby of the hotel where the conference was hosted, writing about the experience for the Nation. Ben Goggin is the deputy tech editor at NBC News, whose specialties include extremism. Goggin wrote a piece about the “Nazis” who went to CPAC and “mingled openly.

National Harbor, Maryland Hello from the press pen at CPAC — the only part of the convention center that’s as full as previous years. There have been ten empty rows in front of Cockburn in the auditorium for most of the conference. President Trump’s address tomorrow lunch time should change that — but which other speakers will? South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, apparently: people filed in to see her when she spoke this afternoon. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris... they suck,” she said, to applause. The media row outside is half as populated as previous years. The attendees are noticeably older: you’d be hard-pressed to find a college student here (Cockburn’s nieces skipped it).

Interested in swapping seats with President Joe Biden? The Oval Office desk chair isn’t up for grabs — at least, not yet — but you are welcome to bid on a Cadillac once leased by Amtrak Joe. Since the DMV presumably took the keys away from the well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, Biden will no longer need those hot wheels with the custom Kona Brown interior. If you’re lucky, the sedan may even come with a few boxes of classified documents in the trunk, assuming the DoJ didn’t find them all during its last sweep. The car, which Delaware Cadillac is selling, has fewer than 16,000 miles on it, perhaps another testament to Biden’s purported love of public transportation.

It looks like Sebastian Gorka has been booted from the MAGA movement. The self-proclaimed “dragon of Budapest” first raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when he needled Human Events editor Jack Posobiec for suggesting the FBI had planted pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC on January 6. Posobiec had pointed out that the recovered bombs looked awfully similar to those used in FBI training. “Right Jack. Because are soooooo many different types of plumber’s end caps out there,” Gorka snarked. On his show he then made a point of rehashing Posobiec’s absurd Pizzagate allegations.Now, Gorka has really kicked the hornet’s nest by not-so-subtly accusing journalist Tucker Carlson of being an “agent of the Kremlin” for choosing to interview Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The ever-joyful People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have put the nail in their no-fun coffin by announcing a new target: the bizarre and beloved Pennsylvania-Dutch tradition of pulling a groundhog out of his burrow to predict the weather.  On this Groundhog Day morning, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring, but PETA had to go and rain on everyone’s parade by reminding us that Phil “is not a meteorologist.”  PETA branded the celebration “a cruel holiday display” because groundhogs are “naturally shy, sensitive prey animals who react poorly when handled in front of raucous crowds.

Cockburn was sad to scratch out the AZGOP Freedom Fest from his calendar, which was due to take place tonight and be headlined by former president Donald Trump. “Regrettably, the AZGOP Freedom Fest 2024 has been canceled as President @realDonaldTrump is required to attend to court obligations.”  He was hoping to see the nation’s most self-immolating state party up close, in a week where their top Senate candidate Kari Lake leaked a private recording she had made of a conversation with Arizona GOP chair Jeff DeWit. In the recording DeWit appears to be offering to pay Lake to drop out of the Senate race and run for governor again in two years instead.

Cockburn has left the snow-dusted streets of the Capitol to see even more of the white stuff up in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s primary. It was a balmy 17 degrees this morning, tanning weather compared to the previous contest in Iowa. And the question on everyone’s lips up here: is Nikki Haley meeting more journalists than voters?  Cockburn found a strange scene as he pulled up at Robie’s Country Store in Hooksett Thursday: sure enough, there Haley was, stood outside giving a TV interview alongside her biggest endorser, Governor Chris Sununu, ten minutes ahead of the scheduled start time. After finding parking, Cockburn attempted to enter the store, as Haley and Sununu had just done.

The most surprising development in Washington of late has been the political transformation of Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman. The hulking cueball has full-throatedly supported Israel since the October 7 attacks — this week to the point of telling South Africa to “sit this one out” after bringing a genocide case against the Jewish state at the International Court of Justice. He has also talked of the need for “reasonable border talks,” branded his alma mater Harvard “pinko” and said he’s “not a progressive.” It’s almost like he wants to win Pennsylvania again. “How is it possible that John Fetterman in the last few months has seemingly become more based than half of the senate GOP???” Donald Trump Jr. approvingly tweeted Thursday.

Morgan Ariel booted by Turning Point USA for consistent antisemitism Turning Point USA cut ties with one of its controversial ambassadors following her latest antisemitic tirade, in which she claimed that the “Zionist Jews controlling our planet are all pedophiIes who have no regard for the sanctity of human life and purity.”  Morgan Ariel, who previously claimed that she “work[s] for Jesus,” has previously drawn criticism for other shocking statements, including calling for the execution of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce for promoting the Covid-19 vaccine, comparing American Christians to dogs being walked by Israel and promoting notorious far-right extremist Nick Fuentes.  Her thoughts this week proved to be the final straw.

Hart of darkness How do they while away the hours in Congress in the long gaps between passing shutdown bills? Cockburn caused something of a stir this time last week by revealing that a staffer for Senator Ben Cardin was spending his free time indulging in gay sex acts in the Hart Senate Office Building. He left the august duty of blurring and posting the offending video to Henry Rodgers and his comrades at the Daily Caller later that Friday. The clip revealed that the staffer, later unmasked as Aidan Maese-Czeropski, was having sex with his partner, German grad student Georg Gauger, at the desk formerly used by late senator Dianne Feinstein.  The internet was aflame all weekend — and the follow-ups came thick and fast.

The so-called hallowed Halls of Congress play host to a plethora of indecent acts every day — but one staffer for Senator Ben Cardin is taking it to new levels.The public Twitter account of the audacious young “twink” is comprised almost solely of him in flagrante delicto with his older “bear” partner. The images and videos are explicit — and conspicuously and deliberately contain the staffer’s face.One pic in particular, shared privately with Cockburn, raised his eyebrow, as it was taken in what certainly appears to be a conference room in the Hart Senate Office Building, where his boss’s office is located.In the photo, the strapping young gentleman is naked but for a jock strap, on on all fours, facing away from the camera.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis advocated for “more speech” as the best remedy for falsehood. But how much speech is too much speech? The Republican Party is pushing the upper limits, scheduling even more primary debates in the new year — even without President Trump. CNN is hosting two of them: one on January 10 at Drake University in Iowa and a second on January 21 at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. Between the two, ABC News and WMUR-TV will host one in coordination with the New Hampshire Republican State Committee on January 18... also at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. The ABC debate is “subject to RNC guidelines,” rather than being RNC sanctioned. Why?

Thursday night saw a clash for the ages between the governors of the twin territories that sustain America’s pornography addiction. It’s hard to determine a winner of the video nasty on Fox News between Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis: DeSantis endorsers claim that their man won, Trump supporters and Democrats call it for Newsom.One tidbit from NBC suggests that the Florida Man did a better job of getting under his opponent’s skin: the governors were potentially set to run longer, but Newsom’s wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom intervened after DeSantis pointed out that her parents had moved from California to Florida.Per Dasha Burns and Nnamdi Egwuonwu, Siebel Newsom “came into the debate room on at least two occasions to raise some objections.

Ever since the House Ethics Committee released its damning report on George Santos yesterday, the chatter has been non-stop. Yes, it appears the flamboyant fabulist used campaign funds to subscribe to sex workers on OnlyFans — but whose content is Santos paying for?  Two early claimants have emerged on Twitter/X. First, from plus-size porn star Leila Lewis. “THIS GUY WAS SUBBED TO ME HAHAHAHA,” she tweeted, following up with “i rated his dick 😭😭😭.” An unenviable prospect.  The other comes from Twitch streamer Soogz1, who boasts 2.3 million Twitter/followers. “my top spender 🥹🫶,” she wrote yesterday, along with a screenshot purporting to show that a user called George Santos had spent $435,621.13 on her content — $340,752.

Elves and Epstein with Peter Thiel “Peter Thiel has lost interest in democracy,” a lengthy profile from Barton Gellman at the Atlantic announces. The piece reveals that Thiel, the techno-libertarian billionaire behind the Senate runs of Blake Masters and J.D. Vance, has no intention of donating to politicians in the 2024 election cycle.What does Thiel consider to be a better use of his money? Triumphing over death. “He has spent enormous sums trying to evade his own end but feels that, if anything, he should devote even more time and money to solving the problem of human mortality,” Gellman writes. Thiel draws a lot of his vision from The Lord of the Rings:“How are the elves different from the humans in Tolkien?