Cockburn’s Diary

Rising from the ashes of anti-porn laws racked up by hardline Republicans in Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma comes a team-switcher who flipped from flying his freak flag to wiping his history of porn likes on Twitter. Dan Osborn, who is married with children per his website, is the Democrat-turned-Independent running for a US Senate seat in Nebraska this November. He’s leaning heavily on his time helming a local union, but it’s his extracurricular activities that raised Cockburn’s eyebrows — mostly the slew of hardcore gay and straight porn he’s liked on Twitter. The faint-hearted should skip to the next item now...

Who pays for posts? A new post on X from “Billboard Chris” provides some insight into how the online influencer racket actually works. Earlier this week, pro-Trump poster Ryan Fournier shared a suspect report that claimed former president Donald Trump was considering picking North Dakota governor Doug Burgum to be his VP — and then listed all of the reasons why that would be a bad idea. The problem? Billboard Chris points out that an “influencer marketing firm” tried to pay him to post the exact same thing.  “I’ve been told there’s a story dropping today that I think would fit well in your feed re a GOP gov who vetoed a bill that would’ve banned biological males playing in female sports. Wanted to see what your rate was to share/write a post?

Who turned the Republican National Committee into a low-budget slasher flick? Just days after Trump’s chosen successors to chairwoman Ronna McDaniel took over the GOP, nearly sixty staffers were ruthlessly shown the door. A source tells Cockburn that Trump informed the new co-chairs, Michael Whatley and Lara Trump, that he wanted “shock and awe” and “headlines”. He got what he wanted: nearly every major media outlet breathlessly covered the mass firings and put “bloodbath” back into the lexicon weeks before Trump used it to describe the auto industry.

The fires of liberty Dramatic scenes at the new Dupont Circle headquarters of Reason this week, as the libertarian magazine’s staff evacuated due to billowing plumes of smoke from a first-floor fire.“The staff of Reason was briefly driven out of our Connecticut Avenue offices by a literal dumpster fire nearby on Tuesday,” editor-in-chief Katherine Mangu-Ward confirmed to Cockburn. “Everyone is fine, and our only regret is there was no private firefighting company to call in our time of distress.” The Spectator’s Washington editor Amber Duke was on the scene for a taping of her new YouTube show with Robby Soave. She offered Cockburn her retelling of events.

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.