Laura Ingraham

Tucker Carlson, ‘belle of the ball’

Tucker time In the month since his death, Charlie Kirk has been credited for his role as a unifying figure on the American right. Nowhere was that more evident than at the Tuesday afternoon service posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Honor, where four hosts of Fox News’s prestigious 8 p.m. slot posed for a photo together: Jesse Watters, Glenn Beck, Bill O‘Reilly and Tucker Carlson. Tucker also got a picture with Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham – incredible considering how acrimoniously things ended between him, his former network and a number of his other high-profile colleagues. (Carlson branded Hannity a “warmonger” as recently as June.

Tucker

Trump, tariffs and IQ: the feud inside the Heritage Foundation

The transfer from wonk-world to the White House is usually cause for celebration – a bragging opportunity for the think tank that just got their guy or gal into the administration. Yet the nomination of E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been met with a rather quiet response from lots of his colleagues on Massachusetts Avenue. Cockburn noticed the crickets. Why isn’t Heritage pushing the appointment more, and leaving Team Trump to do most of the work (there is, indeed, some convincing to do)? Cockburn understands one event last year has made some staff hesitant to publicly endorse Antoni: a presentation delivered by Antoni to Heritage interns last summer was sidetracked when he was asked a question about IQ.

Did Joe Biden’s presidency really happen?

Trees fall in forests, and forgotten statesmen make speeches. Last Saturday, Joe Biden gave his first post-presidential speech to something called National High School Model United Nations, which seems to be a conference for people who maybe don’t exist and nobody outside the room noticed. The event was, according to Philip Wegmann at RealClearPolitics, closed to the press, with no recording of Biden’s remarks made. It’s spooky. The 46th presidency only ended eight weeks ago and already Biden is a ghost. Donald Trump constantly evokes his name – the worst president ever, a catastrophe for this country etc. etc. – and yet the man himself has evanesced.

Biden

A subdued Donald Trump in South Carolina

Greenville, South Carolina I’ve now seen three versions of Donald Trump in the state where I grew up. In 2016, he was the impassioned underdog, battling against Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in a state many in the national media assumed would decide against a New York limousine liberal and stop the Trump Train in its tracks. In 2020, he was the prideful, over-the-top champion of the conservative cause — he bellowed through a sweaty speech, calling out to the universal Republican endorsements in the audience, playing the hits to a stadium crowd mere weeks before the word "coronavirus" was known to the average American.

donald trump south carolina subdued

Dominion v. Fox News: welcome to the media trial of the century

The most consequential legal case for the American media in seventy years begins Tuesday. The defamation suit brought by voting technology company Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News will test how far First Amendment protections can be stretched. It will also determine whether the never-ending media circus surrounding Donald Trump pulled America’s pre-eminent conservative news brand too far into the former’s president’s carnivalesque realm to escape unscathed. The stakes for Fox couldn’t be higher. First — though, in this uniquely fraught case, not foremost — there’s the money. Dominion is claiming $1.6 billion in damages caused by Fox News’s broadcasts related to the integrity of the company’s voting machines during the 2020 presidential election.

Fox News Protest

‘He said, she said’ reports from the MAGA march

It’s all so infantile isn’t it? Antifa jackals harass Donald Trump fans during their ‘Million MAGA March’ on the streets of DC. The ‘protesters’ steal Trump caps and set them on fire. They throw fireworks at people. Skirmishes break out, some people get hurt. There’s a stabbing. Underpaid online reporters stalk the scenes with their iPhones, trying to record the violence and make it go viral. Social media users dutifully share scraps of aggro-porn. President Trump, sounding not unlike a teenager reporting on fisticuffs in high school, tweets: ‘ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back.’ Which hills?

maga march