Steve Schmidt

For many years, Cockburn tried to become a board member at the Lincoln Project. Not because he wanted to sabotage them from within — though that would have been fun — but because he, too, can't get enough of the juicy gossip (though shaving and bleaching his head would have been a definite minus). Since then, the Lincoln Project has imploded several times over, while its most visible founder, Steve Schmidt, has gone on a Tarantino-cum-Elmer Fudd revenge tour against seemingly everyone in his life. The latest target in his (quivering) crosshairs is the McCain family, which even Cockburn can't help but find remarkable. It was John McCain, after all, who gave Schmidt his biggest break as his 2008 presidential campaign manager.

Cockburn was weighing his post-Thanksgiving options this past weekend: the fifth leftover sandwich of the day or the rest of the pricey claret that his hedgie brother had brought to lunch (a rare act of generosity from the spoiled brat). Just as he had settled on the correct answer to this conundrum (both), his appetite was quickly satisfied by a particularly juicy morsel buried the pages of Politico. Christopher Cadelago and Meridith McGraw report that after his 2020 victory, Joe Biden called Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt to “say thank you for the group’s work helping him get elected.

The Twinkin Project scrambled together enough donor cash to hire Democratic strategist Joe Trippi as a senior adviser, the group announced Tuesday. 'Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent political strategist, you know and have studied the work of Joe Trippi,' said Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen in a statement. 'Joe's legendary status in the political space and unparalleled experience innovating — indeed changing the face of modern politics — makes him an invaluable resource for our work here at the Lincoln Project.' Oh yes, Trippi's 'legendary' résumé includes managing the failed presidential campaign for former Vermont governor Howard Dean and the 2017 campaign for the now-ousted Democratic senator Doug Jones of Alabama.

Surely they can’t keep getting away with it. Oh, who is Cockburn kidding? Of course they can. Tuesday was a glorious day for karmic Houdini acts. Over at the New York Post, yet another story of Hunter Biden’s escapades landed with a graceless thud. Throughout Miranda Devine’s 1,300-word piece, one can sense her desperate desire to overwhelm with enough salacious details for the public to care. The First Son hired a Russian prostitute for an $8,000 weekend sex romp! He smoked crack! They made a porno! He balanced a line of M&Ms on his phallus! And Joe Biden, the current President of the United States, might have paid for it all! No, really! A literal ex-Secret Service agent texted Hunter about issues with 'Celtic’’s account. Celtic was Biden’s codename.

MSNBC dropped all pretenses of neutrality at last week’s debate, not that its pretenses were ever remotely credible to begin with. Most of the time they’d at least attempt to play it straight, however perfunctorily. Of course, no one should have been under the illusion that running a debate well was within the repertoire of Rachel Maddow — one of the nation’s leading conspiracy theorists — whose very presence as lead moderator undermined the legitimacy of the entire affair from the outset. Even with the albatross of Maddow, though, it is conceivable that they could have striven for something resembling an impartial approach. Not surprisingly, that all went out the window when one particular candidate was targeted for open contempt.