Cockburn

Elon Musk has often clashed with members of the tech press — irritated by their “targeting” of him over minor matters such as how he runs his businesses and who he fires. He has a longstanding feud with contentious Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz — but is that all for show? That’s the astonishing claim of self-described “investigative journalist” Nicole Slaski, @coolndizabled on TikTok. In a video this week, Slaski talked about how she’d been speaking to a Thiel Fellow, John H. Meyer, who alleges he has been “falsely” imprisoned for arson — and says that Meyer had told her that Lorenz and Musk were in fact romantically involved with each other.  https://www.tiktok.

Barron Trump, modern-day Octavian? In the weirder quarters of the right-wing internet, kooks have long made comparisons between Donald Trump and the emperors of Ancient Rome — viewing him as a Caesar wronged by his rivals and betrayed by his friends, willing that one day his successor might avenge him. A story this week gave fuel to the fire that Trump’s youngest son Barron would become the Octavian to his Julius. The Mail Online reports how Barron has “quietly blossomed into an engaging young man who has leading conservatives purring over his charm and political acumen” and describes him as a “strapping 6ft 7in teen who has never uttered a word in public.” “I see all the attributes of a future president if he has the appetite for it. And why not?

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.