Cockburn

Deport Elon Musk? “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” President Trump lightly threatened on Truth Social close to midnight. But Musk, who is proposing the formation of a new “America party” in reaction to Republicans passing the Big, Beautiful Bill this week, doesn’t seem to really care about electric vehicle subsidies. His X feed is an unending stream of warnings about the runaway national debt and promises to fund the re-election campaign of gadfly Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky. But Daddy Trump isn’t playing nice. This morning on the White House lawn where he always unleashes his punchiest quotes, Trump said, “We might have to put DoGE on Elon. You know what DoGE is?

President Trump and Congressman Thomas Massie are in a somewhat peculiar standoff. The President takes issue with Massie’s opposition to bombing Iran and to the Big, Beautiful Bill. In an over 300-word Truth Social tirade, Sunday, Trump called Massie a “pathetic LOSER,” “lazy,” “grandstanding,” “weak” and “ineffective.” Massie has remained relatively calm. On Monday, he posted a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social jabs alongside a video of one of the national debt trackers he designed. “I’m going to program my debt badge to display the number of milliseconds that have elapsed since @realDonaldTrump has tweeted at me last,” he wrote. But it’s not just Trump who is targeting Massie’s seat.

You don’t mess with the Zohran Here in the capital, the President has been doing his utmost to wrangle Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran into a ceasefire neither government seems to want. It’s... not going great. As he departed for the NATO summit at the Hague, Trump said of the conflict: “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” Meanwhile on the Hill, senators are poring over the Big, Beautiful Bill to see if they can whip up a version of it they’re willing to pass by July 4. But Cockburn finds himself looking north to the Big Apple – and wondering whether the mayoral primary could offer signs of life for the Democratic party.

What do you want to be when you grow up? A pilot? A firefighter? An ICE agent? Since the explosion of the LA riots,  the online gaming platform Roblox has seen kids “role-play as ICE agents” and anti-ICE protesters. Despite Cockburn’s doubts, this is considered “fun.” Internet scholar Taylor Lorenz explained to Cockburn: “Roblox has become like this metaverse where kids and young people go to sort of mimic real-world events. They role-play as teachers, or they have a family.” It’s just like The Sims, but with round-ups and deportations. It seems the game is mimicking real life: just like the protests in California became violent, so did the simulated ones.

A few months ago Team Trump tried to organize its war-gaming plans on the messaging app Signal. It didn’t work. It appears the team has taken to an even more secure platform, as the Iran-Israel war escalates, communicating instead on X. US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee shares with the President, Cockburn and everyone else: Mr. President, God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential President in a century – maybe ever. The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone else. You have so many voices speaking to you Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice. I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts.

Radio Ga Ga That’s it, yes, it’s war! Forget Israel and Iran’s back and forth, ignore the tanks on Constitution Avenue: the real conflict of the week was the heated Briefing Room scrap between two titans of radio, John Fredericks and April Ryan. It all kicked off on Wednesday afternoon ahead of the press briefing, when Trump-supporting call-in host Fredericks sidled in and started airing his grievances about how the briefings used to work under the previous Trump administration. He was moaning about how he never got to ask questions due to the focus-pulling antics of CNN’s Jim Acosta and April Ryan, who, sources tell Cockburn, he referred to as the “woman from urban radio.” Fredericks said this... while directly next to Ryan.

RealClearPolitics, the polling data aggregator, is undergoing a round of cuts. In a letter to staff last Wednesday, seen by Cockburn, publisher David DesRosiers writes: “Good people, our people, and the families that they serve will be impacted. We are sorry.” While cuts to media are nothing new given the challenging business environment, the reasoning behind RealClear’s reductions is somewhat unusual. “We find ourselves under attack from a shadowy new threat – this time from the Right,” writes DesRosiers. “A cabal of so-called conservatives is now attempting to stamp out independent voices. They have persuaded some of our previous benefactors who supported RealClearFoundation while it benefited them to withdraw philanthropic support.

How are you marking Pride Month? This weekend in the DC area, there are really only two ways to go about it. First, despite concern that the second Trump administration would scythe wholesale through gay rights, America’s capital is hosting World Pride, a two-week-long festival of rainbow-patterned frivolity.  Though there may be fewer corporate sponsors than in the Biden era, DC remains as gay as it ever was. In Northwest, 15th St is painted in rainbow colors and the gay bars are packed to the rafters. In Northeast, a two-day music festival kicks off tonight at the RFK Festival Grounds, headlined by Jennifer Lopez and a nice young man called Troye Sivan.

Cockburn is not a regular viewer of The Daily Show. It is no longer as epoch-defining as it was in Jon Stewart’s heyday. But he did take an interest in Stewart’s segment last night with Carole Cadwalladr. For the uninitiated, Cadwalladr is a former Guardian and Observer columnist from the UK most prominent for her reporting on Cambridge Analytica. CA is the political consulting firm known for its contentious use of Facebook data in the 2016 US election and Brexit referendum. After Brexit came what Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill dubbed “the middle-class meltdown to end all middle-class meltdowns.” “And at the heart of it all,” wrote O’Neill, “was a writer for the Observer called Carole Cadwalladr.

Zuckerberg, Musk, Trump… Truss? Cockburn was surprised to hear from across the Pond that Liz Truss – who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom for just 49 days – had plans to set up a social media site. “What I am doing is establishing a new free speech network, which will be uncensored and uncancellable, to actually talk about the issues people don’t want to talk about,” the former PM said at a conference in England last month. The move would see Truss compete with X, Parler, Gettr, Gab and, yes, Truth Social, Trump’s social media app. How will she pull it off? With some American assistance, it seems. Cockburn understands Truss’s network is set to be part of the media conglomerate John Solomon and Mark Meckler are working to establish.