Matt McDonald

‘Charlottesville, Virginia is home to the author of one of the great documents in human history. We know it by heart,’ says a freshly sanded Joe Biden over swooping strings, in tight focus and excruciating high-definition. As the camera cuts closer, you can just about notice his watery eyes flicking from one side of the autocue to the other. The former vice president is taking up arms in ‘the battle for the soul of America’, and he’s doing it on YouTube. The build-up to elections used to center upon television air-time: CNN town halls, fierce attack ads, appearances on late-night talk shows. But the humanoid sociopaths over in Silicon Valley changed all that in the Obama era. Now the key battleground is social media, and the hunt is on for a viral moment.

The Mueller report was published this morning on the Justice Department’s website. Perhaps understandably, a fair few people are interested in seeing what the Special Counsel has to say, and many weren’t able to get on the site. Spectator USA to the rescue: here’s the full report.

Has Joe Biden finally made up his mind? The former vice president has told a House lawmaker that he is running for the 2020 Democratic nomination and asked for an endorsement, according to The Hill. The site reports that Biden called the lawmaker and said ‘I’m giving it a shot’, before asking if he could run some campaign strategy ideas by them and proposing an in-person meeting at a later date. The Democratic lawmaker did not commit to supporting Biden, and spoke to the publication on condition of anonymity ‘due to the sensitive nature of the conversation.’ If it was that sensitive, surely they could have kept it to themselves?

It’s Friday evening and the sun set over three hours ago, which can only mean one thing: the time has arrived for another development in the Robert Mueller probe. This time around, the revelation is the Special Counsel’s recommendation of up to 24-and-a-half years in prison for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort is going down for the crimes of tax fraud, bank fraud and failing to file a foreign bank account report. The filing says that Manafort ‘acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government of millions of dollars.’ The sentencing recommendation comes after Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Manafort had lied to prosecutors on three different topics, breaching his plea deal.

‘Totally clears the President. Thank you!,’ Donald Trump tweeted, following the Southern District of New York’s sentencing filings for Michael Cohen, which recommended prison time for the lawyer. And Donald Trump isn’t mentioned by name in the 40-page document – but things aren’t shaping up too well for whoever ‘Individual-1’ is. Per the filing: ‘During the campaign, Cohen played a central role in two similar schemes to purchase the rights to stories – each from women who claimed to have had an affair with Individual-1 – so as to suppress the stories and thereby prevent them from influencing the election...

Spending too long online can take its toll, no matter your age. The majority of under 35s grew up squinting at backlit screens with bags below their eyes, poring over forums and AOL Messenger, pornography and Netflix. Yet somehow it’s baby boomers who are the worst victims of the internet: technologically dumb, easily scammed, and often more susceptible to fake news. And it looks as if Cesar Sayoc, the Florida man arrested in connection to the pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and left-wing celebrities, is the latest spectacular example of a silver (or in his case, it seems. hairplugged) surfer going off the deep end.

Much has been made of the so-called ‘mob mentality’ of left-wing protesters in the last few weeks. The GOP has been eager to paint anti-Kavanaugh activists as the kind of hysterical torch-wielders that deeply concerned this country’s founders. It’s intriguing, therefore, to see how quickly many in the media seized the opportunity to show the violent ‘mob’ mindset in action on the right. Last night, VICE founder Gavin McInnes was the talk of Twitter after footage emerged showing a protester being beaten by a group of ‘Proud Boys’ (McInnes’s followers) on a Manhattan pavement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?