Greetings and welcome to the 39th edition of the Carnival of Fools! We are stocked afresh for the month of June and ready to entertain you with heroically nonsensical developments in the world of politics, both domestic and international. Absolutely nothing of worth happened this week, which is the way I like it; it makes this job that much easier.
Chris Murphy Hits the Presidential Treadmill
Did you hear the news? Senator Chris Murphy is walking across his home state of Connecticut for some reason! Wherever he goes, he is apparently greeted with fear from local residents — of Donald Trump, that is, not Chris Murphy. From Hartford to Waterbury, from Cos Cob to New London, lonely voices are now ringing out: Who shall save Connecticut from the depredations of the Donald?
News like this naturally spurs a number of questions, such as “Chris who?” and “What is Connecticut?” (Answer: Connecticut is a former toll road between New York and Massachusetts that was erroneously granted the power of self-government.) As for Senator Murphy, apparently he does this every year in the state — regardless of whether he is running a race or not — to remind voters that (1) he exists, and (2) he is not Chris Dodd.
But apparently the senator has more on his mind this time than a stroll through his reliably blue state. Murphy looks like he is gearing up to switch from a walk to a run — for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028. According to Politico, he has set up an ambitious anti-Trump super PAC, exactly the sort of move a politician makes when trying to broaden his fundraising footprint and activist awareness in advance of a national campaign. (This comes as little surprise to anyone who has noticed Murphy’s eagerness in recent years to gain the spotlight as a “resistance” voice on television.)
Most people have no idea who Chris Murphy is. He is not a particularly memorable politician; with his generic bearing and no serious legislative accomplishments to his name, he is indistinguishable from many of his colleagues. Still, I think it’s worth keeping an eye on Murphy’s effort over the next few years as it evolves from this early inchoate phase into a more formal campaign, precisely because he is boring and brandless. (He lacks the political baggage of Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom, for example.)
That, paradoxically, makes him interesting as a sort of control experiment in the fate of the Generic White Politician in future Democratic presidential primaries. And this remains a fascinatingly open question for the Democrats. My guess is that the 2028 primary will be decided by who carries African-American southern women, not by who thrills the woke left. (It will be reported differently in the run-up to the vote.)
For now, I shall amuse myself by imagining Chris Murphy barnstorming South Carolina black churches. Imagine the legendary cringe. American politics has had a hard run in recent years, and things only look to be getting rougher; one thing that might make 2028 worth it is video of Murphy awkwardly singing and swaying along with a gospel choir in pursuit of his vanities. Perhaps we will be granted at least this.
The Pundits of Bluesky Demand to Be Taken Seriously
The “Elon-ification” of Twitter/X — particularly since Trump won the 2024 election — has led to a mass exodus of its loudest and most obstreperous left-wing activist and journalist types. (This is a mixed bag indeed; they have been replaced by bots, monetized engagement-farmers, and something known as “catturd2.”) The progressives didn’t disappear from the world, however; they now mostly reside over in their own strange world, the cloud-cuckoo-land known as Bluesky. There they have, instead, disappeared from public relevance.
For the many who have never heard of it, Bluesky is the “lead competitor” as a social media alternative to Twitter/X, at least in terms of nebulously defined “narrative influence” in the news these days. (Your kids are addicted to a Chinese spyware app, Truth Social is a one-man show, and only your grandmother uses Facebook nowadays — but we do appreciate her clicking on our links.) I use the term “lead competitor” with the archest scare-quotes imaginable, of course; X has at least 20 times the audience of Bluesky, and at least 400 times the influence in terms of driving daily and long-term media narratives in American politics.
What’s even more impressive (or disturbing, depending on your view) is that it held this preeminence long before Elon Musk acquired it; Twitter was arguably even more the beating heart of the progressive media during the Obama and early Trump years, before it became X. Though the subsequent progressive media exodus is real, the platform’s reach remains as potent as ever — not the least reason being that Musk remains one of Trump’s most important allies. Though the intellectual scope of Twitter’s “public square” has indeed shrunk in many ways, its power has not necessarily diminished, and no alternative yet suggests itself.
This naturally chaps the hides of all those progressives now stewing in their own juices over at Bluesky, where skies have turned gray indeed: the user base, never high to begin with, has begun to plummet back down to pre-Trump levels. And anyone who has spent a moment there (as I have) knows why: It’s a joyless madhouse full of shrieking lunatics actively on the hunt for people to hurt.
People there regularly make violent and crazy threats without consequence, because they are made against the right victims (Zionists and Republicans). Blocklists (lists of accounts that are blocked from viewing one’s posts because of some transgression or other) are aggressively propagated and encouraged. It is a hothouse remarkable for, if nothing else, the derangement its insularity has wreaked on those who fled exclusively to it. The only subjects of general discussion encouraged at Bluesky are woke politics, LGBT politics, and anti-Trump politics. The only tone thought to be appropriate is rage. Most of all, no jokes are allowed. Nothing is funny — ever. (For those who remember the ancient meme, this is an accurate depiction of the median Bluesky post.)
The journalists who left Twitter for bluer skies — and, in so doing, reduced themselves to audiences primarily comprising their professional acquaintances — have now decided to band together and strike back. And they’ve got organizing muscle behind it too. We are informed by Politico that the Law Bloggers of Bluesky are now on “Twitter strike”:
June is crunch time for many of the year’s biggest Supreme Court decisions, which typically have much of Washington glued to social media for instant legal analysis. But a number of prominent commentators, experts and groups — including Dahlia Lithwick, Leah Litman, Stephen Vladeck, Jennifer Taub, Chris Geidner, Court Accountability and Public Citizen — are pledging to post to all other platforms before X. The “X-last” strategy, led by Indivisible and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is an effort to shift discourse from Elon Musk’s platform to Bluesky.
Okay, so look — it’s not going to work. You know that, I know that. We don’t even need to waste time walking through the reasons this belch in a tornado will go unheard. (In fact, an “X-last” strategy seems like a back-door way of admitting one’s intent to return to X, does it not?) What makes me laugh about this isn’t just that five people and two blogs you’ve likely never heard of have “banded together” as though they’re some market-moving force with narco-cartel powers, or even that their big show of resistance is such a piteously weak gesture. No, it’s that this is part of an organized progressive initiative. Indivisible is a new “resistance”-branded organization, but the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is essentially Elizabeth Warren’s informal outside organization and has long experience with activist initiatives dating back to the early Obama era.
I have to laugh at the feebleness of it all, but I’m also a professional: I’m open to taking as much of that sweet, sweet Soros money as any left-wing institution is willing to give me to carry the flag for this initiative myself. I don’t see why we can’t reach an agreement here, because I’m in complete harmony with their goals. I too can now pledge that, as part of my new “X-last” strategy, I will post all of my analysis exclusively on National Review first and on X/Twitter second — and last.
I’m fightin’ the power.
50 Cent, Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You
Given the age range and interests of my readership, it occurs to me that some of you might not be familiar with the P. Diddy scandal. The short version is that the rapper Sean John Combs (a.k.a. Puff Daddy, a.k.a. P. Diddy) was arrested in September of last year in New York on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking of multiple women, and currently sits on trial there in federal court.
I’m not going to say that I know the guy’s guilty for sure, but I certainly have my, erm, strongly held opinions. I suppose we’ll all find out soon enough, once the jury returns a verdict. (Let’s just say that there are many, many worse rumors that swirl around Combs.) But since seemingly every story in the news these days has to have some bizarre hidden Trump angle to it, it turns out that Trump and Diddy used to be good friends back during Trump’s old Apprentice days.
Thus came the inevitable question from Fox News reporter Peter Doocy in an Oval Office press conference last week: Would Trump consider offering a presidential pardon to the beleaguered rapper? Trump raised eyebrows by remaining noncommittal about the idea. “Well nobody’s asked,” he chuckled, “I know people are thinking about it, I know they’re thinking about it, I think some people have been very close to asking.” Then, being Trump, he went on to note how Diddy didn’t seem to have much nice to say about him after he got into politics. Still, he said, he’d look into it when the time came.
That’s why it’s good to know that at least one man is willing to get in Trump’s grill and do the important work of talking him out of this folly. Yes, rival (and superior) rapper Curtis James Jackson III — best known to posterity as 50 Cent — is coming to bail America out. Sure, the man once caught nine slugs in a drug deal gone bad back in his pre-fame days, but after promising to Get Rich or Die Tryin’ he not only got rich, he’s alive and well and riding to the rescue:
Rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson said he would contact President Trump to dissuade him from considering a pardon for Sean “Diddy” Combs if the embattled rapper and producer is found guilty in his ongoing federal sex trafficking and racketeering trial. . . .
50 Cent criticized Combs in a Friday post on Instagram, claiming he has “said some really bad things about Trump.”
“I’m going to reach out so he knows how I feel about this guy,” the “In da Club” rapper added, saying he would contact Trump about Combs.
He doubled down in a subsequent Instagram post, writing that Trump “doesn’t take well to disrespect.”
I’m not even joking when I say that I tip my cap to 50’s approach here — Trump doesn’t take well to disrespect, and convincing him someone is a disloyal weasel or a fair-weather friend is the quickest way to turn him against that person permanently. (Do not be surprised that hip-hop artists understand Trump’s mindset well, and vice versa.) “The whole world is rooting for 50 Cent” is a sentence I never imagined I’d be able to write in truth — this is a man with a long list of past beefs, after all — yet now here we are.
Until next week.