Knives out for sassy Massie

Massie hysteria: CR holdout branded ‘Congress’s Keith Olbermann’

President Donald Trump and House Republicans have seemingly written off their maverick colleague Congressman Thomas Massie for any help when it comes to funding the government.

The party is wrangling with Massie over his opposition to the latest continuing resolution, which would avoid a government shutdown if passed. “I’m not voting for the Continuing Resolution budget (cut-copy-paste omnibus) this week. Why would I vote to continue the waste fraud and abuse DoGE has found?” Massie explained.

“It’s oppositional defiance disorder,” one veteran House Republican staffer speculated. “He is Congress’s Keith Olbermann — who was sued by Al Gore and fired by Rupert Murdoch. When you’re disliked equally by left and right, maybe it’s you that’s the problem. He thinks that he’s the last honest man in Washington — and there are just enough people like Ann Coulter who tell him that that it’s OK for him to tear down the shantytown that we’ve built.”

Trump himself was unsparing in his critique of Massie this week; “HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him,” the president wrote on Truth Social. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, got into (another) Twitter/X spat, this time with Massie.

“Tick tock Tommie,” LaCivita wrote. Massie responded that the MAGA-aligned primary challengers he’s faced in the past never “busted 25% because my constituents prefer transparency and principles over blind allegiance.” “Never faced me… stand by,” LaCivita snapped back.

Senator Rand Paul, also a Kentucky Republican, will join Massie in voting against the government funding measure, putting Democrats in a bind: give Trump a win, or share responsibility for a shutdown?

Porter authority: California, here we come

In DC, Republicans are fighting to keep the government open. In New York, the stock market is taking a plunge. But California may not be the place to seek refuge, as Katie Porter announced she is running for governor.

The progressive former Democratic representative released a campaign video this morning announcing her candidacy, claiming she would stand as a buffer between Californians and Trump and his “cronies.”

Porter is aiming to succeed Governor Gavin Newsom, but finished a distant third in last year’s primary to Adam Schiff for the Golden State’s open US Senate seat. Other Democratic candidates for governor include former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former State Senate leader Toni Atkins, former state controller Betty Yee and Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis.

Former vice president Kamala Harris has yet to indicate any intention to run for governor of her state. That would change the make-up of the race: “She wouldn’t run against Kamala,” a Porter advisor told CNN, “and likely none of the others will either.” Cockburn wonders which outcome would be worse for poor Democratic staffers in the state: Harris had a notoriously rocky run at the presidency in 2019 that collapsed into in-fighting, while Porter has been previously accused of “screaming at staffers over the phone during her fundraising call time,” not to mention the time she tried to include her husband as an impromptu ingredient in a potato casserole…

On our radar

BOJO IN DC Just spotted in a meeting with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham right off the Senate floor… former British prime minister Boris Johnson.

SPARE A DIME? The billionaires who flanked Donald Trump at his swearing-in have lost a combined $209 billion in wealth since he took office, according to Bloomberg.

VENGEFUL X Social media site X experienced outages Monday, with CEO Elon Musk alleging a “massive cyberattack” by “a large, coordinated group and/or a country.”

Murphy’s law: Shady Democratic consultant uses ‘news sites’ to push senator beau

At a time when the Democrats appear out of ideas on who should lead them into the next election, one progressive consultant is bold enough to say: pick my boyfriend.

Tara McGowan, who runs a shadowy constellation of “news sites,” is dating Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, according to Semafor’s Max Tani. Longtime followers of The Spectator will recall our bombshell report into McGowan’s Courier Newsroom operation from last February. “They hired journalists and then gave them explicit instructions to promote Democrats,” staffers told Aidan McLaughlin. “It felt very much like a propaganda outlet.”

Lo and behold, Courier Newsroom has extensively promoted Murphy on its sites and social media channels, in what Cockburn can only describe as a glorious coincidence. The Connecticut senator recently separated from his wife Cathy, with whom he has two children. He was spotted cuddling McGowan at a dinner last week.

Murphy has also been the subject of a barrage of recent news coverage touting his leadership credentials: NPR, NBC News, the New York Times, the Hartford Courant, you name it. Nothing readies you for high office quite like a roll around in the astroturf…