The $20 million hunt for the Democrats’ Joe Rogan

Who will be the Democratic party’s Joe Rogan? That is the $20 million question facing the party, as Democrats try to recover from the last election, when the podcasters had the power.

Setting aside Rogan’s status as a longtime backer of both the Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the party’s plan to win back heterosexual, cisgender young men reads like a Barnard gender studies thesis.

The plan’s codename, SAM, stands for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan” and sets out to “study the syntax, language and context that gains attention and virality in these spaces.” Some free advice from Cockburn: normal young men don’t use words such as “syntax” in their everyday speech.

Possible Rogan replacements bandied about include Hasan Piker – who was recently suspended from Twitch for violating the platform’s policy about handling propaganda content from terrorists after he discussed the manifesto of the Capital Jewish Museum shooter. Brian Tyler Cohen and the MeidasTouch network are also on the list. Not exactly a fair fight.

The Democrats aren’t just searching for who should talk about the country, but also who should run it. Politico magazine’s Bill Scher rolled out a potential shadow cabinet for 2028 that includes a comedian as a “shadow administrator of the Small Business Administration,” the recently fired director of the National Intelligence Council as a “shadow director of national intelligence” and the Mayor of Nashville who is under investigation for abetting illegal immigrants, as a “shadow secretary of transportation.”

Samantha Power as a shadow Secretary of State isn’t exactly the A-team, given that she is best-known for running USAID – an agency that has seen better days.

If the Democrats want to reach normal young men, Cockburn thinks they should turn to Hunter Biden. His affinity for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll would resonate more with “the fellas” than most of their milquetoast podcasters.

The French connection

It was the shove heard around the world: the Associated Press filmed President Emmanuel Macron of France having his face pawed at by his First Lady and onetime teacher Brigitte as they disembarked a plane in Vietnam Sunday. Monsieur Le President attempted to wave away the push, telling reporters that he and his wife were “joking around, as we do quite often.” Blink twice if you need help, Manu.

The incident garnered attention from the usual contentious quarters: Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed on Telegram that Macron had received “a right hook” from his wife.

And America’s biggest Brigitte Macron observer is set to step off the sidelines too: Cockburn understands that Candace Owens, the former Turning Point USA and Daily Wire commentator, is set to interrupt her maternity leave this afternoon to address the scandal on her YouTube show.

Owens has been “transvestigating” Brigitte for months, alleging that she was born male. The pundit received a legal letter from the Élysée ahead of the release of her February “investigative” series “Becoming Brigitte.” She has already offered a few sneak-peeks via her X feed: “Boys will be boys,” she tweeted alongside the video yesterday. As they say à Paris, nous recevons les nouvelles que nous méritons.

On our radar

THIS AMERICAN STRIFE National Public Radio is suing the Trump administration over its defunding by executive order.

PENT UP Questions are brewing over the firing of three Pentagon officials who were accused of leaking a document regarding the reclamation of the Panama Canal to a reporter. White House advisors were told that the DoD aides were “outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency wiretap,” according to the Guardian.

AS EU LIKE IT Over the weekend, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen secured a delay of the 50 percent tariffs the United States was set to impose on the European Union.

‘Kill the Boer’ doesn’t mean ‘kill the Boer’: SA prez

It’s often said that President Trump should be taken “seriously, not literally.” Now his South African counterpart is inviting us to apply that rule more widely. President Cyril Ramaphosa told journalists this morning that he considered the so-called “white genocide” of Afrikaner farmers a “sovereign issue” before delving into how the “kill the Boer” chant doesn’t actually mean “kill the Boer”:

“We take into account what the constitutional court also decided, when it said… that slogan, ‘kill the boer, kill the farmer,’ is a liberation chant and slogan, and it’s not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to go and be killed. And that is what our court decided. So… they will probably want to arrest people willy-nilly. We follow the diktats of our constitution, because we are a constitutional state, and we are a country where freedom of expression is the bedrock of our constitutional arrangement.”

Ramaphosa had a testy Oval Office visit last week when President Trump dimmed the lights and presented him with a series of news articles about the deaths of white farmers in South Africa. Ramaphosa’s words also appear intended to draw some not-so-subtle contrasts between himself and Trump: Ramaphosa follows his country’s “constitution” and values “freedom of expression.” His implication is, Trump does not. Cockburn is touched by Ramaphosa’s clarity and bravery – where was it last week?