Don’t try to fight the new media

A word of wisdom for any of the old-guard reporters planning on picking a fight with the new media in the White House Briefing Room: Cara Castronuova, of Lindell TV, was once ranked second in the country at super-bantamweight and has won two bouts at Madison Square Garden.

Mona Austin, of the “100% woman and Black-owned’ Slice, competed with the former boxer during a gaggle with Steve Witkoff by the Palm Room doors yesterday and refused to budge, saying “I don’t want to be on reality TV.” A brouhaha ensued. “There was lots of yelling, it was very uncomfortable,” one hack told Cockburn.

Who needs UFC on the South Lawn when you can have boxing by the Palm Room doors? Seconds out…

Feelings don’t care about your facts

Back when Cockburn was doing his Master’s in Journalism at Columbia (the sportswear company), he was offered sage advice when it comes to covering national tragedies and potential mass casualty events. “These are high-octane times,” his assistant manager told him in the stockroom one morning. “You’d rather be second and right than first and wrong.” Other tips that came up when we was rotating in the fall-winter range were “double-check your sourcing.”

In recent months, it seems that all of those lofty standards have gone out of the window, thanks in no small part to “internet sleuths” and media figures that favor an allegation that suits their preconceptions over a fact that challenges it. Recall for example how there were at least two different men misidentified as Charlie Kirk’s assassin before the arrest of Tyler Robinson – and how right-leaning accounts seized on how one of them was a member of Salt Lake City Antifa. Then consider how when Robinson was detained, left-leaning accounts were eager to show that he was a “groyper” or a Trump supporter. Text messages published subsequently by the FBI suggest that was not the case. Robinson said he had “had enough of his hatred.”

This weekend’s shooting and burning of a Mormon church in Michigan – that killed four and injured eight – offers another chastening lesson for Americans. The shooter, who was killed at the scene, has been identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, an Iraq War veteran. Social media photos surfaced in the aftermath of the attack showed that Sanford had a “Trump-Vance” sign outside his house. Some X users, obviously, falsely claimed this was an anti-Trump sign. Then other social media photos showed Sanford wearing T-shirts that bore the slogan: “Re-elect Trump 2020 – Make Liberals Cry Again.” Bear in mind it’s not clear what, if any, impact Sanford’s seeming support of Trump had on his decision to slaughter LDS worshippers.

In the interest of taking down the temperature, Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell posted the picture on X, saying, “I’m sure @JDVance agrees with me that it doesn’t matter that the Michigan terrorist was a MAGA supporter. Because in America, regardless of your politics, violence has never been the answer.”

A number of prominent users on X then began to allege that the photograph of Sanford in the “re-elect Trump” shirt was photoshopped. (It’s not; it remains live at the time of writing.) One accused Swalwell of “sharing fake photos of a murderer”; others said the congressman should resign “in shame.” Two outlets, Townhall and the Daily Caller, published pieces operating under the pretext that Swalwell had tweeted a fake photo. One is now retracted, the other deleted – and Swalwell is doing a victory dance: “Stay on offense. @DailyCaller only took this bullshit down once I threatened to sue.”

You’d like to be able to say “wait for official confirmation before jumping to conclusions”… but when the FBI Director wrongly attested that a subject is in custody and faces no repercussions for it, what are you supposed to do?

On our radar

THREE MILES UP, THREE MILES DOWN Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fat-shamed hundreds of admirals and generals during a meeting at Quantico this morning. “Every member of the Joint Force at every rank is required to take the PT test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year,” he said.

LIGHTS OUT Congress is within 12 hours of a government shutdown, as Democrats are seeking an extension for Obamacare tax subsidies.

SHE FINALLY WON SOMETHING? Kamala Harris’s book has been out for a week and is set to become the bestselling memoir of 2025, according to her publisher.

The leader we deserve?

Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman, has declared himself the rightful President of “New Constitutional Republic of the United States” and is suing the Donald Trump for $40 trillion – a touch excessive in Cockburn’s eyes – in a suit filed this week in an Arizona, court. The powerful list of co-defendants includes Trump, the Federal Reserve, the National Security Agency, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements, the state of Israel, Elon Musk’s X Corp., T-Mobile, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Warner Bros. Studios.

Chansley claims, among other things, that the NSA has “catfished” him by pretending to be his “celebrity crush,” actress Michelle Rodriguez, and that the government has stolen $100,000 in cryptocurrency from him. “If a person were in the loop of what I had written on my computer a few months prior those details would stand out to a sharp mind,” the suit says.

Subscribe to Cockburn’s Diary on Substack to get it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.