British journalist talks America’s ‘authoritarian culture’ with Jon Stewart

Cockburn is not a regular viewer of The Daily Show. It is no longer as epoch-defining as it was in Jon Stewart’s heyday. But he did take an interest in Stewart’s segment last night with Carole Cadwalladr.

For the uninitiated, Cadwalladr is a former Guardian and Observer columnist from the UK most prominent for her reporting on Cambridge Analytica. CA is the political consulting firm known for its contentious use of Facebook data in the 2016 US election and Brexit referendum.

After Brexit came what Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill dubbed “the middle-class meltdown to end all middle-class meltdowns.” “And at the heart of it all,” wrote O’Neill, “was a writer for the Observer called Carole Cadwalladr.” Cadwalladr seemed to see Vladimir Putin’s fell hand manipulating every populist political act of the last decade. “Putin isn’t just coming for us next. He already has,” she once posted on Twitter/X. (She now has over 200,000 followers on BlueSky, a great barometer of levelheadedness.) The journalist was compelled to pay £1.2 million in legal costs after libeling a major Brexit donor by saying he’d lied about “his covert relationship with the Russian government.”

In 2025, Putin is passé, though. (Just ask Trump.) Now Silicon Valley oligarchs are the target of Cadwalladr’s ire: she left her newspaper job to start the “Broligarchy” Substack. The tagline is “girl power vs tech bros.” And that’s just what she joined Jon Stewart to discuss.

The host offered Cadwalladr his sympathy for her legal penalties. “The one person that was put through the wringer on this was you,” he said. “They really tried to destroy you.”

What measured analysis did Cadwalladr offer of tech’s role in Trump 2.0? Well, she said that Palantir, by “amassing” data from every government department thanks to DoGE, was using AI to establish “a system of control – this is what other authoritarian cultures do.” Note the other. In Cadwalladr’s mind, America has fallen.

“All of these tech bros, they are selling absolute bullshit,” Cadwalladr told Stewart, before saying that her old employer had “married its rapist” by forming a strategic partnership with OpenAI. Cockburn is delighted by this latest incisive British contribution to the American national discourse. Please, keep sending more!

On our radar

TELL US WHAT YOU REALLY THINK Four days after departing as White House senior advisor, Elon Musk voiced strong opposition to the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote on his site X this afternoon.

RAND RANT President Trump said Senator Rand Paul’s ideas “are actually crazy (losers!)” and “the people of Kentucky can’t stand him.” Paul has also been a vocal opponent of the “BBB.”

DRONING ON Little progress was made toward a Ukraine-Russia peace deal after delegations for the countries met in Istanbul. President Volodymyr Zelensky said attacks like this weekend’s drone strikes on Russian warplanes would continue if Putin did not halt his offensive.

TACO TUESDAY A taco truck displaying a large photograph of Trump in a chicken suit with the words, “Trump Always Chickens Out” spent lunch sitting outside the Republican National Committee headquarters. The truck, sent by the DNC, departed at 2 p.m.

The Adams family’s Eurovision

Meet Jordan Coleman, the 29-year-old son of New York Mayor Eric Adams. Coleman is fresh off competing in Albania’s version of American Idol. As part of his quest to become the next Dua Lipa, he’s inflicting songs on the world inspired by his trip abroad and by his father’s time in Gracie Mansion.

Coleman, a substitute teacher in his day job, is dropping an EP under his stage name Jayoo after his travel that he said made him “a different person.”

While Mayor Adams appears increasingly unlikely to return to Gracie next year – disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo seems to be in the driver’s seat – fans of his son’s music will soon be able to jam out to his song called “1212 in Gracie.”

“It’s one of those songs where I’m just like, ‘Dad, I’m recognizing who you are,’” Coleman told the New York Post, “and it’s just like, ‘here we are in this Gracie Mansion just living our life.’”

His father’s Turkish connection, which landed him in hot water with the Feds, does not appear to have made the album.