Donald Trump’s ‘shock and awe’ RNC cull

Who turned the Republican National Committee into a low-budget slasher flick? Just days after Trump’s chosen successors to chairwoman Ronna McDaniel took over the GOP, nearly sixty staffers were ruthlessly shown the door. A source tells Cockburn that Trump informed the new co-chairs, Michael Whatley and Lara Trump, that he wanted “shock and awe” and “headlines”. He got what he wanted: nearly every major media outlet breathlessly covered the mass firings and put “bloodbath” back into the lexicon weeks before Trump used it to describe the auto industry.

Crackheads versus Loomer outside the Trump trial

Attention this week has been fixed on the new “Trial of the Century”: Alvin Bragg’s attempts to prove that Donald Trump’s “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels constitute a violation of New York State election law. Inside the courtroom though, things have been rather drab and procedural: jury selection is taking days and the main inflection point has been Judge Juan Merchan’s suggestion that Trump would likely not be permitted to attend his youngest son Barron’s high-school graduation, were the trial to run that long. 

Instead, the more dramatic scenes have been unfolding outside the lower Manhattan courthouse, where members of the media outnumber protesters. One particularly notable spat involved, on the right, slavishly pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer, and on the left, an antifa activist who bills herself “Crackhead Barney.” 

Heckles from the “Crackhead” gang at Loomer range from the superficial —  “get a BBL bitch,” “your eyelashes are fucked up,” “you have no ass,” “your surgery is bad… who’s your surgeon?” — to the very unfair. “Can you kill yourself?” the Crackheads ask Loomer at one point — a grim rejoinder when you factor in Loomer’s documented history of mental health struggles and suicidal thoughts.

America is watching the Manhattan courthouse… and this is what we’re showing them?

Elissa explains it all

Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin is poised to become the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat and will likely face Republican Mike Rogers in the general election. And Cockburn’s friends who have worked in Michigan politics say Slotkin will employ whatever tactics necessary to win. 

One source passed along a tracker video from Slotkin’s 2018 congressional race, where she unseated incumbent Republican Mike Bishop. For those unfamiliar, trackers are typically employed by rival political organizations and are tasked with following candidates around and documenting all of their public appearances. In this video, Slotkin is seen leaving a political forum in July 2018 as the tracker asks her whether she plans to join the Medicare-for-All Caucus.

When Slotkin finally gets to her car, she looks pointedly into the camera and says, “How are Sloan and Leroy?”

“How do you know my dog’s names?” the tracker asks in shock, as Slotkin closes her car door.

People who spoke with the tracker after the incident say he was shaken up and thought Slotkin intended to threaten him. The tracker, who passed away not long after the incident, did not have social media at the time and could not figure out how Slotkin learned his dogs’ names. He speculated that a girl he had recently met on Tinder was working for her campaign — or that Slotkin’s team had pulled documents from the local humane society, who adopted the dogs out to the tracker. 

It might sound crazy, Cockburn’s sources admit, but they also note that Sloktin is ex-CIA and spent three tours in Iraq as an analyst. Slotkin’s campaign did not return a request for comment from The Spectator.

Turning Point Action director and ‘election integrity’ candidate drops out after accusations of… electoral fraud

An Arizona state representative who is an “election integrity” crusader is dropping out of his reelection bid after Democrats challenged his signatures, asserting that he forged dozens of signatures in his own handwriting. 

State representative Austin Smith, a director at Turning Point Action and member of the state’s Freedom Caucus, previously mocked Arizona’s signature verification system as “a joke.” In a statement filled with grammatical errors, Smith announced that he is withdrawing from the race, even though he is not a “quitter.” He later resigned his post at Turning Point Action.

The Democrats’ complaint “alleges that nine pages of signatures Smith gathered appear to be written by the same person and look like Smith’s own handwriting,” according to local outlets. 

While Smith’s current plan is to remain in office, some Arizona Republicans are demanding that he “resign immediately.” Republican Maricopa County supervisor Clint Hickman called Smith a “man who has lied to the people of Legislative District 29 and the entire state about our election operations for at least three years.” Hickman added that Smith and his allies, which include Republicans’ likely Senate nominee, Kari Lake, “accuse others of dishonesty so easily because they have no qualms about lying to win a political race or a business deal.” 

To others who have tracked Smith’s career, the downfall doesn’t come as a surprise. “A Turning Point guy losing his seat because he may have committed voter fraud is a chef’s kiss the likes of which none of us that have followed these grifters could have ever imagined,” a Republican source told Cockburn.