Inside Tucker Carlson’s ‘Zyn competitor’

The predilections of Pastor Robinson

2024 is proving to be an election year where so much seems to happen and so little seems to change. This week, for example, you might have found yourself alarmed as Donald Trump met the Red Scare girls at a crypto bar in New York (Cockburn agrees that someone should get Barron to convince him to go on the podcast, for what it’s worth).

Or you may have drawn a sharp intake of breath as New York magazine placed its Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi on leave after, per Nuzzi’s statement to Status, “the nature of some communication” between her and RFK Jr. — what can’t that man do? — “turned personal.” Thirty-one-year-old Nuzzi was eager to stress that “the relationship was never physical” with the seventy-year-old Kennedy, conjuring up the distressing mental image that the pair may have exchanged sexy voice notes. The story goes curiously unmentioned in this morning’s Politico Playbook… co-authored by Nuzzi’s fiancée Ryan Lizza. (New York magazine also has a finance columnist who got scammed out of $50,000 and an advice columnist that deluded herself into believing she should divorce her husband, who she cheated on. It’s Cockburn’s favorite publication that’s not The Spectator.)

But for true theater, nothing could quite match “the Mark Robinson story,” a saga so outré it might actually end up shifting the needle. Chekhov’s gun appeared on stage early Thursday when the conservative Carolina Journal reported that Pastor Robinson was under pressure to withdraw as Republican nominee for North Carolina governor due to “a damning news story looming.” Cockburn’s inbox was then stuffed with speculation from his fellow hacks: would it relate to his previously revealed penchant for pornography? Was there a transgender angle? Or could it be “Nazi stuff?”

Bang. Everyone was right. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck revealed later Thursday that Robinson had been a prolific poster on the Nude Africa forum, “The Web’s Largest Source of Amateur Black Erotica.”

Robinson, as North Carolina lieutenant governor, gave a famous 2022 viral speech in church where he declared, “ain’t but two genders.” But years earlier, on Nude Africa, he wrote, “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s fucking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Cockburn can’t fault the pastor’s logic, despite his apparent evolution on the issue at hand.

In other posts on the forum, Robinson declared, “I’m a black NAZI!”; referred to MLK as “Martin Luther Koon”; wrote that “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few” and said he’d “take Hitler” over President Obama. If you asked an artificial intelligence to generate a damaging political story about a Republican candidate, and gradually make it more extreme, this is what it would throw up.

Some of Robinson’s other forum posts are doing the rounds on social media; having seen a few, take Cockburn’s word that CNN wrote the driest — in every sense — version of the story possible. The pastor, in the face of near-irrefutable evidence linking his emails and identify to the account, denies that he is the poster. “Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of a high-tech lynching,” Robinson said. “Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is, too.”

In conservative circles earlier in the year, Cockburn heard some wags claim that were Robinson to be victorious in North Carolina, he would become an instant presidential contender. The pastor, a Trump favorite, was already polling behind his Democratic opponent Josh Stein. But could this story drag the whole GOP ticket down and put North Carolina in play for Kamala Harris? Where’s that old Mitch McConnell quote about “candidate quality” when you need it…

Inside Tucker’s new ‘Zyn competitor’

Former Fox primetime host Tucker Carlson, who launched his own independent media operation on X, is dipping his toes — or gums, rather — into a new venture. Carlson said he was disturbed to learn that his favorite nicotine pouch, Zyn, had donated a lump sum to the Kamala Harris campaign and decided to create his own brand.

The Tucker-backed pouches are called ALP and are set for retail this November. They come in two flavors, Chilled Mint and Mountain Wintergreen, and feature retro tobacco company-type branding.

Friends of Carlson, who is well known for packing a lip and coined the catchphrase “Zyn is not a sin,” told Cockburn last week that they had been trying to convert him to other nicotine brands. But clearly their efforts were for naught. Cockburn hears that the brand has been in the works for quite some time. A source close to Carlson who has had an advance taste test affirms the ALP pouches are “awesome” and that they “sincerely love it.”

How to appeal to union guys, Democrat-style

With the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declining to endorse Kamala this week after a survey of their membership revealed most of them support Trump, Cockburn is reminded of another foolhardy attempt by Democrats to garner union support. During the 2016 election, campaign hacks in Michigan were told that the Hillary Clinton campaign had a great plan for whipping blue-collar votes at a union hall. “They told me how excited they were for the event because they had an amazing speaker lined up. When I asked who it was, they told me it was a well-known transgender activist,” a Republican operative recalled. “I just laughed to myself and told them it was a great idea. That’s when I knew we were going to win.”

Kara-no-ke

A spy tells Cockburn that visitors to the White House Hispanic heritage event this week were treated to an unwelcome bit of impromptu karaoke… courtesy of a well-oiled Ana Navarro from The View and White House social secretary Carlos Elizondo. The pair “kept grabbing the mic from the singer,” says a source, as they warbled “Guantanamera.”  Apparently neither the White House staffer nor the former Republican should be auditioning for The Voice any time soon. It is unclear if Tres Padres was served at the event…

A Promethean night with CEI

Having attended Competitive Enterprise Institute events in the past, Cockburn knew his Thursday evening at CEI’s fortieth anniversary Julian L. Simon Memorial Award Dinner was going to be eccentric and entertaining. But he didn’t expect pyrotechnics.

“We’re holding it at a pagan temple, so it makes sense,” a dinner attendee dressed in a toga in keeping with the “Prometheus: Rebel for Humanity” theme quipped about the fire-dancing girls performing in front of the Washington National Cathedral.

Cockburn enjoyed a cocktail called “the Fire Thief” during the pre-dinner reception and chatted with a group from Reason magazine, CEI staff, a man dressed as Hercules and Grover Norquist. During dinner, Cockburn enjoyed decadent beef pavé and banter with the Washington Examiner’s W. James Antle III and joined in cheers for speakers espousing free-market principles, such as, “Economic freedom saves lives!” 

Magatte Wade, the author and Senegalese entrepreneur, attested to this truth by telling her story of “making something out of nothing” after receiving the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award. George F. Will received the Prometheus Award for Human Achievement and delivered the keynote remarks before National Lagoon’s Policy House, starring CEI staff, set the stage for the “Afterglow” event: more pyrotechnics, a Cirque-du-Soleil-style acrobatics performance and women roaming the cathedral on stilts.

Cockburn is relieved to find that CEI’s reputation for a memorable party remains fully in tact.