Twitter Files triumphant at the Dao Prize

DC’s black tie season is in full swing — so naturally, Cockburn’s penguin suit is already reeking of stale smoke. This week took him to the National Press Club, for the awarding of the inaugural Dao Prize. 

The prize, a $100,000 sum for the winner, followed by two lots of $10,000 for the other finalists, was awarded by the National Journalism Center in partnership with the Daofeng and Angela Foundation. The idea was to reward journalism that’s often overlooked by the Pulitzer Prize committee, who rarely if ever honor right-of-center reporting. There were over twenty nominees, from publications such as Breitbart, the Daily Caller and Townhall.

And the big prize went to… three liberals: Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, who accepted on behalf of all three. The trio were honored for their work on the Twitter Files, when Elon Musk invited them to Twitter’s headquarters to review his selection of documents that unmasked censorship and political bias at the site under its previous ownership. In his speech, Taibbi discussed the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which he credited to “the New York Post’s Miranda Devine”… who wrote the follow-up book on the laptop, rather than Emma-Jo Morris, who broke the story, and was in the room. So much for accuracy in reporting, eh?

The two $10k prizes were bagged by the Washington Free Beacon, for a selection of Aaron Sibarium’s reporting, and a left-wing dark money scandal broken by Andrew Kerr and Joe Simonson. Spotted: former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker; Chris and Sarah Bedford; Reason’s Jason Russell and Robby Soave; The Spectator’s Amber Duke; Matthew Foldi; the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon, Ashley Oliver and Gabe Kaminsky; Billy and Teresa McMorris; Larry O’Connor; Townhall’s Spencer Brown, Katie Pavlich and Madeline Leesman; NewsBusters’s Curtis Houck; the Dallas Express’s Patrick Hauf; Emily Jashinsky and Philip Wegmann, and the Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak and Brent Scher. A large Free Beacon and Breitbart contingent decamped to Shelly’s Back Room for a nightcap, hence Cockburn’s foul-smelling jacket.

Neck and neck in Kentucky?

A new Emerson College poll, the last before the election, has Attorney General Daniel Cameron now tied with Governor Andy Beshear in the Kentucky governor’s race. Beshear previously led the race by double digits, but Cameron has been experiencing a late-stage spike thanks to a more aggressive media strategy and heavier involvement from Donald Trump. Sources tell Cockburn that Team Trump may even move to capitalize on a recent Beshear rally that devolved into a chaotic pro-Palestine protest in the hopes that it may push Cameron over the edge.

Hunter Biden, content creator

The op-ed of the week comes courtesy of America’s most talked-about artist: Hunter Biden has written a piece for USA Today, about how he is being “bombarded by the denigrating and near-constant coverage of me and my addiction.”

Bravely, Hunter is attempting to reframe the regular coverage and congressional investigation of his controversial international business dealings as part of an attempt to shame him for being a drug addict. “The weaponization of my addiction by partisan and craven factions represents a real threat to those desperate to get sober but are afraid of what may await them if they do,” he writes.

Naturally, Hunter wants to protect his father Joe. “My struggles and my mistakes have been fodder for a vile and sustained disinformation campaign against him, and an all-out annihilation of my reputation through high-pitched but fruitless congressional investigations and, more recently, criminal charges for possessing an unloaded gun for eleven days five years ago.”

Cockburn is proud of Hunter for overcoming his personal problems — but he hastens to point out, Congress and the feds aren’t really scrutinizing him for liking naughty salt and having an impressive appendage. It’s the influence-peddling and work with Ukraine and China, among others, that always piqued the interest of investigators, and was the topic of Emma-Jo Morris’s initial “laptop” story three years ago. If Hunter has another op-ed up his sleeve that can clear his father’s name in that department, Cockburn’s editors would love to publish it. Pitch us, Hunter!

Finally, a real pee tape

You can’t play their videos in the workplace, but Virginia Democrats in key races are hoping that their sex tapes and pee tapes are enough to propel them to victory on Tuesday.

By now, Susannah Gibson’s sex tapes are notorious. The sex worker-turned-House of Delegates candidate couldn’t stop selling sex tapes with her husband while on the campaign trail, trying to get hotel workers in on the action too.

Less well known is Jessica Anderson, whose livestreamed pee tape is far realer than Donald Trump’s ever was. In the days before the elections, her opponents resurfaced a video where she’s running in the snow — and needed a bathroom break. “Yeah, I’m peeing. Avoid yellow snow,” she cautions viewers.

Anderson responded to the firestorm by telling Virginians that she didn’t violate the Virginia law that bans public urination and by saying that runners pee outside all the time; she did not address whether runners normally livestream their urine streams, however. Her pee tape is different from other recently resurfaced videos of her, which consist of attacks on parents, telling them to stop trying to “indoctrinate” their kids by caring about local school board races.

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