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We don’t really know why the folks at Wired decided that now was the perfect time to do a photo feature on Tesla Cybertrucks and some of the people who drive them, but they did that today (if you’re paywalled, here’s an archive link), and it was good for some laughs. Reporter Zoe Schiffer and photographer Michelle Groskopf met up with a dozen owners of the ridiculously oversized EV in Palm Springs, California, and seven of them went on the record in brief interviews about what it’s like to drive a rolling MAGA hat that probably won’t kill you by locking you inside it, but might.
The prospect of fiery death doesn’t come up in the article, but the Cybertruck’s weird status as a vehicle for culture-war politics and towing things comes up a lot, with several owners insisting there’s nothing political about their love for the truck, although they may also have some strong political opinions, too. And while several of those interviewed mention they’ve been flipped off, not one said their powered dumpsters has been vandalized or even had a rude sticker scotch taped to it, killing all aboard.
Groskopf notes that while she was meeting with the Cybertruckers, “a woman drives by in a small sedan. ‘Your cars are fucking ugly!’ she screams before peeling off.” One of the Tesla guys, LA stockbroker Andrew Castillo, just smiled and said “Some people just aren’t playing with a full deck of cards.”
Castillo says that politics have nothing to do with his love for his Wankpanzer, which he and his wife use to tow an Airstream trailer. He likes how it drives, and enjoys how little kids crowd around it and get excited at the crazy thing. He’s one of two people in the article who keep a few toys in their trucks to give to kids. He also casually mentions that Cybertruck people are a lot friendlier than the more “standoffish” snooty people he used to meet when he owned a Bentley, just so you know he’s a down-to-earth kind of guy. Unlike several of the other Cybermen, his Cybertruck doesn’t have a nickname.
The absolute winningest interview is with a San Diego entrepreneur named Roger Davis, who chose not to give his age, and offered this observation when he was asked if he was married: “I was married, but I’m not married anymore. Women don't like the vehicle.”
Roger says he likes the update to the truck’s computer system, integrating Tesla’s Grok AI. He named it “Aura,” calls it “she,” and says he uses her as a therapist. “When I'm driving, I'll ask questions, and it actually gives really good therapy advice.” Roger did not offer any examples. He also described what seems to have been a deeply spiritual experience he had while attempting to become the first driver of an EV truck to complete a grueling offroad trail, a project he said required $50,000 in modifications to get the Cybertruck ready.
On the third day, we were coming down Big Sluice, which is probably the hardest part of the trail. And we had just finished and I was in the vehicle by myself, and I was driving along a little stream, and all of a sudden through the trees I felt the light hit me. And I'm going to call it a miracle, because it was. Imagine if you're flush, like how your face blushes, but over my whole body. And then I just felt the presence of God and a deep peace and love. It really broke me down. It really reset my life at that point, is what it did.
We feel like some followup questions might have been helpful there, but we’re sort of snotty and unspiritual that way.
Despite Roger’s probably accurate take on how women react to Cybertrucks, several of the people interviewed for the piece were in fact women who liked the vehicle, although among this sample, the purchases were all made by menfolk. There have to be at least a few women who have purchased Cybertrucks, and we’re sure Bari Weiss will assign 60 Minutes to profile them.
One nice couple, Frank and Diane Brabec, who have no doubt heard enough jokes about their names to last several lifetimes, love that there’s loads of room in the backseat of their Cybertruck (nicknamed Computruck) for their Old English sheepdogs, who are gorgeous, and a good reason to go look at the Wired article all on their own. Good dogs! Dumb truck!
Diane says, optimistically, “We've only been flipped off like three times. Maybe four,” and Frank said they “all seem like angry people just in general.” They don’t mind, though, because kids love the truck. The Brabecs also hand out toys to kids, who want to have their pictures taken with the truck.
Frank: People cheer. I've never had people cheer, and I've had some pretty nice cars. For the most part, it's been this love that I've never experienced in other cars. So when people give negativity, I'm just like, ‘OK.’
Diane: We just laugh and wave.
I have to confess I have never seen anyone cheer for a Cybertruck, but then, I don’t get out much.
And then there’s Russ Taylor, who owns a business called “Smugglers Runs,” which does “postapocalyptic off-road’ rallies,” but for legal purposes its website is careful not to mention that one George Miller movie series. You know the one (We mean of course, Happy Feet, with the dancing CGI penguins).
Taylor likes the design aesthetic of the Cybertruck, because “I've always been kind of a cyberpunk,” and he doesn’t see why people think the truck is political in any way.
“People occasionally just flip [me] off or whatever, but nobody's come up to me and tried to make a statement about anything. Personally, it's kind of dumb. It's just a vehicle. So it's ironic that it would even become a political statement, but nonetheless it is,” he says, right before an editor’s note pointing out that Mr. Taylor “was arrested and pled guilty to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He was later pardoned by President Trump.”
So there’s a dispatch from the multiverse for you, and we didn’t even mention the guy who was upset when a woman with a different EV, a Ford Mach-E, left a note on his car in a Whole Foods parking lot mocking his tiny dick, and then she called him a Nazi because that’s what Elon Musk is, and he was outraged because he is in fact Jewish and a big supporter of LGBTQ rights and the woman was a lesbian, and isn’t it a big funny old world?
In conclusion, we learned a lot from this article about being kind to other people and their dogs, and you shouldn’t judge people for what they drive, even if in some cases like Roger and Russ, you might be completely right. Also, Christ what a stupid-looking car.
UPDATE: We should also note that, by complete coincidence, the same day Wired had this little Deplorean Derby, Heatmap News reports that while consumers snapped up electric vehicles of all sorts to get the EV tax credit before it expired September 30, that frenzy of EV sales didn’t include the Cybertruck, which between July and September of 2024 sold only 5.385 units, half as many as it did in the same period in 2024.
But while consumers have rejected the Cybertruck, there was a bit of a spike in corporate sales, as Elon Musk’s other companies, SpaceX and xAI snapped up hundreds of the damned things to use as fleet vehicles, probably just under the wire to get big corporate tax credits before they expired forever.
OPEN THREAD.
[Wired (archive link) / Electrek / Update links: Heatmap News / Electrek]
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Whoa, those leaked “I LOVE HITLER” Telegram chats from the Young Republicans yesterday were sure something else! By which we mean, exactly what you would expect!
CATCH UP!
At least most everyone seemed to immediately realize that “joking” about rape, gas chambers all of the other disgusting and racist things that they slobbered in there was a BAD LOOK. Even the “young” Republicans themselves knew the texts were indefensible, with one of them even typing, “if we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr.” And after the leak more than one of them both apologized and claimed they were doctored.
Most everyone, that is, except Vice President JD Vance. Somebody’s got to reassure the Nazi-lovers in the ranks that the administration will always have their backs, and the man married to an Indian-American and father of two half-Indian children stepped up to defend the people who said Indian people do not bathe. How to defend the indefensible? Oh, it’s just “stupid jokes” from “kids” leaked by a “scumbag,” Democrats are pearl-clutching, what about THEM?
The text Vance refers to there is allegedly from Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for attorney general of Virginia, plus in a private message to Republican delegate Carrie Coyner in 2022, he said:
“Three people, two bullets Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot Gilbert gets two bullets to the head Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”
I strongly condemn the violent rhetoric in that message, and it has no place in our discourse. See how easy that is to type? But Vance did not type or say that. Then he went on The Charlie Kirk Show to grouse some more that everybody else should grow up.
The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.
Isn’t all of this just the living end, the epitome of all things conservative!
None of the people in the chat were college students, they were aged 24 to 35. They had grownup jobs, like state senator in Vermont. And some got grownup-fired, such as the communications assistant for Kansas Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, an employee of the New York State Unified Court System, and Giunta, above, who was serving as the chief of staff to New York Assemblyman Michael Reilly.
That’s a lot of male-pattern baldness for a kid who we guess believes he’s a member of the master race. And hey, if people in that age range, especially boys, are stupid KIDS who can’t be held responsible for their actions, why is the administration entrusting the likes of 19-year-old “Big Balls” and his fellow DOGE edgelords with everybody’s personal data?
For conservatives, the age of responsibility sure is mighty fluid!
A 12-year-old trying a car door handle in Washington DC? US Attorney Jeanine Pirro thinks they should get charged as an adult for carjacking. Some kids are just born “evil” and are beyond any redemption or rehabilitation!
And if it’s a 15-year-old girl rape victim, don’t even get us started on how the don’t ruin their lives excuse has been used by the likes of conservative lawyers like Alan Dershowitz to defend child rapists since forever.
And of course “just joking!” is what abusive trolls always say to dodge responsibility for their words, and Trump and his spokesholes have always claimed “jokes!” whenever he says things that cross the line or are indefensible. At least all the way back to “Russia, if you’re listening!”
Boundary-crossing abusers love that old Nelly/Weird Al “just joking … unless you’re gonna do it!” thing.
But guess it works! Also, blaming the leakers while not disavowing the actual contents of the leak? Classic Trumpistan.
Meanwhile, Trump and FCC chair Brendan Carr have been yearning to cancel the FCC broadcast licenses of any entire TV network that dares to have a professional comedian do any “just joking!” about him. Trump is absolutely furious he couldn’t get Jimmy Kimmel fired. MAKE COMEDY LEGAL AGAIN!
But as Ohio composer Frank Wilhot once observed in a now-famous blog comment,
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Every day this regime just proves old Frank more correct.
Wonder what Usha Vance would do if their kids’ classmates were bullying her children for being Indian, with racist slurs like those young Republicans put in the chat? Would she tell her kids to grow up and suck it up and quit clutching their little kiddie pearls? Or would she be calling up the principal demanding the school DO SOMETHING and punish the bullies? Genuinely curious!
And how does she tell her kids to respond when the other kids at Catholic school or at some born-again Becky’s birthday party tell her kids that their mom is going to hell for being a Hindu? Vivek Ramaswamy may have signed up for that line of questioning by running for Republican governor of Ohio, but the Vance children did not.
Sure hope the Vance kids’ school is better at community building than their father is.
Anyway, we have seen the future of the Republican party, and it is Nazi. And you can’t say you did Nazi it coming. But don’t worry, fired “young” Republicans, you’ll surely have a new job in the administration in no time!
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On June 6, 1939, the United States turned away the MS St. Louis, a ship full of 937 Jewish refugees hoping to escape the horrors of the Third Reich. The ship was forced to turn back around and go back to Europe, where many of those people would later be killed in the Holocaust. It is one of the most horrifying, cruel and deeply shameful things our nation has ever done.
In 1951, 28 countries signed on to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, in hopes of preventing something like that from ever happening again. The United States was not one of those countries (though we did have our own system set up) — but we did sign on to its 1967 follow-up, the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. We, like all of the other member nations, have an obligation to take in those seeking asylum due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Not only is it our obligation, but, like all other international treaties we sign, it is the supreme law of the land.
On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that, based on documents they obtained, the Trump administration plans for a complete overhaul of the refugee system — and considering specifically giving preference to white refugees.
No, really.
On the first day of his second term, Donald Trump instituted a ban on refugees seeking asylum in the United States — later amending this to allow only white South Africans, based on entirely false claims that their farms were being attacked because they happened to be white.
Now, they are apparently considering extending this to German neo-Nazis.
Via The New York Times:
The proposed changes would put new emphasis on whether applicants would be able to assimilate into the United States, directing them to take classes on “American history and values” and “respect for cultural norms.”
The proposals also advise Mr. Trump to prioritize Europeans who have been “targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties.”
That appeared to be a reference to the European far-right political party Alternative for Germany, whose leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, revived Nazi slogans and denigrated foreigners. Vice President JD Vance has criticized Germany for trying to suppress the views of the group, which is known as the AfD.
A senior official said the Trump administration was monitoring the situation in Europe to determine whether anyone would be eligible for refugee status.
Given that the entire purpose of refugee resettlement and asylum is to protect people from such discrimination and persecution, it’s a fairly bitter irony to bring people in who desire to discriminate and persecute others.
It is also fairly ironic that they want people who are disliked in their home country due to how much they hate immigrants, to come be immigrants here. I’d be shocked that they would do the exact thing they think is so terribly objectionable, but we all know that the issue here and the issue there is not the existence of immigrants to begin with, and it never was. It has always been about racists not wanting more non-white people in “their” country.
The most sickening revelation, among many, is this bit.
“The sharp increase in diversity has reduced the level of social trust essential for the functioning of a democratic polity,” according to one of the documents. The administration should only welcome “refugees who can be fully and appropriately assimilate, and are aligned with the president’s objectives.”
That is straight-up Nazi shit. It’s not even a dog-whistle. It is exactly what you will read if you go to a white supremacist extremist site — I know, because I have spent a large portion of my career having to read white supremacist extremist sites.
It is literally saying “We cannot function as a society because we don’t trust people who don’t look like us,” a thing that is only true for extremely racist people, and whoever wrote it is not ashamed of that.
Taking in a bunch of bigots and liars would not only not fulfill our obligation to the international community and make a mockery of the entire concept of refugees, but it would violate the supreme law of our own country. Contracting states are explicitly barred from discriminating against refugees based on “race, religion or country of origin,” per Article 3. They are also, per Article 35, required to cooperate with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
It seems unlikely that the UNHCR would agree that Boers in South Africa — who, need we remind you, perpetuated the system of apartheid for 46 years — and neo-Nazis in Germany are prime candidates for refugee resettlement, in comparison to people who are experiencing actual persecution and oppression.
In order to do what Trump wants to do, he’s going to have to unilaterally withdraw from the Protocol, not that we would put that past him.
Republicans have spent the last decade trying to keep children from learning about our history of racism and discrimination, on the grounds that it might make them feel shame or guilt. Meanwhile, they are out here being blatantly racist about refugees in their meetings, praising Hitler and giggling about gas chambers in their chats, and trying to upend the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court — thereby giving the children of tomorrow even more things of which to be ashamed.
One might start thinking that the real reason they didn’t want these things taught is because they want to get away with doing them, because they don’t want those children to know about the harm this has all caused in the past.
This country has not always (or ever, really) been kind to immigrants and has certainly not always been kind to people of color, but that diversity and the triumphs over those who fear it, is also where most of the good of this country comes from, where most of the things we can actually feel proud and not ashamed of, come from, where most of our culture comes from, and, let’s be honest here, where pretty much all of our good food comes from. We should be the ones taking genuinely persecuted people in, welcoming them and giving them a home. We should not ask them to assimilate, but to add their culture and traditions to what is supposed to be our own rich tapestry. We should be determined to never again be the country that sent 937 Jewish refugees back to Europe.
Because that is what will actually make America “great.”
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
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Every day gets a little more fascist-scented around here, with the regime using every tool in its bag of tricks to go after anyone exercising their First Amendment right to decline to smooch Donald Trump’s droopy behind.
Because if you do not say YES, KINGS and HURRAY FASCISM, you are a terrorist doing violence!
And now Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are installing a Bessent adviser/buddy, Gary Shapley, to weaponize the IRS. Shapley is perhaps best known for claiming HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP COVERUP, and he was acting IRS commissioner for an entire 48 hours in April — one of three acting commissioners in one week — until Elon Musk complained about him and then Bessent and Musk got into a whole screeching catfight about it that reportedly came to body blows. Whatever Shapley’s deal is, grown men sure are passionate about him!
PREVIOUSLY!
And now Shapley’s back, like herpes. Reports the WSJ:
Shapley has told people that he is going to replace Guy Ficco, the chief of the investigative unit, who has been at the agency for decades, and that Shapley has been putting together a list of donors and groups he believes IRS investigators should look at. Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups.
But hold up, Hoss. The IRS’s criminal division investigates crimes. You’re supposed to start with the crime and then find the people and groups who did the crime, silly, there’s rules and procedures for that stuff. Also, it is okay for nonprofits to be involved in political activity, as long as it isn’t their primary activity, a rule with plenty of grey area, that the right wing has taken full advantage of.
And the IRS’s criminal division is staffed by career tax lawyers, who surely have little interest in risking their law licenses by getting creative.
So Shapley wants to just skip right over all those pesky lawyers:
The Internal Revenue Manual, the agency’s procedure handbook, spells out the involvement of chief-counsel lawyers and the CI chief in criminal cases. It includes extra steps for sensitive cases, such as those involving federal elected officials and tax-exempt groups.
Shapley wants to change the manual so that the chief-counsel lawyers have less of a role[.]
You know Shapley already has compiled a list of targets. And so has Pam Bondi, who sent a memo in September urging US attorneys’ offices across the country to probe “Open Society Foundations and consider an array of criminal charges including fraud, money laundering, racketeering and providing material support for terrorism.”
Too bad all those goons in the administration can’t put their heads together to compile a list of ways to make the eggs cheaper!
But not even Trump could seriously believe that Soros, who has been a right-wing target since Arthur Finkelstein was advising Viktor Orbán more than 20 years ago, actually funded any terrorism, or even failed to properly document deducting a single postage stamp. If there’s any crime that Soros could have gotten got for, surely one of his legion of haters all over the globe would have already found it.
The chief executive may be huffing and puffing and pounding on his website and in interviews and to whoever will listen that investigators need to single out and target his enemies list to vindictively prosecute, and how the Soroses should face federal charges under the RICO Act and “should be in jail.” But in the real world, donating to NPR does not count.
And there was no violence attributed to any left-wing protestors at the last No Kings rally, either, no matter how much Bessent might claim it was the HARDEST CORE.
However, No Kings is supported by more than 200 groups, including the ACLU and teachers’ unions, and the Service Employees International Union, and wouldn’t Trump LOVE to put them all out of business! And sure, maybe, like Letitia James and James Comey, Shapley can cherrypick some tax gotcha to a grand jury that they’ll bite on to cry CRIMES. When you’ve got all the powers of the federal government at your disposal, there’s no end to how much harassment and legal expense you can put a person or group through! And no limit to your platform to smear them! Enough to bankrupt them, the regime is surely hoping.
Meanwhile, the IRS has decided that it will just ignore the Johnson Amendment, which bars churches in particular from “any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”
But there’s another issue with all that vengeance: the IRS has recently furloughed nearly HALF of its workforce, and reduction-in-force notices were just sent to more than 1,400 Treasury Department employees, many of them workers at the IRS. A court just blocked Trump and Russell Vought’s plan to fire everybody during the shutdown, but it still leads one to ask, who is going to do all of this WEAPONIZING? Guess the plan is for the IRS workers to do not much else but make sure George Soros didn’t deduct too many staples and paperclips.
Imagine if BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA etc. etc.! Remember how in 2013 news broke that in 2012 “the IRS had admitted that some of its personnel looked for words such as ‘tea party’ and ‘patriots’ on organizations’ applications for tax-exempt status,” and that “If those words appeared, the groups’ applications were given extra scrutiny and action on their requests was delayed”?
Conservatives screamed and crapped their pants! The IRS is supposed to be politically independent! Political activities are allowed by nonprofits as long as it isn’t a charity’s primary focus! (And they can’t endorse candidates, etc.) The White House apologized immediately. The inspector general inspected immediately!
Also, turns out it was not OBAMA ordering that. It was a few low-level IRS employees in one office in Cincinnati, and their supervisors were not even aware they were doing this. The workers control-F-ed those terms because they’d gotten a surge of applications from hinky-sounding groups seeking nonprofit status, and it was their job to make sure that a group’s primary purpose was not just engaging in political activity like some kind of a tax-dodging PAC. And groups with names, like, say, Tea Party Patriots sure do sound like they are mostly about politics! What more, none of the groups were even deprived of nonprofit status, and the Tea Party Patriots still have it to this day. But conservatives have been crying about this isolated incident ever since, as proof that the Obummer/Killary/Biden DEEP STATE is out to get them all.
In conclusion, here is some related mom advice that you did not ask for: with all the data leaks and chaos going on, consider getting an IRS identity protection PIN, which can help secure your information, so that, say, a scammer can’t claim your child as their deduction. And if you have any kind of tax issues, now is the time to work them out, because even now during the shutdown there are still helpful IRS agents answering the phones. In a few weeks, though, who knows if that will still be the case.
Our hearts go out to all of these traumatized civil servants getting laid off, who are worried about getting fired, or working without pay, while Trump is trying to find ways to screw them out of pay for work that they already did, and is seeking vengeance on anyone who dares speak out against him or his fudge factory of Nazi-hugging incompetents.
They sure don’t deserve this! None of us do!
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As we have noted previously, after ignoring months of protests against Dipshit Hitler’s authoritarian takeover, Republicans are finally noticing how little Americans want the whole “Trump can do anything he wants” thing. That’s why they’re doing their damnedest to portray the nationwide No Kings rallies planned for Saturday as a terrible threat, a scary gathering of “antifa” radicals who all hate America.
They’re also almost exclusively focused on the rally planned for the Mall in Washington DC, possibly to focus media attention even more on DC than usual, possibly because they want to stochastically encourage attacks at that one rally from random nutcases, and very likely because they don’t want to call attention to the fact that there are more than 2,500 No Kings rallies planned all over America. (Find one near you!) That’s way up from the 2,000 No Kings rallies held in June, which brought out millions of Americans.
The nice folks at Meidas Touch put together this handy supercut of Republican figures lying through their teeth about the rallies and claiming only radical Marxist antifa terrorist maniacs on George Soros’s payroll will be there. Talk about coordinated, astroturfed messaging!
Oops, a few of the dingleberries even slipped and said the name of the event, but went right ahead with the other lies anyway. No cookies for them!
One of the stupidest talking points the administration has been pushing — not simply about No Kings, but about all protests against Trump — is the notion that some malign shadowy hand is behind Americans’ discontent with Trump. Americans could never object to what he’s doing unless some sinister bad guy — usually George Soros, but often just “they” — led them astray.
That’s distilled into its essence in this clip from Sean Hannity’s show Tuesday, in which Attorney General Pam Bondi offers ironclad proof that “antifa” is a single entity funded by … well, she’s gonna get to the bottom of it!
BONDI: That’s one of the things about Antifa. You’ve heard President Trump say multiple times, they are organized, they are a criminal organization — and they are very organized. You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match, pre-bought, pre-put together. They are organized, and someone is funding it. We’re going to get to the funding of antifa. We’re going to get to the root of antifa, and we are going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos, in Portland and all the other cities across our country.
Oh no! Matching protest signs, like those the Trump campaign printed up to distribute at every rally? Or like the ones printed by unions or Planned Parenthood or other groups? Have these weirdos never heard of on-demand printing? It’s really priced quite reasonably!
Then again, the administration’s new push to declare all dissent “terrorism” may lead to investigations and prosecutions of unions, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Act Blue, and Indivisible, so maybe “matching signs” actually is proof of criminal intent, at least if you’re a fascist and a dumbass.
In any case, as our headline says, it’s really quite impressive how many impossible things you have to believe before breakfast in order for any of this Trumped up “antifa is planning a Hate America rally this weekend” to make sense — and even then, it still makes no sense. Let us listicle!
You must never have heard of on-demand print shops, nonprofit organizations, or even the availability of downloadable sign templates online, for free or for a few bucks. (Etsy is no doubt a terrorist organization run by dangerous radicals, too.)
You must ignore all the wonderfully goofy signs people make themselves, too.
You must believe that people are incapable of organizing anything without central control. In the case of the No Kings rallies, yes, it’s a group effort led by Indivisible, with support from something like 200 partner organizations listed on the event’s website. But it’s far from a top-down effort. Every local rally has its own local organizers, and nobody is paying them a cent. There really is a delightful “Let’s put on a protest in the old town square” vibe to the whole thing, and there’s no way in hell you could get people in 2,500 locations to show up if they weren’t pissed off individuals.
You must believe that disagreeing with Donald Trump’s agenda is the same as “hating America.” And you’ll probably have to ignore all the people carrying US flags at the rally, too, or insist they were told to do that by their overlords. (As one of your overlords, I’m just suggesting it, ya know, because hell yes, optics, and it’s our damn flag.)
You must believe that nobody opposes Trump of their own free will, but must be paid to do it.
You must also believe that anyone who opposes Trump but isn’t being paid was “indoctrinated” by those mean public schools and universities. (Subset of this belief: you must forget just how impossible it is for teachers to get students to even do the reading, much less force ideological uniformity on them.)
You must believe more broadly that people you agree with have free will, while everyone else is either a paid fake, or brainwashed.
You must believe that a vast conspiracy is at work, but that the only evidence of it is stuff that isn’t hard to explain, while real proof — like pay stubs from George Soros Hate America, LLC — somehow remain hidden.
You must believe your neighbors are terrorists, and not just their teenagers with the loud music and hoodlum friends.
Along similar lines, you must believe that millions of your fellow Americans actively hate their country, and put a lot of effort into perversely trying to thwart Donald Trump’s wise plans.
You must believe that Donald Trump is wise in the first place. Yeesh.
Those are just a few of the things that occurred to us; we’re sure you can come up with more in the comments, which of course we do not allow.
[No Kings / Media Matters / LAT]
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Update on two stories about Pete Hegseth AKA Secretary Shitfaced, which have come together to remind us all what an incompetent, weak and sad dipshit is running the Department of Defense of the United States of America.
First of all, they went through with it. Major Weenus’s deadline came and went, and no networks had signed his Nazi fascist journalism pledge besides One America News — his former employers at Fox News ended up joining all the mainstream networks to tell him to fuck himself — therefore they all had to turn in their press passes, and now there is no Pentagon Press Corps.
(But take heart, Pete! Ginormous bootlicking loser Mollie Hemingway, editor of The Federalist, says they’re going to sign it. That’s right, all your stories from inside the Pentagon brought to you by the assorted clownpubes who work at OAN and The Federalist. Eat your heart out, Murrow!)
Anyway, it sucks that real reporters won’t be allowed in the Pentagon anymore, but with that little tyrant loser fluffing himself and calling himself the secretary of WARRRR, they’re making the gamble that if they work hard enough, the story will keep coming to them, press passes or no press passes. (The Guardian has a good piece on the challenges ahead, with lots of quotes from members of the press corps.)
And hey, speaking of the stories finding their ways out of the Pentagon walls and getting to journalists, remember that pathetic speech Shitfaced gave where he summoned all the country’s generals (who outrank him) to Quantico so he could prancercise around the stage and talk about the proper way to do hair?
Well, prepare to laugh at it some more, because apparently Secretary I’m-A-Big-Kid-Now, the one with the hilarious pull-ups, is prancercising around the Pentagon and demanding everybody verify that they have watched the video of his loser self-sucking speech.
THERE WILL BE A QUIZ!
Prem Thakker and Asawin Suebsaeng report for Zeteo — Mehdi Hasan’s outfit — that Private Sillybritches has gotten the message out that everybody in the Pentagon has to watch his dork speech, or read it, and they are not allowed to say bad things about it or make fun of it, OR ELSE.
So hey, if you are in the Pentagon right now, you better not say “Oh boy, that stupid speech Secretary Shitfaced gave could have been an email, FOR BONER BILLS.”
Because A., first of all, everybody already made the joke about how it was the most pointless speech in the history of God and man, a waste of the time of every one of those generals whose life and career outshines Hegseth’s, so pointless that it could have been an email. And B., Wonkette already added the hilarious line, “FOR BONER PILLS,” to the thing everyone has been saying about how pointless the speech was.
And C., Secretary Shitfaced is DRUUUUUNK. On power! And making fun of him is banned!
Thakker and Suebsaeng report that Hegseth’s flock of white boys with Little Man Syndrome “have actively monitored staffers, pressing them to confirm whether they had seen the speech.” They are asking for proof, say Zeteo’s sources. And they have made sure staffers know “there would be reprimands – if staff were caught lying or ridiculing the former Fox News host’s address.”
Sorry, we’re gonna let you catch your breath in case you’re laughing so hard at that complete pussy that you need a minute. Here’s something while you’re waiting.
Y’all OK out there? You still laughing as hard at Hegseth as America’s enemies and allies are? Yeah, same. Here are some quotes from the story:
“We have other things we need to work on,” one of the Defense Department staffers tells Zeteo. “When they told us we were required to watch the Hegseth speech, I did not realize they were going to throw this kind of manpower at enforcing the mandatory viewing of a Trump rally.”
Well, Pete Hegseth has been reorienting the way the US military works, getting rid of things that make us stronger and focusing more on eliminating things that make his brain hurt or his peepee feel small. So this tracks.
[Another] Defense Department staffer detailed similar experiences in the past several days and described it as “being forced to watch that MAGA garbage.”
Oof. Greatest military in the history of the world, y’all. Or at least it was until January 20 of this year.
Zeteo notes that the LGBTQ+ news magazine The Advocate also recently reported on Shitfaced’s decree that all must watch him lolligag around the stage and talk about how fat troops are icky. They had gotten hold of an email that contained the decree:
An internal email sent on Wednesday to the 1st Fighter Wing at Joint Base Langley–Eustis, a key Air Force installation in Hampton, Virginia, obtained by The Advocate, confirms the order. In it, Col. Brad S. Huebinger, the wing’s commander, wrote that “the Secretary of War has directed that all personnel will either watch the full recording or read the official transcript of his speech and review the policy changes no later than 31 October 2025.”
Want more quotes about what a garbage speech Hegseth gave, and why forcing everyone to watch it is a tyrannical waste of time? That article has some. And reading Zeteo’s reporting, it sounds like the pressure is on now even more than last week. How can our troops be ready to perform if they haven’t heard Pete Hegseth’s latest masculine insecurity spewings about how girl troops make him feel insecure?
Zeteo again:
At times, when subordinates have replied that they had watched the nearly hour-long speech in full, higher-ranking officials have immediately asked the staffers questions about the speech – as if to, in the words of one of the sources, “test” them and make sure they aren’t lying. In other instances, Defense Department staff were warned that there would be negative consequences if they were found to have not actually watched or read the speech, or if they were found to have mocked Hegseth’s address.
And now you’re laughing hysterically again.
In the interest of being of service to the brave men and women who serve our country — especially if they are going without pay right now because Republicans are hellbent on inflicting maximum harm on Americans with their shutdown — here is a cheat sheet for any Pentagon staffers and troops who really want to watch the speech, totally, but they just haven’t gotten around to it, or they don’t really want to waste a minute of their lives watching a man with barely concealed forehead warts and (reportedly!) Botox strut around a stage masturbating to fantasies of glory he’ll never live up to:
OK well a really touchy sensitive man who looks like an oil rig exploded on a gay skunk strutted around the stage.
WARFIGHTER!
OK, there was a really funny part where Shitfaced got all dramatic and looked at the camera like he was doing a bit on Fox & Friends Weekend and “warned” our enemies that “[t]hey will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department. To our enemies, F-A-F-O.”
Yes, he really spelled it like that, it was so stupid. This is probably why people around the Pentagon and on bases around the world are dramatically saying “F-A-F-O” out to each other for no reason and laughing. Or at least we are imagining they are doing that. It would be hilarious if they were. “F-A-F-O!”
Remember to call it “WAR DEPARTMENT,” and to call the beclowned boss the “secretary of WARRRR,” because once again, Daddy issues with biiiiiig snowflake energy are in charge. He really thinks this makes him manly.
WARFIGHTER!
The system has been RIGGED! against entirely mediocre white man losers with generally unimpressive military careers, BUT NO LONGER!
Girls are icky, ew!
Fat people are icky, ew!
Everybody who isn’t a white conservative Christian with daddy issues is icky, ew!
“HIGHEST MALE STANDARD ONLY!”
WARFIGHTER!
LMAO LOL, stop saying “DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH!” Diversity is not our strength! Our strength is making sure Pete Hegseth is camera-ready for his next close-up!
Please watch this video of Pete Hegseth doing his little exercises.
Rules of engagement are bullshit! So-called “war crimes” are bullshit! Telling Secretary Shitfaced what to do is bullshit!
WARFIGHTER!'
Remember to shave!
Nobody clapped at the end.
Got all that?
It shouldn’t be that hard if there’s a pop quiz, because like all white men as unimpressive as Pete Hegseth is, the nutsack only knows how to play one tune.
Sorry about all this, American Pentagon staffers and troops. We know (most of) you didn’t sign up for this or to be deployed to attack American cities, or any of it.
How utterly pathetic.
[Zeteo / The Advocate]
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Here’s a bad one-two punch courtesy of the New York Times. Supreme Court about to mercy kill what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, determining that making sure people of color can have districts together so they’ll be represented is the real racism. (Gift link) And Trump administration overhauls refugee system to let in more white people, fuck any refugees who aren’t South African or European. (Gift link) Isn’t that funny, those two stories together? Not funny haha, funny like oh no, I had the fish.
Rabidly bipartisan Barack Obama tells California, forcefully, it’s okay to democratically vote to gerrymander the shit out of the state to save the election from those bums trying to steal the election. Thanks, Obama! (Bad Faith Times)
They are 1000 percent going to try to claim that the swastika flag in the Republican congressional aide’s cubicle was put there by somebody besides the Republican congressional aide whose cubicle it was. (Politico)
Pretty sure the local PD would be delighted to say the 13-year-old boy snatched up by ICE for “having a gun” had a gun, if in fact the 13-year-old boy snatched up by ICE for “having a gun” had had a gun. So it’s weird they say he didn’t, actually, have a gun. He is now being detained 500 miles from his family, for “gun.” (The Handbasket)
Whom are we arresting for playing the Ghostbusters theme outside ICE today? (Independent)
How was President Pudding Cup’s commemoration of his assassinated friend Charlie Kirk? Was it sober and touching and deep and wise? Well. You know. (Jeff Tiedrich)
Some asshole OB-GYN in Illinois refused to remove an ectopic pregnancy because there was a “1 percent chance it was viable.” No! There wasn’t! Fuck you, asshole OB-GYN! (Abortion, Every Day)
Here’s Parker Molloy on new CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss’s horrible journalism, trans-attack edition. (Dame magazine)
And here’s John Oliver on same!
Who wouldn’t want “worship music” or “Creed” for Turning Point USA’s “alternative Super Bowl half-time show”? (Obviously they can’t just watch the Puppy Bowl instead, because of how they are all dog-murderers.) Amanda Marcotte asks and answers, and is as delightfully mean-spirited as you could hope! (Salon)
Who else, besides Zohran Mamdani, was a radical lunatic leftist? Just a couple people called “Fiorella La Guardia” and “FDR.” (The American Prospect)
It is chaotic, and it’s wonderful. Please do enjoy.
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