“Today, an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them. The US Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS SPRUANCE intercepted the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman, and gave them fair warning to stop. The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom. Right now, US Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under US Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board!” posted President Shitbag on Sunday, fucking up one unarmed vessel evidently what counts as a big win these days.

CNN’s Jake Tapper was having trouble not laughing in fascist sociopath Elise Stefanik’s face after she insisted, repeatedly that, convicted felon President Trump did not call for genocide against the Iranian people when he threatened to wipe out their “entire civilization,” smartly getting ahead of her whataboutery by brining up Stef’s screechy crusade against the keffiyeh kids on Ivy League campuses. “Of course genocide is bad across the board, Jake!” the angry washout exclaimed.

In a joint op-ed printed Sunday by the Detroit Free Press, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State/leading Dem gubernatorial contender Jocelyn Benson write that “This week, the US Department of Justice sent a letter to Wayne County [which contains Detroit and its innermost suburbs] demanding that county elections officials hand over ‘all ballots’ from the 2024 election so the Trump administration can ‘ensure’ federal election laws were not violated in the November 2024 election.” Keep in mind Trump won Michigan by 80,000 votes in 2024, 24,000 of that margin his improvement over his 2020 total in Wayne and 60,000 more than he won in 2016.

Like if they were demanding all the 2020 ballots it would still be stupid bullshit but it’d at least be internally consistent with the “Stollen Election” narrative as well as the moronic “investigation” into the Fulton County, Georgia 2020 ballots seized by the FBI. That this letter got sent at all could indicate the MAGA Reich likely already failed to get a judge to sign off on a similar warrant in Wayne.

“But this demand isn’t about election integrity – it’s about a weaponized DOJ trying to please a president who doesn’t want to be held accountable at the ballot box by voters tired of the chaos of his administration. It’s also about the upcoming elections in November and in 2028, which he is working to discredit by sowing doubt as to the security and fairness of the process. It’s not going to work with us, and it’s not going to hold up in court,” Nessel and Benson continued in the op-ed.

A cohort termed “social media users” by Fox News on Friday “thrashed” ABC News “after the outlet presented a campaign ad from former President Barack Obama in favor of a Virginia redistricting measure as an ‘exclusive,'” with the Fox article of the “thrashings” leading with a tweet by Real Clear Investigations writer Mark Hemingway asking “Why the hell does a major news network consider an extremely partisan campaign ad an ‘exclusive’?” and containing six of the replies to that tweet.

Hemingway’s outlet last year published an in-depth investigation into the 2023 Biden White House cocaine “scandal” five months after convicted felon President Trump was sworn back into office. His wife, Mollie, writes for the Federalist and in 2023 falsely claimed that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed Twitter for every person who ever liked a Trump tweet.

Anyway the Fox News article then detailed six of the replies responsive to Mark Hemingway’s gripe about the now-deleted @ABCPolitics tweet that apparently had painted the reporting of the Obama ad as an “exclusive” at the time. The article it apparently linked to does not anywhere contain the word “exclusive” and in italics at the bottom says it had been updated afterward but not specifying why. One of the replies to Hemingway hints at why, saying “It’s so exclusive I saw it on YouTube before my video started about 20 times in the past week.” So yeah sick burn and it is not at all implausible that the Disney-owned news outlet had been cowed into editing “exclusive” out of the article by Hemingway and the five other Twitter users who had agreed with him. The sixth was a lib who wrote “Because it’s an exclusive I guess? What does partisanship have to do with it?”

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷Vice President Vance will lead the U.S. delegation to the negotiations with Iran in Islamabad, U.S. official tells me

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 19, 2026

President Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that Vice President JD Vance will not be leading the U.S. delegation to Islamabad, citing security concerns. https://t.co/LmXt4rhuxb pic.twitter.com/o35JiWTKIT

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 19, 2026

Should you not feel like watching the brief clip above, Jon Karl said Trump called him to say that it’s too risky security-wise for Jaydee to fly back to Pakistan on less than 24 hours notice, which kind of sounds like bullshit since Vance was there last weekend and as such you’d think it’d be easier.

“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz – A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement! Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom.”

“That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan – They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations. Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it. They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing. In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the US, Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’ We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR NICE GUY!”

“They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Sunday morning, about 24 hours after the Iranian attacks on ships in the strait.

You can argue it’s a hell of a collectors’ item but it never actually was tested as a flotation device in the frigid waters that so many perished in. CBS News reports that a lifejacket worn by Laura Mabel Francatelli, a first-class passenger on the doomed Titanic and signed by her as well as other survivors, sold for $906,000 to an unidentified enthusiast who called in the bid via phone at auction by Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, western England on Saturday.

That amount would’ve bought nearly four tickets on the Titan submersible to actually see the Titanic up close… If OceanGate was still running those tours. And the Titan was still in operation.

Extremist septuagenarian freak Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, aged 76 and 77, respectively, are not planning to retire this year, CBS News reports citing sources close to Clarence and an earlier Fox News report specific to Sedition Sam. MAGA federal judges Aileen Cannon and Matthew Kacsmaryk did not comment on the story and there’s no word yet if they’ve been working on a Plan B to hire a Blackwater hit squad to create openings on the highest court.

The simplest explanation is that the two are arrogant and overconfident of their ability to defy entropy in the same way Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were, that they’ll be able to call it a career on their terms and there’s no way their advanced age could ever have catastrophic downstream consequences for their side and even unravel so much of what they and others had worked so hard to build. They are, after all, boomers who think themselves invincible.

Then there’s the not that distant second most likely, lib hopium explanation: One or both of them floated retirement to John Thune and he told them point blank he couldn’t 100 percent guarantee 51 votes for a replacement with the midterms coming up. Thune also could’ve said they cannot at all rely on Trump not to nominate Mike Lee or some other mental patient now that Donald’s on the outs with Leonard Leo and might not look at anyone in the Federalist Society talent pool. Either way – or both ways since those possibilities aren’t necessarily in tension – it’s better to just keep their fingers crossed and hope that the Senate doesn’t flip, buying them another two years to figure it out even if their majority is likely to be smaller if it survives into next year. The worst outcome would be that one or both of them retire, the replacement nominations fail, the Senate flips, and then the seats stay empty going into a presidential election year that, at this point at least, favors the Democrats.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps gunboats fired on a tanker ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday after Tehran announced its re-closure, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Republicans are breathing a little easier this weekend, cautiously optimistic that President Donald Trump has found an off-ramp to end the war in Iran,” says the lede to Politico’s top story, printed at 7:00 AM EDT, headlined “‘Big sigh of relief’: Republicans finally get some good news,” lol.

A Friday New York Times investigation headlined “Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media” gets right at the inevitable endpoint of a decade of manipulation of social media by MAGA propagandists, a welcome streamlining for a movement that once relied on sophisticated algorithm-jacking by Cambridge Analytica before the 2016 election – and the Russian troll farms that put half-assed, comically inept efforts to keeping the zone flooded with their broken English and obvious copypasta well after the Orange Degenerate did scam his way into power the first time.

Sorry, “Internet Research Agency” dipshit, but Mother Russia still needs someone to test for Ukrainian landmines along the front. Show the same patriotic zeal there as you did on The Hill.

Anyway, the Times’s article’s pretty funny when they get down to the part where they write “It’s not clear who created the AI accounts, and determining whether they are the product of a hired content farm, a foreign influence operation, an experiment or something else is difficult,” as though it actually matters when TikTok is controlled by a pro-Trump cabal, Twitter by Elon Musk who is at the very least anti-anti-Trump these days, and Facebook/Instagram by fucking wiener Mark Zuckerberg who sucks up to the Orange Allah even after Trump threatened him with prison time. The platforms themselves could be generating the ridiculously anodyne content from within for all we know.

A filing in convicted felon President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS spotted by Lawfare’s Anna Bower says “Good cause exists to grant an extension in this matter while the Parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation. This limited pause will neither prejudice the Parties nor delay ultimate resolution,” which is certainly one way to write “I, the undersigned IRS counsel, will be fired by the President of the United States, acting in his official capacity, if I do not give the President of the United States, acting in his personal capacity, a $10 billion settlement whose cost will be borne by taxpayers. But we need more time to figure out which Sunday he’ll bomb Denmark at 2:00 AM EDT on so we can wire him the $10 billion at 2:07 AM.”

With the caveat that this is an internal poll from Platner’s campaign, it’s still aboslutely brutal for her as Platner leads the sitting Maine Governor in the Dem primary race to take on Susan Collins in November. “In an initial vote, Graham Platner leads Governor Janet Mills by 35 points, avoiding triggering a Ranked Choice Vote roll up and winning outright in the first round. Voters were also asked how certain they are to vote for their first choice candidate. Three-quarters of Platner voters say they are ‘very certain’ to vote for him (76 percent), which is half of the Democratic Primary electorate (49 percent). Only half (51 percent) of those who choose Mills are certain they will vote for her, just 15 pecrent of voters,” says the polling memo from the wacky Bernie-backed lib’s team.

pic.twitter.com/qY3wFwRCvg

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 17, 2026

Despite convicted felon President Trump and binge-drinking date rapist Pete Hegseth’s meltdowns about ever-surging AI giant Anthropic’s lack of servility – particularly CEO Dario Amodei’s public image as not wanting to suck Trump’s balls like the other guys – CNN reports Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has invited Amodei to meet with her to try to play nice in light of reports that the next version of Claude, dubbed “Mythos,” has Amodei staring into space, eyes watery, cigarette hanging from the mouth as he quotes from one of the darker parts of the Bhagavad Gita to describe its potential.

Seriously this thing is allegedly a Godzilla and the hype just might be kind of real given that (A) Claude is not stupid. ChatGPT is fucking stupid and confidently so. Grok’s an arrogant dick, while Gemini has a solid toolset but it’s no genius either. Claude is very, very smart. (B) Anthropic is raking in like $12 billion a month from enterprise clients and might be worth a trillion. (C) The Trump Regime is insecure enough to try to “blacklist” them simply for refusing to put Claude behind the controls of a lethal drone, for which Anthro sued and has a strong case. Altogether this is why it’s on Trump’s cancer-stricken babysitter to sit down for an adult chat while the rest of the nutcases stay away. At the very least Susie can ask Amodei to put a good word in for her if/when Mythos goes full Roko.

“The USA will get all Nuclear ‘Dust,’ created by our great B2 Bombers – No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. This deal is in no way subject to Lebanon, either, but the USA will, separately, work with Lebanon, and deal with the Hezboolah situation in an appropriate manner.”

“Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough!!!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Friday morning, apparently but indirectly denying the earlier reporting from Axios that he and his minions are considering releasing $20 billion in impounded oil revenue to get the Iranians to give up their nuclear program.

Also lol at Israel being “PROHIBITED” from bombing Lebanon. Isn’t that “weak on Hezbollah”?

“Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!” the deeply sick old man then posted.

This is why the spandex-wearing grapple-freak doesn’t go on mainstream media that much: They actually challenge him on the bullshit that he spews and pretty effectively spew it right back at him.

Remember all that shit about how giving money to Iran in exchange for complying with the terms of the nuclear deal was bad because they used that “fungible” money to fund the October 7th attacks?

“This is exactly why so many Americans and Israelis were DISGUSTED to see @JoeBiden give the Iranian regime $6 billion last month. Every dollar given to Iran funds terrorism in the Ayatollah’s quest to destroy Israel,” tweeted reptilian humanoid Rick Scott inside of three hours after news of the attack first broke that morning. Wasn’t until the next year he became “Genocide Joe” for not stopping “Bibi” from committing genocide in Gaza to get Genocide Don elected president again.

But hey, now that he’s back in power there’s no harm in handing Iran more than three times that amount as is being floated in the White House, according to Axios, who write “The US and Iran are negotiating over a three-page plan to end the war, with one element under discussion being that the US would release $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds in return for Iran giving up its stockpile of enriched uranium, according to two US officials and two additional sources briefed on the talks.”

Or maybe it was all complete horseshit in the first place and Iran never funded Hamas.

“In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep of Iran,” tweeted Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi on Friday morning. Not clear why they’re saying they’re giving up their leverage over Trump or why it should be trusted, but let’s see how it goes.

“IRAN HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE. THANK YOU!” the Orange Ayatollah posted minutes later, plainly thrilled by the news.

Trump then followed up with “THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100 PERCENT COMPLETE. THIS PROCESS SHOULD GO VERY QUICKLY IN THAT MOST OF THE POINTS ARE ALREADY NEGOTIATED,” the second post identifying the strait correctly.