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Former Trump Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf last month sat down for an interview with Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team investigating the post-2020 election coup attempt, specifically looking into if Donald had interfered with the DHS’s cybersecurity division’s election protection infrastructure before or after the election, Bloomberg reports.

Iowa conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats, described in a Thursday Politico piece as “president of The Family Leader, a socially conservative advocacy group, is one of the most sought-after endorsers in the Iowa Caucus,” claimed to a reporter that all the potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates have agreed to him to not stay too long in the race if (or when) it becomes clear that splitting the anti-Trump vote will just hand the primary to the Orange God Emperor.

“I tell them that there is an open and fair playing field here in the state of Iowa, and that we will introduce you to our base, and we will give you all kinds of opportunities for you to introduce yourself. And if you have the call in your heart to run for president, I am the last person to tell you to not to. But do not listen to your consultants, who have a vested interest in you staying in. I can help you decide if you should stay in or not. They all agree right away,” Vander Plaats said.

Well maybe “claimed” they said that isn’t so accurate as there’s no reason to question that Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Niki Haley, etc told Vander Plaats they would drop out at the right time. They definitely said that to him. That he’s apparently fucking stupid enough to believe them, so much so that he tells a national politics website they’ll do “the right thing” might be the real lede here.

Another GOP strategist sums up the situation pretty nicely. “Everybody on every campaign says, ‘Why is it our responsibility to keep Donald Trump from winning?'” said consultant Dave Carney.

Cowardly Republican Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was kicked off the Senate Armed Services Committee at some point last month by Minority Leader Moscow Mitch in retribution for a challenge to Mitch’s authority, Roll Call reported on Wednesday. The removal is the second such known punishment meted out by the Turtle Man, who last week kicked creepy white collar criminal Rick Scott off the Commerce Committee following Scott’s unsuccessful bid for Senate GOP leader.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman was hospitalized late Wednesday night for an undisclosed reason, though his office did say there was no sign he suffered another stroke, USA Today reports.

“Initial tests did not show evidence of a new stroke, but doctors are running more tests and John is remaining overnight for observation,” said spokesman Joe Cavello, adding that the Senator “is in good spirits and talking with his staff and family. We will provide more information when we have it.”

The personification of Junior’s stepmother Oedipal complex–she is, after all, only a few months older than Melania–Kimberly Guilfoyle decided that people really needed to hear the response to the State of the Union address given by the President of the United States from the woman known best for occupying The Legs Chair on the Fox bloviationpaloozafest “The Five” and making tens of thousands of dollars to stoke the hatred in the crowd on January 6th.

With a speaking style that’s part Eva Braun and part screech owl, Guilfoyle demonstrates her lack of volume control isn’t a skill everyone has and that for her, the best is behind her, not in fact, to come.  Fired from Fox for sexual harassment–an asset on the resume of any prospective member of the Trump family–Guilfoyle echoes the dystopian view depicted by Republican Arkansas Governor and drooling Trump fangirl Sarah Huckleberry Slanders Huckabee Sanders

Republican New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu took one of those officially unofficial steps to making a run for the White House, setting up a fundraising committee that can raise millions of dollars from unnamed donors for a campaign launch.

The Chris Christie of this election cycle established the “Live Free or Die” committee, a 501(c)(4) group that does not have the reporting requirements of a SuperPAC or an exploratory committee, which are more formal organizations.  Sununu would be the second formal challenger to the GOP’s titular head, Donald Trump, joining former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on the slate.

“I’m excited to talk about the successes that we’ve had in New Hampshire: lowering taxes, creating educational choices for parents and kids, and building opportunities for businesses to grow and thrive,” Sununu said in a statement to NBC News. “What we’ve done in New Hampshire is a great model for the federal government — specifically promoting the conservative tenets of limited government, local control, and individual responsibility.”

Context:  Sean Hannity has a three-hour nationally broadcast radio show and gets an hour of prime time air on Fox.  Sean Hannity is also someone who not only secretly advised former President Donald Trump without alerting his viewers about his intimate role, the so-called “news network” he works for did nothing to sanction him for a massive breach of professional journalistic ethics by not announcing a conflict of interest.  In fact, Fox has yet to discipline any of its on-air talent who were secretly advising the Trump White House and possibly colluding with it to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Quote from Hannity, talking about the bombshell that never happened in Wednesday’s performative hearing about government interference at Twitter during the attempt to make Hunter Biden’s laptop “a thing” where testimony was heard that Trump’s White House demanded tweets Trump thought insulting–or worse, that his staff thought would be insulting to him–be removed:  “Then they suppress the information.  Now, when you get to the bottom line here, what does that mean for this country and what should the penalty be for people that purposefully lie, mislead, propagandize against the American people.  Is there any law against them colluding like that?”

New York Magazine reports the board of directors of Project Veritas has put James O’Keefe, the founder of the organization, on paid unspecified leave.  A statement from the group’s board reads:

Like all newsrooms at this stage, the Project Veritas Board of Directors and Management are constantly evaluating what the best path forward is for the organization… There are 65+ employees at Project Veritas dedicated to continuing the mission to expose corruption, dishonesty, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions. … To our supporters: We hear you, we care about you, and we will never give up.”

According to an email sent to the gotcha! sketch artist political advocacy group, O’Keefe is taking “a few weeks of well-deserved PTO.”  Insiders, however, say the group’s leadership have tired of the constant stream of problems under O’Keefe’s leadership, from lawsuits filed by ex-employees, to accusations of O’Keefe sexually harassing targets, to innumerable stunts that have ended in embarrassments or arrests, to the purchase and distribution of Ashley Biden’s stolen diary.  The board will meet Friday when a decision on O’Keefe’s fate is expected.

The manufacturer of eye drops sold under multiple brands has recalled its products after they have been linked to 55 cases of infection by a rare antibiotic-resistant version of a bacteria that can cause permanent eye damage including blindness, NBC News reports.

Sold under the brand names Delsam Pharma and EzriCare Artificial Tears as well as some private labels, the artificial tears were manufactured in India by Global Pharma Healthcare.  The infections from antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa have been identified in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.  Most products were sold through online outlets, but at least one patient reported buying eye drops at Costco.

Consumers should check the manufacturing location of eyedrops to see if they were made by Global Pharma Healthcare and dispose of products made by that company.  If you use artificial tears and develop discharge from your eyes, blurry vision and a feeling like you’ve got something in your eye, see your doctor immediately.

I don’t know if this is a conservative bad take on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” or if Fox host Jesse Watters is simply suffering from Culture War Tourette’s.  Playing to people who didn’t watch Joe Biden’s dominant State of the Union, Watters decided to make it sound as though Biden’s speech was unhinged while praising the melodramatic self-promotion and god-worship spewed by Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

On Tuesday Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hosted a roundtable in which he laid plans for making it easier to sue newsrooms for “libel,” as has been a MAGA fantasy for years, which probably would have been fine if one of the guests wasn’t Libby Locke, an attorney representing Dominion Voting Systems in their case against Lindell and other 2020 election conspiracy freaks for lying about them.

Saying it was his fifteenth time talking to prosecutors, Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen met with prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office who are investigating hush money payments Trump and others made to protect his 2016 presidential bid.

The Associated Press notes that Cohen has been working with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who recently seated a new grand jury to investigate the legality of payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels and a content contract given by the publisher of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal.  Both women say they had extramarital affairs with Trump while he was married to his current wife, Melania, Trump’s third spouse.

Trump wrote checks, including while he was in the Oval Office, to Cohen to filter the money that went to the women, with American Media Inc. paying McDougal to write a fitness column and pose for magazine covers.  Having served jail time for his part in the scheme, Cohen laundered the money to avoid violations of election law and to make it moderately less easy to track, unlike Florida Man Matt Gaetz who paid his pimp, Joel Greenberg, via a financial app for the exact amount of money his two underage sex workers got from Greenberg.  (Allegedly.)

Twitter experienced a series of service interruptions Wednesday with users’ posts being blocked with a message that the user has exceeded their allowable number of tweets for the day,

“Sorry!  You have exceeded your Tweet limit.  Try Retweet again tomorrow,” the message read.  Twitter will limit the volume of tweets, retweets, and quote tweets a user can post to stop spammers, but the message was displayed to anyone using any of Twitter’s direct interfaces, TechCrunch reports.  Users accessing the platform through API were still able to tweet, but reportedly not reply.  The problem appeared to be cleared up by 5:55 p.m. ET, although some users had reported the platform was experiencing the problem intermittently.

We ran the whole hearing but this moment deserves its own article here, as angry redneck Congressman Clay Higgins emptily threatened the four former Twitter executives who testified Wednesday with prosecution for “knowingly and willingly” having interfered in the 2020 Presidential election, as if he could name a specific statute they violated when doing their jobs.

In related news, Rolling Stone reports Twitter kept an internal database of Republican requests for tweets they wanted censored, which yet again blatantly undermines the stated purpose of this shitshow, which was supposed politicized government influence over Twitter moderation.

The City of Centennial, Colorado have had enough of this shit and are suing to shut down a local swingers’ club called “The Office,” alleging zoning violations by the owners who lied about the true purpose of the 24/7 private club located in an otherwise nondescript office building, KDVR reports.

The owners of “The Office,” not named in the report, went out of their way in the February 2022 proposal to say the establishment would not offer “sexually oriented business services” and would only “allow consenting adults to engage with one another,” which in hindsight should’ve been a bright red flag. Court filings allege the word “SEX” is painted in large letters in one of the rooms.

Calling it “The Office” was the owners’ first mistake, as such a prosaic name would immediately imply it’s something else. Plus this article would’ve been more entertaining for our readers for want of just a little extra creativity in a generic-ish sounding DBA, such as “Colorado Exchange Partnership Inc,” “Pampas and Grass LLP,” or “Metro Denver Marriage Counseling Center.”

A three-judge panel on the Eighth Circuit of Appeals on Wednesday ruled Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s investigation into Republican donation processor WinRed’s recurring charge scam as violation of state consumer protection laws could proceed, the Daily Beast reports

“Minnesota’s deceptive-practices prohibition applies to WinRed and General Ellison can investigate whether WinRed violated it,” the judges wrote in their opinion. WinRed, which took a $6 million loss during the 2022 midterm cycle, had tried to argue that federal campaign finance laws superseded state-level oversight and not only did the judges reject this, they ruled that the FEC itself had asked Congress to enact laws to prohibit the recurring donations scam.

“Get ready to send them 500 billion dollars and take in 80 million ‘refugees'”

– The current top comment on the Gateway Pundit article “Update: More Than 11,000 People Confirmed Dead in Turkey Earthquake,” posted Wednesday afternoon.

Testifying to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, former Twitter exec Anika Navaroli told members that in 2019 the Trump White House demanded the company remove this tweet:

lol what a pussy ass bitch. tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president.

— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 9, 2019

Keep in mind the whole point of this hearing was for Jim Jordan and Jim Comer to show that the government – specifically the FBI – had improperly interfered in a private business by supposedly ordering the company to suppress the Hunterghazi story before the 2020 election and blah blah blah. So not only have they so far failed to do that, this hearing actually showed that the Trump Administration actually attempted to do what they maintain is a grave abuse of power.

State of The Union guest Doug Griffin, a Republican and father of fentanyl victim Courtney Griffin, recognized by President Biden toward the end of his State of The Union on Wednesday told the Independent he was disgusted with MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s heckling Biden.

“I was startled as that was the only time during the entire speech that he was heckled in that way. It was really nasty in what was a time of reverence. I think she crossed the line,” said Griffin, adding that he hoped Democrats and Republicans would stop treating the drug’s scourge as a partisan issue. “It’s a constant battle between far left and far right – a struggle to be able to do anything. And I think that was the perfect example of that when she broke in there. It’s not the time or the place to do that. And I’m a Republican – but the issue of drugs is not a partisan issue.”