Conservative quasi-news outlet Newsmax issued a formal apology to Eric Coomer, the director of public strategy and security at Dominion Voting Systems, on Friday, rescinding claims made by Newsmax hosts and guests regarding Coomer and the security of the November 2020 elections.

“There are several facts that our viewers should be aware of. Newsmax has found no evidence that Dr. Coomer interfered with Dominion voting machines or voting software in any way, nor that Dr. Coomer ever claimed to have done so,” the statement reads in part.  “Nor has Newsmax found any evidence that Dr. Coomer ever participated in any conversation with members of ‘Antifa,’ nor that he was directly involved with any partisan political organization.”

After the release of the statement, Coomer dropped a defamation suit he had filed against the broadcaster, according to the Associated Press.  Coomer continues pursuing lawsuits against the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado activist Joseph Oltmann and One America News Network.

“Congratulations to One America News @OANN on their great ratings surge. Also, for their love of the United States of America!” – Statement from the Office of the Fat Orange Bastard.

Note the brevity (only 126 characters) and the use of the “@” symbol as if a statement emailed to reporters is going to “tag” OAN like it would if this had been tweeted. There’s also the intrinsic dumbassery of this statement, because, as Daily Beast reporter Justin Baragona points out (link above), OAN’s viewership is too small to be monitored by Nielsen. So this “surge” is non-existent and originated as either a badly mangled piece of secondhand information Trump got in his head, or he just simply made it up out of whole cloth. Neither would be surprising.

UPDATE I deleted retweet that showed ballot at audit table where ex GOP State Rep. Anthony Kern was counting ballots. Media agreed not to show ballots when shooting images/video at Coliseum. But point remains: Today, Kern counting ballots. Jan. 6, he was at Capitol insurrection. pic.twitter.com/ZGy0Ds3JjV

— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) April 30, 2021

Former Republican Arizona state legislator who openly bragged about taking part in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol on his social media accounts is now one of the people working with the Cyber Ninjas undertaking a recount of the ballots in Arizona.

The Department of Defense has announced that it has begun notifying contractors that it is canceling further construction on the border wall ordered by Donald Trump and that it will terminate related contracts, Politico reports.

“DoD has begun taking all necessary actions to cancel border barrier projects and to coordinate with interagency partners,” Pentagon spokesperson Jamal Brown said in a statement. “Today’s action reflects this Administration’s continued commitment to defending our nation and supporting our service members and their families.”

President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of stopping construction of the border wall, a project critics call an ineffective boondoggle that would do nothing to substantially cut cross-border traffic but whose supporters say is necessary because without it, the United States has no borders and is therefore not really a nation, although more than 220 years of history shows otherwise.

“Although there is no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing in the 2020 election, many still say that Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to become president. The poll suggests the share of Americans who believe that falsehood has held roughly steady since just before he took office in January at 30%. Those doubts are concentrated among Republicans, 70% of whom say they do not think Biden won enough votes to be president. But the share of Republicans who falsely say there is solid evidence that Biden did not win has dropped from 58% in January to 50% now” – CNN.

Podcast host (and person who made a living force-feeding animal entrails to fame-seeking reality show contestants) Joe Rogan admitted today that no one should listen to any medical advice he doles out.

“I’m not a doctor.  I’m a fucking moron,” Rogan noted, stating the obvious, on his podcast two days after saying that healthy young adults shouldn’t get the coronavirus vaccine.  “I’m not a respected source of information even for me. But I at least try to be honest about what I’m saying.”

The newly-honest and yet still uninformed non-virologist Rogan said earlier that he wouldn’t advise vaccinations to otherwise healthy people.  “If you’re like 21 years old and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated,’ I say no … If you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time and you’re young and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this.”

Fox News: “More than a dozen House Republicans Friday are questioning Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on whether there ‘was any political interference’ in the final census numbers used to decide how many House members each state will get for the coming decade. The letter, first obtained by Fox News, is led by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. The Republican House members cited gaps between the number of House seats some right-leaning states were projected to gain – or some left-leaning states were projected to lose – and the final results announced this week. They told Raimondo, overseeing the Census Bureau, that they ‘have questions about the methodology and the role the Biden White House may have played in releasing these numbers.'”

I am very excited to share the cover for my forthcoming book: The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump's America, which is coming out on June 29. You can preorder here: https://t.co/CUexA6yizI

I hope you'll buy a copy and encourage others to the same! pic.twitter.com/aPl3CbT4iF

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) April 30, 2021

Published in The Atlantic on October 3, 2018, right in the midst of that four year shitshow, “The Cruelty is The Point” by Adam Serwer is probably as close to the one truly definitive statement of Trump fandom you will ever find. The summary line: “President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear” sums it up, but you are doing yourself a grave disservice if you voted against the fat orange bastard and haven’t read it. At the risk of going full stan, I will say it’s akin to “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. Just a damn good piece and one for future historians to examine as contemporaneous look at the Trump years.

“President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are talking again, since the former president called his former No. 2 when Pence recently had pacemaker surgery, retired Army Lt. General Keith Kellogg said Friday. The retired general was National Security Council chief of staff under Trump and National Security adviser to Pence. ‘Absolutely. I really do,’ Kellogg said Friday on the ‘John Solomon Reports’ podcast, on whether Trump and Pence can repair their relationship.”

“‘They’re talking together. I know the president called him when he had his operation just recently on the pacemaker. And I know they’re talking.’ Trump had previously said he was ‘disappointed’ in Pence for accepting the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, and their relationship had been strained ever since” says Solomon’s EXCLUSIVE BREAKING article at JustTheNews.com, posted days after the Wall Street Journal reported Johnnie could possibly be in deep shit with the FBI.

“Unfortunately, the Back the Blue Rally in Columbus, Ohio, where we expected thousands of freedom-loving Americans to come out in support of our Law Enforcement Officers, has been postponed. I received a call last night by one of the organizers with information about the rally that I find incredibly disturbing and infuriating. I believe everyone needs to know the truth. The organizers, who have held other events at the Capitol, paid for and received a permit for the Back the Blue Rally for Saturday, May 1st” evil Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene writes.

“Less than 48 hours the event, they received from Ohio State Patrol telling them that a large counter ‘protest’ by Black Lives Matter and Antifa was being planned and there would be no security fencing provided for the and paid for rally. At all their events they have had at the Columbus Capitol in the past, there has security fencing provided and a counter protest area provided so that everyone’s first amendment rights were met and so that everyone’s security needs were met. However, within less than 48 hours before the event, this time all past security measures were thrown out the window. Why?”

You can read the rest of Greene’s rant here, if you really want to. There’s no real reason for this I can discern besides that she’s a fucking asshole and nobody wanted her visiting Columbus, so officials there came up with a bureaucratic excuse to make it clear she’s not welcome.

We couldn’t have done it without y’all 💙 https://t.co/oxuQ5VLDuw

— Seattle Kraken (@SeattleKraken) April 30, 2021

Business Insider: “Josh Duggar, one of the stars of the since-cancelled TLC reality show ’19 Kids and Counting,’ pleaded not guilty on Friday to receiving and possessing child pornography. Federal prosecutors announced in a press release that Duggar ‘allegedly used the internet to download child sexual abuse material.’ Some of that material involved children under the age of 12, the release said. Prosecutors said Duggar could face 20 years in prison and fines up to $250,000 if he is convicted. At an arraignment hearing in federal court in Arkansas, Chief Magistrate Judge Erin Wiedemann told Duggar’s lawyers that ‘given the nature of the charges against him,’ Duggar would likely need to reside with a ‘third-party custodian’ who could ensure he complies with his bond conditions. That custodian must live in a home where there are no minors, Wiedemann said.”

In its perpetual solution in search of a problem, Republicans in the Louisiana legislature are pushing a ban on transgender participating in sports, but GOP members of the state government can’t point to a specific case to rally around, according to The Advocate.

As the state senate debates SB 156, which would limit participating on girls’ and women’s sports teams to those who are “biological females,” presumably those labeled female at birth.  There is no provision in the bill for banning “biological females” from participating on boys’ and men’s teams.  Republican state senator Beth Mizell of Franklintown stated that she sponsored the bill because without it, there would “no longer be women’s sports.”

However, when questioned by Democratic state senator Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge asked Mizell to cite one case of a transgender female participating in a sport in the state, Mizell was flummoxed. 

“Kyrgyzstan said at least 31 people were killed after heavy clashes at its disputed border with Tajikistan, as officials from the two ex-Soviet countries met Friday in a bid to defuse tensions. Clashes between communities over land and water along the pair’s long-contested border are regular occurrences, with border guards often getting involved.”

“But shooting that broke out Thursday between the two militaries was the heaviest fighting in years and raised fears that it might escalate into a wider conflict. Tajikistan, a closed, authoritarian state, has yet to officially acknowledge any deaths from the clashes between servicemen on Thursday. The Kyrgyz health ministry said Friday that Kyrgyzstan had suffered at least 154 casualties, including 31 deaths in the latest bout of violence. The leaders of both sides remained in touch Friday, offering hope that the conflict – which began after communities clashed over an important piece of river infrastructure – can be cooled” – AFP.

https://twitter.com/danielmgmoylan/status/1388066714714316806

“Sit down, my lord.  I have some bad news about South Vietnam for you.”

Daily Beast: “On Wednesday, the apartment and office of former New York City mayor and Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani were raided by the feds. On Thursday, he picked up the phone and called Alan Dershowitz. ‘I had spoken out a number of times against the raid, [and on Thursday] Giuliani called me and asked me if I would share that view with his lawyers,’ Dershowitz, a celebrity attorney and Democrat who served on then-President Trump’s defense team in the first impeachment trial, said in a phone interview Friday morning. Dershowitz continued that he would be happy to talk to Giuliani’s lawyers about the Fourth Amendment issues surrounding the search of Giuliani’s apartment and the seizure of some of his electronic devices ‘as a sounding board,’ but he noted that he hadn’t heard from his lawyers yet.”

“Dershowitz said he has agreed to offer Giuliani and his team ‘constitutional advice’ following the raid, but isn’t one of his counsels of record. Dershowitz reiterated that his position is that ‘a subpoena should be the first recourse.’ ‘You do a search warrant only when you have reason to believe that the lawyer would destroy evidence,’ Dershowitz said, adding that the Fourth Amendment provides particular protections when it comes to ‘lawyers and doctors and priests – anybody who has privileged information.’ Robert Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer and longtime friend, declined to say whether or not he’d connected with Dershowitz, or had been asked to yet.”

“Florida is on track to be the first state in the nation to punish social media companies that ban politicians like former President Donald Trump under a bill approved Thursday by the state’s Republican-led Legislature. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and close Trump ally who called for the bill’s passage, is expected to sign the legislation into law, but the proposal appears destined to be challenged in court after a tech industry trade group called it a violation of the First Amendment speech rights of corporations. Republicans have been barraging Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other tech companies for booting Trump and other conservatives from their platforms after violations of the companies’ rules, including bans on the promotion of violence related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol” NBC News reports.

“Republicans have called social media bans unfair censorship, and this month Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas came close to agreeing, writing in an opinion that legislators could be justified if they passed laws requiring social media to carry all views. The Florida bill would prohibit social media companies from knowingly ‘deplatforming’ political candidates, meaning a service could not “permanently delete or ban” a candidate. Suspensions of up to 14 days would still be allowed, and a service could remove individual posts that violate its terms of service. The state’s elections commission would be empowered to fine a social media company $250,000 a day for statewide candidates and $25,000 a day for other candidates if a company’s actions are found to violate the law, which also requires the companies to provide information about takedowns and apply rules consistently. The proposed fines were lower in the original bill, but on Tuesday the Florida state House raised them in an amendment.”

Hunter Biden just landed a speaking gig to talk with students about “fake news.”

What’s next?

Jack Dorsey gets a speaking tour to talk free speech?

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) April 30, 2021