Knives Out Veep Edition
It's early yet
So we’ve been seeing more coverage like this in the past few weeks:
Now comes Kim Strassel at The Wall Street Journal to identify why this is happening:
This column reported last week on the bitterness Mr. Vance’s congressional colleagues are feeling over his continual absence. In recent administrations, governing majorities have come to rely on the vice president—who is ex officio Senate president—to act as primary liaison between the White House and Congress. Mr. Vance has blown off this important if unsung duty, preferring to stay in the spotlight. Tempers hit a boil last week when—at a pivotal legislative moment—Mr. Vance canceled a planned Tuesday House meeting in favor of appearing on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where he bashed Congress.
Republicans have mostly held their tongues on Mr. Vance out of deference. But the vice president has shown a lot of lefty leg lately: undermining Israel, panning free markets, touting a Christian-themed big-government agenda. That’s in addition to what many Republicans view as Mr. Vance’s naive approach to Iran. That elected Republicans were joining conservative commentators in a Vance rethink was worthy of reporting. And most readers would have seen the column for what it was: part of a growing GOP debate over who should lead the party in 2028.
Team Vance saw it as it sees any slight: an all-hands call to delegitimize a critic—to brand her a RINO, “establishment,” a liar, a captive tool, or part of some anti-JD “op.”
The Vance press team contacted my editors to demand corrections. They wanted a mea culpa for what I didn’t write—namely that Mr. Vance had showed up to the House . . . on Wednesday. Never mind that Congress’s anger stemmed from Mr. Vance’s decision to ditch them for Mr. Rogan’s program. They claimed that wasn’t “the reason” for canceling, though they didn’t provide an alternative explanation. What else was Mr. Vance doing in Austin, Texas?
Their final complaint was a hair-splitting gotcha: I wrote that “lawmakers can count on a few fingers the times former Sen. Vance has set foot in the Capitol.” That’s what lawmakers told me. Mr. Vance’s spokesman insisted the vice president had been there more than two dozen times since taking office. The phrase obviously referred to the infrequency with which Mr. Vance huddled with members of Congress to solve problems and wasn’t a literal count of the number of times he was physically present to attend a speech or break a tie.
Mr. Vance’s real bully-boy strength shows up with his online army, where a retinue of “influencers” and “journalists” stand ready with an arsenal of labels, whataboutisms and falsehoods. The tactics aren’t new. They are straight-up Saul Alinsky—pick the target, freeze it, personalize and polarize it—long practiced by the left. I wrote a whole book about that, “The Intimidation Game.” What is new is for the right to use such means in an effort to shut down conservative dissent.
Even as Mr. Vance’s team complained I’d omitted the word “Wednesday,” his deputy chief of staff went online to claim (falsely) that I—part of the “LEFT”—had written that Mr. Vance was “nowhere to be seen” on “Tuesday or Wednesday,” above a picture showing the vice president in Congress on Wednesday. That was the cue to a swarm of Mr. Vance’s social-media minions. They labeled me a spineless leftist, their proof a series of lame rejoinders: Yeah, but the Senate sucks! Yeah, but what about Mitch McConnell? Yeah, but, you probably don’t even like the SAVE America Act! Yeah, but you’re a loser.
A reported piece on this is in the Washington Post today:
A Washington Post analysis of conservative influencers’ posts on X found that criticism of Vance spiked immediately after his appearance on Rogan’s podcast.
Critical posts poured in from prominent commentators including Ben Shapiro, Marc Thiessen and Batya Ungar-Sargon, as well as online right-wing influencers and little-known X users whose anti-Vance posts quickly gained traction. Some of the users who pledged to oppose Vance and support Rubio in 2028 had profiles that strongly suggested they aren’t American voters and are based in other countries.
It was “obvious to anyone with an IQ above 70″ that the barrage of attacks has been “totally inauthentic and probably coordinated to a certain extent,” the close Vance ally said.
The upsurge in online criticism “hasn’t been reflected in any data correlating with Vance’s image among GOP voters, which currently tracks President Trump’s image to a T,” the person said. “If it were organic, authentic or effective,” Vance’s favorability rating with Republican voters would have cratered over the past nine months, since the intense online criticism first peaked, the person said. “And that just hasn’t happened.”
A spokesperson for the vice president said Vance’s only focus is “fighting for the president’s agenda and delivering wins for the American people,” and that he is not concerned with social media.
Vance allies have pushed back publicly against some of the attacks, at times calling attention to common language used among those posting insults.
Jon Schweppe, a Vance supporter and senior adviser at the American Principles Project, who worked for Trump’s Federal Trade Commission until earlier this year, posted a chart on X last week that showed the vice president’s favorability among Republicans had remained steady despite an “anti-Vance op.” His post quickly received dozens of replies from accounts that didn’t follow him — all attacking Vance. Schweppe described the response as curious, since his post had not been shared by any high-follower accounts.
“Primary season — I guess it’s beginning before the midterms this year,” Schweppe said, adding that Vance’s detractors are “trying to create a divide and separate him from the president.”
“There’s going to be folks within the party structure, within the influencer structure, who are going to try to knock him down a few pegs in hope that a challenger can emerge to beat him, and that’s just what we’re seeing,” Schweppe said. “But it’s absolutely organized.”
My question to Team Vance would be: But what if it isn’t?
The Wiki War Over Nick Shirley
When the Wikipedia entry was created days after the video went live, its opening line was straightforward. Shirley was “an American independent journalist and YouTuber,” known for “investigative reporting on government spending, immigration, and alleged fraud.” There was no verdict on his work and, just as importantly, no ideological label. That would quickly change.
On January 14, the word “unsubstantiated” entered the lead when an editor, High Professor, added that the allegations were “described as unsubstantiated.” Over the subsequent minutes, a miniature edit-war consisting of the removal and addition of the “unsubstantiated” claim ensued. It foreshadowed activity that would unfold on the page over the next six months.
By 5:15 UTC that morning, another editor, CNMall41, had reverted the “unsubstantiated” edit. A third editor, Assorted-Interests, restored it; hours later a fourth editor, PositivelyUncertain, tore it back out, arguing the sourcing was thin — “NBC only mentions it in passing, CNN doesn’t say that at all.” By 2 a.m. UTC on the 15th, High Professor restored it.
The sentence quickly evolved, losing its hedge as a claim made by others: “described as unsubstantiated” became, in an edit by AlsoWukai, “were unsubstantiated.” The perspective of an unnamed few was folded into disembodied truth.
Few Wikipedia edit wars with this kind of cultural charge end quickly, or at all. This case was no different. On January 16, an editor named Studious Cat stripped the claim three times in two hours, arguing it was “demonstrably false” that Shirley’s claims against daycare centers were unsubstantiated; Denniss, Sibshops, and AzureCitizen reverted him each time. Like waves of troops thrown against an unrelenting front, editor after editor fought for the glory: Isaidnoway, Ethiopian Epic, NathanBru, Jokerpower71, Friedbyrd, and Wrolen all removed or softened the line, and each time it came back, replaced — in almost every instance — by the same few hands.
All told, the sentence was cut and restored more than 20 times. But the impact of one account stood out above all.
While Wikipedialand was carrying on this ideological edit war dressed up in procedural debate, reality kept complicating things. In April, FBI and Homeland Security agents executed 22 search warrants against Minnesota daycare and other facilities, including the Quality Learning Center, one of the daycare centers Shirley had visited — which drew social media plaudits for signage misspelling the word “learning.” (The center is now closed.)
This month, Fahima Mahamud, owner of Future Leaders Center, another daycare center featured in Shirley’s December video, pleaded guilty to the charges and tried to board a flight to London the same day she told the state she was closing.
Wikipedians argued fiercely that these charges did not align with Shirley’s claims because they centered on fraud connected to a state-funded food program, rather than daycare center administrators inflating their headcounts.
Mamdani and Ms. Rachel, War Profiteers
Sure, the mayor is genuinely no fan of the Jews; he and his wife have been obsessively demonizing the Jewish state for years while cheering on those meek humanitarians over at Hamas.
But, as Tuesday’s video makes all too clear, the mayor’s own biases are a sideshow, not the main attraction.
At heart, he’s a theater kid starved for attention — and he knows that nothing gets his base more riled up than squawking about death, war and suffering: the video received 2.3 million views the day Mamdani posted it on YouTube.
It’s politics as imagined by a narcissistic, solipsistic, dim millennial whose privileged upbringing featured so little by way of real-world experience that he felt compelled to find purpose elsewhere.
And he found it, like all too many members of his screen-addled generation, in the cheap and meaningless validation that comes with chasing clicks and likes online.
He is hardly alone in this scam.
The mayor’s bestie, the online toddler influencer known as Ms. Rachel, recently took a sharp turn into politics, posting less about the ABCs and more about “Palestine” — and amassing a fortune along the way.
The numbers tell the story.
In 2023, before Hamas’ marauders crossed into Israel to behead babies, rape teenage girls and kidnap hundreds of innocent civilians, Ms. Rachel enjoyed a sizable but solid audience of about 5 million viewers.
Once she started posting and speaking incessantly about Gaza — offering only grudging empathy, at best, to the Israeli children slaughtered in their beds or held hostage in dark tunnels by vile terrorists — her numbers zoomed: As of this year, her channel boasts more than 20 million subscribers.
Because preening about war while showing no real interest in its causes and making no real effort to help bring about a resolution is one heck of a business model.
Mamdani, the drama club’s alpha dog, was paying attention.
He’s realized that if a dimwitted kids’ entertainer with a YouTube channel can turn “caring about Gaza” into a multimillion-dollar empire, and if a petty provocateur like Hasan Piker can use it to brand himself as the Democrat Party’s new kingmaker, then a clever and ambitious cad with no moral scruples can catapult the same sentiment into a stellar political career.
✍️ Feature
🌍 Foreign
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Is Losing Patience Over an Iran War With No Clear End in Sight
The Wall Street Journal: The Houthis Have Opened a New Front in the U.S.-Iran War
Daily Wire: Why Hasn’t Washington Pressed Qatar To Extradite Terrorists?
National Interest: How to Get the Other Half of U.S. Economic Statecraft Right
The New York Times: The Case for Elbridge Colby’s Defense Strategy
New York Post: Cops Fume as Mamdani Urges New Yorkers to Protest Netanyahu
🏛️ Domestic
The New York Times: Trump, Thune, and the Senate Election Bill
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Unveils New Tariffs Designed to Withstand Legal Scrutiny
Axios: House and Senate Republicans Push Reconciliation, SAVE Act
Daily Wire: Meet the Republicans Running for Re-Election on Amnesty
Politico: Contractor Disputes Mikie Sherrill’s Claims of New Jersey Voter Registration Software Error
Politico: House Members Stare Down a Grueling Summer on the Campaign Trail
Politico: Lisa Murkowski and the Todd Blanche Confirmation Fight
🗳️ 2028
📰 Media
💻 Tech
The New York Times: Risky Trips and the Social Media Travel Trap
City Journal: Prediction Market Ad Regulations Target Polymarket and Kalshi
🧬 Health
🏈 Sports
Daily Wire: Caitlin Clark’s Bodyguard Is Now Fighting for Us
Daily Wire: The Strange New Rules for Women’s Sports Coverage
ESPN: LeBron James and Closing the Chapter on Heat/Cavaliers Reunion Talk
🎭 Culture & Hollywood
Daily Wire: The Metaphysical Yin and Yang of Christopher Nolan and Taylor Swift
The Hollywood Reporter: Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Pause Extended
Variety: ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Actress Mary Kate Golding Dead After Stabbing
🪶 Quote
“Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.”
― Ovid