Biden uses human shields to avoid Pelosi

NBC anchors play with traffic

Spotted: NBC News anchors Chuck Todd and Hallie Jackson furiously waving cars under a parking garage gate after the State of the Union address. Cars started to pile up at a broken pay station before an enthusiastic Jackson, who hosts Hallie Jackson NOW, yelled down the ramp for everyone to line up bumper-to-bumper so they could follow each other out before the gate closed in between cars.  “I feel bad,” Jackson lamented as one car missed the cutoff.

Joe Biden uses human shields to avoid Pelosi: source

Never fear, “Uncommitted” voters. It turns out Joe Biden may have more in common with Hamas than previously thought. A spy tells Cockburn that at a campaign event back in 2020, Biden used supporters as a human shield to keep him away from a different kind of threat: former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “Oh, you served in the military? Good, you can keep me away from Nancy,” Biden is rumored to have said.

Chuck D: 2024 election ‘a pair of octogenarians… one of them wrapped in narcissism’

Cockburn had an unusual Super Tuesday, watching the results roll in at a Foo Fighters benefit concert at the Anthem for Power to the Patients, a nonprofit demanding that hospitals be transparent about the cost of medical procedures. The rock megastars, whose frontman Dave Grohl is a DMV local, were introduced by fellow recording artists Chuck D of Public Enemy, Fat Joe and Valerie June. 

On the red carpet before the event, Cockburn asked Chuck if he was surprised that healthcare isn’t a bigger issue in the 2024 election cycle. “I’m surprised a lot of things aren’t bigger issues. We have weapons of mass distraction out there,” he said. “To young people, a pair of octogenarians running for public office and one of them just wrapped in narcissism, it’s like… there’s going to be a lot of important issues that are just going to be under the hula hoop.” 

In the arena, a slideshow of po-faced patients played on big screens as pristinely suited Hill staffers and grizzled rockers poured in. “This is one of the fanciest fucking places we’ve ever played in our lives — we don’t get chandeliers,” Grohl said during the Foos’ hour-and-forty-minute-long set of their greatest hits. “I feel underdressed.” He dedicated “My Hero” to Chuck D and reminisced about a series of DC rock ’n’ roll radio stations before delivering a blistering rendition of “Monkey Wrench.” The band also threw in covers of the Beastie Boys and the Ramones for good measure. A much less predictable evening than what Cockburn saw in the sixteen voting states.

Candace Owens’s Jewish questions

Another day, another Candace Owens podcast peppered with “Jewish questions.” This week the Daily Wire host released an episode about her spat with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and his daughter, in which she explained her perspective on what her old buddy Kanye West meant when he said “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” and speculated on the existence of Jewish “gangs” that threaten and intimate their opponents in Hollywood. 

“What if that is happening right now in Hollywood, if there is just a very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism?” asked Owens. “It’s food for thought, right? And I think again, there have been enough people that are speaking out about a ring in Hollywood, also a ring potentially in DC, that we should start to ask those questions, all of us.” 

Owens was attempting to suggest that she was talking about “these Jews” and not “all Jews.” Yet she managed to hit several antisemitic stereotypes while doing so, prompting calls for her to be fired by the Wire, whose founder Ben Shapiro is one of the most prominent Jews on the American right. 

Previously Wire top brass have stood by Owens under the guise of a commitment to free speech. But Cockburn understands that really it might just prove more expensive to fire Owens than it would to let her run the length of her contract, given the likelihood of her filing suit against her employer if she were axed for something she said on her show. In the meantime, expect her to keep “just asking questions…”

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