The Poolish - National Security Edition, 29 September 2024

The Russians are coming, and more news

I’ve been away on vacation for a couple of weeks so of course that’s when everyone started going really insane and I fell out of the loop for the juiciest stuff. Now I’m back and apparently everyone’s eating cats and dogs and the Russians and the Iranians and God knows who else is causing chaos with what has otherwise been a super normal American election. Here’s a summary of the latest nightmares.

Russian Interference Denier Exhausted By Constant Need to Excuse Russia's Ongoing Interference

After Tenet Media, the company behind oxygen thieves like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Lauren Southern, was revealed in early September to be illegally funded by the Russian state, nobody is more upset by this turn of events than journalist Matt Taibbi, who has been insisting for years that Russia does not interfere in America’s media or elections.

Understandably, the most frustrating thing about being making Russia’s innocence your hill to die on is when Russia keeps stubbornly doing the thing. It’s almost like the Russian state doesn’t care about Matt’s career at all!

Nevertheless, immediately after the Tenet scandal hit, Taibbi gave one smug statement about how it’s all bullshit and then dumped an article about the Deep State Covid conspiracy, as that’s what really matters right now and always.

Interesting to note that nobody else seems to deny that this is a thing, up to and including the very people being accused of receiving dark Russian money. Each of their responses has been more indignant than the last about their victimhood and how they truly knew nothing about this and their lawyers are ready to “handle” anyone who suggests otherwise.

The thing that stretches credulity the most about this, naturally, is that anyone seriously thought someone was paying that amount of money to Benny Johnson because they enjoyed his content.

Meanwhile, our intrepid journalist Matt Taibbi will be avoiding this story in style this weekend as he jets off to DC to be a featured speaker at something called “Rescue the Republic,” a full weekend of whatever B- and C- list MAGA dipshits aren’t too busy in the Trump campaign trail to sell fake masculinity supplements and propaganda to the normies. This photo of him shows the exact moment he realises he’s only there because they couldn’t book Glenn Greenwald.

Elon Musk Mysteriously Backpedals on Kamala Harris Murder Fantasy

When yet another psycho was taken down after pointing a gun in Donald Trump’s direction, the online right up to and including Trump’s own son immediately broke into celebratory adulation. Surely this absolutely assures Trump’s victory in November! Voting against somebody who survived an assassination would be reprehensible, but voting against somebody who survived two assassinations is illegal. It’s actually one of the constitutional amendments. I dunno, number 12 or something.

All of the standard conspiracies and revenge fantasies came out. The usual stuff. The Libertarian Party casually tweeted that somebody needs to murder Kamala Harris.

Why would Elon Musk allow such dangerous rhetoric on his website? That’s a rhetorical question because we all know why. Musk has spent the past year repeatedly insisting that Harris winning this election will mean the actual end of America and/or human civilization depending on how deep of a ketamine hole he’s in at the time so he’s not exactly closed-minded to the idea. Shortly after the Party of Freedom posted their call for assassination, Elon chimed in:

What happened next requires some context. See, throwing a statement like this about a president or vice president against the wall is kind of what the government calls an actionable threat. One of my bosses at Cracked once had his ass hauled in front of the FBI just for writing a fictional comedy article that mentioned kidnapping the president’s daughter. And he didn’t have a massive platform complete with an army of die-hard sycophants.

With that in mind, consider when this Farzad guy lightly warned him to watch his footing and Musk responded by doubling all the way down.

Elon then took an almost unheard of break from tweeting before mysteriously deleting his tweet. This is speculation, but we can only assume that he started receiving phone calls and door knocks from so many three letter agencies that we haven’t even heard of some of them, because the next thing we know he’s pulling the old “haha j/k” gambit.

It’s okay guys, he was just telling a funny joke about killing Kamala Harris. It’s one of those dry jokes that skilled comedians play absolutely straight without smiling. You know, like Andy Kaufman or somebody.

Assuming he’s telling the truth about what was really going through his mind (he’s not, btw) it kind of makes you think—isn’t it just as bad when a powerful man in charge of a not insignificant chunk of the nation’s commnications and security apparatus jokes about killing the Vice President?

It's Weird Conservative Sex Scandal Day