ELON MUSK WILL NEVER RECOVER FROM THIS:

As for Rubin herself, as Dan McLaughlin tweets, “More people on the center-left & left (such as Jennifer Rubin) abandoning Twitter means only deepening their ideological cocoon while limiting their audience reach. Seems a bad trade!”

HOW IT STARTED: Why Isn’t the President Angry?

Obama’s aloofness was practiced, which is why he needed to be instructed out of it. But Joe Biden’s detachment is something else. If his administration’s bottomless tolerance for disruptive and unsympathetic anti-Israel demonstrators and its lopsided fixation with policing the conduct of Israel’s war against a mutual adversary didn’t come off as blinkered before, it most certainly will now. Maintaining that myopia still would reflect a degree of indifference to our shared reality that Americans should not tolerate in our president.

Perhaps the president isn’t indifferent. Maybe he’s simply scared — not just for his own reelection prospects, tenuous though they may be, but of what acknowledging Hamas’s actions obliges him to do. That diagnosis would make sense. His administration has been plagued by fear; fear of Russian escalation if they gave Ukraine the tools to win its war rather than simply not lose, fear of what the Taliban would do if the U.S. blew through a self-set deadline to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, fear of having to restore stability to a region rocked by Iranian-backed terrorist attacks on Americans and their allies. The White House projects weakness and intimidation, a posture that encourages our adversaries. America’s enemies do not understand where Biden’s lines are, and they will keep testing him until they find one. This must be it.

Biden has shown incalculable patience with Hamas’s dilatory tactics, but that patience should reach its end with the news that it was all a game. The president and the nation he leads have been soundly embarrassed. It’s incumbent on Biden to summon at least some of the rage his countrymen feel and act accordingly. Americans and the world are watching, Mr. President. It’s your move.

—Noah Rothman, NRO, April 11, 2024.

How it’s going: Biden snaps at Israeli reporter in latest terse moment with media: ‘Think you can keep from getting hit in the head by a camera behind you?’

Lame-duck President Biden rounded on an Israeli TV reporter Tuesday after the correspondent asked whether Biden believed an agreement to free dozens of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip is possible before he leaves office in January

“President Biden, do you think we can get a hostage deal by the end of your term?” Israel Channel 13’s Neria Kraus asked Biden, 81, ahead of his meeting with Isaac Herzog, president of the Jewish state.

“Do you think you can keep from getting hit in the head by a — a camera behind you?” snapped an irritated-looking Biden in response.

Kraus caught the moment on video and appeared to hold back laughter as Biden pivoted to his Oval Office meeting with Herzog, whom he hailed as “a personal friend.”

The New York Post today.

I am legitimately jealous of Joe Biden right now. He's got it made. Literal Senioritis, and he doesn't give a hoot.

And why should he? He still gets the free airy-plane rides, nobody really cares that he isn't doing anything, and he didn't lose an election. What's not to like? https://t.co/s9qRWnDaz9

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) November 12, 2024

Finally, with less than 70 days left in his administration, Biden found an issue involving Israel to be passionate about: being as crude and insulting to an Israeli reporter as he’s been throughout his career with American journalists — the vast majority of whom have been his party’s operatives with bylines.

EXILE ON MAIN STREET: Rolling Stone Validates Early Trump Staff Picks by Labeling Them THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.

Hey, not everybody can be as respectable as Charles Manson and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, you know.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BEES: Well-lit cities keeping bees awake and ruining their love life, claims study.

Light pollution is making bees sleep-deprived and harming their mating waggle dance, a study has found.

Artificial light from vehicles, street lights, road signs and other sources are seeping into the natural world and increasingly disrupting the lives of insects and also animals.

A study of honey bees has found that exposure to light around the clock disrupts the internal body clock of the insects and causes them to sleep less.

Sleep deprivation has been linked to a worsening of the waggle dance which is essential to how the bees find a mate and breed.

The waggle dance is also an intricate communication system between the bees which informs hive mates about the location of food sources.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, compared groups of bees that enjoyed normal sleep in the dark with others that were subjected to continuous artificial light.

Gooder and harder, California – your bourgeois desire to want to be able to walk home at night in safety is how you get the Asian Murder Hornets. Or something far, far worse:

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD ONCE AGAIN DOING STRAIGHT UP REPORTAGE: Experts Confirm Batman: The Animated Series Was Pinnacle Of Human Civilization.

“The data doesn’t lie. It’s the objective truth that when Kevin Conroy landed the role of Batman for the animated series in 1992 that was the exact moment when human civilization reached its highest aspirations in art and culture,” said polymath genius Conrad Leopold Winston from his top-secret hi-tech lab staffed by a team of crack experts working around the clock to understand and prevent the demise of our species.

“Apathy will set in as humanity begins to realize that nothing it can come up with will ever approach the glory that is Batman: The Animated Series. We are fated to see civilization collapse as everyone stops trying. We can only look back with nostalgia. Humanity has no future,” he added with a sigh.

“It was a banger,” added fellow expert Gordon Cornellius Augustus while looking at still frames from the show with his electron microscope. “Absolutely everything lined up on this one. The show was sophisticated, despite the trappings of ostensibly being a simple after-school cartoon that caused children to procrastinate on their homework. Its mature tone and film noir aesthetics combined with stellar orchestrated music and expert-level writing which always remained faithful to the source material made Batman: The Animated Series stand out.”

Endorsed.

NEW SHERIFF ON THE WAY:

The Old Border Czar VS The New Border Czar pic.twitter.com/9Ie8JRsroR

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 12, 2024

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You may have seen on YouTube videos that are AI fever dream interpretations of say, what a Star Wars movie would have looked like if it had been made in the 1950s:

Here’s how those videos are made using AI and assembled on everyday video editing software:

MSNBC LOSES OVER HALF OF ITS PRIMETIME AUDIENCE AS RATINGS TANK:

MSNBC once again beat CNN in the ratings game, but for all the wrong reasons.

New Nielsen ratings show the liberal network has lost more than half of its primetime audience since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory last week, a sea change that signals its viewers are discouraged and tired of the spin. Fox News reported that MSNBC saw a 54% ratings drop after averaging 1.1 million primetime viewers for most of October. That number stood at 736,000 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week. The change comes as Fox News’s viewership climbed 61% in the same three-day period, a “Trump bump” that has executives elated.

MSNBC will likely claw some percentage of their audience back if they once again go full on into #resistance porn as they did from 2017-to early 2021. But in any case, a percentage of their audience might not be the only thing the cable channel loses going forward: Report: Comcast to Put MSNBC and Oprah Founded Oxygen Networks Up For Sale in Cable TV Sell Off.

Comcast, the media powerhouse behind NBCUniversal, is stirring up major buzz in the entertainment industry. The company recently announced that it’s considering a significant move: separating from several of its top cable networks, including MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, and Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen. This surprising revelation came from Comcast President Mike Cavanagh during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, and it has left media analysts and TV enthusiasts asking a ton of questions about the future of these beloved channels.

While Comcast’s broadcast network NBC and its streaming service Peacock will be spared from this proposed separation, it’s a clear signal that the cable TV world is shifting dramatically—and Comcast might be the next major company to embrace that change.

As John Nolte adds: Signs of the Collapse of Corporate Media Influence Are Everywhere.

Related:

Glorious. pic.twitter.com/cmDqKl9Dr9

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 12, 2024

QUESTION ASKED: Will Trump’s new cabinet be good for Israel?

Trump has pleased Jewish supporters with three early Cabinet-level appointments. Trump chose New York Representative and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik to be his ambassador to the United Nations. There, Stefanik plans to advance “America First peace through strength leadership on the world stage.”

Stefanik has repeatedly spoken in support of Israel and Israeli hostages since October 7. However, she truly stood out and won many Jewish fans with her tough questioning of university presidents during the House’s campus antisemitism hearings last academic year. Given that Israel remains the United Nation’s idee fixe, and the institution remains awash in antisemitism, Stefanik should be well prepared for her new position.

Trump’s second appointment is also a New Yorker. Trump has tapped former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, a Jewish Republican, to be his Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. Before New York’s Jewish Democrats — particularly the Orthodox — crossed over to vote for Trump this month, they voted for Zeldin when he ran for governor of New York as a voice of moderation, back in 2022. Zeldin posted on Twitter/X, “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalise our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

The third Cabinet-level appointment, by far the biggest name so far, is reported to be Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. Rubio has represented Florida’s sizeable Jewish community in the Senate since his election in 2010. The New York Times characterised Rubio as “a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China and Iran in particular.” Rubio is also knowledgeable about foreign policy, fluent in all the issues he would have to handle as Secretary. Finally, it’s worth noting that unlike others who could have been named as Trump’s Secretary of State, Rubio is not an isolationist and would immediately reverse Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s intense hostile-to-Israel energy. America’s allies abroad should be cheered by Rubio’s selection.

* * * * * * * *

There are still consequential positions like Secretary of Defense and Attorney General that remain unclaimed, but Trump is off to a strong start with his nominations. American Jews who supported Trump over concerns about antisemitism and Israel should feel comfortable that Trump sees them, and their concerns should be addressed by the incoming administration. Change is coming.

Worst. Hitler. Ever.

Related: Trump nominates Mike Huckabee for US ambassador to Israel.

 UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE: The Three Historians: Niall Ferguson, Victor Davis Hanson, and Andrew Roberts (Video).

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: FEMA worker Marn’i Washington breaks silence on not helping Trump-voting hurricane victims.

The FEMA boss who was fired after ordering volunteers not to approach homes displaying Trump signs in Florida after Hurricane Milton has insisted her edict ‘was not isolated’ and also happened in North Carolina.

Speaking out for the first time since she was fired, Marn’i Washington accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of ‘lying’ about the scandal, and making her the scapegoat of a wider practice.

Washington was blasted publicly and lost her job after a text chain was leaked that showed her instructing colleagues to ‘avoid’ houses that had Trump signs in their yards.

Washington told DailyMail.com she is seeking an attorney and is ‘at risk’ as a result of the backlash she’s received. ‘I have information that proves FEMA is lying,’ she said.

In a podcast appearance last night, she went further — claiming more FEMA employees are guilty of the same bias, but that she is the only one being hung out to dry.

‘FEMA preaches avoidance first, and then de-escalation. This is not isolated. This is a colossal event of avoidance,’ Washington said in an interview with YouTube podcaster Roland Martin.

‘Not just in the state of Florida. You will find avoidance in the Carolinas,’ she revealed.

She says she was directly following FEMA protocol when she issued the controversial directive.

As Karol Markowicz tweets, “This should be a gigantic story:”

The fired FEMA worker is going down fighting and saying it’s agency policy to skip Trump supporter’s homes, she didn’t come up with it on her own. This should be a gigantic story. https://t.co/l71wziqjDF

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) November 12, 2024

Josh Hawley concurs:

The Homeland Security Committee needs to launch an immediate investigation and call this individual to testify. Under oath. In public. https://t.co/Jax02rRG6X

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 12, 2024

DE-GLEICHSCHALTUNG* IS BEGINNING: Report: Corporate Executives Sit on Boards of Hospitals That Perform Child Sex Changes.

* As Ace warned in February, and likely even more so going forward, it’s time for the establishment left to breakout the airbrushes on a Stalinist level: The Trans-Children Era is About to Be Memory-Holed and the Perpetrators Will Be Disavowing Involvement. Particularly since, as Rich Lowry wrote on Sunday, “Trans Moralism Is Killing the Democrats.” “This is what happened on trans issues in the election. Donald Trump’s ‘she’s for they/them’ attack ad was the most effective and consequential political spot of this century.”

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH MATTHEW YGLESIAS IS A VOICE OF SANITY: A Common Sense Democrat manifesto.

My goal here is to write these principles down at an adequate level of abstraction such that they don’t become a policy laundry list. They’re also not supposed to be a straitjacket. Different people have different views and different priorities, and principles need to be loose enough to accommodate some differences. But I also don’t want these to be total platitudes; I want some people to read them and think, “Fuck this, I don’t agree.” Over the next few weeks, I’ll share posts elaborating on each one individually, but in the meantime, these are the principles I’d like to see the Democratic party embrace:

1. Economic self-interest for the working class includes both robust economic growth and a robust social safety net.

2. The government should prioritize maintaining functional public systems and spaces over tolerating anti-social behavior.

3. Climate change — and pollution more broadly — is a reality to manage, not a hard limit to obey.

4. We should, in fact, judge people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin, rejecting discrimination and racial profiling without embracing views that elevate anyone’s identity groups over their individuality.

5. Race is a social construct, but biological sex is not. Policy must acknowledge that reality and uphold people’s basic freedom to live as they choose.

6. Academic and nonprofit work does not occupy a unique position of virtue relative to private business or any other jobs.

7. Politeness is a virtue, but obsessive language policing alienates most people and degrades the quality of thinking.

8. Public services and institutions like schools deserve adequate funding, and they must prioritize the interests of their users, not their workforce or abstract ideological projects.

9. All people have equal moral worth, but democratic self-government requires the American government to prioritize the interests of American citizens.

Does he mean it? Yglesias famously tweeted in his younger, more carefree days:

And as John Ekdahl tweeted today, “He’s gonna get utterly obliterated for this, and I can’t wait.” But in any case, “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people,” Milton Friedman once said. “The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”

DAYS OF WINE AND SMUGNESS:

REPORT: Trump picks Kristi Noem to serve as his Homeland Security secretary.

WATCH: Token Republican Scott Jennings Makes CNN Watchable Again.

Jennings was a lonely voice of reason earlier this year, when journalists were still insisting President Joe Biden was fit to serve another four years in office. He slammed Democrats for suggesting that, behind the scenes, they’d seen Biden “do cartwheels and handstands while doing trigonometry while solving all the nation’s problems,” even though “nobody believes that” and most Americans could see that the president “could barely walk up the stairs.” He compared Biden to Colonel Sanders: “His face is on the bucket, he doesn’t make the chicken anymore; in fact, he’s not even alive anymore.”

* * * * * * * *

The Democratic Party’s condescending attitude was a serious problem, Jennings argued. (It was.) He observed that “a lot of men think Democrats care more about dudes who want to become women than dudes who just want to be dudes.”

Jennings deserves enormous credit for making CNN (almost) watchable again. Apart from Donald Trump, he is the best thing that ever happened to the liberal network.

He’s certainly gotten CNN back onto Twitter thanks to his highly clipable soundbites and absolutely unruffled demeanor, and will likely soon host his own show somewhere. But I’m not sure if boosting CNN’s presence on Twitter actually translates into better television rating for the beleaguered news opinion network.

MARCO RUBIO TO BE TRUMP’S SECRETARY OF STATE?

If so, Worst. Hitler. Ever.

Our new Secretary of State will not be anything like Tony Blinken pic.twitter.com/mEWWZM092j

— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) November 12, 2024

Related “You’re Hired!” Follow Along For Daily Wire Live Updates As Trump Builds His White House.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Chris Wallace to Leave CNN.

CNN anchor Chris Wallace announced on Monday that he would leave the network at the end of his contract, citing the growing influence of podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Charlamagne tha God.

Wallace – who joined CNN in January 2022 after nearly 20 years at Fox News – told the Daily Beast he would leave the network at the end of his three-year contract in favor of independent broadcasting.

Describing podcasts and streaming platforms as “where the action seems to be,” Wallace pointed to Rogan and Charlamagne’s influence during the 2024 election, before adding, “I don’t flatter myself to think I will have that sort of reach.”

That’s probably very wise.

Back in December of 2021, when Wallace left Fox News for the soon to be stillborn CNN+ platform, Glenn quoted an Insta-reader who quipped, “Chris Wallace announces he is leaving Fox News to pursue his dream of being viewed by far fewer people.”

To paraphrase legendary rock manager Ian Faith, his appeal may become even more selective post-CNN.

CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE: The Progressive Movement Is Finished.

Did he arrest his political enemies? No. Did he vilify half the country as “existential threats” to democracy? No. Did he weaponize agencies of the U.S. government against its citizens? No. In fact, many say that he was too lenient with spreaders of election denialism, like Hillary Clinton.

The Biden-Harris administration did all of those, plus they spiked inflation and opened the U.S. border, allowing everyone in the world to enter at taxpayer expense. Then they insisted it was either not happening, or if it was happening, it was Trump’s fault.

Much of the Democrat leadership and just about all of the legacy media don’t understand everyone’s desire, Republicans and Democrats alike, to enjoy a higher quality of life. Nobody wants more rules, more restrictions, more censorship, less wealth, less security, and fewer choices in life.

All of the legitimate concerns Democrat voters have over the massive influx of illegal migrants in their communities, the weakening of law enforcement, the tolerance of social disorder, the illogical push toward racial and gender preferences in all walks of life, and the war waged on oil and natural gas in the name of “climate change” have been tossed to the side by Democrat leaders. And these voters are fed up.

Just because the Democrats and legacy media push narratives to support their Progressive values and force-feed them down the throats of the public does not mean voters are going to comply. They’re now finding this out in real time.

As mentioned, it was a wild ride for the past twenty-plus years. Harris has gone down in flames. Let’s hope that the Progressive movement goes with her.

They’re not planning to, at least for now: Progressive Democrats push to take over party leadership.

Progressive Democrats are pushing to take over the party leadership as in-fighting breaks out following Kamala Harris’s election defeat.

Left-wingers are hoping to install Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman, to take over the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and swing it away from the current centrist leadership ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Pramila Jayapal, who leads the Democrats’ progressive faction in Congress, has said she would “love to see somebody” who is “like a Ben Wikler”, Politico reports.

Her intervention may mean Left-wing Democrats swing behind Mr Wikler, who is seen as an effective fundraiser and has been credited with reviving his party’s fortunes in Wisconsin, if he launches a bid for the position.

It comes as Democrats battle over how to rebuild their party following Donald Trump’s election victory on Tuesday night.

Different factions of the party are openly feuding with each other in the aftermath of Ms Harris’s defeat, amid claims that the vice-president failed to appeal to working-class voters.

Bernie Sanders, the veteran Vermont senator, has argued that the next Democratic campaign should be based on a more Left-wing economic message.

Real Bidenomics has never been tried!

UNEXPECTEDLY! Apple quietly discontinuing flagship $3,500 Vision Pro headset due to lackluster sales.

Apple has made a quiet, tactical retreat from augmented and virtual reality, scaling back production of its $3,500 Vision Pro headset.

One employee at Chinese manufacturer Luxshare — which is under contract to perform the final assembly for Vision Pro — revealed that the tech giant informed them that manufacturing of the product may need to ‘wind down’ by November’s end.

Luxshare, according to this source, has already cut assembly rates in half: putting together about 1,000 Vision Pro units/day, down from a high of 2,000 units/day.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, however, has put on a brave face, saying that the $3,500 AR-goggles simply are ‘not a mass-market product.’

‘Right now, it’s an early-adopter product,’ Cook said late last month, in a sprawling interview.

‘People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today—that’s who it’s for. Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.’

In fact, industry analysts at Counterpoint Research estimate that Apple only sold around 370,000 of its Vision Pro headsets in the first three quarters of 2024, figures dwarfed by the millions of cheaper Quest headsets sold by its rival Meta.

And with the holiday season fast approaching, their analysts see no signs of improvement, predicting only 50,000 or so more Vision Pro’s will be sold this year.

Based on my initial take on the product, and, much like Google glasses before them, how uncool they made a wearer look, I can’t say I’m at all shocked by this news.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Enough with the Star Wars Announcements! (Video.)

SPIRIT AIRLINES FLIGHT FROM FLORIDA HIT BY GUNFIRE WHILE TRYING TO LAND IN HAITI:

A Spirit Airlines flight out of Florida was struck by gunfire on Monday while making a landing in Port-au-Prince in Haiti on Monday.

A spokesperson for the airline told Fox News Digital Spirit flight 951 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was diverted to Santiago, Dominican Republic, where it landed safely after being hit by gunfire.

After arriving in the Dominican Republic, an inspection found evidence of damage to the aircraft that was consistent with gunfire.

Conan O’Brien assures me that this story is the proverbial “fake news:”

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Jimmy Kimmel Ratings Soar After Debuting New Segment Where He Stands There All Sad And Cries Like A Wuss.

This is likely straight-up reportage, based on the news from last week: MSNBC Celebrates Beating CNN in Election Night Ratings (Guess Why So Many Were Watching).

STEPHEN MILLER: Kamala Harris ran the Fyre Festival of campaigns.

As it turns out, not all of those celebrity “activists” appeared with Kamala Harris because they believed in her or were doing their civic duty by getting engaged. They charged fees — and some were astronomical. Harris made elaborate promises to her crowds about celebrity performances. Crowds were brought in with the promise of seeing Beyoncé perform, only to leave disappointed. It was all a financial ruse, much like the infamous Fyre Festival of 2017. For the uninitiated, Fyre Festival was sold as a high-end island music festival and was promoted on Instagram by celebrities such as Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. Attendees were promised luxurious accommodations, airline transportation to and from the island and expensive food and alcohol. What followed, however, was mass confusion, unfulfilled promises, stranded and hungry people and vendors left unpaid. The lead promoter went to prison on fraud charges.

As it turns out, the Harris campaign wasn’t run much differently. As reported in the Washington Examiner, the Harris campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom set for her appearance on the Call Me Daddy podcast, which only netted about 800,000 downloads. Meanwhile, Donald Trump appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast — and his interview has got more than 47 million views on YouTube.

There were seven swing-state concerts that involved high-priced performers — Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Jon Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin and more — who seemingly ended up costing the Harris campaign more than $20 million on event production alone, and reportedly even more on paying the celebrities to appear. Even Oprah Winfrey charged the campaign $1 million to show up. The campaign went so far into debt that the campaign was reportedly forced to scrap Canadian Nineties indie-pop singer Alanis Morissette to save money. The pop concert campaign strategy is said to have been the brainchild of former Obama advisors on the campaign.

You can do rock concerts as a campaign strategy when your candidate has rock star chops, of the level that (the composite character of) Barack Obama had on the stump during his 2008 campaign. But Kamala’s campaign was a textbook example of what happens when a bunch of Obama advisors go to work for a candidate who isn’t him and attempt to run the same playbook.

Obama also benefited from a very different news cycle: until the massive subprime mortgage meltdown tanked the stock market on September 29, 2008, the economy wasn’t an ongoing horror story in the news; inflation was under control, unemployment was low in the first half of the year, and on the surface, the stock market was performing relatively well (until it wasn’t). A recurring headline in the summer of 2008 at Instapundit was “Dude, where’s my recession?” It eventually arrived — and how — but until it did, Obama campaigned in a much more forgiving environment among potential voters, before Milton Friedman wasn’t running the show anymore, to only slightly paraphrase the unintentional warning by Joe Biden in 2019 on what he was about to unleash on the unsuspecting American middle class.

BLUEANON BLAME GAME! ‘Scapegoat’ George Clooney to ‘Step Back from Politics.’

“George Clooney feels he is being used as a ‘scapegoat’ in the furious blame game over who could have cost Kamala Harris the election – and will now take a step back from politics,” reports the Daily Mail.

Clooney “threw his support behind Harris after penning a blistering op-ed on why Joe Biden would cost the Democrats the win if he didn’t abandon his campaign,” the report continues, adding, “but it still wasn’t enough to prevent a historic victory for Donald Trump.”

“Clooney has since been criticized by Democrats for his influence during the election, with some claiming Harris’ loss was his fault.”

To be fair, it could have been far worse, according to former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau: Biden’s internal polling had Trump winning 400 electoral votes, ex-Obama official claims: ‘Catastrophic mistake.’

To be fair, Ed Morrissey files Favreau’s statement as “Too Fun to Check.” “[C]olor me very skeptical on this claim, at least until Favreau produces the data. Team Kamala has begun spinning like a top to blame Biden for the loss in order to preserve her potential as a candidate down the road, and this looks like a political myth in the making. ”

Meanwhile, Variety, when not being obsessed with getting Ezra Miller’s pronouns correct, is big mad at everyone in flyover country! Stop Blaming ‘Celebrity Endorsements’ for Kamala Harris’ Loss: We Need to Hear From Artists Now More Than Ever.

In the end, it’s not just about newbie registrations or political conversions — it’s about inspiration for the already committed, too, and salve. Those who already knew who they were going to vote for don’t cherish the memory of hearing Isbell sing “Hope the High Road,” Springsteen do “Land of Hope and Dreams” or Gaga perform “God Bless America” any less for the electoral loss. And in the wake of the national defeat, there’s a sense of feeling less alone and ready to move forward even in some of the tweets that have gone out. Watching Eilish dedicate “Your Power” to disheartened women the night after the election is re-heartening. Even having Bette Midler tweet out a lengthy, trenchant H.L. Mencken quote — basically, as gallows humor — can feel a little healing, even if it’s a big Hollywood celebrity and not your personal BFF sending it through.

Whether it has any effect or not, everyone has to answer the question for themslves, if not their children: “What did you do in the war, daddy?” Imagine feeling — as Bruce Springsteen did — that “Donald Trump is the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime,” and then stifling that because of what the New York Post or the twits on Elon Musk’s platform might write.

I agree! In fact, going forward, the left should take inspiration from this 2016 Onion headline: