74-Year-Old Democrat Who Ran Against AOC Offers Infuriating Defense

Democrats lost the White House, the House, and the Senate—but that’s apparently not enough cause for them to rejigger their playbook.

Earlier this month, Representative Gerry Connolly bested New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to become the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. It was a battle of establishment Democratic politics versus new wave progressivism, and the Democratic caucus opted to vote against the future of the party by a margin of 47 votes.

But when pressed on why a 74-year-old with a recent esophagus cancer diagnosis deserved a shot at arguably one of the most influential positions in the House, Connolly couldn’t muster up a response deeper than having paid his dues. Speaking with CNN on Monday, Connolly’s rationale boiled down to simple entitlement.

“The decision about leadership ought to always be based on a proven record, skill set, competence, capability, and your plan for moving forward,” Connolly told the network. “I’ve never had my chance to be a ranking member or a chairman of a full committee. This is it.”

“I’ve got the bona fides and the credentials over 16 years that my colleagues looked at, examined, validated, and decided that’s what we need,” he continued. “And that’s what the Democratic caucus overwhelmingly decided to do.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reportedly entrenched in the process of getting Connolly to lead the key investigative body for the purpose of keeping Ocasio-Cortez away from the fulcrum of power.

Two more House Republicans have voiced their reluctance to back House Speaker Mike Johnson in his bid to hold on to his leadership spot.

During an appearance on Fox Business Tuesday, House Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy said he wasn’t sold on backing Johnson.

“I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda,” Roy said, according to Punchbowl News.

Representative Rich McCormick also said he was not solid on his support of Johnson during an appearance on NewsNation Tuesday. When asked whether he planned to support the embattled speaker, he replied, “Most likely.”

“We have decisions to be making, and we have to discuss with each other—about 10 people who are leaning,” McCormick said. “And what that means is we want reassurances. I’m not really sure we’re taking the debt seriously. I’m not really sure we’re doing the right things.”

At least three other Republicans already expressed their skepticism of Johnson earlier this week: Representatives Thomas Massie, Victoria Spartz, and Andy Harris, who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

That’s one too many votes Johnson can’t afford to lose in the speaker election, set to take place on Friday.

The world’s richest man has decided to change his digital look, opting to resurrect a dated image that the Anti-Defamation League flagged as a hate symbol in 2016.

Musk’s rebranded account began posting to his 209 million followers on X under the name Kekius Maximus on Tuesday, a blend between “kek”—a gaming variant of “LOL”—and Maximus Decimus Meridius, the main character in Ridley Scott’s 2000 action film Gladiator.

“Kekius Maximus will soon reach level 80 in hardcore PoE,” Musk posted.

Musk’s memeified alter ego also includes an archaic reference in the annals of internet history: Pepe the Frog, a character that has existed on internet message boards and blogs like 4chan and Tumblr since 2008. In 2015, Pepe was co-opted by the far right, and recent usage of the image in the U.S. has become synonymous with antisemites and white nationalists and harkens back to its presence at the forefront of violent movements like the Charlottesville riot and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Under his new guise, Musk decided to attack Wikipedia, resharing a three-year-old clip of the digital encyclopedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger torching his creation for going “woke.”

“Don’t take it from me (I’m just a frog after all), take it from the co-founder of Wikipedia,” Musk wrote under his new pseudonym.

(Sanger wasn’t amused by the dredged-up interview. Instead, he torched the billionaire for refusing to refund an “ineffective annual subscription” to X. “Tell your staff to refund my money, Elon,” Sanger wrote.)

Musk’s alleged burner account, Adrian Dittman, also got in on the tired meme, preemptively toying with the idea that journalists would legitimately refer to the incoming Department of Government Efficiency co-chair via his chosen joke title.

“Imagine you’re a journalist who’s writing about Elon on X and it goes: ‘Elon Musk, aka ‘Kekius Maximus’ on X…” Dittman posted Tuesday.

Donald Trump claimed Monday that he’s already begun making moves toward making Canada the fifty-first state, and nobody’s excited.

Trump shared a screenshot of a post from Leading Report, a right-wing website that offers some news, some misinformation, and lots of conspiracy theories. Now, it seemingly reported a piece of otherwise unreported ”news” that was instantly elevated by the president-elect.

“Kevin O’Leary says he will go to Mar-a-Lago to ‘start the narrative’ about merging Canada with the United States because ‘we don’t want Trudeau negotiating this deal,’” a post last week stated.

“Think about the power of combining the two economies,” the post added, listing possible benefits to combining the two massive nations, including a common currency, open trade, and an “EU-type passport.”

Trump offered no comment or caption on the post, but reshared it to his followers on Monday.

O’Leary, a Canadian businessman known for Shark Tank, praised the idea of making Canada the fifty-first state during an appearance on Fox News last Friday.

“I think this is a great idea, and I think the potential is massive, and the opportunity is huge,” O’Leary said. “I think at the end of the day, Canadians and Americans, their DNA is the same in terms of what they believe in … freedom.”

Trump’s ravings about Canada began as a joke in response to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s warning that Trump’s plan to enforce steep tariffs would cripple both their economies. Rather than actually engage with the issue, Trump joked that Canada should just become the fifty-first state.

Now he’s taking that joke too far, and likely putting some money in Mr. Wonderful’s pocket.

“Thank you, MAGA, for turning the US into the laughingstock of the world,” wrote the X account Republicans Against Trump in response to Trump’s post.

Others pointed out that Trump was once again moving to work alongside an unelected billionaire, rather than an actual representative of the country he hopes to take over.

Some speculated that Trump was only interested in trolling world leaders and playing with his map.

And others were just taken aback by how stupid the entire thing is.

Donald Trump has two words for his controversial Cabinet nominees: Be quiet.

The president-elect’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, issued a frank missive to Trump’s nominees on Sunday, warning the cohort to tone down their social media activity ahead of their Senate confirmation hearings.

“While this instruction has been delivered previously, I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself,” Wiles wrote in a memo obtained by the New York Post.

“Accordingly, all intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel,” she continued.

Wiles—dubbed the “Ice Maiden”—did not specify in her memo if she was responding to any singular incident. But one Trump transition source told the Post it wasn’t related to the heated debate between the “tech-right” and far-right factions of Trump’s base over H-1B visas.

Incoming Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-chairs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have found themselves at the epicenter of a digital brawl over their ardent defense of the work visa program. Last week, Musk claimed that H-1B visas offer a solution to a “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent” in the U.S. Far-right opponents of immigration—and Musk’s position—claim the H-1B visa disincentivizes companies from hiring American labor.

The H-1B visa program has an annual cap set by Congress, admitting 65,000 foreign workers per year. In 2023, it was estimated that there were more than 700,000 H-1B visa holders in the U.S., according to data from the American Immigration Council.

Republicans are in a tight position to push Trump’s controversial picks through the Senate process. Assuming that all Democrats will vote against Trump’s nominees, the president-elect can only afford to lose three Republican votes to squeeze his candidates into the executive branch.

Some of Trump’s more contentious Cabinet picks—such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard—have noticeably quieted their social media presence since Christmas.