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SO AUTHENTIC! Camera Catches Pete Buttigieg and Another Democrat Being Coached on How to Act ‘Normal’ at a Campaign Event

One of the things you’ve heard a lot of in recent months is that voters like authentic candidates. People who are not acting but just being themselves is popular, largely due to Trump, who pulls this off effortlessly.

Democrats struggle with this. They come off as polished and rehearsed. They are perceived as saying things just to please the people in front of them at any given time, not because they actually believe what they are saying.

In the video below, Pete Buttigieg and another Democrat are seen being coached on how to appear authentic and normal. Buttigieg even cracks a joke about it at one point.

They’re so bad at this.

FOX News reports:

Democrats caught on camera coaching candidate on how to be ‘authentic’ in 2026 messaging

Democrats campaigning in Pennsylvania inadvertently posted a video online, giving a look behind the curtain of their 2026 midterm strategy and how they’re preparing to appear more authentic and win back voters who felt “left behind.”

The clip, viewed by Fox News Digital and not previously reported, shows Democratic Pennsylvania candidate Bob Brooks in a conversation with Biden-era Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who couldn’t even remember what district he was campaigning in. The pair received coaching from an off-screen staffer, urging them to stay on message.

“Think about your audience,” the staffer prompted. “Why is this race so important? We need to win the House [of Representatives] — all of that. Winning over people who feel like they’re left behind by the party, flipping the district. All of that, I think, is really strong, showing up for working people, affordability.”

The rare look at a behind-the-scenes campaign moment, filmed by Democratic campaign arm The Bench, highlights the efforts the party is taking to underscore affordability, appeal to everyday voters and come across as naturally as possible after losing swaths of their base in the 2024 election.

“We are going to have a really normal conversation with three cameras pointing at you,” the staffer joked.

“Everybody act normal,” Buttigieg chuckled.

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When Killing Becomes Commonplace

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
— Voltaire (1694-1778)

Last week, when the Pentagon resumed its attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, the media barely noticed. The U.S. military has now destroyed 56 vessels and killed 190 persons. The killings began in September 2025 and have continued to this month.

The attacks caused a stir a few months ago when one of the strikes disabled the boat at which the attack was aimed but failed to kill all the passengers. When a follow-up strike was ordered, it succeeded where the initial strike had failed. The admiral who ordered the murder of the survivors told members of Congress in secret that he believed he was following orders. The secretary of defense denied that he ordered the survivors to be killed.

Killing survivors is expressly prohibited by federal law as well as by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And, of course, ordering the killing of innocents is always unlawful.

So, the Pentagon made two changes. It produced more lethal strikes so as not to be burdened with the problem of survivors, and it either stopped killing survivors or stopped revealing that it killed them.

Everyone who professionally monitors the government expects that it will not be truthful when the truth is unpleasant or reveals criminal behavior. This expectation is realistic, considering history and Supreme Court rulings that permit the government to lie.

The Navy rescued two survivors whom it failed to kill. Under the law, rescuing is to be done by the Coast Guard. But that law was written when the Coast Guard was in the Department of Defense. Today, it is in the Department of Homeland Security, which is largely mistrusted by the DoD.

So, rather than share information about its attempted murders with a department of the government over which it has no control, rather than having a team ready and nearby to rescue survivors, the Pentagon assigned the Navy to arrive long afterward and rescue two fishermen.

But the Navy didn’t know what to do with them, so its legal team asked Department of Justice lawyers for guidance. They asked the DoD what evidence of crimes it had on these fishermen, whereupon the DoD was unable to provide an answer that would rise to the level of probable cause — the legal standard for charging and detaining anyone.

Probable cause is a level of evidence such that a neutral person would conclude that it is more likely than not that the detained persons committed a stated crime. At that point, the DoJ told the DoD to return these would-be victims to their home countries.

In 56 attacks, and one follow-up attack, only three persons survived. Two of them have hired American lawyers and have served notice of their intention to sue the federal government for its attempted murder of them.

The government initially claimed that these killings were of known drug dealers and this was part of a law enforcement operation. Yet, under federal law, the military is prohibited from engaging in law enforcement.

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Mamdani Brags He Eliminated NYC’s $12 Billion Budget Deficit, But Then a New York Outlet Dug Into the Numbers

On Tuesday morning, New York City’s ultra-progressive mayor, Zohran Mamdani, took to X to take quite a boastful victory lap.

“When we came into office, we uncovered a $12 billion budget deficit,” Mamdani posted to X. “Today, I’m proud to say we brought it down to zero.”

“We didn’t close the gap on the backs of working people,” he continued. “We closed it while funding parks, libraries, safer streets and making historic investments in public housing. Call it Pothole Politics. Call it Democratic Socialism. It’s government that delivers for the people who make this city run.”

“That’s what New Yorkers deserve. And that’s what we will keep fighting for every single day.”

In a vacuum, this certainly sounded like it should’ve been a good Tuesday for NYC residents. But shortly after Mamdani’s post went up, the New York Post came out with a blistering rebuttal of Mamdani’s claims — and a much closer look at the numbers that Mamdani largely avoided delving into.

Blasted for including “a menu of hidden fee hikes” in his budget plan, the outlet pointed out that this deficit “fix” from Mamdani was anything but.

And notably, some of the harshest criticisms lobbied against Mamdani came from a fellow Democrat.

“Banking on yet to be determined revenue-raising gimmicks and identifying fake savings are not wins,” an unnamed Democratic operative told the New York outlet.

The operative savagely added, “This budget plan is as real as Kim Kardashian’s lips.”

So why is this budget plan so inauthentic?

Critics argue that the holes in Mamdani’s budget vision become glaringly obvious once you look beyond the lofty rhetoric and into the actual revenue proposals being floated by City Hall.

According to city budget documents cited by the New York Post, officials are eyeing a laundry list of new fees, fines, and enforcement crackdowns to help plug fiscal gaps.

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Democratic Socialism Works! Leftists Go Nutty for Mamdani After He ‘Balances’ the NYC Budget

Well, friends, if you support President Donald Trump and oppose the left, the game is up. He’s done it. Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s bright young communist mayor, has balanced the city’s budget without raising taxes or cutting a dime from social services. Leftists already loved him for being a Muslim, a migrant, and an America-hating Marxist, and now they love him all the more, for don’t you see, he has proven, in the teeth of racist, xenophobic, far-right opposition, that socialism works!

If you believe that, I have a very fine bridge that would make a lovely addition to your backyard, and it’s extremely reasonably priced. But over at Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s leftist facsimile of Elon Musk’s X, they’re in full celebratory mode, and from the looks of things, the champagne is flowing freely. One leftist laid out the sober (alleged) facts: “They called him a communist. Said he’d destroy New York. 131 days in he balanced a $12 billion deficit without cutting a single service. This is what we’ve been asking for.” Another responded: “This is exactly what they were afraid of. He’s proving that it can be done and all their fear mongering is just bulls**t.”

Many leftists were sure that Mamdani had performed this particular trick by doing what patriots refuse to do: soaking the rich the way they deserved to be soaked. One wanted even more: “i’m sorry am i getting this right? NYC Mayor Mamdani taxed wealthy people on properties they own if they don’t live in them, it balanced the city’s multi-billion dollar budget immediately, and all the wealthy people are still wealthy? am i getting this right? they’re still wealthy, right? and no middle or lower financial earners saw any additional tax? am i getting this correct?” In a word, no, but don’t let me spoil the party.

The reality, as the New York Post explained Wednesday, is that New York City’s budget is “only ‘balanced’ with gimmicks that guarantee oceans more red ink in the years ahead. With a late assist from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s own flim-flammery, the new, $124.7 billion Mamdani spending plan relies on one-time cash infusions, postponed payments and dubious calculations of future tax windfalls and theoretical savings.”

Hochul helped out by giving the city $4 billion, so Mamdani’s balanced budget is indeed a triumph of socialism: the city is solvent not because it spends responsibility and within its means, but because it got a handout. As long as the handouts keep coming in and Mamdani can keep on spending other people’s money, everything will be fine.

A crash is coming, however. City Comptroller Mark Levine explained that Mamdani’s “balanced” budget “‘relies on $2.8 billion in one-time measures’ and short-term savings, without addressing ‘the fact that City government continues to spend more than we take in, even in a year of record revenues.’” One day the money is going to run out. Mamdani can hope that he will be out of office by then and can blame someone else. One Threads user tried to sound a note of caution amid all the celebrations: “I am a Mamdani supporter and proud leftist. Please understand that he did this by delaying funding pensions, which has historically been a disastrous way to kick the can down the road.”

But the can is kicked, and so for the time being, Mamdani can bask in the glory of an accomplishment that he didn’t really accomplish. Another Threads leftist rejoiced in this triumph of socialism: “Mamdani socialist a** is on these other politicians NECKS honey. Balanced the budget. Banned ICE. Created a snow shoveling workforce, handled two storms, filled thousands of potholes, extended free childcare, opened an office for deed theft, held numerous town halls for tenant rights. Got the city to engage civically in multiple initiatives. He’s even killing it on social. lol.”

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Republican South Carolina Senate Leader Kills GOP’s Redistricting Effort: ‘Competition Makes Us Better’

The Republican leader of South Carolina’s state Senate defied President Donald Trump and voted against a redistricting effort that could have slashed the state’s only Democrat-led congressional district, arguing that “South Carolina is stronger when we have a vibrant Democratic Party.”

State Sen. Shane Massey’s (R-NC) first time talking to the president came last week when Trump called him to discuss how he wanted the redistricting to happen, the New York Times reported.

Contrary to Trump’s wishes, Massey joined four other Republicans in voting against the proposal that would have allowed for the Senate to reconvene later this month for a redistricting effort.

The legislature has until 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 14, to approve House-passed changes to the sine die resolution, which would state what the lawmakers can take up after that date.

“Now, the state appears unlikely to join the redistricting frenzy that has taken hold across the country,” the Times reported.

Massey delivered a dramatic speech on the floor Tuesday before the 29-17 vote, arguing that he has “too much southern blood in me to surrender.”

“Our state is stronger with vibrant parties,” the senate leader stated. “I think we, as a whole, are stronger when we have a clash of ideas. I think that’s true at the national level, I think it’s true at the state level.”

He continued on to argue that “Republicans are stronger when the Democrat Party is vibrant and viable.”

“You are. Competition makes you better, y’all,” he added.

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CIA Went Rogue, Raided Tulsi’s Office to Seize Papers

A breaking news alert from Fox News, apparently confirmed by a Republican congresswoman, states that the Central Intelligence Agency went rogue, raiding the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to seize files.

It seems from the Fox News report that the CIA seized the files just now, though a whistleblower from the agency who testified to Congress today referred to the wrongful seizure of files in his testimony. It is therefore not clear if the raid occurred today or before the testimony, or if there was more than one seizure. In either case, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is giving the CIA 24 hours to return the files in question or face consequences.

The CIA was allegedly after the files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the MK-Ultra human experimentation scandal. The story on the raid is developing but seems to be legitimate, and illustrates the need for drastic cuts in our Deep State. Donald Trump cannot hope to prevent such egregious acts by merely replacing top leadership. The majority of employees at the CIA and FBI worked there during the Biden-era weaponization of justice and believe they are not accountable to Trump or We the People.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard was reportedly in the process of declassifying the JFK and MK-ULTRA files, and it seems the CIA gave us indirect confirmation that there is something in those files that they desperately do not want anyone to know. The problem is that we don’t know if they will be able to destroy the files or not before the Trump administration can get them back. If the raid just occurred and did not happen previously in the last couple of days, it is interesting to note that President Trump was out of the country in China, and therefore unable to be present personally to deal with the situation. Hopefully, Vice President Vance is on the job.

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Honda’s Costly EV Fiasco Drives First-Ever Annual Loss

Honda announced a 423.9 billion yen ($2.7 billion) loss Thursday in a first-ever negative result for the fabled Japanese automaker, reportedly driven by heavy costs for its electric-vehicle plans underscored by President Donald Trump’s pro-U.S. manufacturing policies.

AP reports the longstanding automaker – established in 1948 by Soichiro Honda – conceded the dire losses related to its EV operations are estimated to total 2.5 trillion yen ($16 billion), incurred mostly in the fiscal year just ended and the current fiscal year.

Analysts cited by the outlet detailed Honda Motor Co. plunged into an EV-dominant strategy when the market simply was not interested.

As a result, the Japanese carmaker has now abandoned many of its plans for EV models including those in the works in a joint venture with Sony Corp. as it seeks to find a way out of the financial hole it has dug for itself.

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Hantavirus: Have We Learned Nothing? The Fear Machine Is Starting Again. This Time, You Should Recognize It.

Watching the headlines unfold this week feels like watching a rerun of a movie we’ve seen multiple times before.

  • A virus outbreak on a cruise ship.
  • Emergency evacuations. Hospital escorts.
  • Contact tracing across multiple countries.
  • Media outlets flood the public with alarming updates before most people even know what hantavirus is.

The images, the language, and the emotional conditioning are familiar because we have seen this exact pattern before. It always begins the same way: create fear first, provide context later, and by the time the facts catch up, the public has already been pushed into a state of panic and vaccinated. It seems every 2 years we get a new viral scare from the media, as the very expensive and intrusive Biosecurity Agenda gets built out. Remember this?

2020: COVID

2022: Monkeypox

2024: Bird Flu

2026: Hantavirus

What is a Hantavirus?

Hantaviruses are a large class of enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses. Today, scientists recognize more than 50 hantavirus species worldwide, with approximately two dozen known to infect humans. Most infections occur through inhalation of aerosolized rodent urine, feces, or saliva (how unclean was that cruise ship?) Human-to-human spread is considered very rare, although the Andes virus in South America has shown limited evidence of person-to-person transmission. For the last 50 years, rodents have been the primary hosts of hantaviruses. However, recent discoveries have shown that hantaviruses also infect bats, moles, and shrews.

Before the 1993 outbreak in the Four Corners region of the Southwest (where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet), only 31 hantavirus cases had ever been reported. The initial outbreak affected 24 previously healthy young adults who suddenly developed fever, muscle aches, and rapidly progressive respiratory failure, and within days, there were a few deaths. CDC investigators eventually identified a previously unknown hantavirus carried by the deer mouse. It was later named Sin Nombre virus. The deaths resulted from what became known as Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS). (Do you remember hysterically hearing about this from the CDC or local public health departments? I don’t either…)

After the 1993 outbreak, the CDC began national surveillance for hantavirus infections. As of the end of 2023 (30 years), 890 confirmed hantavirus disease cases had been reported nationwide, as HPS or non-pulmonary hantavirus infections. (A non-pulmonary case is one in which patients tested positive for hantavirus infection but never developed the classic pulmonary phase. Of these, 309 cases were classified as HPS with a case-fatality rate of approximately 35%, which is about 10 deaths per year.

Historical surveillance has shown that approximately 96 percent of U.S. cases occurred west of the Mississippi River, reflecting the geographic range of the deer mouse and related rodent reservoirs. However, at least one case has been identified in nearly every state.

The CDC reports that hantaviruses are spread through exposure to infected rodent urine, droppings, or saliva, especially when contaminated materials become aerosolized and inhaled. As previously stated, deer mice are considered the principal reservoir for Sin Nombre virus in North America. Hantaviruses found in the United States are not believed to spread from person to person.

Long-term CDC surveillance has demonstrated that hantavirus activity fluctuates with environmental conditions that influence rodent populations. Researchers studying deer mouse ecology in the Southwest have observed that fluctuations in infected rodent populations are closely linked to environmental conditions.

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14,500-Year-Old Evidence of Human Presence in South America? Experts Fire Back at Controversial Study Challenging Age of Chile’s Monte Verde Site

Experts have responded sharply to a controversial study published earlier this year that sought to challenge the dating of archaeological features at Chile’s famous Monte Verde site.

Excavations that began at Monte Verde decades ago, led by archaeologist Tom Dillehay, established evidence of a human presence at the site as early as 14,500 years ago. The discovery was significant, as it marked the first unequivocal evidence of human presence in the Americas that predates the cultural manifestation known as Clovis, which had long been assumed to be the earliest human presence in the New World.

Those findings, supported by ongoing investigations Dillehay and his colleagues have conducted over the last several decades at Monte Verde, were challenged in March in a study led by archaeologist Todd Surovell, Ph.D., who, along with his colleagues, argued that a fresh analysis of features located near the Monte Verde site suggested it could be younger than previous estimates by as much as several thousand years.

Now Dillehay, who is currently the Rebecca Webb Wilson University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Religion, and Culture at Vanderbilt University, and more than two dozen other experts in the archaeology of the early Americas have responded in a series of eLetters published in Science, which argue that Surovell and his colleagues’ findings are not strongly supported by existing evidence.

Pre-Clovis in Southern Chile

Following its discovery in 1976 and Dillehay’s subsequent excavations, Monte Verde has long been considered a cornerstone of early American archaeology. With its array of well-preserved artifacts that include stone tools, as well as wooden structures, botanical remains, and even a human footprint, radiocarbon dating has periodically been undertaken at the site, which consistently places its occupation at an estimated 14,500 years ago.

At the time these discoveries were made, Monte Verde became one of the earliest securely dated human settlements in the Americas. Not only that, it became one of the first major challenges to the then-dominant “Clovis First” paradigm, which insisted that evidence showed the earliest arrivals in North America occurred no earlier than around 13,000 years ago.

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Colombian Lawmakers Approve Bill To Legalize Marijuana

Lawmakers in Colombia have advanced a bill to legalize marijuana through its first step in the legislative process.

The First Committee of the House of Representatives approved the measure from Rep. Alejandro Ocampo on Tuesday, sending it to the full chamber for consideration. If approved there, the legislation would then go to the Senate for two additional votes.

“We just approved the regulation of cannabis in the first debate. It’s time to regulate. We’re going to regulate everything from seed to finished product,” Ocampo said in a social media post. “We’re going to keep marijuana off the streets so that it can only be sold in places where you have to show your ID, have a permit, and have a license.”

The bill will “help homeless people, help farmers and indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who have lived with this plant for many years,” he said.

Colombian lawmakers have considered cannabis legalization legislation over multiple recent sessions, with one such proposal to insert the reform into the nation’s constitution falling short at the final stage of the process in 2023.

A separate bill to legalize marijuana advanced through the first stage of the process last year, but then stalled.

President Gustavo Petro, for his part, is supportive of legalizing cannabis—and he’s put pressure on legislators to advance the reform. He said in late 2023 that lawmakers who voted to shelve a legalization bill that year only helped to perpetuate illegal drug trafficking and the violence associated with the unregulated trade.

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