Wednesday's HOT MIC

Here is today's HOT MIC.

Who had 10:39am Pacific in the pool?

Pro tip.

Peter Thiel is trying to pick the rotting carcass of Gawker clean.


Peter Thiel may not be done with his revenge quest against Gawker.

The vindictive tech billionaire's lawyers filed a motion this week arguing that he has been "unfairly excluded" from ongoing bidding for the defunct news site's archives and brand name, BuzzFeed reported.

The filing would clear the way for a possible sale of Gawker to Thiel, at which point he would be free to scrub any or all of the old articles that remain online, including the infamous 2007 post that outed him as gay and sparked his secret years-long plot to destroy the outlet.

Those machinations were first made public last year when Thiel was revealed to be bankrolling Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the former digital media empire for publishing the wrestler's sex tape.

The $140-million verdict from that case bankrupted Gawker Media, and while Univision bought its stable of other properties, including GizmodoJezebel, and Deadspin, the company's namesake site has remained dormant as its lawyers have hammered out terms for a potential sale in bankruptcy court.

Thiel has claimed that he supports a free press but called Gawker a "singularly sociopathic bully."

Naturally, the tech press loves to portray Thiel as the real villain because he is a conservative. I had run-ins with the Gawker crowd over the years and Thiel is right. They were bullies, just not very good at it.

They would come at you on social media in waves for hours, or sometimes days, and try to wear you down. Most of it was real weak fare, like finding unflattering pics of me on Google and trying to embarrass me with them, as if I weren't aware that I'm not photogenic or that ugly photos of me exist on the Internet.

It was mostly just an irritant-my Twitter feed would be jammed with their nonsense-but it would get ugly at times. That was basically the mentality of the people running the site. Attack, defame, embarrass. They got some of their own medicine and the tears have yet to stop flowing.

Fallout's a bitch.

Al Franken allegations are a big money problem for Democrats.


During the 2016 election cycle, Franken transferred more than $322,000 in personal campaign funds to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A similar cash infusion is presumably off limits in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, as Franken is politically damaged goods now that he stands accused by two women of groping.

Perhaps a bigger loss than his direct contributions to Democrats’ Senate campaign arm is the sidelining of Franken, 66, as a go-to fundraiser for his colleagues, particularly ahead of an election featuring several vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Facing tough re-elections, they returned or donated Franken’s contributions within hours of the first allegation, which occurred in 2006 before Franken was elected to the Senate.

Franken’s email fundraising list, methodically built over many years, is among the most lucrative in Democratic politics with small, grassroots donors. His success as a headliner was unique for a rank-and-file, second-term senator. The brash liberal and former comedian was a top, box-office draw on the fundraising circuit. But with a second allegation of sexual harassment surfacing Monday, Franken is matching his swift rise with an equally rapid fall.

“He is indeed sidelined — and it’s a significant loss,” said a Democratic political operative focused on congressional races, who, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.

Given the nature of the charges against Franken, hopefully it's only a matter of time before those anonymous sources are willing to go public.

Cue the world's smallest violin...

I used to think that "insufferable" was the absolute kindest thing you could say about Glenn Thrush, but I had no idea just how right I was.

With friends like these...

Roy Moore Dated ‘Younger Ladies’ For Their ‘Purity,’ His Pastor Friend Says.

Make of this what you will.

A prominent right-wing preacher who appeared alongside Senate candidate Roy Moore at a campaign rally just days ago said that Moore dated teen girls because of their “purity” and because when he got back from Vietnam there weren’t any women his age left to date.

Pastor Flip Benham told a local Alabama radio show on Monday that there was nothing wrong with Moore dating teenage girls.


I can't top David Burge who quipped, "Roy Moore is every character in Dr Strangelove rolled up in to one."

But of course.

We have a serious problem in this country with voter registration, and only one party seems to want to do anything about it.

In Houston, waiting hours in line for a pie is apparently a thing.

Or you could just stay home and bake one in half the time.

The latest hate crime hoax comes to us from the St. Louis area:

... Or at least a conversation with journalists who should be covering these stories with more skepticism.


Here are some of the documents from the House Intel court filing yesterday:

The documents confirm that Fusion GPS made payments to three reporters between June 2016 and February 2017, suggesting pay-for-journalism that pushed the Trump/Russia collusion narrative.

My story on this is here.