The Friday Brief

April 4, 2025

Inside: A quick request. Madness, Markets, and Penguins. Mike Flynn, Spanked In Court One Last Time. No One Was A Nazi in 1946. Wisconsin Aftermath. Mike Waltz Uses Gmail. Laura Loomer Won’t Be Ignored, Don. Ads of the Week. What I’m Reading. Scenes from the Home Front.

Before We Begin Today’s Friday Brief:

The Lincoln Project’s work has been nominated again this year for the Webby Awards in two categories.

The first is for a special episode of the Lincoln Project Podcast, an interview with Texas father and husband Ryan Hamilton about his wife’s near-death experience with the draconian Texas abortion law. It was the most harrowing, wrenching interview of my life, and I’m deeply moved it was nominated.

I’d be honored if you’d cast a vote for “So Much Blood” at the Webby’s site.

The second nomination is for our 2024 ad “Daisy,” which tells the story of the consequences to women during Trump’s second term.

Your support means so much. My creative team (Whitney! Joey! Ben! Kate! Riley!) crafts these ads, podcasts, and so much more. They are magnificent creatives, making all this look slicer than I ever could. I’m just a monkey with a microphone without them. It’s their brilliant, tireless work we see honored in these nominations.

Please take a moment to vote!

Thank you.

Rick

The Big Picture

Madness, Markets, Penguins

I’m no economist, but this seems…bad:

I’ve done some spectacularly dumb shit in my lifetime.

I’m talking “dumber than a bag of hammers” levels of idiocy. Handstand on the top of the Exorcist stairs in Georgetown? Check. That Tijuana adventure we do not speak of? Yeaaaah. Shark-riding experiment? Guilty as charged. Working for Rudy Giuliani? Been there. Working for Katherine Harris? Also been there. Dirtbike jousting? Yup. Homemade ANFO? Hell, yes. (Damn near died in that one. Lost my eyebrows for a while.)