☕️ FRACTURE FAIRIES ☙ Tuesday, March 31, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Three 'fracture' stories in one day— While media hallucinated (or pushed) conservative cracks, they missed the actual fault lines opening beneath the Democrat coalition. And much more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! March is ending, capping off 2026’s first fiscal quarter and making accountants start sweating and ordering extra tax software. Don’t worry guys, just use AI like everyone else. Today’s roundup exposes yesterday’s sneaky corporate media push to gin up more MAGA fractures: corporate media’s triple-fracture fantasy exposed; why asking MAHA voters if Trump has “done enough” proves nothing except that they want more; the Times’ desperate attempt to manufacture a conservative “scholar split” (spoiler: they couldn’t find any scholars who actually agreed with them); CPAC’s rumpled-suit crime wave; the James Fishback phenomenon and trad-media mystery; and the REAL fractures happening in the Democratic Party that nobody’s covering.

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Prepare for ceaseless psychological warfare heading into the midterms. Yesterday brought no fewer than three different and new ways the Republican party is supposedly “fracturing.” We know this because corporate media said so, and as we all know, the trad-media is a finely tuned instrument of dependable truth, much like a Magic 8-Ball, only with less journalistic integrity.

First, Politico ran a breathless, top-of-page poll story about how the MAHA coalition is cracking:

“Trump voters are divided on MAHA progress,” a subheader blared. But it turns out the question they asked was “has Trump done enough to make America healthy again?” Among Trump voters, half the respondents said “Trump has done enough,” and half said, “Trump has not done enough.” Concluding that Politico’s question proves a “cracked coalition” is like saying toddlers are deeply divided over whether Barney the Purple Dinosaur appears on TV often enough.

Its own poll was then used to support Politico’s Grand Canyon-sized leap of logic, a jump more impressive than the time local motorbike celebrity Joey D. Parsquale vaulted seven school buses and one slightly confused city councilman. How on Earth could “please, Mr. Trump, do more” possibly cause a “battle” that “sways the midterms,” unless “sway” is a new Washington insider term meaning “to completely misunderstand basic human communication.”

Conservatives value free speech, Socratic debate, and complaining about everything. It’s practically our national pastime, right up there with avoiding taxes, hesitating over vaccinations, and trying to puzzle out what the heck is in a hot dog. (We still don’t know for sure.) When Politico’s MAHA respondents said Trump hasn’t done enough, they weren’t defecting to the Democrats. Please. They were saying, “This is what I ordered. Bring me a larger portion.”

📉 Yesterday’s second “fracture” story appeared, of course, in the New York Times, which covers conservatives the way a pillow covers a face. Here’s the second breathless headline:

The Times obsessively covers the conservative movement like a deranged neighbor who only wants to talk about the HOA president’s fascist tendencies. Tomorrow —ironically, April Fool’s Day— the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the oddly named case of Trump v. Barbara (which sounds like a 1980’s Lifetime Channel divorce documentary), in which it will decide a potentially nuclear issue directly targeting the intersection of immigration and elections.

Despite those sky-high stakes and a rich field of journalistic crops to harvest, the Times somehow found a way to transform that electrifying story into another boring fairy tale about a conservative coalition cracking. This time? Conservative “scholars.” Meaning law professors.

But they couldn’t put “law professors” in the headline, because half their readership would immediately fall into a deep, coma-like slumber. I have known a lot of law professors. They are wonderful people. They have strong opinions. They can consume impressive quantities of scotch. But “scholars?” For most of them, that’s a little rich.

The Times quoted “scholar,” I mean law professor, John Yoo, one of George W. Bush’s lawyers, who now teaches at UCal Berkeley. “When Trump first started talking about it, a lot of people thought this is crazy,” John said, in a very scholarly way. “But in the intervening years, a lot more serious people are taking it seriously.” I know the feeling. They thought a lot of what we were saying during the pandemic was crazy. Not so much anymore, though.

The Times then helpfully paraphrased John to let us know that he thinks the Supreme Court will rule against Trump. (The paraphrase after quoting him was a tell. John’s comment was probably much more nuanced. This is how they lie.)

Next, it quoted Stanford law professor Michael W. McConnell, a “conservative former federal judge,” who also thinks SCOTUS will uphold birthright, but who called professors siding with Trump “serious scholars” whose views have given him “some pause.”

Let’s review the tape. John Yoo said, “Serious people are taking it seriously.” Former judge McConnell said, “serious scholars” have given him “some pause.” The Times concluded: THE MAGA COALITION IS IN SHAMBLES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

🔥 The story did not, of course, quote any of the “serious people” or “serious scholars” who agreed with Trump. Just the two guys who don’t, and concluded it was a “split.” That’s like interviewing two people who hated Top Gun: Maverick and declaring the entire aviation industry is in crisis.

The Times conveniently neglected to quote any of the “serious people” and “serious scholars” that its own sources cited. Their names aren’t hard to find. But why ruin a good narrative with facts? Let’s review. First, two real legal scholars, Georgetown’s Randy Barnett and Minnesota’s Ilan Wurman, co-wrote a New York Times essay arguing “Trump Might Have a Case on Birthright Citizenship.” It was right there in their own paper— but they still couldn’t find it.

Next, NYU’s Richard Epstein filed a scholarly brief in the case supporting Trump’s position. Professor Wurman had even told the Times itself that “this question is not open-and-shut, that conventional wisdom may not be correct, and that the Trump EO has more going for it than people realize.” Bloomberg Law —one Google search away— ran a piece headlined “Trump Birthright Citizenship View Rests on Originalism, Not Vibes.”

These professors aren’t fringe cranks; they’re the originalist scholars the conservative justices actually read, who actually filed briefs in the case, and might’ve had something smarter to say about the legal issues than just “serious people are taking it seriously.”

But the Times only quoted the two professors who disagreed with Trump —and who didn’t file briefs— then called the result a “split.” That’s like interviewing two people who didn’t like the movie on streaming and calling it a box-office bomb.

Guess what, Times? You just proved that conservatives, unlike Democrats, are allowed to disagree with each other without being ordered to re-education camp for struggle sessions.

I’ll cover the oral arguments story on Thursday, barring unforeseen breaking news, or unless I forget. (I won’t forget.)

There’s a war for your mind underway. It’s designed to make you anxious and enervated. Don’t fall for it. The only thing fracturing is their narrative.

📉 Finally, we arrive at the third “fracture” story in one day, because the Times apparently hadn’t yet met its assigned quota. Headline, also, unsurprisingly, from the New York Times:

The awful story started with the Times proving it can use the thesaurus to find words with negative connotations to sneakily attach to conservatives. The Times reported that viral video producer Nick Shirley “mumbled his remarks.” Mumbled! Throughout the Biden debacle, the Times never once described the Cabbage as “mumbling his remarks,” even though he always sounded like he was trying to talk and eat oatmeal at the same time. But Nick Shirley? Sure, total mumbler. 🙄

The story then sneered that the event’s 20-somethings weren’t in the ballroom listening to Nick Shirley mumbling, they were hanging out in the hall “in rumpled suits.” Rumpled suits? What kind of elitist claptrap is that? What was the Times trying to say? That they’d slept in their clothes? The DC Men’s Wearhouse isn’t up to Times’ standard? That young men in their twenties don’t possess the sartorial elegance of a 19th-century British lord? Stop the presses.

Then the Times made its astonishing scientific discovery: teenage boys have things on their minds other than nuanced political analysis. Specifically, testosterone. “The majority of us, we don’t necessarily come to these types of events for the speakers because generally they dish out the same slop over and over,” said Jack Moore, 19, a Georgia Teen Republican. We know what 19-year-old boys come to the events for. It’s not rocket science; but it’s a baffling mystery to Times reporters, apparently.

Finally —a fact completely omitted from the Times’ story— at the same CPAC conference the Times described as a wasteland of disgruntled, mumbling millennials in wrinkled khakis, Trump polled at 96% approval and even the Iranian military action at 89%. Some fracture.

The article concluded that MAGA is dying, based on a single quote from a 27-year-old working for the gubernatorial campaign of James Fishback. Who is James Fishback? Well, he is a fringe candidate ‘running’ for Florida governor. Fishback, 31, has a colorful biography including: nominating himself for the Federal Reserve, somehow managing to get himself banned from all Waffle House restaurants, having a me-too problem over a 2022 dustup with an 18-year-old former fiancé who now claims the relationship started when she was younger, and he just had his car repossessed. (Getting banned from Waffle House is actually quite an achievement. You usually have to try to cook your own hash browns while not wearing pants to even get a warning).

Assuming even half of that is true, there’s an even more damning fact.

The liberal media absolutely loves James Fishback. “Young conservatives in Florida are fascinated by James Fishback,” the New York Times gushed earlier this month, calling him “a long-shot gubernatorial candidate known for his provocative online posts.” It matter-of-factly reported that Fishback called for “hanging” people in the Epstein files, and ending gay marriage, but still couldn’t bring itself to describe him as a fascist.

Instead, the Times glowingly described Fishback’s ideas as “a mix of nativist America First stances and edgelord flair.” It lauded that “Mr. Fishback and his campaign have become darlings of the algorithms.” It said he was “refining an emerging style of far-right politicking that has him toggling between trollish online posts and idealistic policy proposals.”

It’s not just the Times. It’s the whole corporate media infrastructure. They’re all platforming James. For example, CBS, December:

The Spectator, January:

Let me be clear. I’m not punching at Fishback. I don’t know him. He has zero chance of winning the Florida gubernatorial nomination. He’s a right-wing horsefly who seems to relish the role. From what I can tell, I probably agree with him —at least directionally— on 80-90% of the issues. While we disagree on style and rhetoric, and certainly on infighting techniques, I’m not trying to cancel him.

UPDATE (11:02AM): After my texts blew up, it may be that the agreement circle is smaller than I’d guessed. As I said, I don’t know much about Fishman’s positions.

But I am deeply suspicious of corporate media’s love affair with him, and James, if you’re listening, you should be, too.

📉 Meanwhile, while the trad-media was busy hallucinating conservative fractures, they completely missed the actual, real-life fractures happening inside the Democrat Party. On Sunday, Senator Cory Booker told NBC the Democrats have “failed this moment” and called his own party’s coalition “too small to make a big change.” He said that “purity tests” within the Democrat party have led to more division in the US.

Think of it. That’s a Democrat senator at the leadership level publicly announcing his party blew it. But weirdly, there was no “COALITION CRACKING!” headline from Politico.

In Maine, Democratic Governor Janet Mills and progressive challenger Graham Platner are tearing each other apart in a Senate primary so bitter that NPR called it a “proxy battle between factions.” In Michigan, the Democratic Senate primary has split three ways —establishment vs. progressive vs. further-left— in what local media is calling “a proxy war for the Democratic Party’s soul.”

But the Times headlined that Michigan soul-war story as merely “challenging the idea of political risk,” whatever that means. Imagine if three Republican Senate candidates were fighting over “the party’s soul.” You’d hear about that story from space.

🔥 MAHA, conservative scholars, MAGA youth— all groups the Democrats are trying to get their fingernails underneath to pry away from the winning conservative coalition. It only works if we let them get away with it. Don’t let them get away with it.

Now, please excuse me. I have to go iron my rumpled suit, mumble some remarks, and get myself banned from Waffle House.

Have a terrific Tuesday! Roll back here tomorrow morning for more unified and unfractured essential news and conservative commentary. And a few chuckles.

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