Thank You For Your Support

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed." - Ernest Hemingway

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Before I continue preparing a slew of political highlights to unload here this week— a mash-up of various campaign recaps, events, commentary, and critiques that have piled up in recent weeks due to consistent travel (saying yes to nearly every invite that finds me) I want to thank you all for your enthusiastic support in this new endeavor. Most who subscribe here are accustomed to pop culture features as steady topics. While I won't abandon that entirely, I assure you the campaign shift will be just as if not more entertaining, considering the unique access that has opened up in the past two months, allowing me the opportunity to pull back the curtain and examine the election process with curiosity, respect, humor, and transparency. 

I can't believe how many people have come up to me lately—on all sides— to confess they are either excited about politics for the first time in their lives (thanks to my coverage) or experiencing a revived interest in the process after disastrous circumstances surrounding the 2020 elections severely damaged their trust in fair elections. Part of my motivation in this political redirect is trying to determine, without succumbing to existential dread, if the dream of America is, in fact, dead in the minds of most people in this country. 

Have we been groomed now to cave to an easy divide over branded politics and propaganda? If so, can we be healed from it?

Three weeks ago, when I posted the photo of my middle son wearing a teeshirt that read, "Trump Did Not Wrong" — gifted to us by Laura Loomer, I lost over 30k followers overnight. Mind you, most influencers try their hardest to avoid these types of mass exits. For me, it serves as an intellectual cleansing. For the past two years, to secure a following built mainly of open-minded, intelligent moderates, I've used trite instigations like this to sweep my audience of seething radicals on both sides. Anyone who won’t like or appreciate the levity I lean on. When I posted that photo, I knew I would be seated in the ballroom at Mar-A-Lago weeks later. Anyone that bothered by a teenager in a political statement tee will surely not enjoy anything that’s ahead in this journey. 

Good luck and good riddance!

Collectively (consciously & subconsciously), we are all recovering from the brutal effects of such a weird and twisted Covid era. After what we've been through, we deserve repaired unity in democracy and coverage that seeks truth, not poisoned by boring billionaire agendas. Your subscriptions rally against that. Your subscriptions mean I can pick up and fly out to an event on a day’s notice— as you know, spontaneous travel is expensive. Because you, as readers, provide me the means to do so, I feel indebted to make you feel as included in each event as possible. As long as people like me remain solely funded by the public, we will never be obligated to answer to, stroke, or secure anyone's greater agenda. In this framework, I can collect and recap experiences honestly for you. I decide my deadlines. I determine what is worth my time and travel. And at the end of all that, I'm not even here to tell anyone how they should vote. I'm here to offer a vision of candidates from a mostly optimistic point of view, which feels slightly edgy in contrast to today's dismal media trends where everyone is out to "get" or expose everyone else. 

However, as a disclaimer (because it does get brought up), with Biden as an imagined candidate, my bias is apparent. I cannot cater to that level of deception and delusion. Why should I? He's not fit to run the country another month, let alone four more years. Can we not admit out loud that we are tired of the lies surrounding this administration? Tired of pretending we actually know who's running this country when all we get is a propped-up cadaver appearing for occasional press conferences who fumbles through a teleprompter script every damn time.

If Team Biden were to extend an invite, happily, I would attend. Though, I suspect transparent journalism is not what they’re seeking currently. 

That said, I look forward to sharing what we've been up to these past few weeks. Some scenarios are almost too surreal for me to digest in real-time. Between a stay at the Kennedy compound and, four weeks later, a magical night at Mar-a-la-go, I'm still catching my breath and pinching myself. 

I can't wait to share the details about it all (especially THE MOST dramatic introduction to Trump under pale moonlight with Phantom of the Opera blaring on surround sound amidst a breezy terrace atop Mar-A-Lago). Three days later, in a gold monogrammed bathrobe purchased under a spell in his gift shop, I’m still asking myself if that was real.

Anyway, thank you for trusting me to bring you all the goods. 

With Love and Thanks,

JRK