I get along wonderfully with the other PJ Media writers. They’re great. Many of ‘em I’ve admired from afar before joining their merry team, and since getting to know ‘em professionally, I like ‘em even more.
Robert Spencer collects fatwas like they’re bottlecaps. His moral courage is off-the-charts; his cajónes must be the size of Alpha Centauri. Matt Margolis is the hardest working man in conservative media — and my fellow Tesla Bro — but just for the record, my Model S is WAY faster (and more masculine) than his girlish Y.
And so many others: Sarah Anderson, Rick Moran, Catherine Salgado, Stephen Green, Chris Queen, Kevin Downey, Stephen Kruiser, Jamie Wilson, Charlie Martin, Victoria Taft, Athena Thorne — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (Apologies to Benjamin Bartee, Bryan Jung, David Manney, Eric Florack, Tim O’Brien, and the rest: Y’all are awesome, too.) They’re dazzlingly talented thinkers, writers, pundits, and/or troublemakers. I’ve learned a lot from ‘em.
And I think they like me, too.
Mostly because I tend to choose topics that nobody else wants to write about.
See, behind the scenes at PJ Media, there’s a first-come, first-serve rule in claiming topics. Obviously, we wouldn’t want 20 op-eds about the same exact thing on the same exact day, so there’s a process for claiming new articles.
If someone beats you to the punch, you’re out of luck.
And since our compensation model is based, at least in part, on article views, PJ Media writers are highly motivated to claim topics that resonate with you, our audience. So, whenever a hot news story breaks, everyone wants to claim it first, because we all wanna be #1.
At times, the elbows can get awfully sharp.
But for the most part, I tend to focus less on fast-breaking stories or daily outrages, and more on tactics and strategy. That’s my niche: I understand PR, marketing, media relations, and messaging, so that’s what I write about.
And hopefully, what I write complements what my colleagues write.
It’s sort of like a marriage: You’re a damn fool if you marry your carbon copy, because there’s already one of you. A second “you” would be redundant.
Instead, the best marriages are complementary: Where one spouse is weak, the other is strong. When one spouse struggles, the other picks up the slack.
And then, together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For whatever reason, the pieces just… fit.
That’s the telltale sign of a marriage that’ll go the distance.
My value proposition to you, the PJ Media VIP reader, is modest: I’m not gonna be your source for the latest news. It’s not my jam and honestly, it doesn’t really suit my skillset. Look, I’m a smart and capable Day One thinker, but I’m way smarter on days three and four. The more time I can spend thinking about something, the better my ideas.
My strength is identifying new PR opportunities, explaining (and reverse-engineering) PR tactics, and critiquing marketing/communications strategies. And since PR is as much an art as it is a science, when you click on my columns, I’ll give you a perspective that you won’t get anywhere else.
I won’t always be right, but I’ll always be different.
Besides, your cup runneth over with latest-news, quick-take, rapid-fire political content. I have so many incredible colleagues who not only excel at it, but do it with wit and flair. (And some of their headlines are just: [chef’s kiss]. I’ll stare at ‘em on my phone and start giggling in public.)
So I’ll try to be the best “me” possible. And, I hope, my colleagues will do the same. We all bring something different to the table: different backgrounds, different perspectives, different skills, and different life experiences.
It’s a really nice combination, isn’t it?
PRediction: One of two things is true: Either we’re in an A.I. bubble… or we’re not.
If we are, then the economy is headed for a recession, which means the Republicans will be massacred in the midterms. It’s 100% inevitable, because a recession will overshadow everything else. We’re talking an inescapable black hole.
(And you-know-who the media will blame.)
But it’s also possible that we’re in the exact opposite of a bubble: Perhaps A.I. is actually undervalued.
After all, if A.I. is as transformative as its acolytes claim, then it’s impossible to foresee all the possibilities. Nobody knows how the dominoes will fall, because if A.I. facilitates innovation and ingenuity, by definition it’ll move in directions we cannot predict.
There seems to be two A.I. camps. First are the skeptics. They view chatbots (such as Grok, ChatGPT, and others) as muscled-up predictive texting. Basically, it’s nothing more than autocorrect on steroids, endlessly regurgitating the data it’s trained on.
It’s a pretty cool party trick, but it’ll never be on par with a human mind.
Then there are the A.I. true believers, such as Elon Musk, who predict the machines are on the cusp of not only matching the human mind, but exponentially surpassing it. And then, for the first time since, perhaps, the age of the Neanderthals, human beings won’t be far and away Earth’s smartest resident. (Fun fact: Neanderthals actually had bigger brains than modern humans, although the link between their brain size and intelligence is speculative.)
When this happens, social progress will snowball. Our A.I. overlords will lead us to a glorious new Golden Age of surpluses, riches, global peace, and immortality!
(Or it’ll kill us. Can’t be totally sure yet.)
I don’t wanna wax all Asimov and go on a sci-fi rant. Long-term, A.I. “could be” this or it “could be” that.
But short-term, as long as A.I. continues to be scalable, the economy should be fine.
This technology is backed by the biggest companies in the world. The FAANG boys (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google), plus Musk (Grok) and Open AI (ChatGPT) and Microsoft have deep enough pockets to weather any storm.
If A.I. is a bubble, then eventually, the bubble with burst. And since the answer to the “bubble question” depends on new research, the A.I. insiders will recognize it first.
That’s why investors are staying optimistic: They’re following the lead of the A.I. insiders.
PRojection: The most important news story that not enough people talked about was the Nvidia earning report from Nov. 19.
CNN: Nvidia beats earning expectations, even as bubble concerns mount.
Nvidia posted strong revenue and profits that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations Wednesday. The closely watched result could prompt a sigh of relief across the stock market following growing concerns about an artificial intelligence bubble.
Nvidia’s sales grew 62% year-over-year to $57 billion in the October quarter, ahead of the $54.9 billion Wall Street had projected, signaling that demand for AI chips remains strong even as more questions emerge about whether returns from the technology will keep up with the pace of infrastructure investments. It posted profits of $31.9 billion, up 65% from the year-ago quarter and also slightly above expectations.
“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement, a message that echoes his earlier arguments that fears of an AI bubble are overblown.
The company also posted stronger-than-expected sales guidance of around $65 billion for the fourth quarter, another indicator that the AI spending spree isn’t slowing anytime soon.
The moment A.I. progress stalls, it’ll be reflected in Nvidia’s sales. The fact that its sales are still accelerating is wonderful news for the GOP.
It means we still have a fighting chance in the midterms.
If we’re in an A.I. bubble, the researchers would know it before we do. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. By all accounts, it’s still full steam ahead.
Inside the White House, I’ll betcha they uncorked the champagne bottles.
It’s worth noting that the Trump administration had gone out of its way to accommodate the A.I. titans, pumping billions into A.I. infrastructure, shielding it from state regulations — even when doing so angers the MAGA base.
I think they’ve concluded that the A.I. industry is too big to fail.
Because if it does, EVERYTHING will fall with it… except the Democratic Party. For them, it’ll be manna from Heaven.
Which means, a smart 4D chess move for the Democrats would be using the mainstream media to push stories about A.I. stalling, failing, and being an overhyped (and overvalued) bubble.
If they scare away enough investors, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Long term, the truth will be the truth; either A.I. will deliver on its grandiose promises or it won’t. But short-term, the easiest way for the radical left to kill the economy in 2026 — and stop Donald Trump for good — is to convince nervous investors that A.I. is a stupid, overvalued investment.
Keep your eyes on this. It’s the economy’s Achilles heel.
PRaise: To Donald Trump for deftly defanging Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. It was a masterclass in subverting expectations. Instead of clubbing him with a (rhetorical) crowbar, Trump killed him with kindness.
We’ve previously discussed Trump’s strategy. But there’s one other wrinkle worth discussing:
Somewhere midweek, it’ll dawn on pro-Mamdani leftists that Donald freaking Trump — a.k.a. “literally Hitler” — treated Mamdani with more kindness, respect, and professional decorum than fellow New Yorker Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who didn’t even support Mamdani!
Nothin’ like sowing some extra discord in your enemy’s camp.
That’s why Trump is Trump, boys and girls: his instincts are uncanny.
PRedators: In her Friday night resignation announcement, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) revealed her plans to leave Congress. Not immediately; she’ll wait until her pension vests in 2026 (coincidentally enough) and leave office then.
During her announcement, one of her reasons for quitting was that she didn’t want to subject her “sweet district” to a primary battle. Well, okay.
Then why didn’t she simply announce she wasn’t gonna run for reelection and stay ‘til the end of her term?!
Wouldn’t that prevent her “sweet district” from facing a mean, awful primary battle, too — while also ensuring that the citizens in her “sweet district” would continue to have their interests represented in the halls of Congress? Wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds?
Doesn’t her “sweet district” deserve as much?
Nah. She wanted to punish MAGA for forsaking her. She’s just grabbing some cookies on the way out.
She loves her “sweet self” more than her “sweet district.” The people of Georgia deserve better than this.
