To everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of a mental health crisis:
Show us your laptop.
Show us your iCloud.
Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy. No context. No filter. No explanation.
You won’t.
You won’t because you know what I know. Any one of us, frozen at our worst moment, photographed in our lowest hour, looks like a monster. Looks like a stranger. Looks like someone who deserves to be cast out.
That is not who we are.
My mom and baby sister were killed in a car accident when I was just a kid. Cancer took my brother Beau, my best friend and my rock. I battled alcoholism. I battled addiction. I chose the coward’s way out more times than I can count.
For years I believed the defining chapters of my life were written by tragedy, loss, and shame.
I no longer believe that.
Pain can shape us. Loss can humble us. Failures can leave scars that never fully fade. But none of them have the authority to define us.
And it sure as hell ain’t the critic that counts.
That authority belongs to us alone-the person in the arena.
Every setback presents a choice. Play the victim, or cut the bullshit and take ownership for who we become next.
Life does not determine our character. It reveals it.
Again and again we are asked the same question. When shit happens, what next?
We are not defined by what happened to us. We are not defined by the worst photo, the worst text, the worst tattoo, the worst night. We are defined by the person we choose to become. And by the courage to choose that person, every single day.
So before you reach for the gavel - show us your laptop.
You won’t.
The whole world saw mine. And I am still here. Still becoming. Still choosing. Still standing.
That is the only definition that matters.
BREAKING: BRAVO! James Talarico demolishes Ted Cruz for smearing him as not "masculine" enough to win in Texas by listing all of the things that "real men" never do.
And Cruz does every single one of them...
"Ted Cruz basically said he wouldn't use the word 'masculine' to describe you,'" Jen Psaki said to Talarico on MS NOW. "It seems pretty clear what they're trying to do here, at least to me. Not only are they going after you, but they're really trying to attack groups of people you've defended in the past, including trans people and others. What do you make of that?"
In addition to Cruz's pathetic smear, Trump's pet fascist Stephen Miller falsely asserted that Talarico is transgender. Other Republican influencers have implied that he's gay. The strategy here is clear: lean into culture war lies about Talarico rather than contest him on actual policy.
"Yeah, there's been a lot of talk in this race about what it means to be a real man," Talarico said to Psaki. "And recently on the campaign trail, I told the story of my adoptive dad, the man who gave me his last name, the man who raised me as his own."
"Every Saturday morning, Mark Talarico would mow our lawn, whether it was rain or shine, whether he wanted to or not, he insisted on mowing our lawn himself," he continued. "And then without anyone asking him to, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn because our neighbor was elderly, she was a widow. And my dad never talked about it. He just did it."
"Because that's what a man does. A man takes responsibility," he said.
"A man upholds his commitments to his family and his neighbors."
"A man does what's right even when no one is watching."
"And here's what real men don't do... They don't lie and cheat their way through life," he went on. "They don't sell their soul to the highest bidder. They don't steal from other people in order to enrich themselves. And so I've said before, and I will keep saying, that real men serve others."
"Weak men serve themselves," he added. "And so I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man. And I don't think Ken Paxton or Ted Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is."
Someone should tell Ted Cruz that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Donald Trump called his wife ugly during the 2016 Republican primary, only for Cruz to go on to become one of Trump's staunchest supporters. There is nothing "masculine" about selling out your own family in pursuit of power.
Similarly, Talarico's disgraced opponent Ken Paxton is the furthest thing from a good man. He was impeached as state attorney general by his own party for bribery, and his wife divorced him for adultery. If that's what a "real man" does, then we need a lot fewer "real men" in government.
Please ❤️ and share if you support James Talarico!
🚨🇺🇸 A terrified Bongino told Tucker that Trump shut down the Butler investigation himself.
Tucker says he accidentally obtained the Thomas Crooks social media posts the FBI claimed didn't exist, then called Kash Patel and Dan Bongino looking for answers.
Bongino, a friend of many years, allegedly became hysterical before finally telling him to take it up with Trump, who he said killed the Butler investigation himself.
Tucker says he still has every text exchange.
"There's no good explanation for shutting down an investigation into your own attempted murder.
This is not what we've been told it was."
@TuckerCarlson@TCNetwork
Yo am I crazy or did Adidas just drop a Scotland hype video/ad based on Trainspotting?
Absolutely love it….might be rocking with them now for the tournament
🚨 French authorities have confirmed Israeli interference in May's Scottish elections.
Will @YvetteCooperMP follow France's lead and summon the Israeli ambassador? Or will she continue Labour's tradition of letting them away with absolutely anything?
https://t.co/0VdgZEZ2QZ
🇫🇷🇮🇱 France says Israeli influence firm, BlackCore, may have interfered with elections in France, Scotland, Angola, Togo, and also New York City's mayoral race.
They're accused of running digital influence operations using fake accounts, AI, and smear campaigns.
Remember how the EU was up in arms about supposed Russian election interference?
Guess what they've said about this. Nothing.
Funny how "protecting democracy" becomes a much more complicated concept when investigators start looking at people other than Russia.
Writer: Ian
Who paid for this Israeli firm to interfere in the Scottish Parliament elections a month ago? Where is the Scottish press on this?
Surely this is a bigger story than all the tittle tattle they seem obsessed by. https://t.co/36yER9ZAh2
I thought that if Israeli soldiers or settlers attacked Christian villages, the Christian world would unite in their millions in condemnation that their sacred sites were being burnt and erased.
For anyone familiar with Belfast, the most obvious fact about the areas in which racist pogroms took place last night is that they are all Loyalist. The Scottish protests all featured Union flags. Yet the legacy media basically refuses to mention this: https://t.co/Dim66gUUQB
This is the Epstein article by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (authors of the forthcoming “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump”) everyone's talking about, without a paywall: https://t.co/2wbHe8R9xE
1.EXCLUSIVE: @BylineTimes exposes the Russian neo-Nazi network – promoted by Tommy Robinson – pushing 'White Lives Matter' propaganda to sow division and race war across the UK and Europe. Founded by a sanctioned oligarch close to Putin🧵https://t.co/rNHXhfFOrj
A quarter-century of data tells a very different story about which groups are actually being unfairly targeted by the police in Britain - read our @BylineTimes data dive setting out the facts https://t.co/T048iRlWqs
The Senegalese 🇸🇳 delegation gets this treatment on arrival in the USA. Full tarmac searches, shoes off, bags turned inside out like criminals.
This is straight up humiliation and a disgrace. They’d never put white boys through the same.
Scottish renewables projects will be hit with a £1bn bill to use the UK grid. Meanwhile, projects in England and Wales are paid to connect.
https://t.co/pMKOTTGi16
Police Scotland merger criticised by opposition parties has resulted in world leading detection rate and every homicide committed in Scotland since 2013 solved https://t.co/niioKxoCSC