https://www.cbsnews.com/news/venezuelan-navy-threatened-to-open-fire-on-us-financed-aid-ship-puerto-rico-governor-says-today-2019-02-23/

A Venezuelan Navy vessel threatened to "open fire" on a ship carrying humanitarian aid that was dispatched and financed by Puerto Rico's government, according to the island's governor.

In a statement Saturday night, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said he instructed the ship, which departed the island Wednesday and has American citizens on board, to leave the area where it was reportedly threatened by embattled President Nicolás Maduro's navy to ensure the crew's safety.

"This is a direct threat against a humanitarian mission being carried out by American citizens," he said. "This is unacceptable and shameful."

Rosselló said he had notified U.S. government official about the alleged incident.

A spokesperson for the Puerto Rican government told CBS News the ship, which was not displaying a U.S. or Puerto Rican flag, was entering Venezuelan territorial waters when it was threatened. The ship carrying humanitarian aid was heading to the port city of Puerto Cabello, in Venezuela's northwestern coast, the spokesperson added.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bannon-zero-doubt-trump-running-in-2020/

Former top presidential adviser Steve Bannon says he has "zero" doubt right now that President Donald Trump will run for a second term in 2020.

However, the ex-chief strategist tells CBS News Correspondent Seth Doane that 2019 will not be an easy year for the president.

"I believe that we're going to enter into an extraordinary time in American politics," Bannon warned.

"We've allowed the Democrats, because they take control of the House, to weaponize a whole bunch of investigations. They're going to be able to weaponize the Mueller report. 2019's going to be quite vitriolic."

CBS News has learned that Mueller's report is expected to be turned in sometime after next week to Attorney General William Barr.

However, Bannon said that the special counsel investigation is not the only one the president should be concerned about, pointing to investigations from the Southern District of New York and federal prosecutors as other areas of concern.

"I think we're, in the United States right now for the next four or five months, going to really be into quite a vitriolic time," Bannon said.

https://thebulwark.com/salem-host-promotes-kamala-harris-jussie-smollett-conspiracy-theory/

The theory, as NBC’s Ben Collins reports, comes from the online message board 4Chan, notorious for conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and racist memes.

It is unclear how McCullough came across the theory, but it seems popular among the Q-Anon conspiracy crowd on Twitter. Naturally, some believer in the theory (or troll) temporarily edited Harris’s Wikipedia page. Or possibly it came from the pro-Trump Twitter personality Terrence K. Williams, who refers to Smollett as Harris’s “crazy nephew.”

Whatever the origins, McCullough was quickly challenged on the veracity of his statement. His response was to shift the burden of proof to the people questioning his claim: “Source that debunks the evidence I’ve seen?” Typically, that’s not how it works in journalism. But whatever.

McCullough later deleted the tweet, but the fallout kept coming on Twitter, so he seems to have decided on a non-denial, block-and-bridge counterattack: Pointing to a 20+ day old tweet by Harris where she called the manufactured Jussie Smollett incident a “modern day lynching” with a bright red “SCAM ALERT!” graphic over it.

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/431290-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-stars-as-a-political-superhero-in-new

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) will be featured as a "butt-kicking" political superhero in a new comic book.

The Devil's Due Comics publishing company announced on Friday that it has assembled a team of artists to create what it calls the “mother of all one-off commemorative comics: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez And The Freshman Force. Issue #1, New Party: Who Dis?”

The comic book is titled after a fiery response the freshman congresswoman directed towards Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in January after he said he hopes she is not the future of the Democratic Party.

Ocasio-Cortez fired back in a tweet at the time, asking, “New party, who dis?”

KEK