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The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro shredded conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday’s edition of the former’s show, musing that “testosterone replacement therapy can only do so much.”

“And Alex Jones sitting along for all of this, like, Alex Jones is the guy who had to pay out a bajillion dollar settlement because he was lying about dead kids at Sandy Hook. That guy was welcomed, that guy was treated-, Tucker Carlson literally called that guy a prophet. He literally called him a prophet,” began Shapiro while discussing President Donald Trump’s feud with a quartet of conspiratorial podcasters. “Alex Jones, who by the way says he no longer supports Trump. He put out that tweet yesterday saying that he no long supports President Trump.”

Shapiro then read an excerpt from the following tweet fired off by Jones on Thursday evening:

I have made it very clear that I no longer support Trump and I’m very thankful to him for making it clear that I have nothing to do with him. The new Trump is a rotting husk of the old Trump.

I hope 47 enjoys Mark Levine being his spirit animal..

“Speaking of a rotting husk, do take a look in the mirror, my dude,” added Shapiro. “Testosterone replacement therapy can only do so much.”

Trump disavowed Jones, Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens on Thursday in a Truth Social post that read:

I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs. They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too! Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did! They’ve all been thrown off Television, lost their Shows, and aren’t even invited on TV because nobody cares about them, they’re NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS, and will say anything necessary for some “free” and cheap publicity. Now they think they get some “clicks” because they have Third Rate Podcasts, but nobody’s talking about them, and their views are the opposite of MAGA — Or I wouldn’t have won the Presidential Election in a LANDSLIDE. MAGA agrees with me, and just gave CNN a 100% Approval Rating of “TRUMP,” not Hand Flailing Fools like Tucker Carlson, who couldn’t even finish College, he was a broken man when he got fired from Fox, and he’s never been the same — Perhaps he should see a good psychiatrist! Or Megyn Kelly, who nastily asked me the now famous, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” question, or “Crazy” Candace Owens, who accuses the Highly Respected First Lady of France of being a man, when she is not, and will hopefully win lots of money in the ongoing lawsuit. Actually, to me, the First Lady of France is a far more beautiful woman than Candace, in fact, it’s not even close! Or Bankrupt Alex Jones, who says some of the dumbest things, and lost his entire fortune, as he should have, for his horrendous attack on the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, ridiculously claiming it was a hoax. These so-called “pundits” are LOSERS, and they always will be! Now Fake News CNN, The Failing New York Times, and all of the other Radical Left “News” Organizations, are “hailing” them, and giving them “positive” press for the first time in their lives. They’re not “MAGA,” they’re losers, just trying to latch on to MAGA. As President, I could get them on my side anytime I want to, but when they call, I don’t return their calls because I’m too busy on World and Country Affairs and, after a few times, they go “nasty,” just like Marjorie “Traitor” Brown, but I no longer care about that stuff, I only care about doing right for our Country. MAGA is about WINNING and STRENGTH in not allowing Iran to have Nuclear Weapons. MAGA is about MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and these people have no idea how to do that, BUT I DO, because THE UNITED STATES IS NOW THE “HOTTEST” COUNTRY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!

— —

The post ‘Speaking of a Rotting Husk…’ Ben Shapiro Shreds Alex Jones Amid Trump Feud first appeared on Mediaite.

Last month, Microsoft announced that it planned to remove "unnecessary" Copilot features in Windows 11. The news was a bit shocking to say the least: Microsoft has been one of the biggest proponents of generative AI, pushing the technology into as many corners of its apps and OS as possible—despite negative feedback from users. Now, it seems the company is paying attention, and is actually sticking to its word.

As spotted by The Verge's Tom Warren, Microsoft has already started removing some "unnecessary" Copilot buttons from certain Windows apps. Warren notes that the latest Windows Insider version of the Notepad app is missing the Copilot button. In its place, Microsoft has added a "writing tools" menu. The Snipping Tool also has a similar situation: When you select an area to take a snapshot of, you won't find the Copilot button anymore.

It's a small start, but at least the company is starting the removal process. In his announcement last month, Pavan Davuluri (Microsoft's President of Windows & Devices) revealed that the company would remove Copilot from both Notepad and the Snipping Tool, but also Photos and Widgets. If the trend holds, expect to see these apps lose their Copilot buttons next.

The keyword here really is "buttons" though. As Warren highlights for The Verge, Microsoft seems to be largely retaining the AI features themselves. "Writing tools" in Notepad still has Microsoft's AI writing tools, in case users still want to access those options. But by removing the large Copilot option, users who want nothing to do with AI in apps like Notepad can easily avoid them. Really, it's evidence that the "in your face" approach Microsoft has taken to AI integration has really backfired. It doesn't help the company's case that, up until last week, Microsoft's official terms of service said Copilot was "for entertainment purposes only."

It's simple enough to remove Copilot buttons from software; it's another thing entirely to deal with the Copilot button affixed to new "Copilot+ PCs." Microsoft had manufacturers add this button as part of its dedication to this new technology, but now that it's pulling back a bit, it leaves these PCs in an odd place. It always seemed like a strange choice to put a Copilot key on a laptop when it wasn't clear how many users really want to use Copilot features in the first place. At least you can remap it to do something more useful if you don't care for Microsoft's AI.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized direct negotiations with Lebanon after facing mounting pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Wednesday, Israel launched a renewed offensive against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, which has been firing rockets into the north of the country.

The Israeli military said the airstrikes over Beirut hit 100 targets in less than 10 minutes, including the Hezbollah headquarters and command-and-control centers. Additionally, the Israeli Defense Forces confirmed that Ali Yusuf Harshi, the nephew and personal secretary to Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem, had been killed in the strikes.

Hezbollah violated a ceasefire on March 2 that had been in place since November 2024, resuming its attacks on Israel shortly after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.

As of Thursday afternoon, according to Lebanon’s health minister, the death toll from Wednesday’s strikes surpassed 200 people.

As confusion abounds regarding the exact terms of the U.S. ceasefire with Iran, Netanyahu and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have both said a pause in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah was not part of its terms.

Iran, on the other hand, has called the strikes a ceasefire violation, and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf took to X to warn of “STRONG responses.”

“1- Lebanon and the entire Resistance Axis, as Iran’s allies, form an inseparable part of the ceasefire (Point 1, 10-point proposal),” he wrote. “2 – PM Shehbaz Sharif publicly and clearly stressed the Lebanon issue; there is no room for denial and backtracking. 3 – Ceasefire violations carry explicit costs and STRONG responses. Extinguish the fire immediately.”

In a phone call on Wednesday, Trump and White House envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly encouraged Netanyahu to scale back Israel’s strikes on Lebanon for the sake of preserving the negotiations with Iran.

While Netanyahu declared Israel would continue striking Hezbollah “with force, precision and determination” as early as Thursday morning, he pivoted within hours and announced that he had authorized “open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible.”

“The negotiations will focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon,” he said in a statement.

The post Israel to Hold Direct Talks with Lebanon After Facing Pressure from Trump Administration first appeared on Mediaite.

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My wife and I live in an urban area where outdoor space is at a premium, so I consider our home's second floor roof deck one of its standout features. It’s sunny and relatively private—and, crucially, it’s outdoor space in a city where a Juliet balcony is often the best you can do.

There are two downsides to the space, however. One is that it is plagued by bugs, especially since one of our neighbors began hosting the dreaded spotted lanternfly like they were protecting an endangered species. The other is that our cats love being on the deck, but also love launching themselves over the fence to explore the neighborhood. (Did I mention this deck is on the second floor? You haven’t lived until you’ve hunted down a lost cat across your neighbors' roofs.)

The solution, for us, was to screen in the deck. First, I built a simple frame to extend the railings up a few feet, and created a pergola-like set of rafters going across to support a screen. Here’s what it looked like at that point:

Framing on my deck. Credit: Jeff Somers

But how to actually enclose it? I could have just stapled screen to the framing, but that would lead to a problem in the winter, when the "roof" would be laden with snow. I’m pretty good with a power drill and some pressure-treated 2x4s, but I don’t think my screen-roof would've held several feet of New Jersey snow, so my screen needed to be easily removable (and replaceable).

The solution was a DIY screen-in kit from Screeneze

SCREENEZE No-Spline Screened in Porch Kit - 96-in, 5 PK (Bronze) - SCREENEZE Aluminum Base & Vinyl Caps - Porch Screening System for Mesh Screen Patio Enclosure Panels

$189.99 at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

$189.99 at Amazon

After some research, I found the solutions: A screened-in porch kit from Screeneze. It’s a simple concept: You attach an aluminum base to the perimeter of whatever opening you’re screening in, stretch your screen over the base, and lightly hammer a vinyl cap on top to secure the screen in place without staples. When you need to, you can easily pry off the caps with a flathead screwdriver and remove or replace the screen.

Once installed, the base of the kit looks like this:

Closeup of SCREENEZE base. Credit: Jeff Somers

and the caps look like this:

Close up of SCREENEZE cap. Credit: Jeff Somers

The aluminum base is easy to cut to size using a hacksaw or metal snippers, and the caps can be cut with a utility knife or even a decent pair of scissors, so you can customize the size of your screened area. They come in four basic colors (bronze, sand, white, and clay).

The installation process was also pretty simple: I measured the perimeter, bought the necessary number of base and caps, and cut my bases to the correct lengths. You don’t have to make them exactly as long as the space you’re screening—you can cut them into smaller, more manageable lengths and attach them end-to-end, making sure you line them up so the caps can go across seams if necessary. This is especially helpful for the caps, as I found trying to hold them in place so I could hammer them home was a challenge, as they are quite bendy. Cutting them into shorter lengths made them a lot easier to work with.

Phifer BetterVue High-Visibility Mesh Screen for Patio Porch, Screen Door Mesh, & Balcony - High Transparency Window Screening for Porches Roll - (48 in x 100 ft) - DIY Replacement & Repair

at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

at Amazon

The kit comes with all the self-tapping screws you’ll need, so you can slap the aluminum base up pretty fast. Then you just need some screen—I bought an enormous roll of the stuff from Phifer BetterVue, because it’s proved to be durable, attractive, and easy to work with.

My rumpled supply of screen. Credit: Jeff Somers

I cut lengths to cover the horizontal openings, and attached the screen to the top base first. That made it easy to go back, stretch the screen down, and attach the bottom and side caps, giving me a nice, tight screen that won’t block the view (or the sun). Next, I cut two large sections of screen to cover half of the “roof,” attached them to the sides using the caps, stretched them to the center, and attached them to the front and back of the deck (it was hard to stretch the top screen tightly, especially because there’s no base or cap running down the center line, so it remains a little loose, but it still does the job.

Here’s what it looks like fully installed:

The finished screen. Credit: Jeff Somers

Screening in the deck made it the ideal outdoor space

So how’d it turn out? Terrific. Screening in the porch means:

• There are no bugs. Every once in a very long while, a winged insect makes its way into the deck area, but it’s very rare. And I haven’t seen a spotted lanternfly back there in a loooong time (though I still see them everywhere else, because, again, one of the neighbors seems determined to be a refuge for them).

• Pets can hang out there. I no longer have to worry about cats escaping into the neighborhood, and I don’t have to feel guilty about preventing the furry idiots from enjoying our outdoor space. They can lounge around as much as they like—they enjoy climbing the screen like spidercat, too. Maybe a bit too much.

• The screen doesn’t block the sun, so it’s still a bright, pleasant place to hang out, grill, or do whatever else.

• It's easy to remove and reinstall. When the weather turns, I can pry off the caps and roll back the screen in about ten minutes, so I don’t have to worry about snow loads destroying everything. And when the screen gets torn, I just undo that section and pop in a fresh screen, a process that takes five minutes at most.

The Screeneze kit has lasted years, through some pretty gnarly weather, and it’s still in almost-new shape. If you’ve got a deck, pergola, or porch, screening it in can make a more enjoyable and more useful space, and this kit will make doing that a fairly simple job.

WhatsApp is finally getting a long-awaited privacy feature that allows you to display a username rather than your phone number, which will remain hidden from other users. This feature has been in the works for more than a year, with few details released as to its functionality and ETA. While it's still not rolling out to all users just yet, we now know a little bit more about how it will work.

According to WABetaInfo (and as reported by 9to5Google), WhatsApp is set to launch usernames to a very limited number of accounts as part of a phased rollout. This means that you may not have access to this update now—but you should consider the switch as soon as it becomes available to you.

How to add a username to WhatsApp

Once the username feature is widely available, you should see the option in your WhatsApp profile settings (go to Settings and tap your profile name and photo). On the pop-up, you can choose to create a WhatsApp username or select your existing Facebook or Instagram username instead. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp has a handful of rules for new usernames:

• Usernames can contain only lowercase letters, numerals, periods, and underscores.

• Usernames must include at least one letter.

• Usernames cannot start with "www." or end in a domain (such as .com).

• Usernames must be be 3–35 characters in length.

Usernames on WhatsApp must also be unclaimed across other Meta platforms—so even if a username appears available on WhatsApp, you won't be able to choose it if someone else is using it on Facebook or Instagram. If you have an existing username on either of the latter, consider the potential privacy implications of making your accounts easy to identify across platforms before linking that same name to WhatsApp.

Along with a WhatsApp username, you'll also be able to set up a four-digit code, which other users will need to enter when they message you for the first time. Username keys allow you to limit communication to trusted contacts.

Former ABC News political director Mark Halperin insisted on Wednesday that there was still time for President Donald Trump to “fix the problems by the midterms,” praising the president’s “great sense of instincts” and “great sense of timing.”

During a conversation with Halperin on The Megyn Kelly Show, host Megyn Kelly observed that things weren’t looking good for Trump and the Republican Party in the 2026 midterms following his war against Iran.

“He is down significantly with every constituency that put him in office,” she noted. “He’s gone up with the very small contingent that includes the massively hawkish neocon right, but with every other contingent, he’s gone down.”

Kelly then questioned, “So what do you think his mindset is here coming out of that? Now even that small contingent is unhappy with him, but they’ll get over it because they’re very grateful for the war, but he has so much work to do in regaining the support of the other groups.”

Halperin replied, “Well, he’s not up for re-election, and so where his support stands doesn’t directly affect him. I think that there’s time, although the clock ticks, for him to fix the problems by the midterms, not just by ending the war, but by doing some of the other things Republicans are talking about.”

“He’s got a great sense of instincts and a great sense of timing normally, but this is a complicated one, and I think we don’t know yet how this has gone as compared to his greatest hopes and worst nightmares,” he continued. “As PT Barnum, he’s always going to sell this as a big success, but he has a chance to succeed having done a difficult thing.”

Halperin concluded, “But there’s no doubt that China and Russia must look at this and say, ‘Huh, nice try. If this was meant to intimidate us, it didn’t work.’ And even if gas prices, as he said, they will come down now, it’s still not clear if the goal was to make the American people feel like he accomplished something. He’s far short of that right now.”

Watch above via The Megyn Kelly Show.

The post Mark Halperin Insists There’s Time for Trump ‘to Fix the Problems by the Midterms’ as Popularity Craters: ‘He’s Got a Great Sense of Instincts’ first appeared on Mediaite.

Stephen Colbert seized on President Donald Trump’s claim that the U.S. had “met and exceeded” its objectives on Wednesday in Iran, conceding that the president has met one core goal: stopping coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The Late Show host opened his show reflecting on how, after his incendiary threats to destroy Iran if his conditions were not met before his imposed deadline, the president had announced a last-minute deal.

“You’ll remember Trump had threatened to kill a 5,000-year-old civilization at 8:00 p.m. Eastern,” Colbert began. “But a little more than 1 hour before that deadline, Trump agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran.”

“Finally, the war was over for a bit,” he joked.

The comedian quipped that Trump “realized” Beatles icon John Lennon’s “dream” before running back a clip of his famous anti-war song “Give Peace a Chance” – changing the lyrics to: “All we are saying, is peace for two weeks.”

As the audience applauded and laughed, Colbert then pivoted to the president’s Truth Social post announcing the “double-sided ceasefire.”

“Aren’t all peace deals double-sided? I believe there’s a word for a single-sided ceasefire, and it’s murder,” he said.

Rounding on Trump’s explanation for ending the conflict, claiming that the U.S. had “already met and exceeded all Military objectives”, the comedian set up to needle the president – once again – on the topic he won’t drop.

“It’s true, this war reached all of its objectives,” the host quipped, before adding: “It’s been weeks since anyone mentioned the Epstein files.”

Watch above via CBS.

The post Stephen Colbert Jokes That Trump Achieved One Key Objective With Iran War first appeared on Mediaite.