Former health minister Greg Hunt (Image: AAP/Tracey Nearmy)

The Hunt for Rudd We struggle to pick a favourite part of the drama emanating from former PM Kevin Rudd’s intervention in the desperate state of the COVID vaccine rollout. There was an extremely not-mad Health Minister Greg Hunt having a “little chuckle” at the story, refusing several times to use Rudd’s name (calling him “the individual”) as though he feared he would summon him like Beetlejuice or something. We also got Defence Minister Peter Dutton sharing Pfizer’s rebuttal of allegations that no one had made, winning him an argument no one was having, and Malcolm Turnbull giving out likes to anti-Morrison tweets like lollies:

We will leave the last word to Rudd. His people put out a lengthy statement (which isn’t like him) restating his involvement and insisting that his letter was “entirely consistent with public statements by Pfizer”. And if you’re wondering why it came from a member of his office, writing about about Rudd in the third person, we suspect it’s so the final line really landed with the intended disdain:

Mr Rudd would definitely not seek to associate himself with the Australian Government’s comprehensively botched vaccine procurement program.

Film festival filler We’re so glad to see the Melbourne International Film Festival is back and we hope Melburnians can get to enjoy it despite today’s ominous news. The selection looks incredible, but we in the Crikey bunker might make it a priority to catch this one, featured on the website (before being hastily amended this morning):

Ah yes, Lorem ipsem, the story of a gal who came to town to make it big in the subediting trade, but found she was just filler. Tickets selling fast

Trump is @dril part 400 Via The Hill comes a section of Donald Trump’s weekend speech to Conservative Political Action Conference that caught our eye:

I got impeached twice. I became worse.

I became worse.

We have previously noted that, if you can ignore the whole fascism thing for a second, Trump’s presidency was the funniest thing it is possible to imagine, and rhetoric like this just continues the impression that Trump is merely the persona of internet weirdo dril come to life. Insisting he just gets worse is remarkably similiar @dril’s taunt: “go ahead. keep screaming “Shut The Fuck Up ” at me. it only makes my opinions Worse”.

Back in 2019, having said that IS “uses the Internet better than almost anyone”, Trump hastily added that there was “nothing to admire about them, they will always try to show a glimmer of vicious hope, but they are losers and barely breathing”, recalling @dril’s clarification that, when it comes to IS, “you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’ “.

And as further proof @dril controlled both accounts and didn’t always remember which was which, this masterpiece from 2012:

From Muppet show to shit show Bill Shorten telling Patricia Karvelas the vaccine rollout “is a shit show” (each word crisp and enunciated like Shorten was a classically trained actor reading his lines for the first time) put us in mind of when he greeted the appointment of Michaelia Cash to attorney-general with the: “You can’t write this shit”, before swiftly deleting it. Unlike the previous instance — which implied a day previously focused on allegations of historical rape ought to focus on his professional mistreatment — this one, we suspect, will get some cut through.