Carl "The Dig" Allison Diggler is a fictional American journalist. Introduced in 2015, the character was created by Blake Zeff and mostly written by Felix Biederman and Virgil Texas for CAFE, an onlin
Carl Diggler's Twitter avatar. Diggler superimposed a Santa Claus hat onto his photo during the 2015 Christmas season and was unable to change it back because of his technological ineptitude.
Felix Biederman (left) and Virgil Texas (second from right) in 2017
The three most significant sources of inspiration for Diggler were Chris Cillizza (pictured in 2012), Mark Halperin (in 2012), and Ron Fournier (in 2006). Fournier, the primary inspiration for Diggler, was briefly duped into interacting with Diggler on Twitter as though Diggler were a real pundit.
Diggler challenged Nate Silver (pictured in 2015), the editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, in the prediction of 2016 presidential primary contests.
Christopher Michael Cillizza is an American political commentator, who worked for the television news channel CNN from 2017 to 2022. Prior to joining CNN, he wrote for The Fix, the daily political blo
Carl Diggler
…are drawn from specific real-life journalists. In an episode of the podcast Chapo Trap House, Biederman and Texas listed Digger's biggest influences as Chris Cillizza, Mark Halperin, and above all, "greatest hack of all time" Ron Fournier. Cillizza wrote for the Washington Post blog The Fix, and his tone and tendency…
Cillizza at the 2024 Gaithersburg Book Festival