“This is Greek… more or less… it comes out of Greece… this is the ultimate facade for Greece.” Donald Trump is wielding a blown-up graphical rendering of one of the planned porticos of the new White House ballroom. “This is a different facade,” he says, pointing to another placard propped up on an easel, “This one’s Rome.”
The President spent the morning touring the ballroom’s construction site with the press. Currently a forest of rebar and metal prongs, the project has now burst its bounds and is developing into a general fortress-cum-lair. A vast underground complex is to be built below the ballroom, housing a hospital, research facilities and meeting rooms for the military. The roof of the complex will feature a “drone port” that can stash, according to Trump, “unlimited numbers of drones.” Ventilation shafts will be fortified against potential intruders, and all of the windows will be made of four-inch bulletproof glass. “What happened a couple weeks ago at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner could not happen here.”
Who will pay for it? “This is all my money and donors’ money. This is tax free,” said Trump. Yet it seems like the congressional GOP has other ideas. A $1 billion bill to fund the ballroom is currently before the Senate, but there is a snag: the Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough deems the measure a funding bill that requires 60 votes to pass. The Senate GOP has but 53.
Meanwhile, the real-estate development feels like a respite from the cares of office for Trump. Describing the columns, the facades and the furnishings, his speech had a clarity and force that is often not present when discussing other, less interesting topics – such as Iran. Holding up one of the pictures, the President’s torso was briefly obscured. “I look so thin. They’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s gotten so thin’ because I’m holding this. You don’t have to look at my waist. You can look at this. You saw enough of my waist along with President Xi.”
On our radar
MORAL COMPASS President Trump endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the runoff election for one of Texas’s US Senate seats.
CAN HE SAY THAT? On the day of the Kentucky primaries, Trump branded Thomas Massie a “Dumocrat.” “I don’t think he’s a libertarian,” he told the press during his ballroom walkthrough.
LOCATION CROATIAN Croatia announced its soccer World Cup squad this week. The team will be captained by 2018 Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modric and headquartered at Alexandria’s Hotel AKA for the tournament.
District of Chaos
Cockburn turned his mind to local matters over the course of this weekend. The District of Columbia’s primary elections are less than a month away and will decide the next DC mayor and congressional delegate. The new faces will have their work cut out for them: after President Trump’s crime crackdown last summer, there has been a resurgence of public disorder in the nation’s capitol. “Teen takeovers” in Navy Yard and on U Street have devolved into brawls where shots are exchanged.
One incident on Sunday was particularly egregious as local teens trashed the Chipotle by Nationals Park, flinging chairs at each other as if it were WWE Smackdown.
Fortunately the administration has the best woman on the job: Judge Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney for DC, who is threatening to prosecute parents over the actions of children who participate, as the kids are in violation of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s teen curfew.
The DC Council members vying to succeed Bowser as mayor are split on how to address the issue. Kenyan McDuffie, an Independent running as a Democrat, stressed his background as a prosecutor and focused on law and order in last night’s mayoral debate. This was to tease out a contrast with frontrunner Janeese Lewis George, a progressive, who opposes Bowser’s curfew.
You’d hope that someone would step in with a meaningful attempt to curtail this nonsense before the summer’s festivities, with the nation’s 250th birthday, an IndyCar race and a UFC fight all due to take place in the city over the coming weeks. Perhaps Dana White may have a few ideas…
Hunter x Candace
Candace Owens has announced that an interview with Hunter Biden will be airing on her show this Thursday. “I’ve heard you call me a crackhead many times,” Hunter tells her in the trailer. “The truth of the matter is, I was a crackhead.” Owens, who built a considerable following calling him exactly that, nods along.
In fact, the situation makes Cockburn think of Senator John Kennedy’s famous words, “If you hate cops just because they’re cops, next time you get in trouble, call a crackhead,” as the two look across at each other like amiable exes meeting for drinks years after the divorce.
Kash Patel’s girlfriend Alexis Wilkins quoted the video on X saying: “Oh, this makes sense now. She’s just an ideological chameleon who has no values but will go wherever the money is. Got it. Everyone who has been hypnotized by her soap opera propaganda – you waking up yet?”
The 122-second trailer covers considerable ground: from the notorious crackhead laptop to “the Epstein class.”
“DC is corrupt… politics are corrupt,” muses Candace.
“It’s not left or right. The DC elite of the left, they crushed my dad,” Hunter responds.
Hunter seems to support Owens’s controversial investigation into Charlie Kirk’s death, telling her she was “right on” to ask questions about someone who was “like a brother” to her.
At the end of the trailer Hunter’s words take an unexpected spiritual turn – “In the Acts of John, there is a thing that Christ says, ‘You must learn to suffer as I do in order to be able not to suffer.’” The Acts of John are of course apocryphal, and this meeting has the feel of a non-canonical event. Thursday can’t come soon enough.
Comments