Donald Trump set aside some time this morning to pay special attention to the most maligned minority in the country: Italian Americans. In an East Room reception, bookended by songs from – who else – tenor Christopher Macchio, the President paid tribute to Christopher Columbus, declaring, “I resurrected him.”
Trump also name-checked “Alphonse Capone,” saying of Italian Americans’ affinity for mobsters, “You have to understand, the Italians, they love it.”
Joe Biden was the first president to declare the October federal holiday “Indigenous People’s Day,” in 2021. In case it wasn’t obvious, Trump was eager to strike a contrast. “The radical left communists all hate Christopher Columbus,” he said. “Christopher Columbus changed the history of humanity forever.” Echoing Tony Soprano, he added, “In this administration, to us, he’s a hero.” Trump also claimed he “probably got close to 100 percent of the Italian vote.”
There was a major architectural theme to the President’s remarks. He shouted his “marble guy” Brett, “the man that did the heliport.” “He’s gonna be doing the ballroom floor, all the marble in the ballroom,” Trump said. Brett specified that he got his marble from “Brescia.” The President also talked up the two statues of Christopher Columbus he’s had installed on White House grounds: a life-size one outside the Eisenhower Office Building and a smaller one set to be placed in the Rose Garden. He drew a contrast with how Columbus statues had been destroyed in Baltimore in 2020 and vandalized in Jersey City. “Let’s say that some of the rougher members of your community stood around it,” Trump said of the Jersey City statue. “That was the coolest thing.” The President summoned his Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, who he dubbed “a serious Italian,” to the podium. “The grand marshal for Columbus Day of all time is President Trump,” Bisignano said. The President also called out a number of other high-profile attendees: Energy Secretary Chris Wright, OMB Director Russ Vought, Congressmen Nick LaLota and Mike Rulli, World Cup Task Force chief Andrew Giuliani. “Say hello to your father,” he said to Giuliani.
Trump also expressed his pride in addressing urban crime during his second term. “We need law and order,” he said. “Washington went from one of the most unsafe cities in the world to one of the safest. Crime is down 87 percent; think of that.”
In contrast, he said, “They’re all dirty – blue-run cities, it’s where the crime is.” He lamented how under the previous administration, visitors to DC from places like “Iowa and Idaho… they come from all over the country, they go home in a coffin.”
There was real diversity among the attendees of the reception, with swarthy Sicilians mixed in with their lighter-haired northern cousins. Cockburn spotted CNN starlet Joe Borelli in among the throng. Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka, who is not all that Italian, towered over a group of guests on the far side of the room. Waiters circulated, handing out peach Bellinis and espresso tiramisù, as a string quartet played Vivaldi and Frank Sinatra. In the far corner sat Lincoln Reflecting Pool contractor John Cafaro, in a smoking jacket and shoe-polish-blackened hair, chewing an unlit cigar.
“Italian Americans, I love you, that’s why I’m here,” Trump concluded. “I take a little more time with you, usually I’m in then I’m out.” Then, as he did at the state dinner with Xi Jinping last month, he led guests in for a look-see of the ballroom construction next door. The President is nothing if not a good host.
On our radar
WHAT KATIE DID NEXT Katie Zacharia, a Fox News regular who previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security, has been offered the post of White House press secretary.
RTR President Trump heads to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for college football tomorrow, to watch the University of Alabama’s primetime clash with the University of Georgia Bulldogs.
NOT-SO-FREE DOM 250 An ethics watchdog has published expenditure records that appear to show that much of this summer’s Freedom 250 celebrations were funded by taxpayers, not private investment as previously claimed.
Lime crime
Electric scooters have long been a scourge of Washington life. Now a city scheme has rendered them a whole new kind of dangerous. Three men were shot on U Street in the wee hours one Friday morning last month – and, per the police, “two men believed to be involved in the shooting fled the scene on a Lime scooter or bike.” On the same weekend, three males in “black clothing and ski masks” shot a man outside Whole Foods on H Street NE, approaching him on “lime green electric bikes” before “riding away.” The following Friday, two suspects in a Columbia Heights stabbing “fled on scooters.”
Violent crime aside, DC residents are noticing an uptick in reckless scooter behavior. One City Cast reporter described how her three-year-old daughter was “bowled over” by a “speeding Lime bike.” Cockburn spoke with Corbin R., who was knocked off a scooter by a gang of youths last night.
“I was riding through an intersection on a scooter going straight down the street,” Corbin said. “A group of about four teenagers on Lime bikes, very obviously underage, probably 13 or 14, were maneuvering to take a left and accelerated – I think to try and get in front of me or intercept me, even though I had the right of way. They shoved me off my scooter onto the pavement.” Corbin was left with “both knees scuffed” and “bled through” his pants.
Given that Lime is a tech company that uses facial recognition software to verify that DC riders are aged 18 or over, you might think it would be easy to curtail these perps. You would be wrong. Local scooter aficionado and Reason senior editor Robby Soave explains: “Washington DC’s Department of Transportation requires scooter companies to offer free or greatly discounted rides to low-income residents, as well as non-smartphone, text-to-unlock methods of accessing the devices. Text-to-unlock doesn’t initiate the facial scan; you have to affirm that you are 18, but it doesn’t verify. When you sign up for the free ride program, you have to verify your age, but many of these teens will just use their parents or another adult. This system is prone to abuse, and has made Lime scooters the getaway vehicle for teenagers committing petty crimes or, in some cases, more serious crimes.
“If you’ve ever almost been run over by a kid on a Lime bike, thank the city government,” he adds.
Corbin has a number of measures he’d like to see introduced to curtail the problem, ranging from “requiring strict controls to prevent under 18s from using micro mobility” to “moving youth prosecutions from the DC Attorney General to the US Attorney’s Office.”
Cockburn would like to see a tech solution to a tech problem – perhaps from a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology like… LimeBike investor Marc Andreessen, who would surely hate the idea that one of his projects might be cutting against the story President Trump tells about his “DC crime crackdown.”
Preth path
Spotted in the White House briefing room this afternoon: Alex Bruesewitz showing around former heavyweight champion of the world Mike Tyson.
Guilfoyle’s Greek gambit
US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle is facing her personal Thermopylae – a battle against impossible odds. She is now accused of asking a Trump donor to wire her $100,000 to clear her personal credit card debts six days before her Senate confirmation hearing. “You could just send it here. It won’t show up anywhere [on the official records] if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote to the lawyer Eric Deters on Signal, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of Governor Gavin Newsom, and was engaged to Donald Trump Jr. for four years, before the two broke up in 2024. This tendency toward variable loyalties is now thought to have colored her time as ambassador. Guilfoyle used her position to promote the interests of the Greek energy firm Aktor Group in Washington, per the Journal.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about the ambassador’s conduct during his trip to Greece this week. “I’m not going to comment on a story that was literally posted a few hours ago,” he said. A cadge from Plato’s Socrates, it would seem: “I know that I know nothing.”
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