Donald Trump chose to spend his first public moments post-midterm blowout showing reporters around the building site for his new ballroom. His wife Melania demonstrated greater message discipline Thursday: she convened Russian and Ukrainian officials in the White House’s Grand Foyer for remarks about the temporary ceasefire she helped to strike in Oleshky, a small city across the Dnieper from Kherson which has been occupied by Russia since 2022.
Earlier in the fall, Oleshky was running out of food, and aid packages were being taken out by drones, according to the New York Times. Ukraine and Russia accused each other of operating the offending drones. The ceasefire permitted Ukrainians to evacuate.
Melania strolled up to the podium in a cream Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit and said, “We have chosen humanity over war.” She recounted her role as an “exclusive intermediary” securing the temporary ceasefire: “I was involved in every stage of the plan,” she said. Melania also highlighted the Newsmax video crew who had been escorted into Oleshky, by Russian troops, to document the humanitarian effort.
Newsmax’s foreign correspondent Shelby Wilder found herself in hot water for her remarks about her colleagues’ coverage last week. She said:
Russia is using this humanitarian operation as a propaganda opportunity. Moscow wants to portray itself as the rescuer of civilians in a city that it occupies; one it has destroyed and plunged into this humanitarian crisis. And we need to be clear: Russia controls what we are going to be allowed to see. Moscow appears to have brought in numerous Russian media compared to just the one American news outlet. Our team, because of that, is not going to have an unrestricted picture of life under Russian occupation.
Afterward, she was promptly hoicked off air.
The First Lady had reeled in some big names for her brief ceremony – Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, was present, as was Ukrainian people’s deputy Davyd Arakhamia. Both spoke and presented Melania with tokens of appreciation.
It was something of a surprise last month when the Office of the First Lady put out a statement about Melania securing a localized “Ceasefire Between Russia and Ukraine” – particularly as it came on October 23, mere days after the President’s controversial diesel deal with Putin, when Trump was primarily blaming President Zelensky for the lack of a peace agreement. In fact, the First Lady has probably offered the most consistent position on the Ukraine war of anyone associated with the second Trump administration. By focusing solely on the “humanitarian” aspect, speaking in United Nations-lite aphorisms and thinking about the children, Melania has not been tripped up by the conflict – unlike some cabinet secretaries, who have found themselves confidently setting out a stance before being contradicted by the President.
Perhaps if her husband’s colleagues had adopted the First Lady’s serene outlook and steadfast commitment to peace, the Republican party might not be staring down such a cruel winter…
Arch nemesis
Just when you thought your week couldn’t get any worse… a federal judge in DC last night blocked construction of President Trump’s planned “triumphal arch” by Arlington National Cemetery. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan announced a two-week halt on building while the court considers challenges to the legality of the project.
Chutkan also bristled at the Trump administration’s attempt to justify the arch using a 1925 congressional approval for a similar, never executed project. “The sheer improbability that a 100-year-old statute would contain authority, unknown to every previous administration, to erect a 250-foot arch at a principal location in the Nation’s capital indicates how far Defendants must stretch to justify this project,” Chutkan wrote.
Protesters, many of whom are veterans, have been demonstrating at the site of the proposed arch at the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge for days. The decision comes as a blow to President Trump, who has spent a significant chunk of his second term fixated on architectural projects to help assert his legacy, from the White House ballroom, to relining the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, to the renaming and redevelopment of the Kennedy Center and, most recently, designating the Oval Office a national monument. If the arch project is prevented for good, the President will presumably look to other, more out-there methods to burnish his place in the history books. Watch out, Cuba!
On our radar
MISSISSIPPI COUNTING Democrat Scott Colom currently maintains a 1,936-vote lead over incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in the US Senate race in Mississippi.
OCTOBER SURPRISE The US economy added 165,000 jobs in October, with unemployment dropping to 4.1 percent, according to the Department of Labor.
ROUGH JUSTICE Jason Reding Quiñones has resigned as US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and John Eisenberg has quit as the head of the Justice Department’s national security division. Their exits from the DoJ follow Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon’s resignation yesterday.
The year of the two Sullivans
It’s grim up north. With 74 percent of the votes counted – a bizarrely low proportion for an election that took place on Tuesday – the Democratic US senatorial candidate for Alaska Mary Peltola is on 48.17 percent of the vote, with incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan on 47.88 percent. In fourth place on 1.68 percent is… Dan Sullivan.
The second Dan Sullivan, dubbed “Decoy Dan” has become one of the main flashpoints in Alaska’s US Senate race. Shortly before the election, the New York Times discovered evidence that Peltola’s staff (though not necessarily Peltola herself) recruited the False Dan in a cynical ploy to split the incumbent Senator’s vote.What’s more, this second Dan only changed his party affiliation to Republican two days before filing and requested to appear as “Dan Sullivan” on the ballot – exactly how the Senator styles himself.
If the second Dan denies the first Dan the win – a more than plausible outcome – then all hell is likely to break loose. The DoJ plans to investigate the matter, and outgoing Governor Mike Dunleavy has suggested that he’d refuse to certify the result. The Alaska Division of Elections attempted to disqualify the second Dan, but their decision was overturned by the state’s courts. In a post-2016 election remarkably free from allegations of fraud, Alaska may prove the Great White exception.
Surfing the blue wave in DC
A blue wave flattened the Republicans’ majorities in the House and Senate on Tuesday night. In the capital’s bars, both sides drank regardless.
Cockburn began his day sedately at the White House, and was on the scene early Tuesday afternoon as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wandered toward a flock of reporters to take a few questions. He deflected one about why the President chose to speak at, and about, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as his final address before the midterms. Presumably he was thinking, “because my department actually did an OK job… unlike some of my colleagues.”
The gambling app – sorry, “prediction market” – Polymarket hosted a “watch party” of sorts at Mission Navy Yard, a nightclub popular among young consultants and Republican staffers. At 7 on the dot they began to broadcast a sponsored livestream with Piers Morgan and his erudite guests: Representative Nancy Mace, “Comic” Dave Smith and Palestinian-American journalist Omar Baddar. Cruelly the venue was not playing sound loud enough, so attendees were denied their crucial insights.
“Isn’t Piers Morgan British? Like not American at all?” observed one zoomer guest, looking up from his phone. A number of the vest-clad throng were glued to their screens for the early proceedings, encouraging one another to “check the new pulse” of the app’s aggregate prediction.
Uptown at Butterworth’s, the District of Columbia’s Republican party hosted a celebratory bash. Most seemed oblivious to the results and far more preoccupied with the free bar. “Let’s go stand by the TV to watch it all crumble,” one chap said as he led his group across the room.
Cockburn entered the Organizermemes party at metrobar in Northeast DC the moment the Democrats clinched the Senate, per NBC. The crowd erupted in joy. Your correspondent sat at a picnic table to catch his breath as jubilant progressives milled around behind him. “We won South Carolina, bitch,” one woman said.
As Cockburn pored over the results, he overheard some young ladies accosting a pair of white men behind them. One of the men had the misfortune of being British, and was being accused of being responsible for the slave trade by a woman of Nigerian origin. To the victor, the spoils?!
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