Cockburn isn’t the only one heading to the Bahamas this weekend. So is Donald Trump Jr. – to get married to Bettina Anderson in a private ceremony of around 50 people. It will be his second marriage and Anderson’s first. It sounds like Don Jr.’s father might be sitting this one out.
“He’d like me to go,” President Trump told reporters Thursday, “but it’s going to be a small little private affair, and I’m going to try and make it… I’m in the midst – I said, ‘You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things.’”
“He’s a person I’ve known for a long time,” he added.
Political careers and family life often conflict but Cockburn won’t accuse Trump of being an absentee father just yet. It may have been that the decision was made by the couple. CNN correspondent Alayna Treene shared on X that one source said: “The President was long expected not to attend, in part due to the couple’s desire to have an incredibly private ceremony.”
A tropical trip is not on Trump’s official White House schedule this weekend, but the Bahamas is not far at all if you have a private jet. He could always swoop in at the last minute. Talk about upstaging the bride.
Sadly, at lunchtime today, the President confirmed that “circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me” to attend the nuptials.
On our radar
LEKKER BRAIJ Since October 6,069 people have been admitted to the US as refugees. All but three are South African.
BALLOT BOXING The White House election security czar attempted to ban Dominion voting machines last year, by asking the Commerce Department whether their components could be declared national security risks, Reuters revealed.
GOODNIGHT KIDS DC Mayor Muriel Bowser just reinstated a citywide 11 p.m. curfew for under 18s, with an 8 p.m. curfew in areas designated by the chief of police.
Air of discontent
Delightful news for those of us leaving DC this weekend: a directive from the Department of Homeland Security has directed all travelers returning to the US from Ebola outbreak countries – DR Congo, South Sudan or Uganda – to enter the country through one specific airport… Washington Dulles. As if those Star Wars-style people transporters couldn’t get any worse…
A Bret Baier book party at Cafe Milano
Cockburn nipped into Cafe Milano as a river of rainwater ran down Prospect Street yesterday evening. The occasion was a book party thrown by Adrienne Arsht and DXC in honor of Fox News’s Bret Baier. Baier is out with The Case for America: An Argument on Behalf of Our Nation, which has spent two weeks in the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers’ list.
Your correspondent took up a posting at a high-rise table and made himself an easy mark for the Milano servers, who duly plied him with lobster hors d’oeuvres, arancini balls and glasses of red. A hundred or so attendees braved the weather, among them Ambassador Mike Waltz, Kellyanne Conway and former Miami mayor Francis Suarez.
In brief remarks, Baier teased how, thanks to DXC’s AI department, he’d be interviewing AI-generated avatars of the past presidents whose words he leans on in the book. He also praised his wife “Amy Baier, my coanchor in life” and their sons, before heading to a signing table. Cockburn took the opportunity to familiarize himself with the chef at the back of the room cooking up rigatoni at the pasta bar, stuffing his face before sauntering into the night.
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