Cockburn’s Diary

So the royal visit was a resounding success. Charles III got whisky tariffs dropped, Trump got a shiny new bell, the “Special Relationship” (yuck) endures. If only the weather could have played ball for Tuesday morning’s White House greeting. The President branded the spattering rain and cloudy skies “a beautiful British day.” One member of Congress saw the forecast and decided to give the festivities a miss: Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who opted to wait for the King to give his joint address indoors that afternoon. “I love King Chuck, but I am not going to ruin a suit for him,” Kennedy was overheard telling reporters. Quite. The state

Oh don’t go giving him more ideas. President Trump is hosting King Charles III in Washington today – the first state visit by a King of England since 1939 – and now the Daily Mail is saying that the two are distant cousins. According to royal journalist Robert Hardman, Charles and Trump (through his mother Mary MacLeod) share a common ancestor in the Scottish aristocrat the 3rd Earl of Lennox (1490-1526), who furnished England with its line of Stuart kings. On learning this the President’s thoughts turned – where else – to real estate. “Wow, that’s nice,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I’ve always wanted to live in Buckingham Palace!!! I’ll talk

Well, that was odd. Cockburn spent Saturday evening at the Substack party, hosted at the Renwick Gallery next door to the White House. He was handed what he was assured was a non-alcoholic cocktail were handed out upon arrival. Great. Leading lights of the “alternative” (read: once mainstream) media were dotted throughout the room. Cockburn spotted Jim Acosta and Michael Tracey before their now infamous clash over Tracey’s haranguing of investigative Epstein journalist Julie K. Brown. Things appeared to be shaping up for a salient White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with President Trump in attendance across town at the Washington Hilton with 2,600 journalists. A gunman had other ideas. The Vice President, President

Even by Washington’s sordid standards, this has been a particularly grubby week. Things kicked off with the departure of vacation queen and Josh sauvi B enthusiast Lori Chaves-DeRemer from the Department of Labor; they continued with a tell-all from the ex-girlfriend of former ICE deputy director Madison Sheahan. Don’t get Cockburn started on Congress (Juliegrace Brufke’s “Case Study in Congressional Smut” is worth a peruse.) There is no shortage of salacity, yet Cockburn can’t put his finger on why he’s so entranced by the stories from the Daily Mail and the New York Post regarding DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Julia Varvaro and her much older ex-boyfriend, Robert Bianchi. Bianchi withheld his identity and approached the Mail with text messages and

It’s knives-out season for Capitol Hill creeps. After Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales were forced to resign their congressional seats following allegations of sexual impropriety, Congress has turned into a circular firing squad of claims and callouts. Members past and present, not to mention the media, are encouraging staffers to come forward and reveal who did what on that Vegas trip or congressional retreat. Cockburn, who has some track record with these stories, has one eye on his inbox as ever. The chatter has picked up over the past few days ahead of the House Ethics Committee today. A list of investigations of alleged sexual misconduct by members was published, detailing the

Call Her Daddy, a podcast for young women hosted by Alex Cooper, has found itself caught in the crosshairs of Evie magazine. The “conservative Cosmo” posted on X yesterday, “Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy is one of the worst women in America in terms of negative impact on women. Trash advice that if followed has a high chance of ruining your life.” Back when Call Her Daddy was owned by Barstool Sports, Cockburn’s then-colleague Amber Duke critiqued the podcast for being “incredibly explicit and smutty,” with the hosts doling out “terrible relationship advice to the young, impressionable women who inexplicably view them as role models.” But Cockburn’s nieces, who are in the know on this sort of thing,

Another high-profile departure at the Heritage Foundation: Mary Vought, who served as the think tank’s VP of strategic communications, bids adieu this week. “I’m grateful to @KevinRobertsTX for entrusting me with this position. It’s been an honor to work alongside some of the nation’s foremost policy minds while leading Heritage’s talented communications team – a group I am deeply proud of,” Vought tweeted. “I am returning full-time to my company, Leverage PR.” “Thank you, @MaryVought, for your great work,” Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts wrote in response. “It’s been a pleasure to work with you for nearly a decade – both @TPPF and @Heritage – so I look forward

Ivanka Trump gave a rare interview yesterday, appearing on the Diary of a CEO podcast. The show, hosted by the British entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, embodies the mix of individual hustle and mental health awareness that is rapidly becoming the dominant mode online. “You’re a bit of an empath, right?” asked Bartlett during a segment on business negotiation tactics. “Oh for sure,” answered his guest. Trump came across as a frazzled and slightly besieged figure. She was tired of the “nasty swirl of social media” and the “gladiatorial” aspect of politics. She claimed to have found solace in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, the treatise on stoic philosophy now much in vogue among people like Bartlett. It

Anna Paulina Luna is on the warpath. The Florida congresswoman, and former Sports Illustrated model, is calling out colleagues on both sides of the aisle after a series of allegations of sexual impropriety. “I’m about to do a conference all-call to explain to members on both sides that it is illegal to sexually harass staff and interns,” she posted yesterday. “You all need to pull your shit together. Stop molesting the staff! Freaks.” One target of Luna’s ire is her Republican colleague Tony Gonzales. Gonzales had an affair with a female staffer who later committed suicide by self-immolation; he is not standing for reelection after pressure from colleagues. The San Antonio Express-News published texts from

Joe Kent has been making the rounds since resigning as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over America’s involvement in the Iran conflict. He’s appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Mark Levin’s radio show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, The Young Turks and UnHerd’s YouTube program. But it’s an interview with the Daily Caller editor-in-chief Amber Duke that earned the ire of Laura Loomer, the rabid pro-Trump, pro-Israel loyalty enforcer. In the Caller interview, Kent claimed FBI Director Kash Patel stopped an NCC probe into Charlie Kirk’s murder by Tyler Robinson. Loomer took umbrage with Duke’s style, which she characterized as “softball” in a lengthy X screed. Loomer also mentioned Duke’s deleted high-school tweets, which include Holocaust jokes she exchanged with her

King Charles III is planning a state visit to Washington DC next month. He is rumored to be staying at the White House, attending a state dinner and possibly addressing a joint meeting of Congress. The last royal to address Congress was Charles’s mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II speaking to a full chamber in May 1991, during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, around three months after the end of Operation Desert Storm. Britain contributed more than 50,000 troops to Iraq during the Gulf War which was – and remains to this day – the largest deployment of British military personnel since World War Two. (Pay no heed to Punchbowl’s Jake

Cockburn is saddened to hear of Chuck Norris’s death, aged 86. He was an action star of the 1980s, a top meme of the 2000s – and an outspoken political thinker for almost all his career. Norris was a close ally of now-Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who he endorsed for president in the 2016 campaign. In a tribute, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Norris as “a great friend of Israel and a close personal friend.” Thanks for reading Cockburn’s Diary from The Spectator. Subscribe to receive new posts and support his work. Back in 1986, Norris costarred with Lee Marvin in The Delta Force, an action flick inspired by the

As the FBI investigates two potential terror attacks on US soil, the bureau’s director Kash Patel has been racking his brain for better ways to protect the American people. Apart from firing counterterrorism agents, his plans include partnering with UFC fighters to train the world’s premier law enforcement agency. The elite fighters will head to Quantico as part of an “overall initiative by the FBI to provide its agents with exciting, innovative training options,” according to a UFC press release. Patel is calling the training session a “historic seminar,” though Cockburn suspects, based on Patel’s Winter Olympic foray into elite sports with the US men’s hockey team, the vibe might be closer

At a private dinner with two dozen donors, President Trump surveyed the room and asked which candidate they would choose to follow him in leading the MAGA movement. The vote was almost unanimously in favor of Marco Rubio over J.D. Vance. As the two men vie to be next-in-line to the throne, Trump seems to be enjoying the spectacle. If Rubio was indeed preferred in this (albeit skewed) environment, it is not much of a surprise to Cockburn. Vance has appealed strongly to an online contingency which is… overrepresented online. Remember when Rubio fell on his sword because he wanted to keep Trump out of office? Of course not; that was over

How are you “monitoring the situation,” four days into the joint US-Israeli offensive against Iran? Our Commander-in-Chief has adopted an unorthodox approach: evading the press in person as the strikes and counterstrikes fall, while taking phone calls from basically any journalist with his personal number. By Cockburn’s count, President Trump has given at least 20 “exclusive” telephone interviews to reporters since the early hours of Saturday morning. Old habits die hard. The starting gun was fired by the Washington Post’s Natalie Allison and Tara Copp at 4 a.m., three hours after the bombs started to hit. “All I want is freedom for the people,” Trump told them. Since then, he’s offered a variety

Mayor Zohran Mamdani met Trump in the Oval Office yesterday to pitch a huge New York City housing initiative – and secure the release of a Columbia University student from ICE custody. Mamdani’s communications director said that Trump was “very enthusiastic” about the plan to build 12,000 new affordable homes in Sunnyside, Queens, by using over $21 billion in federal grants. What’s more, the student, who happens to be a photogenic young woman, was freed. Results all around. Zohran and his team gave Trump a prop newspaper with the headline “TRUMP TO CITY: LET’S BUILD,” a play on the 1975 New York Daily News cover – “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” The headlines

President Trump will deliver the first State of the Union address of his second term tonight – and the White House social media team want to whet your appetite. “The White House digital team will transform all its social channels into ‘Trump TV’ – a 12-hour retrospective of the year since President Trump’s last address to Congress,” Axios reports. Your correspondent can’t help but feel Team Trump is missing a trick. The most transfixing thing to show the American people before the address isn’t “Trump of the last 12 months,” it’s “Trump live.” Cockburn has observed with intrigue how his younger relatives watch streamers’ content, from IShowSpeed traipsing across Africa to

Underdog candidate for Florida governor James Fishback went face-to-camera to pitch his 50 percent income tax for OnlyFans creators last month. It would be called a “sin tax” meant to discourage “certain behaviors.” This came at around the time he got into an X spat with Sophie Rain, a Florida resident believed to be one of the site’s top earners. This week, he joined a Kick stream hosted by Myron Gaines* to discuss the policy with some OnlyFans creators. “It’s not a war against women,” Fishback explains, “it’s a war against a platform that exploits, commodifies, and objectifies women.” The OnlyFans girl to his left says that she would have

So farewell then, Reverend Jesse Jackson. The civil-rights hero and two-time Democratic presidential candidate died this morning, aged 84. Given his titanic status as an African-American leader, the first living president, former or current, to issue a statement was, naturally… Donald Trump. “He was a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts,’” wrote Trump on Truth Social just before 8:30 a.m. “He had much to do with the Election, without acknowledgment or credit, of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand.” In fact, at the time of writing, Obama still hadn’t posted about the Reverend (former presidents Biden and Clinton issued statements this morning). The 44th

Usually, the panel section of a black-tie awards dinner is the least lively part of the evening. Honorees praise and agree with each other, soundtracked by the clinks of forks as guests cautiously push salad around their plates. Not so at RealClear’s third Samizdat Awards, AKA the Sammies, which took place at the Breakers in Palm Beach Wednesday. Things started off sedately, with Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet talking about Charlie Kirk, on whose behalf he received the Samizdat Prize. Next, Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan discussed the repercussions he’d faced in Britain for his trans-critical views, for which he garnered sympathy from the room’s guests, who largely trended right-of-center.