Cockburn’s Diary

Donald Trump stood outside the Palm Room doors at the White House this week, taking questions alongside the AI titans with whom he’d just had lunch. Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, Greg Brockman: a still image of the gaggle captures a net worth that edges into the trillions. Cockburn found his mind wandering back to Trump’s interview with The Spectator at the start of his second term. Ben Domenech pointed out that the priorities of his wealthy new big tech friends “and the kind of populist priorities of your voters, don’t necessarily align on everything.” “Probably,” Trump conceded. “Are you going to have to tell them no on some of the things that they’re going to ask of you?” Domenech asked. “Sure.

Nancy Mace appeared on her new video podcast Get Maced Thursday wearing a garment X posters called a “cat suit.” Technically speaking, it was a skin-tight black leather top with a zipper down the front. The outgoing (in every sense) South Carolina Congresswoman did resemble Catwoman from the DC Universe. Was the DC pun somehow intended? Graphics appeared on the screen during the video in the style of comic book drawings. The video pushed her YouTube audience to just over 70,000 subscribers. She spoke in an unsettlingly calm voice about topics such as the Iran war (“why we want it to end”), potential Democratic nominees and Hasan Piker (not yet a potential Democratic nominee). Throughout the video, Mace unpacked opinions on Yemen and Qatar as they relate to the war.

You meet Washington at a very Chinese time in its life – the capital is preparing for the state visit of Xi Jinping, as the Chinese president blows off the UN General Assembly and heads for talks with President Trump next week instead. His visit will include a state dinner, where invitees include a number of business leaders who operate in China. Cockburn understands that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia are on the guestlist. Presumably Altman will be trying to bend Xi’s ear on that AI slowdown to which he’s ever so committed. Huang, meanwhile, took a call from Trump onstage at a conference this week, where the President called AI concerns a “hoax” and Huang pledged, “We’re going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America.

“Are you gay?” a tall young man in a cowboy hat asked Cockburn, under his breath. Your correspondent was hovering in the foyer of the American Airlines Center, looking up the RNC schedule on his phone. “Excuse me?” Cockburn said. “Are you gay?” the young man asked again. “Am I gay?! No,” said Cockburn. “Oh,” the young man said, a touch disappointed. “Seemed like you might be gay.” Cockburn had never read too much into the viral internet chatter that accompanies large conservative conferences, about the surge in activity on homosexual hookup apps. This interaction in Dallas gave him pause for thought. Perhaps there was something to the rumors about that one bathroom in the AAC.

As far as fall traditions go, the renaissance faire is among Cockburn’s favorite. Fair maidens and humble peasants amble around stalls, chewing on turkey legs and spectating jousts as they pretend to be in Auld Europe. Yet in recent years, modern degeneracy has taken hold: now instead of a family day out, renfaire is fun for the whole polycule. Pornified bartenders in Euphoria makeup humiliate horny patrons as they serve them drinks. The Maryland Renaissance Festival is taking steps to stop the rot. The faire is implementing a new dress code that bans “fursuits.” For the blissfully uninitiated: fursuits are full-body costumes worn by the “furry” subculture, which mean the wearer appears to be an anime-style anthropomorphic animal.

The Washington Post is under the microscope again. This time, it has been facing legal pressure to rehire former opinion columnist Karen Attiah. If she is brought back on board, her role would be within an overhauled Opinions section, which since early 2025 has had an explicit focus on “free markets and personal liberties” and is mostly populated by libertarians and conservatives. Documents cited in the legal decision make it seem like former Opinions editor Adam O’Neal wanted to fire Attiah for some time, as her body of work was “inconsistent” with his section’s new free-marketeer vision.

Down in North Carolina, Kyrsten Sinema is in the dock. The former senator for Arizona is being sued for $75,000 by Heather Ammel, the ex-wife of her old bodyguard Matthew, under the state’s “homewrecker law,” which allows jilted spouses to seek damages from “the other woman.” During her Senate tenure, there had long been whispers about Sinema, a bisexual divorcée, and her relationships with her security staff. At least one of those rumors proved to be true, apparently: “When the opportunity presented itself, and when Mr. Ammel approached me, we had sex,” Sinema told the court. In her July 31 deposition, Sinema admitted she and Ammel slept with each other several times in the summer and fall of 2024, all over the country.

How do you conceal yourself from the all-seeing-eye of the internet? Being married to the founder of an AI giant helps, apparently. A Wall Street Journal article this week delves into Cami Clark, the wife and key advisor to Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. “There are scant details about Clark online – and efforts have been made to remove references to her,” the Journal reports. One reason for this could be Clark’s past exploits running Eddice, an online sex magazine-cum-blog – and how at one point she sought investment from, oops, Jeffrey Epstein.

DC influencer Tony P has returned to the spotlight, in a Washingtonian profile titled “Guess What? Tony P Hates You, Too.” Cockburn would be remiss not to point out that The Spectator was first to cover Tony P’s rise to niche internet local celebrity back in August 2023. Tony P’s earnest tone has shifted significantly since then, as is made evident by the interview. He appears embittered by the fact that his brand-partnership earnings have decreased, from making half a million dollars at the height of his influence to now bringing in less than he made as a consultant (just below six figures). He is wistful about his “25 minutes” in the spotlight: “I stretched it out a decent amount of time. A year and a half is not that bad.

Troy Jackson, Maine’s new working-class Democratic candidate for Senate – following Graham Platner’s demise – has PR problems. Cockburn thinks it’s a case of #MeToo going a little too far. While Platner was on Kik posing in a towel and supposedly sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriends, Jackson was doing the honorable thing – pairing off with his cousin. The level of concern we are seeing over this simple fact is a case of parasocial hysteria. Who cares if Troy is dating, and has two children with, his second cousin? So did FDR. Well, that was his fifth cousin, but still. Though Jackson and his cousin Lana never wed, cousin marriage isn’t even illegal in Maine and for good reason. Troy Jackson is from a town of 250 people. He’s a logger.

The House of Medici patronized Michelangelo, Botticelli and da Vinci. The House of Obama patronized Nicola Green: the artist wife of David Lammy, who served as deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom until Monday. From August 2008 to January 2009, Green was offered, according to her website, “unprecedented artistic access to President Obama’s monumental campaign,” the fruit of which was In Seven Days…, a portfolio of seven abstract paintings of the new president, released in 2010. Cockburn’s favorite is “Day Six, Sacrifice/Embrace,” which shows the head and hands of the 44th president, splayed on a sky-blue field.

The effort to prosecute former Olympic canoeist David Hearn for damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has hit a snag. Judge Todd E. Edelman noted that the government is “operating at its own peril” if it alters the Reflecting Pool before the defense attorneys’ expert has the opportunity to sample the lining. Hearn’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case on Thursday, arguing that the government had not preserved the section of pool liner that Hearn stands accused of slashing. “Despite the importance of the pool liner to the case, in the brief period since June 19, 2026, the same government that presented and returned the indictment against Mr.

Dorchester House is a storied Art Deco apartment block in Northwest DC, noted for being John F. Kennedy’s first address in the capital. Fast forward a few decades and the building appears to offer far less glamor: a number of residents have complained about repeatedly finding urine and feces in the building’s stairwells. One resident told Cockburn he encountered excreta in the stairwell “daily during the winter.” The waste is cleaned up “usually within a few hours after I contact the front desk,” says the resident, “but in rare cases it can remain for days. There is still some dried feces in one of the stairwells that has never been cleaned up.” “I have to use the flashlight on my phone to avoid stepping in it,” he added.

“It could be really cool if Congress was filled with goth people,” Kelley Dennison, the 27-year-old Republican nominee for Colorado’s 2nd congressional district, told the Daily Caller. The Gen Z massage therapist is campaigning on an unexpected aesthetic, selling merchandise that tout her as “America’s Goth Baddie.” But her campaign is predicated on more than her dark eyeliner and tattoos. Dennison is “Colorado first,” running on traditional conservative and populist policies on affordability, environmental conservation and family. Though Dennison was raised in a Democratic household, she has come to believe that party’s principles “don’t pay my bills.” “Colorado won’t be gamed for political currency or an agenda.

Hunter Biden has worn many hats in his 56 years on Earth. Scion, serviceman (briefly), attorney, businessman, crack addict, painter and, lately, influencer. The former first son burnished his online credentials by joining Substack this week – and Cockburn welcomes his comrade. Hunter’s first meaningful post on “Where’s Hunter,” his blog on the platform, is called “It’s Dad.” The piece reads like something any other wealthy aspiring artist might shuffle up to read at an open-mic night. The sentences are short, the metaphors heavy. He muses – there is no other word for it – on the voicemail his father Joe left him and how it was heard around the world after the contents of his infamous laptop were published: The late hour. The quiet room.

The 2018 Florida governor’s race will go down as one of the great sliding-doors moments in American politics. Ron DeSantis, after “begging” for Donald Trump’s endorsement, eked out a 0.4 percent win over the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum. In the years since, DeSantis became an anti-lockdown Covid champion, a very expensive failed presidential candidate and is now hotly tipped to fill a Trump cabinet vacancy once he leaves the governor’s mansion in November. Gillum has had a… different trajectory. Police officers found him in a hotel room with a male escort, suffering from a suspected crystal meth overdose in 2020. The married father-of-three checked himself into rehab and came out as bisexual later that year.

Former speaker of the House, Representative Nancy Pelosi, who will retire from Congress this year is lending her name and her leadership to the University of California Berkeley to create the Nancy Pelosi Institute. She explains that it will help to “train leaders for our future.”   The National Association of Scholars, being a non-partisan organization with a strong commitment to civic virtue, is delighted to see another prominent politician contribute to the realization of important principles in higher education. Admittedly, we have not always agreed with the former speaker on how best to advance the public good on campus, but Pelosi says she was drawn by the “notion of a bipartisan academic center” at Berkeley, “the epitome of public education.

Who will dare represent Pennsylvania at the Freedom 250 Great American State Fair? The commonwealth’s Governor Josh Shapiro announced last week that the state would not be represented at the fair because no businesses were interested in sponsoring the booth. Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick countered two days later that they had assembled a coalition of Pennsylvania companies, including crayon manufacturer Crayola, willing to step in. “Pennsylvania is where America’s story began, and there was no way we were going to let the Commonwealth go unrepresented,” McCormick explained. “Celebrating America’s 250th birthday and Pennsylvania’s special role in our country is important and bipartisan,” said Fetterman.

Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican congressman from Arizona, has reportedly been living with one of his male staffers, according to Juliegrace Brufke’s Sources Say News. The staffer, Will Hannen, now runs Hamadeh’s campaign. In recent weeks, Hamadeh’s team posted glamour shots of his office on Instagram where staffers sit and stand in staggered formation, like the cast of The West Wing, if they were House Republicans. At least one “looksmaxxing”-inspired video was posted featuring Hamadeh and his team titled: “Professional looksmaxxing office!” On the subject of Hannen being a live-in staffer, Hamadeh spokeswoman Lori Hunnicutt “denied the relationship was romantic, telling Sources Say News: ‘The Congressman and Mr.

As far as the controversy over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool goes, Donald Trump is reverting to type: like any other Florida man with a pool, he won’t admit that maintaining one is complicated and blames external factors when things go wrong. The President ordered that a new blue coating be applied to the pool’s base, which has already started flaking. In a testy exchange with CBS’s Ed O’Keefe yesterday, Trump said that the contractors who installed the new surface were not to blame. “We had vandalism,” he said. “Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.” “Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?” he wondered aloud. Quite.