Cockburn’s Diary

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.

“This is Greek… more or less… it comes out of Greece… this is the ultimate facade for Greece.” Donald Trump is wielding a blown-up graphical rendering of one of the planned porticos of the new White House ballroom. “This is a different facade,” he says, pointing to another placard propped up on an easel, “This one’s Rome.” The President spent the morning touring the ballroom’s construction site with the press. Currently a forest of rebar and metal prongs, the project has now burst its bounds and is developing into a general fortress-cum-lair. A vast underground complex is to be built below the ballroom, housing a hospital, research facilities and meeting rooms for the military.

Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks has resigned, ostensibly “to retire and return home to Texas to focus on my family and ranch.” Banks served under President Biden but quit in frustration over the administration’s lax border policies. When Trump returned to office, Banks took up his old job again: like Cincinnatus, he came out of retirement to serve, and will now return to his plow. Perhaps “plow” is the operative word here. It’s widely speculated that Banks is in fact resigning because of a Washington Examiner investigation, which claims that he was a sex tourist who made regular trips to Colombia and Thailand while in post.

President Trump sent off another flurry of Truth Social posts this morning, featuring Iranian fighter jets being zapped by lasers, mock-ups of a new Trump $100 bill and a morbidly obese Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, chowing down. The AI-generated picture shows Pritzker sitting down to a vast buffet of nachos, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, a chocolate milkshake and – somewhat incongruously – spaghetti and meatballs. “J.B. is too busy to keep Chicago safe!” reads the caption. Cockburn notes how AI is changing Trump’s comedic style, which increasingly leans towards the pictorial rather than text. Unlike previous adversaries, the President has yet to give Pritzker a nickname à la “Sloppy” Steve Bannon or “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer.

Could this be the most “Trump” event to appear on the White House daily schedule yet? THE PRESIDENT participates in a LIV Golf Dinner Sterling, Virginia Yes, tonight President Trump will head out to the Trump National Golf Club Washington, D.C., for a dinner with competitors in LIV Golf Virginia. The LIV golfers are competing for a $20 million prize this weekend – though due to financing issues, this may end up being the last year of LIV, as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has pulled its backing. A “riyal” disappointment. The President will link up again with his old pal Bryson DeChambeau, with whom he famously golfed during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis coined the phrase “laboratories of democracy” to describe how individual states could act as test cases for different policies and ideas. Judging by its recent track record, Virginia aspires to be the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In November, voters of the Commonwealth elected Governor Abigail Spanberger – a so-called “Blue Dog Democrat” who used to serve in the CIA and railed against socialism and calls to “defund the police” after the Democrats underperformed in the 2020 elections. Virginia Democrats also retained control of the state’s Senate and House.

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 dinner Tuesday night produced a minor slip-up for the New York Times.

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 to the King and Queen about this in a few minutes!!!

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.

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.

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 outcomes.

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.

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 to collaborating with you in the future. Best wishes on the next step!

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.

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.

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.

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 Sherman, who this morning tweeted that “King Charles II” was coming: the previous Charles has been dead for 341 years.

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 Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847 a year earlier.

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 to “Monster Energy-infused frat rager.

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 two seasons ago. Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, comes across as a late-stage auditionée who doesn’t have the respect of the crowd.