Cockburn’s Diary

Vivek unplugged Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy signaled virtue in the pages of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, claiming that he’s resolved to swear off social media entirely in 2026. “I’ll spend my newfound time listening to more voters in real-world Ohio, developing more policies to make our state affordable, and being more present with my family,” the former presidential candidate wrote. While Cockburn can think of more exciting pastimes than listening to voters in real-world Ohio, it’s not a bad sentiment. We could all use a social-media detox. But let’s consider the source. While running for president, Ramaswamy floated the idea of a TikTok ban for 16-year-olds and an “openness” to banning the app outright.

"Why is Epstein the top issue in American life right now?” galaxy-brained columnist David Brooks wrote in the New York Times last month, while also comparing Epstein Files obsessives to QAnon followers. Well, maybe because the Files seem to touch all corners of our cosseted elite, to whom Brooks (and Cockburn) belong. But at least Cockburn, unlike Brooks, isn’t in the Epstein Files: Brooks should have warned in his column that the Files contain several photos of him, yukking it up next to Google co-founder Sergey Brin at some sort of meal.

Wilin’ out President Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality,” White House budget director Russell Vought is a “right-wing zealot” and Elon Musk microdoses ketamine, according to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Musk is “an odd, odd duck,” Wiles told Vanity Fair during an series of 11 – count ’em, eleven – interviews, “as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person.” Also, Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” in her handling of the Epstein Files.

Cockburn is a cultured character with a longstanding fondness of the high arts. He was therefore amused to read an open letter, titled “The Kennedy Center Boycott and Its Impact on Artists” from the Orchestra Committee of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera Orchestra, in a recent issue of International Musician. The letter effectively amounts to classical musicians pleading with liberal patrons to attend Kennedy Center shows – despite President Trump’s overhauling of the institution. “While we respect every patron’s right to personal expression, withdrawing from beloved music as an act of protest is a shortsighted response that hurts the very artists who make that art possible,” the committee writes.

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas announced her bid for the US Senate yesterday with a video in which she listens implacably while President Trump insults her. The President sarcastically brands Crockett the “new star of the Democratic party.” “Wait until she gives it back,” tweeted Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Moron). “Turning Texas blue is what I want to talk to y’all today. There are people who say ain’t no way. We tried it 50 kinds of ways,” Crockett said in yesterday’s campaign announcement speech. “Let me be clear: y’all never tried it the JC way... they have no idea what Crockett’s crew will do!” Later, on CNN, Crockett said that she doesn’t need to convert Trump’s supporters. “That’s not our goal,” she said.

Is Britain’s upstart Reform party really as committed to free speech as they would have us believe? Tucker Carlson was meant to converse with leader Nigel Farage on his trip to London last week. But, Cockburn hears, Farage pulled out after the stateside controversy about Carlson’s recent choice to chat with “groyper” leader and bête noire Nick Fuentes. Who knew the leading light of the British right would be so sensitive about “platforming?” Top Farage advisor James Orr, who also serves as an Anglo-whisperer for Vice President J.D. Vance, made excuses on Reform’s behalf. “It’s the donors and consultants, always,” Carlson told Cockburn about the choice to pull out. “If you want to save your country, you have to ignore them.

The lure of the junket can tempt even the hardiest of media souls. For Twitter influencers who’ve never heard of an ethical standard, much less adhered to one, they’re catnip. That’s why this week Cockburn has witnessed the embarrassing spectacle of several right-wing personalities shilling for the government of Qatar. Rob Smith, an Iraq War vet who bills himself as “influential, not an influencer,” described his Qatari vacation as “eye-opening.” He also sounded very Baghdad Bob by saying he’s “helping to keep America strong by understanding and highlighting the unique and mutually beneficial military and financial partnerships that we share with Qatar.” Smith says he asked “tough questions,” yet underwent a barrage of criticism.

Cockburn woke up bleary-eyed, splashed water on his face and took stock of his calendar this Black Friday. It is already filling up with events from embassies, magazines and cautious frenemies. He spent his Thanksgiving down South, practicing grounding techniques and avoiding stirring pots, except for the pot of cranberry sauce. It isn’t easy being Washington’s nosiest socialite – and even Cockburn needs to get away from the swamp once in a while. However, the time for wholesome family fun has ended. Your disoriented correspondent will be on a plane headed back to Reagan before all the decorations are up in the White House.

The call sheet for this afternoon’s event at the White House was as imposing as ever: WHO: The President Mrs. Melania Trump, First Lady of the United States Gobble, Turkey Waddle, Turkey Putin at 10, turkeys at 12, home to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving by nightfall. A typical day in the Trump presidency. This year’s birds, Gobble and Waddle, hail from Wayne County, North Carolina, and will return to live out their days at North Carolina State University. Luckily they aren’t from Venezuela, else Pete Hegseth would have turned them into a cloud of red vapor and feathers already. Cockburn helped himself to a cup of hot apple cider from the White House staff and settled in at the back of the press area.

Congressman Cory Mills of Florida is currently subject to a restraining order from a former girlfriend (and former Miss United States), after he threatened to release sexually explicit images of her. He also faces accusations of assault against a different woman, has been accused by fellow soldiers of “stolen valor” for which he received a Bronze Star, and is subject to a House Ethics Committee investigation for “improperly solicited and/or received gifts, including in connection with privately sponsored officially-connected travel.” Good grief. Now NOTUS reports that while on a “rescue” mission to Afghanistan in 2021, when he was running for Congress, Mills was spotted with sex workers in the hallway of a hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia.

We all know far too much about Olivia Nuzzi. The first excerpts from American Canto, her unwelcome addition to the “spliterature” genre about her affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have been unavoidable for the past few days. Cockburn can’t decide what’s worse: the revelations themselves or the windy prose in which Nuzzi’s editors have allowed her to inflict them on us. Her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza’s addition to “the Discourse” last night didn’t help matters. Rather than envisioning who sent pictures of what to whom, or getting jealous of a brainworm, Cockburn has found himself nostalgic. He’s casting his mind back to 2009, back when Nuzzi sought attention in a more innocent fashion: as an aspiring teen-pop starlet.

The MAGA crack-up has been the talk of the town this week – thanks to a squishy answer from President Trump on H-1B visas in a Fox News interview, the looming release of all the Epstein documents the House has access to, disagreements over what America’s relationship with Israel should be… and the lingering hangover of the Heritage Foundation’s Tucker Carlson quarrel. (Conveniently, the forthcoming US issue of The Spectator tackles this topic – you can read two pieces from the cover package, by Freddy Gray and Ben Domenech, now.) These disputes – about whether there’s such a thing as being “more MAGA than Trump” – are trickling out beyond Washington and into the 2026 primary races.

Where are you going, Elon? Where have you been? The 87-year-old novelist Joyce Carol Oates unleashed her X account to excoriate the app’s owner Elon Musk this weekend. “So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died... In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’” OK, Joyce.

In there like skincare President Trump arrived back from the Far East last week with a trade deal or two and an improved relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping. But he’s not the only one benefiting from his visit. A significant chunk of the White House press corps took advantage of the trip to APEC to stock up on sought-after Korean skincare products. “I brought back two face washes, a cream and a hundred masks,” one producer told Cockburn. “Via Google Translate, I asked the workers at a skincare store called Olive Young for some of their favorite products – they showed me this cream, they said it’s very popular in South Korea.” The ROK is “the Turkey of skincare,” she added.

A warning to anyone who dares question the efficacy of America’s relentless war machine: Laura Loomer has joined the Pentagon press corps. Her outlet, “Loomered,” is now credentialed, after she agreed to Pete Hegseth’s restrictive reporting rules. Not that those would have stopped her, she tweeted this morning. She’s already spent a good part of this year “rooting out deceptive and disloyal bad actors from the Department of War.” “There is no denying that my investigative reporting has had a massive impact on the landscape of personnel decisions within the Executive Branch, our intelligence agencies and the Pentagon,” Loomer wrote, humbly.

It’s happened again, it’s happened again… What’s the scariest thing about America right now? Creeping authoritarianism? The looming Socialist Republic of New York? “The enemy within?” For Cockburn, who draws from a never-ending well of Dutch courage, the answer is nothing. Perhaps the White House’s Halloween reception might offer him further insight into the more macabre side of the nation. The US Air Force Band greeted your correspondent as he walked along the Presidential Hall of Fame, past the paved “Rose Garden Club” and onto the South Lawn. They offered a soundtrack of film and TV scores – the best of Bernard Herrmann and John Williams – as well as the obligatory Bach.

The Karine humiliation routine The media is piling on former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s “tell-some-but-not-all” memoir Independent. Matt Taibbi called the book “incoherent,” which is to be expected, but check out this from the Washington Post’s reviewer Becca Rothfeld: “It is incredible – and emblematic of the Democrats’ total aesthetic and intellectual driftlessness – that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium.” KJP then took a call from the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, who’s savaged many intellects far greater than hers.

Has anyone seen Graham Platner’s tramp stamp? “I grew up as a little punk rock kid listening to Dead Kennedys and Dropkick Murphys,” Graham Platner, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the open Maine Senate seat said yesterday at a town hall in Ogunquit. He neglected to include the information that as a little punk rock kid he attended Hotchkiss, a private boarding school in Connecticut that currently costs more than $70,000 a year for tuition and meals, whose alumni include the founders of Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers. Such details rarely appeal to the common people. Platner, who runs an unprofitable oyster farm, served eight years in the Marines after high school.

Build me up President Trump, like many of his forebears, is remaking the White House in his own image. The Donald has just finished giving a speech to Republican senators at the “Rose Garden Club” – which he paved over earlier in the year. As he told Cockburn’s colleague Ben Domenech back in February, “We had the press here yesterday. Do you see the women there? They’re going crazy. The grass was wet. Their heels are going right through the grass, like four inches deep.” Today Trump talked about his latest redevelopment: “We’re building a world-class ballroom,” he told the crowd. “For 150 years they’ve wanted a ballroom... the government is paying for nothing.

Tucker time In the month since his death, Charlie Kirk has been credited for his role as a unifying figure on the American right. Nowhere was that more evident than at the Tuesday afternoon service posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Honor, where four hosts of Fox News’s prestigious 8 p.m. slot posed for a photo together: Jesse Watters, Glenn Beck, Bill O‘Reilly and Tucker Carlson. Tucker also got a picture with Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham – incredible considering how acrimoniously things ended between him, his former network and a number of his other high-profile colleagues. (Carlson branded Hannity a “warmonger” as recently as June.