Cockburn’s Diary

Brett Cooper, former host of The Comment Section on the Daily Wire, has sparked rumors after liking a controversial Instagram post by former colleague Candace Owens. Speculation follows a clip from Piers Morgan Uncensored last month in which Owens accused Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a war criminal with “genocidal ambitions.” Owens told Morgan, “I want to use my platform to say that I believe they are intentionally executing a holocaust.” Cooper liking Owens’s post raised questions: does Cooper agree with Owens’s take on the war in Gaza? Could this be tied to her departure from the Daily Wire? And does she plan to collaborate with Owens moving forward?

In one of the grubby little hypocrisies that have come to characterize Joe Biden’s single term, the president awarded Jose Andrés the Presidential Medal of Freedom last weekend — at around the same time as signing off on another $8 billion weapons sale to Israel. A previous lot to head off to our top Middle East ally may well have played a part in the air strike that killed seven people working for Andrés’s World Central Kitchen in Gaza. Such complex contradictions may explain Andrés’s muted reaction to receiving the honor: one of Cockburn’s sources saw the chef dining with his family and friends at Nobu after the ceremony. When the spy approached Andrés at the bar the chef was ebullient — yet upon being congratulated he turned solemn.

What a difference a lot of snow and a Donald Trump victory makes. January 6, 2025 is shaping up to be vastly different from January 6, 2021, thanks to weather forecasts of almost a foot of snow in the DC area and a beaten-down Democratic Party that couldn’t steal an election if it tried to.Despite some left-wing fever dreams, Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to certify Trump’s victory as planned on Monday; the only potential hurdles will be whether Republicans can get a speaker of the House in time, and just how bad the snow fall ends up being. If it is substantial, Cockburn is happy to report, there will be a snowball fight on the grounds of the US Capitol, just like there have been in days of yore.

Who’s in charge of the executive branch? That question has been on many lips throughout the duration of President Joe Biden’s term, and has been asked even more often since his decision to stand aside as Democratic nominee in July. Perhaps the White House itself offers some visual clues to the answer: a source who has been heading in for transition meetings with the outgoing administration notes that virtually all of the jumbo portraits inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue feature Vice President Kamala Harris — visiting foreign countries, making speeches and the like. Biden, meanwhile, is barely featured. Perhaps all of his impressive pictures are displayed in the basement at Rehoboth Beach...

Gay-PMG Grüezi from Switzerland, friends. A Cockburn spy was recently hoping to enjoy a quiet lunch at an Irish pub in Zurich’s Old Town when he was sat next to a large group of somewhat intoxicated KPMG Switzerland employees. It was quite the liquid lunch, with beers and wine flowing for hours and one staffer suggesting a round of shots, a move that was quickly rejected from the already too-far-gone group. One American employee of the firm was waxing lyrical about KPMG’s alleged hopelessly bigoted management.

Lincoln in the Bardo “The economy has never been better,” top Democrats and their surrogates told voters during the 2024 elections. It turns out that’s because the economy was doing just fine for a lot of the party’s top vendors. After all, Kamala Harris’s $1 billion of campaign expenditures had to wet some beaks, if not win votes. One series of outlays stood out in particular: the millions of dollars spent by the Lincoln Project, despite the Democratic Party’s top infrastructure rolling out focus groups showing that the group’s work had zero impact on the 2020 presidential election. “Tragic,” elections analyst Rob Pyers wrote on X. “After raising $15.5 million for the year and burning through $16.

Elsewhere in the world, they just call Thanksgiving “Thursday.” But in the addled minds of some on America’s progressive left, it’s something far worse. Joy Reid aired her “Thanksgiving message to MAGA trolls,” in which she discussed her “alternative” Thanksgiving idea for those who voted for Donald Trump: “Make your own dinner, MAGA, make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears, troll among yourselves with Elon and leave us alone. You’ve got your heart’s desire: the president you dreamed of, and worship instead of Jesus.

Nancy Mace has embarked on her newfound crusade against the trans employees of the Hill — a group of people so uncomfortable in their own skin that many undergo plastic surgery in order to feel more like their true selves. Mace’s campaign to ban biological men from the women’s restrooms of Congress marks a change in tack for the congresswoman — not the first one, obviously. “I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality,” the South Carolina congresswoman told the Washington Examiner back in 2021. “No one should be discriminated against.

A new betting pool emerged on the Hill at the tail-end of this week: who will get fewer votes in his confirmation hearing? Matt Gaetz or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?So far, most of President-elect Donald Trump’s staffing announcements have prompted either jubilation or downright astonishment — and that’s only among his supporters. When Matt Gaetz was announced, some suspected a typo: surely Trump had meant to tap his former attorney general, Matt Whitaker? One top Judiciary Committee staffer compared Gaetz’s bid to helm the DoJ to that of Neera Tanden to helm the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget: an effort that was doomed from the start but meant to reward a Twitter-happy loyalist of the new president.

The flawed logic of the anti-Trump sex strike No one really knows what a second Trump administration will hold for America — given the breadth of his coalition of contradictory factions, some of his voters are bound to be disappointed. But the prospect of the Donald’s mere presence back in the White House has led to a spasm of outrage on social media, with young women and members of the LGBTQIAA+ community fearful of the erosion of “rights” in case Trump, J.D. Vance and the Republicans eschew the campaign manifesto and draw instead from the Heritage Foundation’s more hardline Project 2025 agenda.Drastic measures are being mooted.

Against Buttons-bashing It’s hiring season at the Manhattan Institute — Christopher Rufo this week announced that Christina Buttons and Hannah Grossman are joining its Logos Initiative team as investigative reporters. “We’re building the best investigative team in right-leaning media. Whatever happens with the election next week, we will be shaping the news to come,” Rufo tweeted. Yet no good deed goes unpunished. X users have been poring over Buttons’s history. Some are outraged that Buttons is a former Democrat who voted for Obama, Hillary and Biden; others harped over the fact that she quit the Daily Wire over the strength of some of Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles’s language about trans people.

Clinton dips in the Lake You can’t teach the Big Dog new tricks… Bill Clinton cemented his reputation as the Harris campaign’s least helpful surrogate this week in an appearance where he branded Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Arizona, “someone who is physically attractive.”“Bill Clinton has officially turned into every other married man over the age of sixty-five in Scottsdale — embarrassing themselves by publicly hitting on women thirty-three years their junior,” a Lake staffer told Cockburn. Lake is only two years older than Monica Lewinsky.

In spooky season, it’s only appropriate that the “joy” has been drawn out of the Harris campaign like a demon facing an exorcist. It may have found a new host in her opponent: former president Donald Trump brought down the house at the Al Smith dinner for Catholic charities in New York City last night, which Kamala opted to skip. Trump has also faced criticism this week for canceling events and dodging interviews with CNBC and the Shade Room. His remarks are worth watching in their entirety (you can do so below), but here are some choice one-liners. Clearly Trump has benefited from keeping the company of comedians Andrew Schulz and Theo Von lately. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Early voting has started and the efforts to sway undecided voters are growing more unorthodox as we head toward Election Day. Donald Trump deconstructed the art of the dismissive nickname on Andrew Schulz’s podcast; Kamala Harris likewise partook in a much-vaunted “media blitz” through the friendly studios of The View, Call Her Daddy, Stephen Colbert — and the slightly more testing environs of 60 Minutes. Dem VP pick Tim Walz is also kicking off what Politico bills as a “man-focused media blitz,” which comes across a bit Harvey Fierstein. As for high-profile Harris backers?

“When Boeing fails... BET ON SPORTS! #STRIKE #IAM751 #NFL #MLB,” a striking Boeing employee recently posted on Facebook, geotagging a three-star hotel and casino in Washington State. Posts in a private Facebook group purporting to belong to the striking workers of Boeing reveal that, amid the first Boeing employee strike in almost two decades, the workers of the world are uniting on vacation. The group, called “Boeing Employees (Lazy B),” contains a multitude of posts from striking members on vacation in Mexico, gambling in casinos and on fishing trips. “On strike in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco Mexico. #iam751 #boeing,” another post reads. A third reads, “strike fishing again.

“Brooklyn is the Istanbul of America,” now-Mayor Eric Adams told a pair of Turks on camera after they asked him for political favors in a cameo he made in a Turkish romcom. Now, in real life, Adams is accused of doing just that, following a sweeping indictment unsealed by prosecutors in Manhattan who allege that he fraudulently obtained $10 million in public campaign funds and accepted over $100,000 in bribes in order to facilitate a new Turkish consulate.“In 2014, Eric Adams, the defendant, became Brooklyn borough president.

The predilections of Pastor Robinson 2024 is proving to be an election year where so much seems to happen and so little seems to change. This week, for example, you might have found yourself alarmed as Donald Trump met the Red Scare girls at a crypto bar in New York (Cockburn agrees that someone should get Barron to convince him to go on the podcast, for what it’s worth).Or you may have drawn a sharp intake of breath as New York magazine placed its Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi on leave after, per Nuzzi’s statement to Status, “the nature of some communication” between her and RFK Jr. — what can’t that man do? — “turned personal.

Project 2025 problems Despite Donald Trump’s best efforts, Project 2025 isn’t going anywhere. Its former director, Paul Dans, made the media rounds this week, where he attacked the leadership of the Trump campaign in a New York Times interview, while simultaneously telling CNN that “Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025.”Dans, who stepped down from Project 2025 over the summer, accused top Trump aides Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles of “malpractice” for scheduling a presidential debate so early that it allowed President Joe Biden enough time to drop out. He is, however, excited at the involvement of Corey Lewandowski, Ben Carson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Congratulations to Barron Trump, the Paul Atreides of Mar-a-Lago, on his enrollment at the private, excruciatingly progressive New York University this week. Barron has found his tribe immediately, joining all the college’s other Republicans at the Stern School of Business. If he’s not too busy chugging Miller Lites at Phebes after using Eric’s old ID to get in, the Trump scion could find himself taking some intriguing classes.  Were Barron to stick around to do an MBA after, he could study Professional Responsibility with Spectator favorite Jonathan Haidt.

Will Kamala actually appoint a Republican to her cabinet? A rare surprise in the otherwise routine Harris-Walz interview on CNN last night: when asked if she’d appoint a Republican to her cabinet, Kamala said, “Yes I would.” This is perhaps in response to two Democratic presidential candidates from the last decade — Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — endorsing Trump and joining his transition team. President Biden appointed a few Republicans to ambassadorial positions — notably Arizonans Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain — but Harris appears ready to go a step further. The likeliest option would be to appoint a serious-minded ex-military Beltway figure to a role like director of national intelligence or defense secretary: Mark Esper, for instance.