Politics

I remember poring over the photos when they first appeared in Architectural Digest in early 2023. Even back then, before Lily Allen wrote what Rolling Stone called “the most brutal album of the year,” I knew in my gut that her marriage to that actor guy she met on Raya – whatshisface? David Strangerbeard? – wouldn’t last. Because looking at the pictures of their house made me feel queasy. There was something off about it. It just wasn’t right. It didn’t bode well. It’s not that the house wasn’t gorgeous. It was – and still is – spectacular. A double-width brownstone in the slouchiest artisanal urban village on Earth: Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

​​Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir about her scandalous affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then a presidential candidate and now the country’s leading health bureaucrat, comes out next month. She’s called it American Canto, not to be confused with the bestselling novel Bel Canto, about terrorists who occupy an opera-themed party at a South American mansion. Instead, Nuzzi has trapped us all in the opera of her mind, and there’s no escape.  ​Nuzzi has the apparent ability to turn otherwise rational, educated men into blubbering masses of jelly.

Donald Trump’s meeting with President Xi was the standout moment of this month’s Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in South Korea. Yet almost as much attention focused on the rumors that Trump’s gaze had turned once again to North Korea. Addressing suggestions he would meet Kim, the President told reporters, "I’d be open 100 percent. I get along very well with Kim Jong-un." A meeting never materialized, but speculation – and tension – has only grown since.  Days after Trump’s departure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived as part of his own tour of Asia. In Seoul, he became the first defence secretary in nearly eight years to visit Panmunjeom, the border village within the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

It’s Thursday morning as I write. Has The Wall Street Journal weighed in with another attack on Kevin Roberts yet, the besieged president of the Heritage Foundation? No? Be patient. It’s early hours yet. Another fusillade is due any minute.  I have written about that tempest-in-a-teapot myself. I agree that Roberts’s brief video statement defending the Heritage Foundation’s friendship with Tucker Carlson was ill-advised. I say why in that column. I also think that his efforts at damage control have been ineffective. But given the incontinent fury of the response to that two-minute and thirty-nine-second video, I am not sure that anyone could have calmed the storm.

“We’re in Brazil,” California Gavin Newsom said. “One of our great trading partners. One of the world’s great democracies. I mean, hell, you need rare Earth minerals, this is the country we should be engaging with. Instead, middle finger with 50 percent tariffs. That’s shameful.” That’s certainly a point to argue, but the question is why, exactly, was Newsom in Brazil, telling the gathered at a UN climate summit that the Trump administration had “disrespected” them? “I’m here in the absence of leadership of Donald Trump," he told a Sky News reporter. “He’s abdicated responsibility on a critical issue. I’m here to show up on behalf of my country. I’m here to showcase California’s leadership, dominance in the low-carbon greenco space.

When Whoopi Goldberg announced on The View that Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania would appear on the show to discuss why he voted to end the government shutdown, one audience member shouted “Boo!” It was just one audience member, on The View, on a Monday morning. But the liberal mind loves performative booing. Fetterman appeared on the show today via split screen from Washington, DC, wearing his signature black hoodie. The man won’t dress up for any occasion, and we must admire him for that. View host Alyssa Farah Griffin, the token Republican on the panel, said: You were critical of this shutdown from the outset, saying it never should have happened, never should have come to this, even at times criticizing your own party.