Graham Platner

Starting a new job is never easy, but Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, has had an extra rough first two weeks after firing veteran correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday. Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker released a joint memo today condemning the firings but declaring their intention to remain in post. CBS’s management has been accused of ignoring the demands of the (dwindling) core viewership and making top-down political changes to drag the station’s coverage to the right. In that spirit, Cockburn is offering Bilton some suggestions of feet to fill Pelley’s shoes. Thanks for reading Cockburn’s Diary from The Spectator. Subscribe to receive new posts and support his work.

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.

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.

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.

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.