The White House

The White House lawn became the latest battleground in the “Free the Nipple” fight this weekend.  A shocking display of inequality was captured on video when TikTok influencer and trans woman Rose Montoya filmed herself topless in front of the White House, flaunting her breasts during a Pride event. Montoya was joined by two trans male activists who were also shirtless. Yet only Montoya — whether out of a sense of decency or internalized social pressures — censored her nipples with her hands. For all the White House's moral posturing, Cockburn is shocked they would tolerate such brazen inequality.

Wedding bells are ringing! President Joe Biden’s granddaughter, Naomi, was treated to a White House wedding to Peter Neal over the weekend. The ceremony was the nineteenth White House wedding — and the first for a presidential family member held on the grounds since the Clinton era. Naomi's nuptials come just a week after Tiffany Trump's private wedding in Mar-a-Lago. And the pair have more than November weddings in common: Tiffany and Naomi overlapped at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League college that Donald Trump attended. Cockburn's spies claim they even used to be spotted at the same parties. The Biden wedding was also a strictly behind-closed-doors affair.

President Biden must not be feline optimistic about his paltry poll numbers, particularly after his landmark Build Back Better Act died on the Senate floor. But he’s finally delivered on one campaign promise: he’s got a cat. The First Family circulated pictures of Willow, a two-year-old gray and white short-haired tabby cat, on Friday morning. According to Politico, Willow first met Jill Biden “when she jumped on stage and interrupted her remarks during a 2020 campaign stop.” The New York Times reports that "Willow is named after the first lady’s hometown, Willow Grove, Pennsylvania." The cat hails from western Pennsylvania, which could prove useful for the Democrats as they try to claw back some credibility in the run-up to the midterms.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Tuesday that President Joe Biden will hold his first solo press conference on March 25, over two months after taking office. The administration scheduled the conference after weeks of journalists pointing out that Biden was the first president in 100 years to not hold formal court with the media within his first 33 days on the job. But sadly, unless the White House opens up the press conference to a wider array of journalists, this is just theater. The Biden administration has been responsible for an unprecedented crackdown on media access to the White House, which it has largely blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Washington DC It’s still dark outside and dumping rain as the media waits for the annual White House Holiday Decor preview. The weather’s not as cold as last year and there isn’t the same cinnamon-sugar smell of cookies wafting from the East Room basement but it’s still enough to prompt complaints from members of the press. I am kind of enjoying it. I know that it’s probably one of the last times the Trump family can subject the media to some misery while still in office. This year’s Christmas decorations will probably be more contentious than ever thanks to that leaked audio recording of Melania questioning ‘who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff?

Is Kayleigh McEnany the best Press Secretary in history? I think she may be. True, it’s early days. She was elevated to the position only in April and presided over her first briefing just a few weeks ago on May 1. But so far her tenure has been glorious. Despite having attended both Georgetown and Harvard, where she took a law degree, she remains quick-witted, forthright and occupies a cant-free zone that suffuses the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room with a spirit of patriotic candor that is as welcome as it is rare in the self-involved purlieus of the so-called mainstream media. She is also, I think it important to observe, distinctly dishy, another advantage.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, announced yesterday on Twitter that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, would be departing her job at the end of the month. He later, at a press conference about a new program to help felons reenter the work force, praised her as a 'magnificent person' who has done 'an incredible job.' Taking the podium, Ms Sanders expressed her admiration for the president and his agenda and said, tears in her eyes, that working for him had been 'the honor of a lifetime.' Pretty straight forward, right? Wrong. The press hates Sarah Sanders. Like its hatred for Donald Trump, the detestation is reflexive, visceral, and in the deepest sense aesthetic, a matter of immediate feeling.

Less than two years into his administration, President Trump is in search of his third Chief of Staff. This is emblematic of the single largest problem plaguing his White House and hamstringing the implementation of his agenda: personnel. The president ran on a platform of orthodox American republicanism, but that offended the recent vintage sensibilities of the US branch of the globalized ruling class. As a result, he always had a thin bench from which to draw, at least if he restricted his search to Beltway apparatchiks as he inexplicably did. Thus did Trump kill his legislative agenda by making an ill-fated deal with Paul Ryan that brought Reince Priebus into the White House as his Chief of Staff.