Washington dc

As far as the controversy over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool goes, Donald Trump is reverting to type: like any other Florida man with a pool, he won’t admit that maintaining one is complicated and blames external factors when things go wrong. The President ordered that a new blue coating be applied to the pool’s base, which has already started flaking. In a testy exchange with CBS’s Ed O’Keefe yesterday, Trump said that the contractors who installed the new surface were not to blame. “We had vandalism,” he said. “Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.” “Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?” he wondered aloud. Quite.

The World Cup begins this week, and Americans have been celebrating as only we know how: by fighting Europeans on social media about stadium size and atmosphere, and banning Africans and Middle Easterners from the country. Nonetheless, the next month offers a great opportunity to take advantage of DC’s status as a truly international city, and fraternize with foreigners while watching multimillionaires pass a ball around in 100-degree heat. For today’s special sports edition of Cockburn’s Diary, here’s your correspondent’s guide on where to watch each team in the District. Germany The Brig The Brig describes itself as a “secret beer garden.

Cockburn isn’t the only one heading to the Bahamas this weekend. So is Donald Trump Jr. – to get married to Bettina Anderson in a private ceremony of around 50 people. It will be his second marriage and Anderson’s first. It sounds like Don Jr.’s father might be sitting this one out. “He’d like me to go,” President Trump told reporters Thursday, “but it’s going to be a small little private affair, and I’m going to try and make it… I’m in the midst – I said, ‘You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things.’” “He’s a person I’ve known for a long time,” he added. Political careers and family life often conflict but Cockburn won’t accuse Trump of being an absentee father just yet.

“This is Greek… more or less… it comes out of Greece… this is the ultimate facade for Greece.” Donald Trump is wielding a blown-up graphical rendering of one of the planned porticos of the new White House ballroom. “This is a different facade,” he says, pointing to another placard propped up on an easel, “This one’s Rome.” The President spent the morning touring the ballroom’s construction site with the press. Currently a forest of rebar and metal prongs, the project has now burst its bounds and is developing into a general fortress-cum-lair. A vast underground complex is to be built below the ballroom, housing a hospital, research facilities and meeting rooms for the military.

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.

Well, that was odd. Cockburn spent Saturday evening at the Substack party, hosted at the Renwick Gallery next door to the White House. He was handed what he was assured was a non-alcoholic cocktail were handed out upon arrival. Great. Leading lights of the “alternative” (read: once mainstream) media were dotted throughout the room. Cockburn spotted Jim Acosta and Michael Tracey before their now infamous clash over Tracey’s haranguing of investigative Epstein journalist Julie K. Brown. Things appeared to be shaping up for a salient White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with President Trump in attendance across town at the Washington Hilton with 2,600 journalists. A gunman had other ideas.

Even by Washington’s sordid standards, this has been a particularly grubby week. Things kicked off with the departure of vacation queen and Josh sauvi B enthusiast Lori Chaves-DeRemer from the Department of Labor; they continued with a tell-all from the ex-girlfriend of former ICE deputy director Madison Sheahan. Don’t get Cockburn started on Congress (Juliegrace Brufke’s “Case Study in Congressional Smut” is worth a peruse.) There is no shortage of salacity, yet Cockburn can’t put his finger on why he’s so entranced by the stories from the Daily Mail and the New York Post regarding DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Julia Varvaro and her much older ex-boyfriend, Robert Bianchi.