Mischief, mayhem and Washington gossip. Send tips and party invites to cockburn@thespectator.com.
President Trump has had a mixed reaction to the enormous document dump of “Epstein files” from the Department of Justice a week ago. The President had a terse exchange with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when she asked about the files Tuesday – yet in his pre-Super Bowl NBC interview, Trump was empathetic toward one of his predecessors. “It
Cockburn takes a keen interest in the correspondence between former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s ex and consigliere. Back in 2019, readers will no doubt recall, Andrew took part in a disastrous interview with the BBC’s Newsnight in an attempt to smooth over the reports of his ties to Epstein and his alleged sexual
One of the many mysteries surrounding the Epstein saga is Jeffrey Epstein the man. Beyond simple hedonism, his motives seem inscrutable – and how did he make his money anyway? The latest cache of released Epstein files has shed new light on his character. Part of what emerges is Epstein the compulsive video gamer, who was banned from online
Lemon squeezy Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor turned Substack influencer, was taken into custody by Homeland Security and FBI agents in Los Angeles last night. Lemon had previously covered an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month – though a federal judge in the state refused to
As Gangs of New York showed us, those who’ve settled in America have a tendency to bring Old World grudges over with them. Judging by a recent video put out by Dr. Mehmet Oz – now serving as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services – one of these ancient feuds may now be playing
Dairy dies in darkness The Washington Post finds itself making news more than reporting it of late. Stories swirled this weekend of looming cuts to the sports and foreign desks. The newsroom is on edge. Yet is it possible some “Posties” have been getting too comfortable? Cockburn hears of an email that went around the Post’s New York bureau last week, mentioning
The White House and Department of Homeland Security are making hay out of the DHS “Worst of the Worst” database, posting links to it throughout the week as evidence that ICE’s actions in Minnesota are justified. President Trump also held up printouts from the database during his Tuesday marathon presser. But Cockburn has been playing a different game with
Kat Abughazaleh is one of those influencers who – unnervingly – seem to pop out of nowhere fully formed. There was a stint at Media Matters – which in many ways pioneered the modern industry in “disinformation”-watchdogging, political fact-checking and “studying the far right” – where she made short-form videos taking the fight to people like
The State Department has a “secret playbook for using sports to advance Trump’s agenda,” according to Politico. Foggy Bottom has a tough assignment ahead. Witness the opening ceremonies of Sunday’s NBA game in London between the Memphis Grizzlies and Orlando Magic, the first NBA game in the UK in six years. As Vanessa Williams sang the
Journos on ice How hot is the White House briefing room? Pretty scorching if you’re Niall Stanage, the Hill reporter who was drawn into a back-and-forth with press secretary Karoline Leavitt over ICE’s conduct. Leavitt asked for Stanage’s opinion on why Renee Good was shot, he gave it… and she branded him a “biased reporter with a
More like Kyrsten Sinner? In September, a North Carolina woman, Heather Ammel, filed a suit in county court alleging that former Arizona senator and current crypto lobbyist Kyrsten Sinema had an affair with her husband Matthew while he served on her Senate security detail. That suit has since moved to federal court, so now the whole world knows what Cockburn
Fishing for clout James Fishback, a Republican primary candidate for Florida governor, is promising to institute a 50 percent tax on all income derived from the adult-content site OnlyFans if he’s elected. How he thinks this will get him elected is a mystery to Cockburn, as OnlyFans has a lot of fans, and also Florida
The soap opera that is Elon Musk’s personal life has taken a predictably Black Mirror turn. Ashley St. Clair, Elon’s most recent baby mama (to Cockburn’s knowledge), started complaining on X last week that people were using Grok, X’s AI tool, to create unauthorized sexually explicit images of her, including “Photos of me of 14 years old,
Americans hate to love, or love to hate, the country’s First Family, the Trumps, a melodramatic cast of characters that makes the Ewings, the Carringtons, the Bridgertons or the Roys seem small by comparison. But a gee-whiz protagonist for everyone has emerged in the persona of Kai Trump, the President’s granddaughter and the eldest daughter
President Trump offered Republican members of Congress a stand-up routine involving an imitation of transgender athletes lifting weights at the House GOP Member retreat earlier today. The President said that his wife “hates” when he does this and considers it “unpresidential.” “She said, ‘darling please, the weightlifting is terrible’,” the President recounts, before launching into his
Vivek unplugged Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy signaled virtue in the pages of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, claiming that he’s resolved to swear off social media entirely in 2026. “I’ll spend my newfound time listening to more voters in real-world Ohio, developing more policies to make our state affordable, and being more present with my family,” the
Cockburn stumbled into The Spectator’s New York office this morning afflicted with that annual January woe: the post-holiday blues. He was having a serious pout at his desk before he was chastened out of this gloom by his northern colleagues’ new neighbor: Nicolás Maduro. No one had a worse Christmas season than the deposed Venezuelan
“Why is Epstein the top issue in American life right now?” galaxy-brained columnist David Brooks wrote in the New York Times last month, while also comparing Epstein Files obsessives to QAnon followers. Well, maybe because the Files seem to touch all corners of our cosseted elite, to whom Brooks (and Cockburn) belong. But at least Cockburn, unlike
“Here ve go again” says Melania Trump to the camera at the start of the new trailer for MELANIA – a feature documentary on the First Lady from Jeff Bezos’s Amazon Studios. This House of Cards-style breaking of the fourth wall seems to promise a certain intrigue in the movie to come. The trailer, which is soundtracked an Amadeus-esque orchestral
Wilin’ out President Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality,” White House budget director Russell Vought is a “right-wing zealot” and Elon Musk microdoses ketamine, according to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Musk is “an odd, odd duck,” Wiles told Vanity Fair during an series of 11 – count ’em, eleven – interviews, “as I think geniuses are. You
