Mischief, mayhem and Washington gossip. Send tips and party invites to cockburn@thespectator.com.
Like Amsterdam, like New York City, Washington is a rat city. Old buildings and moisture create the conditions for them to thrive. Rats provide the midsized city with classical urban charm. On the other hand, they’re vermin. As of this week, it’s official: DC Health is putting rats on the pill. The agency is planning
More like Pam Gone-di! President Trump this afternoon confirmed that Attorney General Pam Bondi would be moving on to pastures new. In a Truth Social post announcing her dismissal, Trump called Bondi a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend” who “did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with
Kristi Noem has just started her new role as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas. She might need even more protection than a mere shield. The Daily Mail (who else?) this morning published bombshell photos and messages of her husband Bryon, wearing humongous prosthetic breasts and women’s leggings. While his wife was serving as President Trump’s Homeland
“See you in Valhalla” is how Kash Patel said farewell to Charlie Kirk. Unfortunately, it now seems that Patel’s own sanctum has now been breached. Iran-aligned hackers have broken into the FBI director’s personal email inbox and released the contents online. What did they leak? The un-redacted Epstein files? The truth behind the Kennedy assassination?
Joe Kent has been making the rounds since resigning as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over America’s involvement in the Iran conflict. He’s appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Mark Levin’s radio show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, The Young Turks and UnHerd’s YouTube program. But it’s an interview with the Daily Caller editor-in-chief Amber Duke that earned the ire of Laura Loomer,
The White House X account has won notoriety as a coven of young memesters scandalizing the nation. There have been meme images of leading Democrats decked out in sombreros, and clips featuring footage of Iranian military hardware being blown up interspersed with WiiSports. Now the antics have been taken a step further. There is currently widespread talk
King Charles III is planning a state visit to Washington DC next month. He is rumored to be staying at the White House, attending a state dinner and possibly addressing a joint meeting of Congress. The last royal to address Congress was Charles’s mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II speaking to a full chamber in
Walking by Hungary’s immense neo-Gothic parliament building in Budapest’s Kossuth Square, one of Cockburn’s traveling companions sidles up to him. “For a certain kind of right-winger,” he grins, “Hungary is their Rojava.” ‘We were Trumpists before Trump,’ Orbán often says There’s something to this idea, for sure. Since 2010 the premiership of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has
Cockburn is saddened to hear of Chuck Norris’s death, aged 86. He was an action star of the 1980s, a top meme of the 2000s – and an outspoken political thinker for almost all his career. Norris was a close ally of now-Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who he endorsed for president in the 2016
Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit! There’s an Irish lilt to proceedings in Washington today. Vice President J.D. Vance and Second Lady Usha hosted Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the Naval Observatory for breakfast this morning (Cockburn hopes both black and white pudding were served). The Taoiseach then jigged down to the White House for a bilateral meeting
Something queer’s afoot in the Islamic Republic. As Mojtaba Khamenei was announced as Iran’s new Supreme Leader last week, reports emerged that his own father, the late ayatollah Ali Khamenei, didn’t want him to take power and even went as far as making this explicit in his will, according to the New York Post. Now,
As the FBI investigates two potential terror attacks on US soil, the bureau’s director Kash Patel has been racking his brain for better ways to protect the American people. Apart from firing counterterrorism agents, his plans include partnering with UFC fighters to train the world’s premier law enforcement agency. The elite fighters will head to Quantico as
At a private dinner with two dozen donors, President Trump surveyed the room and asked which candidate they would choose to follow him in leading the MAGA movement. The vote was almost unanimously in favor of Marco Rubio over J.D. Vance. As the two men vie to be next-in-line to the throne, Trump seems to be enjoying
It’s day seven of “Operation Epic Fury” – and the White House is posting through it. The war in Iran that Team Trump wants to show us is tailored for the short attention spans of the vertical video era. Consider this clip posted on X by the official White House account last night, which intersperses declassified footage
How are you “monitoring the situation,” four days into the joint US-Israeli offensive against Iran? Our Commander-in-Chief has adopted an unorthodox approach: evading the press in person as the strikes and counterstrikes fall, while taking phone calls from basically any journalist with his personal number. By Cockburn’s count, President Trump has given at least 20
Mayor Zohran Mamdani met Trump in the Oval Office yesterday to pitch a huge New York City housing initiative – and secure the release of a Columbia University student from ICE custody. Mamdani’s communications director said that Trump was “very enthusiastic” about the plan to build 12,000 new affordable homes in Sunnyside, Queens, by using
Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill austerely complied with a House Oversight Committee subpoena in order to explain their ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Yet Hillary’s testimony today didn’t exactly go to plan. Proceedings were halted after a breach of the hearing’s protocols – by a member of the committee. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert took
President Trump will deliver the first State of the Union address of his second term tonight – and the White House social media team want to whet your appetite. “The White House digital team will transform all its social channels into ‘Trump TV’ – a 12-hour retrospective of the year since President Trump’s last address
Underdog candidate for Florida governor James Fishback went face-to-camera to pitch his 50 percent income tax for OnlyFans creators last month. It would be called a “sin tax” meant to discourage “certain behaviors.” This came at around the time he got into an X spat with Sophie Rain, a Florida resident believed to be one
So farewell then, Reverend Jesse Jackson. The civil-rights hero and two-time Democratic presidential candidate died this morning, aged 84. Given his titanic status as an African-American leader, the first living president, former or current, to issue a statement was, naturally… Donald Trump. “He was a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts,’” wrote Trump
