Cockburn

Cockburn

Mischief, mayhem and Washington gossip. Send tips and party invites to cockburn@thespectator.com.

A color revolution at CPAC

From our US edition

National Harbor, Maryland Cockburn has been poring over ostentatious Elon Musk fan art, reexamining that guide to which salutes are allowed and playing a mental game of “what’s that nice lady done to her face?” He is, of course, addressing you from the press pen of the Conservative Political Action Conference across the river from DC. The crowd seems older than previous years, with fewer college students milling around. Cockburn feels like the only person who wasn’t in the Capitol on January 6, 2021: he saw a couple of gents in Proud Boy attire rolling around, beers in hand, at 3 p.m. on Thursday — and while on his way in he was behind one recently freed prisoner and his four-month-old service dog in training, Whitney.

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Donald Trump speaks his ‘Truth’ about Ukraine in attack on Zelensky

From our US edition

Negotiating peace can be delicate business. Often it requires a steady hand, a strong sense of compassion and inexhaustible patience. As Senator George J. Mitchell, a leading architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, once wrote, "In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume it is true and try to imagine what it might be true of." Cockburn was reminded of Mitchell's sage words when he read the president's Truth Social post about Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday afternoon, which he republishes in full below: Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S.

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Daily Mail dominated by Elon’s baby mama

From our US edition

Rumors of a romantic entanglement between the Texas-based conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair and Elon Musk have been buzzing around MAGA circles for some time. Yet St. Clair, a former Turning Point USA ambassador and Babylon Bee staffer, decided to go public with a Valentine’s Day statement on, where else, X, the website her child’s father owns. St. Clair wrote that she had not previously disclosed her infant’s parentage “to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause.” One atypical aspect of St. Clair’s plea to be left alone: the inclusion of an email address for crisis PR guru Brian Glicklich.

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Bill de Blasio has a girlfriend and you don’t

From our US edition

Love is in the air at Casa Cockburn this Friday — it’s Valentine’s Day and politicos are pairing off. The most shocking? The revelation in the New York Post that divorced former mayor Bill de Blasio is dating Nomiki Konst, a Democratic activist and former host of HillTV’s Rising.  “Nomi and I have started a really lovely relationship, just in time for Valentine’s Day. We’ve known each other for a long time and are very kindred souls ❤️,” the mayor texted the Post. “We’re going to cuddle up and watch romantic movies and drink Greek wine, in honor of Nomi’s heritage.” Cute. Forty-one-year-old Konst previously interviewed de Blasio and his then-wife Chirlane McCray in 2018.

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Pope attacks Trump administration over deportations — yet stays quiet on China

From our US edition

Papa don’t preach! It’s not every day that the Supreme Pontiff, the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion souls on earth, deigns to weigh in on a social media spat involving the vice president of the United States. But Pope Francis is no ordinary pontiff — and he’s just launched an extraordinary broadside against the new Trump administration, including a clear rebuke of J.D. Vance over his recent Twitter row with the British politician-cum-podcaster, Rory Stewart. Last week, as Cockburn noted, J D Vance appeared to "pwn," as the kids say, Stewart in a row over Christian principles and the issue of immigration. "Google ‘ordo amoris,’" Vance told the equine-mouthed Stewart on X, as he cast an uncharitable (albeit accurate) aspersion on Stewart’s intelligence quotient.

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DEI still rules the Dems

From our US edition

While some Fortune 500 companies are dropping DEI programs like hot cakes, many in the Democratic Party are not so eager. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who was almost the official face of the House Democrats’ messaging, has been taking her message that “mediocre white boys” are the ones complaining about DEI to the airwaves of cable news.Now the Democrats’ Senate committee is rolling out a job application form with an optional DEI section where applicants can pick between five sexualities and five genders, with options including “trans* woman / Transfeminine” and “pansexual.” This form was one of the first actions that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) new chief diversity and inclusion officer.

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Is it Democrat divorce season?

From our US edition

Source: Trump appointee struggles for coherence before TV hit Which top Trump pick caused concern — bordering on panic — at a major news network this week, by turning up in a daze, slurring their words so heavily employees couldn’t understand them? The appointee claimed to have slipped on the ice and was moving “like a cripple” around the studio and spilling food, a source tells Cockburn. “To me,” the tipster says, the pick “seemed addled on pain meds. Could barely stand.” Cockburn of course wishes nothing but the finest health to the incoming administration — they need to stay safe if they’re serious about taking on the Big Pharma cartel!

Cockburn at the Trump inauguration

From our US edition

A very Special Relationship On Friday night, Cockburn began at the British Embassy for send-off drinks with outgoing ambassador Karen Pierce. Several foreign correspondents were present, along with the Washington Post’s John Hudson, Robert Costa and Fin Gomez of CBS. They all tucked into sparkling wine and beer and fish and chips hors d’oeuvres.Britain was also on the agenda for Cockburn’s next event, the Stars and Stripes and Union Jack Celebration thrown by the Gunster Group, Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore on the roof of the Hay-Adams. Upon hearing an accent, Natalie Winters of the War Room podcast asked of one British guest, “so, groomer or groomée?”Cockburn watched the esteemed Dr. Sebastian Gorka exiting in a long military-style trenchcoat.

What’s going on between Brett Cooper and Candace Owens?

From our US edition

Brett Cooper, former host of The Comment Section on the Daily Wire, has sparked rumors after liking a controversial Instagram post by former colleague Candace Owens. Speculation follows a clip from Piers Morgan Uncensored last month in which Owens accused Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a war criminal with “genocidal ambitions.” Owens told Morgan, “I want to use my platform to say that I believe they are intentionally executing a holocaust.” Cooper liking Owens’s post raised questions: does Cooper agree with Owens’s take on the war in Gaza? Could this be tied to her departure from the Daily Wire? And does she plan to collaborate with Owens moving forward?

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Biden bids an ominous farewell to a falling America

From our US edition

President Joe Biden delivered his farewell address last night in the Oval Office. While he started with strong patriotic themes, he ended by warning the country of some “things that give me great concern.” Biden declared that America is an oligarchy now. Cockburn thought it was turning into a dictatorship? He can’t keep track. Overall, though, he thought Biden’s speech presented an idealistic view of America. It featured inspiring snatches, with stories about the Statue of Liberty and references to the words of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, saying America is “a nation holding the torch of the most powerful idea ever in the history of the world. That all of us are created equal.

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Jose Andrés’s mixed emotions

From our US edition

In one of the grubby little hypocrisies that have come to characterize Joe Biden’s single term, the president awarded Jose Andrés the Presidential Medal of Freedom last weekend — at around the same time as signing off on another $8 billion weapons sale to Israel. A previous lot to head off to our top Middle East ally may well have played a part in the air strike that killed seven people working for Andrés’s World Central Kitchen in Gaza. Such complex contradictions may explain Andrés’s muted reaction to receiving the honor: one of Cockburn’s sources saw the chef dining with his family and friends at Nobu after the ceremony. When the spy approached Andrés at the bar the chef was ebullient — yet upon being congratulated he turned solemn.

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The weird and wonderful presidential interactions at the Carter funeral

From our US edition

Past, present and president-elect presidents, along with their wives — and current and former veeps — put on brave faces at the funeral of President Jimmy Carter Thursday. Not so much because they were in mourning, but because, Cockburn suspects, they had to interact with one another. The solemn event made for some interesting viewing: smooshed together in the front pews of the Washington National Cathedral were all five living presidents. President Joe Biden buffered himself from his predecessor/successor, President-elect Donald Trump, with First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff in between. Next came Trump and First Lady Melania. In the second row were President Bill and First Lady (is that what we call her?

Snow-storming the Capitol on January 6

From our US edition

What a difference a lot of snow and a Donald Trump victory makes. January 6, 2025 is shaping up to be vastly different from January 6, 2021, thanks to weather forecasts of almost a foot of snow in the DC area and a beaten-down Democratic Party that couldn’t steal an election if it tried to.Despite some left-wing fever dreams, Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to certify Trump’s victory as planned on Monday; the only potential hurdles will be whether Republicans can get a speaker of the House in time, and just how bad the snow fall ends up being. If it is substantial, Cockburn is happy to report, there will be a snowball fight on the grounds of the US Capitol, just like there have been in days of yore.

Comedian Whitney Cummings roasts Democrats on CNN

From our US edition

“Whitney Cummings, it is time for you to roast the year,” Andy Cohen said Tuesday night, an invitation he would perhaps go on to regret. Cohen and Anderson Cooper let Cummings loose on 2024 as part of CNN's New Year's Eve coverage. Cummings quickly breezed through a laundry list of controversial and touchy jokes in four or so minutes on live TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IL-p-fKS08&ab_channel=WhitneyCummings She addressed “our” wistful obsession with murderers (the Menendez brothers, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Luigi Mangione), the increased sale of baby oil, Hunter Biden's laptop, white supremacy in relation to Ariana Grande, cryptocurrency as "astrology for men" and the drones in New Jersey that the government surely knows about...

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Portraits of Kamala Harris

From our US edition

Who’s in charge of the executive branch? That question has been on many lips throughout the duration of President Joe Biden’s term, and has been asked even more often since his decision to stand aside as Democratic nominee in July. Perhaps the White House itself offers some visual clues to the answer: a source who has been heading in for transition meetings with the outgoing administration notes that virtually all of the jumbo portraits inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue feature Vice President Kamala Harris — visiting foreign countries, making speeches and the like. Biden, meanwhile, is barely featured. Perhaps all of his impressive pictures are displayed in the basement at Rehoboth Beach...

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What’s preventing a repeat of the Senate twink scandal?

From our US edition

Gay-PMG Grüezi from Switzerland, friends. A Cockburn spy was recently hoping to enjoy a quiet lunch at an Irish pub in Zurich’s Old Town when he was sat next to a large group of somewhat intoxicated KPMG Switzerland employees. It was quite the liquid lunch, with beers and wine flowing for hours and one staffer suggesting a round of shots, a move that was quickly rejected from the already too-far-gone group. One American employee of the firm was waxing lyrical about KPMG’s alleged hopelessly bigoted management.

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Is Trump exiling his problem women?

From our US edition

Maybe the best really was yet to come: Kimberly Guilfoyle has landed the break-up gift of a lifetime, finding herself appointed Donald Trump's ambassador to Greece the same day news broke of her split from his son Donald Jr. "For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally," President-elect Trump wrote in a statement Tuesday evening. "Her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics along with her sharp intellect make her supremely qualified to represent the United States, and safeguard its interests abroad." "I am so proud of Kimberly," echoed Don Jr. on X. "She loves America and she always has wanted to serve the country as an ambassador. She will be an amazing leader for America First.

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Brett Cooper departs Daily Wire following days of speculation

From our US edition

“Hey guys, some of you have heard the rumors online, and the rumors are mostly true,” Brett Cooper began her YouTube video, posted Tuesday evening, very tactfully. “Today, December 10 will be my last day hosting the Comments Section, and working for the Daily Wire. It is not true that I am being forced out; it was my own choice to leave.” Cooper had frequently been dubbed the "female Ben Shapiro" during her tenure as one of the Daily Wire’s other podcast hosts. She was also set to star in the Wire’s production of Snow White and the Evil Queen, out next year for some reason. The video announcing her exit has garnered over 5 million views on X in the twelve hours since publication. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Where’s the nonbinary restroom at the Supreme Court?

From our US edition

Lincoln in the Bardo “The economy has never been better,” top Democrats and their surrogates told voters during the 2024 elections. It turns out that’s because the economy was doing just fine for a lot of the party’s top vendors. After all, Kamala Harris’s $1 billion of campaign expenditures had to wet some beaks, if not win votes. One series of outlays stood out in particular: the millions of dollars spent by the Lincoln Project, despite the Democratic Party’s top infrastructure rolling out focus groups showing that the group’s work had zero impact on the 2020 presidential election. “Tragic,” elections analyst Rob Pyers wrote on X. “After raising $15.5 million for the year and burning through $16.

Wishing you a joyless and guilt-ridden Thanksgiving

From our US edition

Elsewhere in the world, they just call Thanksgiving “Thursday.” But in the addled minds of some on America’s progressive left, it’s something far worse. Joy Reid aired her “Thanksgiving message to MAGA trolls,” in which she discussed her “alternative” Thanksgiving idea for those who voted for Donald Trump: “Make your own dinner, MAGA, make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears, troll among yourselves with Elon and leave us alone. You’ve got your heart’s desire: the president you dreamed of, and worship instead of Jesus.