Cockburn

Cockburn

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

Wednesday

Cockburn

Is Trump exiling his problem women?

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.

kimberly guilfoyle women
brett cooper
Cockburn

Brett Cooper departs Daily Wire following days of speculation

“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?

Friday

Cockburn

Where’s the nonbinary restroom at the Supreme Court?

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.

Friday

Cockburn

Wishing you a joyless and guilt-ridden Thanksgiving

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.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Harris campaign chiefs give pathetic excuses for blowing $1 billion to lose election

After the Harris/Walz campaign blew over $1 billion, its top managers joined their first interview post-election on Pod Save America to explain what went wrong. Their excuses range from having less than 107 days instead of a year and a half, the fact that Harris wasn’t elected via the “traditional” route, the “political environment” — meaning Biden and Kamala’s poor approval ratings — along with Donald Trump, Donald Trump and Donald Trump. “They don’t pretend to have all the answers here,” host Dan Pfeiffer started the podcast. “There’s way more to cover than we could possibly cover in one podcast.” Though you may struggle to believe it, the hour and thirty-five-minute interview only got worse from there.

pod save america excuses
kamala harris
Cockburn

WATCH: Kamala’s blundering, bizarre farewell message

Farewell, Kamala Harris. It’s been a brutal month for the outgoing vice president. Following her devastating loss on November 5, the failed nominee has been subjected to days of vicious briefing and revelations about her dreadful campaign. Whether it was spending millions on celebrity appearances or getting rejected by the Hot Ones podcast, the Democratic bid of 2024 will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. But for those who fear that Kamala’s loss means an end to her infamous gaffes: don’t despair! There are already reports that the defeated VP now plans to run for California governor. Nixon, without the charm, if you will.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Where Trump’s Washington will actually be hanging out

Where will conservatives and Donald Trump's disciples spend their non-working hours in DC for the president-elect’s term? The Washingtonian provided a list by Jessica Sidman last week, but by Cockburn’s estimation, it’s not totally over the target. Contenders on Sidman’s list include the Big Board, Cafe Milano, Capital Grille, Dirty Water, RPM Italian, Royal Sands Social Club, Shelly’s Back Room and the Waldorf Astoria — which used to be the Trump Hotel DC but was sold back in 2021. Shelly’s is Cockburn-approved, especially for the cigar smokers. Rudy Giuliani has been spotted in there before. But Cafe Milano, Capital Grille and Dirty Water are not necessarily “hangouts” for conservatives or the MAGA crowd in particular.

washington trump

Friday

Cockburn

Nancy Mace is effectively the first trans member of Congress

Nancy Mace has embarked on her newfound crusade against the trans employees of the Hill — a group of people so uncomfortable in their own skin that many undergo plastic surgery in order to feel more like their true selves. Mace’s campaign to ban biological men from the women’s restrooms of Congress marks a change in tack for the congresswoman — not the first one, obviously. “I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality,” the South Carolina congresswoman told the Washington Examiner back in 2021. “No one should be discriminated against.

mace

Tuesday

Cockburn

DC officials brace for Trump’s reign

You better watch out, you better not cry... President-elect Donald Trump is coming to town. And according to a recent Associated Press report, he’s making a list and checking it twice — that's to say, he’s looking to enforce laws. It’s only November, but officials in DC are already preparing for the so-called disastrous effects of Trump’s reign come January. “We have been discussing and planning for many months in the case that the District has to defend itself and its values,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser in a briefing.  Who knows what disasters will befall us on January 6 when Congress convenes to count the electoral votes — but Bowser is prepared to request the support of the DC National Guard on that day.

muriel bowser dc

Friday

Cockburn

Who’s least likely to be confirmed to Trump’s cabinet: Gaetz or RFK Jr.?

A new betting pool emerged on the Hill at the tail-end of this week: who will get fewer votes in his confirmation hearing? Matt Gaetz or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?So far, most of President-elect Donald Trump’s staffing announcements have prompted either jubilation or downright astonishment — and that’s only among his supporters. When Matt Gaetz was announced, some suspected a typo: surely Trump had meant to tap his former attorney general, Matt Whitaker? One top Judiciary Committee staffer compared Gaetz’s bid to helm the DoJ to that of Neera Tanden to helm the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget: an effort that was doomed from the start but meant to reward a Twitter-happy loyalist of the new president.

Wednesday

Cockburn

How the Harris campaign blew $1 billion in 107 days

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign spent more than $1 billion in three months, according to a detailed report from the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky. FEC records not only show that Kamala paid $1 million to Oprah Winfrey’s production company, but six figures on a building set for her Call Her Daddy podcast, as well as millions on digital consultants and “event production” — also known as her supposed “in” with the celebrity world. TMZ, true to form, asked Oprah in the street if she had been paid by the Harris-Walz campaign. Oprah said the reports were “not true” and that she was “paid nothing — ever.

Friday

Cockburn

Is a DC ‘journalist brain-drain’ even possible?

The flawed logic of the anti-Trump sex strike No one really knows what a second Trump administration will hold for America — given the breadth of his coalition of contradictory factions, some of his voters are bound to be disappointed. But the prospect of the Donald’s mere presence back in the White House has led to a spasm of outrage on social media, with young women and members of the LGBTQIAA+ community fearful of the erosion of “rights” in case Trump, J.D. Vance and the Republicans eschew the campaign manifesto and draw instead from the Heritage Foundation’s more hardline Project 2025 agenda.Drastic measures are being mooted.

dc

Friday

Cockburn

Revenge of the stenographers

Against Buttons-bashing It’s hiring season at the Manhattan Institute — Christopher Rufo this week announced that Christina Buttons and Hannah Grossman are joining its Logos Initiative team as investigative reporters. “We’re building the best investigative team in right-leaning media. Whatever happens with the election next week, we will be shaping the news to come,” Rufo tweeted. Yet no good deed goes unpunished. X users have been poring over Buttons’s history. Some are outraged that Buttons is a former Democrat who voted for Obama, Hillary and Biden; others harped over the fact that she quit the Daily Wire over the strength of some of Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles’s language about trans people.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Tim Walz had ‘passionate’ fling with daughter of CCP official

Good news. Contrary the speculation of the likes of Tucker Carlson, “Tampon Tim” is not gay... because he had a passionate fling back in 1989 with a woman from China. Bad news: he made the daughter of a top-ranking Chinese Communist Party official feel “cheap and common.” According to the Daily Mail, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz “sipped tea, made love and listened to George Michael hits” with Jenna Wang when they were both in their twenties. “Tim was very passionate and very romantic. I can still remember dancing with him to our favorite song, 'Careless Whisper,” Wang told the Mail. “We were deeply in love and I wanted to marry him and start a family. When it didn't happen, I felt very unhappy and sad. Tim's behavior was very selfish.

tim walz affair fling chinese jenna wang

Tuesday

Cockburn

CNN boots commentator Ryan Girdusky for Hezbollah pager joke

Conservative commentator and 1776 Project PAC founder Ryan Girdusky found his punditry gig at CNN to be short-lived after the network kicked him off air Monday for making a joke about Hezbollah’s exploding pagers. Girdusky was sparring with two progressive co-panelists, Ashley Allison and Mehdi Hasan, on CNN Newsnight over whether Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden could be reasonably equated to the 1939 Nazi rally at the same venue. Girdusky asserted that Democrats were smearing Trump’s supporters by accusing them of attending a Nazi rally, to which Hasan replied, “If you don’t want to be called Nazis, stop doing — stop saying,” presumably meaning to end that sentence with “Nazi things.

girdusky

Friday

Cockburn

Jennifer Rubin’s resignation from the Washington Post is surely imminent

The non-endorsement is the new endorsement! Hot on the heels of the Los Angeles Times’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race, a controversial call made by the paper's owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong that has been met with multiple staff resignations, the Washington Post is following suit. A statement published Friday reads: "The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates." Public statements from leading Post personalities have been aghast. Columnist Karen Attiah tweeted, "Jesus Christ." Then, an hour later, "..." Then an hour later still, "What an absolute stab in the back.

jennifer rubin
election
Cockburn

Election night plans… soirée or flee?

Clinton dips in the Lake You can’t teach the Big Dog new tricks… Bill Clinton cemented his reputation as the Harris campaign’s least helpful surrogate this week in an appearance where he branded Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Arizona, “someone who is physically attractive.”“Bill Clinton has officially turned into every other married man over the age of sixty-five in Scottsdale — embarrassing themselves by publicly hitting on women thirty-three years their junior,” a Lake staffer told Cockburn. Lake is only two years older than Monica Lewinsky.

Thursday

Cockburn

Can Kamala Harris answer a single question?

It’s official. Donald Trump is “like Hitler” and Kamala Harris — even though she does “pray everyday, sometimes twice a day,” can’t seem to answer questions. Her "joyful" campaign took a confusing turn in her CNN town hall in Pennsylvania Wednesday night. She opened with an attack on Donald Trump, in answer to Anderson Cooper’s question about John Kelly’s claims. Kamala says Donald Trump is “increasingly unstable,” “unfit,” “fascist to the core” and that “he himself has said he would terminate the constitution of the United States.” It wasn’t until much later that “joy” and “optimism” were mentioned. The audience at the Delaware County town hall consisted of undecided voters.

kamala

Saturday

Cockburn

AOC sets the stage for herself at Pennsylvania Harris-Walz rally

State College, Pennsylvania Cockburn wandered curiously up a bustling College Avenue in State College yesterday toward the State Theatre, where Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was set to take the stage and stump for the Harris-Walz campaign. He was waylaid along the way by a group of Republicans waving flags and ringing a cowbell alongside a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump. The “counter-protesters,” as they described themselves, were garnering numerous supportive honks and thumbs-up from cars driving by. They told Cockburn only one person had yelled an obscenity. So much for the Divided States of America! Down the street, two lines had formed half an hour before AOC’s scheduled showtime.

aoc

Friday

Cockburn

Donald Trump, king of comedy?

In spooky season, it’s only appropriate that the “joy” has been drawn out of the Harris campaign like a demon facing an exorcist. It may have found a new host in her opponent: former president Donald Trump brought down the house at the Al Smith dinner for Catholic charities in New York City last night, which Kamala opted to skip. Trump has also faced criticism this week for canceling events and dodging interviews with CNBC and the Shade Room. His remarks are worth watching in their entirety (you can do so below), but here are some choice one-liners. Clearly Trump has benefited from keeping the company of comedians Andrew Schulz and Theo Von lately. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

comedy