Cockburn

Congratulations to Barron Trump, the Paul Atreides of Mar-a-Lago, on his enrollment at the private, excruciatingly progressive New York University this week. Barron has found his tribe immediately, joining all the college’s other Republicans at the Stern School of Business. If he’s not too busy chugging Miller Lites at Phebes after using Eric’s old ID to get in, the Trump scion could find himself taking some intriguing classes.  Were Barron to stick around to do an MBA after, he could study Professional Responsibility with Spectator favorite Jonathan Haidt.

Will Kamala actually appoint a Republican to her cabinet? A rare surprise in the otherwise routine Harris-Walz interview on CNN last night: when asked if she’d appoint a Republican to her cabinet, Kamala said, “Yes I would.” This is perhaps in response to two Democratic presidential candidates from the last decade — Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — endorsing Trump and joining his transition team. President Biden appointed a few Republicans to ambassadorial positions — notably Arizonans Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain — but Harris appears ready to go a step further. The likeliest option would be to appoint a serious-minded ex-military Beltway figure to a role like director of national intelligence or defense secretary: Mark Esper, for instance.

Chicago Big Little Lies season three is happening, says Young Sheldon Convention guests looking to play a game of IRL “Who? Weekly” were best off hanging out at the CNN-Politico Grill, which served free booze and local delicacies all week. Smoking was forbidden, sadly. On Thursday Cockburn caught up with Iain “Young Sheldon” Armitage — who confirmed that a third season of Big Little Lies is “happening” while he was mixing an ice cream float — and spoke to Dean Norris, AKA Hank from Breaking Bad. “I’m having a blast,” said Norris, “I’m having a brat summer.

In there like swimwear For any readers seeking evidence that, despite the election, we are in the heart of silly season, look no further than this week’s non-troversy concerning Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and her swimwear.In midweek, TikTok users apparently discovered a 2016 video of APL wearing a “Make America Great Again” one-piece swimsuit. The chatter migrated to X, when a troll posted the clip with the caption, “Anna Paulina Luna should be working at my local Hooters, NOT in Congress!” https://twitter.com/thephillipholz/status/1823697402416476491 This prompted a defiant response from the Florida congresswoman. “I have a confession to make since the TikTok Democrats are onto me: I wear bikinis to the beach and mineral sunscreen...

Axed-ios Axios announced in an email to staff this week that they are laying off 10 percent of their workforce — and to add insult to injury, the announcement was stylized like one of their editorial products.“Why it matters: We’re eliminating about 50 positions to get ahead of tectonic shifts in the media, technology, and reader needs/habits,” the email read. The canned staffers were also informed via email rather than in an in-person meeting, which Axios claimed was for logistical reasons.It gets worse. A spy tells Cockburn that the laid-off workers were summarily frog-marched out of the media company’s northern Virginia building Thursday by security.

Oppo veepstakes: which of Kamala’s VP picks has the dirtiest laundry? Have you canceled plans this weekend? Are you a white dude for Kamala? You just might be in contention to be the Democratic pick for vice president this year! The nation’s hacks are doggedly monitoring the movements of electable white dads from convenient states as the campaign formerly known as Biden 2024 prepares itself for weekend auditions ahead of an announcement next week. Similarly, America’s grubbiest political operatives have been working overtime to farm out opposition research on the men in question.

Sofa, so good? What does “fake news” mean in the post-truth era? Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and rebranding of it to X, was supposed to augur a new age of unfiltered information, to combat the censorship of Silicon Valley apparatchiks. For a lot of this week, that meant you’d see Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk sincerely assuring you that Joe Biden was dead or about to die (he addressed the nation, weakly, on Wednesday, an impressive feat for any corpse). How is the discerning reader supposed to separate fact from falsehood in this climate? That’s the question facing tech-savvy Senator J.D.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin In the bars of Mitchell International Airport, the Bloody Marys are freely flowing. Cockburn can’t blame the departing attendees of the 2024 Republican National Convention: anyone who was in the Fiserv Forum for Hulk Hogan’s high-T address yesterday will have felt the need to sink a few cold ones after. Carrying on his form from earlier in the week, Cockburn did precisely that, heading to the irritatingly named Drink Wisconsibly opposite the arena after the conclusion of Trump’s remarks. On the way in he exchanged a respectful nod with former congressman Madison Cawthorn, who was wearing a bottle blonde as a seatbelt across the lap of his wheelchair (Ubers are hard to come by in the Cream City).