Cockburn

The call sheet for this afternoon’s event at the White House was as imposing as ever: WHO: The President Mrs. Melania Trump, First Lady of the United States Gobble, Turkey Waddle, Turkey Putin at 10, turkeys at 12, home to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving by nightfall. A typical day in the Trump presidency. This year’s birds, Gobble and Waddle, hail from Wayne County, North Carolina, and will return to live out their days at North Carolina State University. Luckily they aren’t from Venezuela, else Pete Hegseth would have turned them into a cloud of red vapor and feathers already. Cockburn helped himself to a cup of hot apple cider from the White House staff and settled in at the back of the press area.

Congressman Cory Mills of Florida is currently subject to a restraining order from a former girlfriend (and former Miss United States), after he threatened to release sexually explicit images of her. He also faces accusations of assault against a different woman, has been accused by fellow soldiers of “stolen valor” for which he received a Bronze Star, and is subject to a House Ethics Committee investigation for “improperly solicited and/or received gifts, including in connection with privately sponsored officially-connected travel.” Good grief. Now NOTUS reports that while on a “rescue” mission to Afghanistan in 2021, when he was running for Congress, Mills was spotted with sex workers in the hallway of a hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia.

We all know far too much about Olivia Nuzzi. The first excerpts from American Canto, her unwelcome addition to the “spliterature” genre about her affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have been unavoidable for the past few days. Cockburn can’t decide what’s worse: the revelations themselves or the windy prose in which Nuzzi’s editors have allowed her to inflict them on us. Her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza’s addition to “the Discourse” last night didn’t help matters. Rather than envisioning who sent pictures of what to whom, or getting jealous of a brainworm, Cockburn has found himself nostalgic. He’s casting his mind back to 2009, back when Nuzzi sought attention in a more innocent fashion: as an aspiring teen-pop starlet.

The MAGA crack-up has been the talk of the town this week – thanks to a squishy answer from President Trump on H-1B visas in a Fox News interview, the looming release of all the Epstein documents the House has access to, disagreements over what America’s relationship with Israel should be… and the lingering hangover of the Heritage Foundation’s Tucker Carlson quarrel. (Conveniently, the forthcoming US issue of The Spectator tackles this topic – you can read two pieces from the cover package, by Freddy Gray and Ben Domenech, now.) These disputes – about whether there’s such a thing as being “more MAGA than Trump” – are trickling out beyond Washington and into the 2026 primary races.

Where are you going, Elon? Where have you been? The 87-year-old novelist Joyce Carol Oates unleashed her X account to excoriate the app’s owner Elon Musk this weekend. “So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died... In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’” OK, Joyce.

In there like skincare President Trump arrived back from the Far East last week with a trade deal or two and an improved relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping. But he’s not the only one benefiting from his visit. A significant chunk of the White House press corps took advantage of the trip to APEC to stock up on sought-after Korean skincare products. “I brought back two face washes, a cream and a hundred masks,” one producer told Cockburn. “Via Google Translate, I asked the workers at a skincare store called Olive Young for some of their favorite products – they showed me this cream, they said it’s very popular in South Korea.” The ROK is “the Turkey of skincare,” she added.

A warning to anyone who dares question the efficacy of America’s relentless war machine: Laura Loomer has joined the Pentagon press corps. Her outlet, “Loomered,” is now credentialed, after she agreed to Pete Hegseth’s restrictive reporting rules. Not that those would have stopped her, she tweeted this morning. She’s already spent a good part of this year “rooting out deceptive and disloyal bad actors from the Department of War.” “There is no denying that my investigative reporting has had a massive impact on the landscape of personnel decisions within the Executive Branch, our intelligence agencies and the Pentagon,” Loomer wrote, humbly.

It’s happened again, it’s happened again… What’s the scariest thing about America right now? Creeping authoritarianism? The looming Socialist Republic of New York? “The enemy within?” For Cockburn, who draws from a never-ending well of Dutch courage, the answer is nothing. Perhaps the White House’s Halloween reception might offer him further insight into the more macabre side of the nation. The US Air Force Band greeted your correspondent as he walked along the Presidential Hall of Fame, past the paved “Rose Garden Club” and onto the South Lawn. They offered a soundtrack of film and TV scores – the best of Bernard Herrmann and John Williams – as well as the obligatory Bach.

The Karine humiliation routine The media is piling on former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s “tell-some-but-not-all” memoir Independent. Matt Taibbi called the book “incoherent,” which is to be expected, but check out this from the Washington Post’s reviewer Becca Rothfeld: “It is incredible – and emblematic of the Democrats’ total aesthetic and intellectual driftlessness – that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium.” KJP then took a call from the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, who’s savaged many intellects far greater than hers.

Build me up President Trump, like many of his forebears, is remaking the White House in his own image. The Donald has just finished giving a speech to Republican senators at the “Rose Garden Club” – which he paved over earlier in the year. As he told Cockburn’s colleague Ben Domenech back in February, “We had the press here yesterday. Do you see the women there? They’re going crazy. The grass was wet. Their heels are going right through the grass, like four inches deep.” Today Trump talked about his latest redevelopment: “We’re building a world-class ballroom,” he told the crowd. “For 150 years they’ve wanted a ballroom... the government is paying for nothing.