How I fumbled Washington’s most eligible bachelorette

Washington, DC

To the Queen Anne splendor of the British Ambassador’s Residence in Washington for Peter Mandelson’s welcome party as our man in DC. Downing Street did their utmost to stop lobby hacks from attending since they didn’t want us to report anything that might distract from Keir Starmer’s ring-kissing at the White House the next day. The PM’s make-or-break meeting with the Don clearly weighed on his mind. On the plane over, he looked almost ill at the prospect. Yet by the time he landed he was cracking jokes, air-kissing Tina Brown and bantering with FBI director Kash Patel — a Liverpool fan — about football. Oh, and as for Peter’s do, the Lutyens palace sparkled after its £120 million refit, but it was still perhaps a little understated for someone of his stature.

When we reached the White House, Sir Keir’s nerves had returned. He looked as though he might vomit. Impossibly young and beautiful aides shepherded us into the Oval Office. I inadvertently caught the PM’s eye before proceedings begin and, without thinking, gave him a wink. No. 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, Mandy and that other great Blairite re-tread, Jonathan Powell, sat on the golden sofas with fixed grins. In the end, unlike poor Volodymyr Zelensky, Sir Keir got out unscathed. His thirty-minute interrogation in the press pool could easily have gone wrong if there had been another ten minutes of free-wheeling questions, but the president was ready for lunch. The first time Starmer met Donald Trump, at Trump Tower last September, our pescatarian PM was served chicken. At least he got sea bass this time. After an hour of tales of the president’s Scottish heritage, royal anecdotes and an offer of a round of golf, the only near miss for Starmer came when he challenged Trump to join him at his Sunday afternoon five-a-side league in north London instead. I hear the offer was not accepted.

“At least they will make wonderful ruins,” Gore Vidal said of DC. But not yet. Quite the opposite; the streets are clean — much more so than Westminster’s. Even the hobos are friendlier. And, unlike in Westminster, you can get a decent chablis and oysters at all hours. As New York and London struggle, DC thrives. No glasses clink here without someone saying: “We are so back.” There’s no doubt that the Trump lot have made the place more fun. The HQ of this right-wing insurgency is Butterworth’s in the shadow of the Capitol dome; a café by day and speakeasy by night. It’s run by Raheem Kassam, whom some readers will remember as Nigel Farage’s right-hand man. He has impeccable Trumpworld connections. On the night I was there, J.D. Vance’s chief of staff Jacob Reses was holding court, while Hill staff frat boys chirpsed Fox News types over cocktails and caviar. There was much discussion over whether J.D. is “America’s first high-Tory.” The conversation around him is never about whether he will run in 2028 (the MAGA crowd already call him “48”) but who his veep should be. Don Jr. seems to be a firm favorite.

Dinner with Natalie Winters, the enfant terrible of the White House press corps. (Though, given the number of suitors who come over to say hello, it may be more appropriate to call her “Washington’s most eligible bachelorette.”) At just twenty-four, Winters is the co-host of the MAGA podcast Steve Bannon’s War Room and has driven what she calls “the legacy media” round the bend with her West Wing credentials. She does not mince her words nor shy away from publicity. She spent a large part of the evening posing in her Hervé Léger dress as her attentive pals snapped away. I made a mistake, however, by ordering tap water for the table. I was given a long lecture on the dangers of water fluoridation: “Tap turns you trans.” It’s because of high levels of birth control hormones, apparently.

Natalie’s photoshoot led MailOnline by the next morning, with the headline: “White House correspondent starts flame war with Zelensky after her ‘inappropriate’ outfits raised eyebrows.” She knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s also far from the only person in DC trash-talking Zelensky. When I have brunch with “Trump allies,” they suggest the president himself sought Zelensky’s resignation. It’s hard to do justice to just how furious they are that he turned up in military fatigues rather than a suit. “Banana in pajamas” was one of the politer verdicts. Some administration figures openly push conspiracy theories about Zelensky’s alleged drug use. No one wanted to listen to my arguments. In the end, I fudged the “fire Zelensky” row in my Sun column after emphatic official denials all round, only for Trump himself to all but say it on TV after the paper hit newsstands. A hard lesson learned there.