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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. A tipster pointed Cockburn toward two fundraising events over the coming days that illustrate the divide, for the US Senate contest in South Carolina.
First, the glitzy “Trump Graham Majority Fund Luncheon,” which takes place tomorrow in West Palm Beach. President Trump will make remarks in favor of the incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham – with tickets at an eye-watering $50,000 per person. (The contact for the event is Lisa Spies, whose husband Charlie briefly served as RNC chief counsel in 2024 and had a lengthier tenure working for Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign.)
Closer to home, there’s a happy hour at Butterworth’s on Monday to raise funds for Paul Dans’s challenge to Graham. Tickets range from a far more modest $50 to $2,500. Dans, readers may recall, served as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 director, leading the initiative from 2022 until 2024. He took the fall after the Trump campaign distanced itself from Project 2025, as its hardline social conservatism offered Team Biden-Harris a convenient foil.
Speaking of Heritage, rumors are once again swirling about a looming trustee meeting next week to resolve the think tank’s recent woes. But a spokesman assures Cockburn: “There is no board meeting scheduled for next week.”
You don’t know Dick
Today marks the tenth day since former vice president Dick Cheney’s passing. Flags around the country are flying at half-staff (in accordance with an Eisenhower-era executive order) – but aside from that, reactions to Cheney’s death have been quite muted in Trump’s Washington.
The President has not issued a statement about Cheney – or a Truth Social post, for that matter. Compare that to when President Jimmy Carter died 11 months ago, when Trump made two tributes on Truth Social. Cheney’s funeral will take place at the Washington National Cathedral next Thursday – but it is not clear whether President Trump plans to attend, let alone speak. He is not on the Cathedral’s announced list of speakers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
On our radar
DINESH IS SERVED Dinesh D’Souza, author of The End of Racism, has come under fire for his post speculating that Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy could “fix education” for white kids, while “all the professional whiteys on X continue their idle boasting.”
SWAL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL? Representative Eric Swalwell has been referred to the Department of Justice by the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency following allegations of mortgage and tax fraud.
GAETZ RATES A troubling report in the New York Times details how the 17-year-old girl who was the subject of a Justice Department sex-trafficking probe and House Ethics Committee investigation into former congressman Matt Gaetz was homeless and had joined a sugar-baby website, while underage, to get money for braces. Gaetz said, “I never had sex with this person.”
Rock robot rock
Last August, a group of Silicon Valley power-players, including unofficial Trump advisors Marc Andreessen and Joe Lonsdale, the cofounder of Palantir, launched a super PAC called “Leading the Future” to back AI friendly candidates. The White House is “irked” about this, according to NBC News, because one of the PAC leaders is a former staffer for Chuck Schumer. The White House is usually irked about something, but a staffer, speaking on the record, finds this unusually irksome.
“Any group run by Schumer acolytes will not have the blessing of the President or his team,” said the official. “Any donors or supporters of this group should think twice about getting on the wrong side of Trumpworld.”
But perhaps a nonpartisan approach makes sense. The computers that are about to run society care not whether you’re blue or red, donkey or elephant. Such petty mammalian concerns are beneath them. Our Silicon Valley betters established Leading the Future to grease the skids for AI’s arrival, not to play puerile partisan games. Sitting around talking about a “slap in the face” because some foolish person once worked for a political rival is pointless. AI is here to lead the future, not to be borne back ceaselessly into the past. Cockburn, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords.
Weigh-in at the border
Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a “cable” last week instructing US diplomats to consider obesity as a reason to reject foreign visa applications. The cable is an unholy fusion of MAGA nationalism and MAHA weight concerns.
Obesity, the cable correctly states, leads to all sorts of terrible health problems, which can be a drain on America’s national resources. These would better spent, apparently, on rounding up obese people and sending them back to their country of origin. “Self-sufficiency has been a longstanding principle of U.S. immigration policy,” the cable says, “and the public charge ground of inadmissibility has been a part of our immigration law for more than 100 years.”
It’s unlikely that immigration officials were turning away obese people at Ellis Island. People used to arrive in this country lean, hungry and ready to push a pickle cart on the Lower East Side. Cockburn nonetheless observes that obesity tends to be more of a problem for people after they arrive in the United States, not before, as they discover the magical qualities of the Sonic value menu. But it’s clear that the State Department has now adopted an immigration policy based on signs that have hung in American frat houses for decades: no fat chicks.
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