Book Joe Biden for your quinceañera!

Biden his time

Cockburn struggles to get inside the mind of a billionaire. You amass or inherit a great fortune and can spend it however you please. You could send your spicy second wife to space with Katy Perry, or import Instagram influencers to your Gulf state. But surely there are more charitable uses of great wealth?

Here’s one: help the aged and get Joe Biden to speak for you, as best he can. Steven Nelson of the New York Post revealed yesterday how the former president had been struggling to find takers for speaking engagements after leaving office. “CAA is having trouble booking gigs, which isn’t surprising,” a source told the Post.

Supposedly Biden’s fee is $300,000: a staggering sum for the likes of Cockburn, but a drop in the ocean for any oligarch.

You could pay him to give an address about “colored kids,” or have him relive the greatest hits of his final Trump debate at your next fundraiser. The best bet might be to send him on an olfactory tour through swing states to remind voters there what they’re missing out on. The Democrats are wondering where to go next – who better to lead them than a man who’s wondering where he is at all times?

Perhaps you think Cockburn’s suggestion unfair or humiliating, but consider this: is it any worse than making the guy serve as president?

On our radar

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE? Secretary of State Marco Rubio said America would “move on” if progress wasn’t made in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, with the Trump administration wanting to decide “in a matter of days.”

LEVIN IT UP Fox News host Mark Levin has been appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council by President Trump.

NO MORE COUNTING DOLLARS, WE’LL BE COUNTING VOTES Tim Myers, the former bassist of awful 2010s pop band OneRepublic, is running for Congress in California’s tight, GOP-held 41st district.

Hogg wild at the DNC

David Hogg recently made the switch from Harvard to the Democratic National Committee, where he serves as one of the top elected officials of the party. Despite that, he is currently working on upending his party by backing primary challengers to safe-seat Democrats.

“We need to show our base we’re here to fight for them,” Hogg explained. “We need to show there are younger faces stepping up.” Unsurprisingly, Hogg’s new boss isn’t too happy. “It is the DNC’s longstanding position that primary voters — not the national party — determine their Democratic candidates for the general election,” chair Ken Martin said.  

But Hogg is playing favorites and making exceptions. Both former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 85, and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, 80, sit in safe districts and are facing spirited challenges from carpetbaggers from the hard left. Saikat Chakrabarti, an early leader of the Justice Democrats that helped elect AOC, is challenging Pelosi. Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian-American former Media Matters staffer, is challenging Schakowsky.

Hogg claims he is looking to support candidates who are 35 years or younger in federal races. Yet he is backing both incumbent octogenarians: “Fighters who are delivering,” he says. He also can’t get enough of Senator Chris Van Hollen. “THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED MORE OF,” Hogg tweeted about the Maryland Senator’s tête-à-tête with accused MS-13 member and alleged wife-beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. At 66, Van Hollen is fresh-faced only when compared to Pelosi and Schakowsky…

Love is blind… and unemployed

Elon Musk has been scything government jobs as fast as he’s been siring heirs. Yet could the efforts of America’s most prominent pronatalist end up negatively affecting the birth rate? A piece in Axios takes stock of the DC dating scene in Trump’s “Golden Age” – with local matchmakers claiming that interparty dating is less likely than ever.

“Four years ago, five years ago, I was hearing, ‘Oh, I couldn’t date a Trump supporter,’” one professional matchmaker said. “Now it’s like, ‘I cannot date someone if they drive a Tesla.’”

“Laid off by DoGE” is popping up in dating app bios across town, with some newly fired workers pressing for cheaper first dates or canceling them altogether as they scramble to pay rent.

One eligible conservative bachelorette, texting from Europe, has given up on finding love in the capital altogether. “DC dating is so bad that I’m looking in other states and countries for my man,” she told Cockburn.

If there’s no love at first sight, some of the unemployed are aiming to leverage failed dates into possible jobs – a move so psychotically DC that it might just pan out. Thank goodness for Mrs. Cockburn.

Sign up here to get Cockburn’s Diary in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays – before anyone else…