Extreme Makeover: White House Edition

One of President Trump’s unique gifts is that he can simultaneously hold two truths to be self-evident. That’s how the White House managed to send out a press release yesterday with the headline “FACT: Evidence Suggests Link Between Acetaminophen, Autism.” Cockburn supposes it’s fact that evidence “suggests,” but it’s really just bet-hedging.

Concurrently, Trump manages to present himself as the great preserver of classical architecture and American tradition, yet is on the verge of unveiling a gaudy “Presidential Walk of Fame” on the White House Colonnade. Though right now there’s brown paper where the presidents will be, the Walk of Fame will feature black-and-white portraits of all of them, including two of the late great Grover Cleveland and two of Trump himself. The portraits will, naturally, be placed in gold-effect frames.

Trump told the Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese earlier this month that there’s nowhere else in the United States where you can see photos of all the US leaders together except for a private presidential area in the Washington Hilton. Cockburn doesn’t think that’s true, but he’ll roll with it. He supposes visitors to the White House could use a reminder as to what Benjamin Harrison and Calvin Coolidge really looked like. But according to Trump, no one will ever see Joe Biden’s face. “We put up a picture of the autopen,” Trump told the Caller.

Fact: Evidence Suggests that Trump Is A Next-Level Troll Who Will Never Let A Grudge Go. Sounds true to your correspondent.

On our radar

TECH TROUBLE President Trump had to contend with a broken autocue and a broken escalator as he addressed the United Nations General Assembly this morning.

BOLSONARO JR. CHARGED Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair, has been charged by Brazil’s top prosecutor. Eduardo, who moved to DC in February, stands accused of lobbying the US to sanction Brazil over his father’s coup trial.

KIM POSSIBLE Jimmy Kimmel will return to the airwaves tonight (in most locations) after a week’s suspension for inaccurately commenting on the death of Charlie Kirk.

For Pete’s sake

Kamala Harris’s unearned redemption round got off to a predictably rocky start last night with an interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, one of the few media outlets that’s still interested in her. Harris called President Trump a “tyrant” and compared him to a “communist dictator.”

The newsworthiest bit of the overlong interview came when Maddow and the former vice president discussed Harris’s running-mate selection process, which gets ample treatment in her memoir 107 Days (out today!). Harris told Maddow that she didn’t pick Pete Buttigieg because he’s gay. Maddow responded “that’s hard to hear.”

Then Harris hedged. She said she didn’t pick Mayor Pete because Donald Trump “knows no floor” and, in a 107-day campaign, having a gay running mate would have opened the campaign up to attack. “To be a black woman running for president, and as a vice presidential running mate, a gay man. With the stakes being so high, it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk,” she said. Not very “brat,” if you ask Cockburn! Instead, she picked Tim Walz. The rest is herstory.

Buttigieg, whatever you might think about him, has developed a rare ability among Democrats to meet Republicans where they’re at and talk to them like they’re human beings.

Cockburn thinks that the likes of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Tony Fabrizio and Ric Grenell could attest that homophobia isn’t one of our “communist dictator’s” sins. Is there anti-gay sentiment in the Republican base? For sure. Can Mayor Pete handle it? Absolutely. Harris a disastrous candidate for president? Signs point to yes, and this press tour has no floor.

To Russia without love

As the world’s leaders are welcomed to New York – and its traffic – for the United Nations General Assembly this week, Cockburn has his eye on a colorful character who’s headed the other way. Here’s to Tara Reade, best known for her sexual assault allegations against then-senator Joe Biden. Reade has been granted Russian citizenship after defecting there two years ago. In a television clip from state-owned network RT, Reade thanked her friends Maria Butina – convicted in 2018 for acting as an unregistered Russian foreign agent in the US, now a member of the Duma for the Putin-aligned United Russia party – and Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, for whom Reade now works.

“It was very scary facing possible prison in the US if I went back,” Reade told her RT colleague. “They said I violated sanctions for being on Channel 1 and had issue with me working for RT. And I’m very proud to work for Russia Today, so, I’ve been very outspoken and pro-Russia and the Biden administration didn’t appreciate that.”

Cockburn can see how Reade moving to Russia more than a year into the Ukraine war might have been a bit of a sticking point for the American government. поздравления to her all the same.

Knowing your enemy in NYC

On Saturday night, threading his way through the pullulating streets of Midtown Manhattan, Cockburn made a fresh visit to the spectacular rooftop aerie of the genial Know Your Enemy co-host Matthew Sitman who was celebrating his 44th birthday. Celebrants included journalistic worthies such as John Ganz, the author of a bestselling book on the paleocons, Lydia Polgreen and Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Times, Justin Vogt of Foreign Affairs, David Klion of the Nation, Matthew Boudway of Commonweal and Jacob Heilbrunn of the National Interest. Sitman himself could be heard learnedly talking about the conservative political theorist and demigod Leo Strauss’s classic text, Persecution and the Art of Writing. Know your enemy indeed.

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