Kari Lake grabs the headlines

Choking up with the Faith and Freedom Coalition

Imagine a venue where you can watch Kane from WWE following up Vivek Ramaswamy. That’s where Cockburn finds himself this Friday morning: in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority Conference.

Sound like a mouthful? Cockburn is counting the mentions of the left’s agenda being “rammed down our throats” (two so far — is this a biblical reference?). Seven presidential candidates are speaking today. So far Cockburn’s clocked Vivek, Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Francis Suarez — unforgivably he missed Asa Hutchinson after getting wrapped up in conversation with a trafficking advocate (anti) in the entryway. He just watched Chris Christie get heckled and booed for criticizing Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis is to come later today. Larry Elder and Nikki Haley are scheduled for Saturday before Trump delivers the keynote at the conference’s dinner — which Cockburn hopes isn’t rammed down the guests’ throats…

Out in the foyer, you can pick up a towel with the Pledge of Allegiance on it or a hoodie bearing the message “RED WHITE and TRUE” and a Labrador’s face. “This is really Obama’s third term,” a MAGA-hatted zoomer with a blonde mullet tells a friend. Needless to say, by the time this hits your inbox, Cockburn hopes to be at the hotel bar. Here are some more tidbits to tide you over…

Riley Gaines for office in Kentucky?

Whispers on the Hill are floating an unorthodox name to be GOP nominee for lieutenant governor of Kentucky: Riley Gaines. The former University of Kentucky swimmer may have been beaten to the podium by Penn’s Lia Thomas, a trans woman, at the women’s NCAA championships, but she’s impressed politicos in her recent congressional testimony, in TV hits and in recent speeches nationwide. The Capitol Hill mutterings fly in the face of an important fact: Gaines is twenty-three and would therefore be ineligible for another seven years. Still, Republicans seem to think the swimmer is destined for great things…

How is the Feng shui at Axios?

DC media or Curb Your Enthusiasm? Axios co-founder Mike Allen is certainly known more for his newsletter-writing ability than his social awareness, but even Cockburn was stunned by a phrase that supposedly once came out of Allen’s mouth. 

A spy was riding the Axios building elevator with Allen the morning after one of the outlet’s parties last spring. “Last night was so perfect,”  Allen told one of his toadies. As you know I over-index on Feng shui. The room was perfect, the group was perfect.” There was one downside, though: Allen griped to his colleague about “Tom, who didn’t loosen his necktie.”

“What an absolute psychopath,” the spy said of Allen’s Queer Eye-esque party analysis. A message to Mike: invite Cockburn next time — he does wonders for the Feng shui…

Kari Lake grabs the headlines

Three otherwise unrelated Kari Lake stories from yesterday worth your perusal:

The Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Mariana Alfaro, June 22: “Kari Lake accused of defamation in suit filed by Arizona election official”

People magazine’s Virginia Chamlee and Marisa Sullivan, June 22: “Kari Lake Appears at Mar-a-Lago More than Melania Trump and ‘Practically Lives’ in a Suite”

The Daily Mail’s Rob Crilly, June 22: “EXCLUSIVE: Bikini-clad Kari Lake swaps Mar-a-Lago for the Bahamas and a family vacation before her book tour next week and a likely Senate run in the fall”

My party will go on

How much would it take for you to change the theme of your party hours before it was due to start? Picture it: the caterers have already sliced the sandwiches to look like fish, the blue bunting is hanging across the hall. This is the dilemma faced by Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge in England Wednesday as they hosted an underwater-themed May Ball, the same night that an alumnus of the college, Hamish Harding, was missing underwater in the Titan submersible.

“If we could change it now, we would,” the committee claimed when they were criticized for their decision to go ahead with the ball, titled Into the Depths. But according to a report in the student newspaper, revelers were pleasantly entertained with nautical-themed music including Celine Dion’s hit “My Heart Will Go On,” from the film Titanic, while Harding and four others were thought to be trapped thousands of feet underwater. Unfathomable.

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