The eccentric debut of Raheem Kassam and financier-attorney Will Chamberlain’s new Human Events is here. Ronald Reagan’s favorite magazine is now Raheem’s roundhouse. So how does it look? Not the worst.
Eager to solidify the bridge between the Trumpzine of today and the conservative periodical of old, the site is highlighting a forty-something Trump shaking hands with the Gipper. ‘This is no time for “peacetime” Republicans,’ say the editors, dissolving any pretense of partisan non-affiliation. ‘This is a time for brawlers. And we are here to brawl.’
On tap for week one: Donald Trump Jr., Chamberlain’s legal analysis of the Mueller exoneration, the popular populist Italian writer Alessandra Bocchi and Conservative Inc. grandee Dennis Prager, among others.
Kassam, of course, is an alum of Breitbart, Nigel Farage and Steve Bannon. He’s a gregarious gadfly with a presumably five-digit bar tab at the Trump Hotel near the White House. He’s also a clever operator and polemicist – but it remains to be seen if the site has the heft to make a dent.
One veteran political observer in DC reports that it will be ‘a mix of Breitbart and Townhall.’ Without the ‘good and bad baggage’ of the former, ‘it could succeed.’ For Kassam, it’s the brink: helm a serious enterprise and become a blue-chip player in a Trumpified Washington, or wash out, and spiral from a fourth major venture before 40.
For Chamberlain – ‘you’ll never confuse him with Wilt Chamberlain,’ chortles an attendee of their launch libations Wednesday night – success means moving from Twitter livestream star to… hopefully something else. The party Wednesday was a humble heir to the duo’s primaveral bacchanalia at CPAC in early March: attendance ranged from two or three dozen to reportedly up to a hundred, whereas the CPAC bash was a frantic free-for-all.
Only reporting: one of the better Trumpist one-hit wonders was in attendance. Former Missouri Senate candidate Courtland Sykes, a fire-hydrant-shaped dynamo, held court in the dimly-lit bar. If you don’t remember this short-lived challenger to Josh Hawley’s ascension, well, re-acquaint yourself. Sykes may be taking a break from moral combat but claims to still be running ‘Talosorian.’ Think tank, consultancy, pterodactyl-like sci-fi villain, or all of the above? Cockburn is unsure.
Another night in new DC…
