Down in North Carolina, Kyrsten Sinema is in the dock. The former senator for Arizona is being sued for $75,000 by Heather Ammel, the ex-wife of her old bodyguard Matthew, under the state’s “homewrecker law,” which allows jilted spouses to seek damages from “the other woman.”
During her Senate tenure, there had long been whispers about Sinema, a bisexual divorcée, and her relationships with her security staff. At least one of those rumors proved to be true, apparently: “When the opportunity presented itself, and when Mr. Ammel approached me, we had sex,” Sinema told the court. In her July 31 deposition, Sinema admitted she and Ammel slept with each other several times in the summer and fall of 2024, all over the country. Sinema was asked by her own lawyer under oath whether she would ever make romantic phone calls or express romantic sentiments. She answered both questions by saying, “I’m not like that.” All business.
Observers in the courthouse were amused to see that Sinema arrived with – you guessed it – a new security detail in tow. Her henchmen blocked court staff from going into the restroom while the former senator was using it. Cockburn hopes the benefits package is healthy.
START YOUR ENGINES President Trump is holding a rally in support of Senator Darline Graham in Myrtle Beach tonight. He and the First Lady will spend Sunday watching the Freedom 250 Indycar race on the National Mall. (Do not get an Uber in DC this weekend.)
IDIOT SANDWICH Residents who live above Gordon Ramsay’s burger and pizza restaurants in downtown DC complained to the Washington Post that the eateries are making their condos stink and polluting the air quality.
NANCY KISSINGER RIP Nancy Kissinger, the widow of former secretary of state Henry, died at her family home in Connecticut yesterday. She was 92.
So farewell, James Fishback. The 31-year-old former hedge-fund manager finished a distant third in Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary – perhaps suggesting that second-place Jay Collins was more deserving of column inches. Fishback was declared the “rage-bait” candidate by the mainstream press. He failed to win over Florida voters by saying, of his opponent Byron Donalds, “By’rone wants to turn Florida into a Section 8 ghetto.” His proposed “sin tax,” a 50 percent income tax on OnlyFans sex workers, didn’t sway them either.
The latter proposal saw Fishback embroiling himself in a social-media flame war with Sophie Rain, one of OnlyFans’s top earners, who takes home a reported $34 million a year. Fishback and Rain had a debate over Kick, this country’s equivalent of the Oxford Union. To celebrate Fishback’s loss, Rain is pledging to clear Florida teachers’ classroom wishlists – as supporting teachers was a rare point of agreement in Fishback and Rain’s meeting of minds. “if you’re a teacher in need please reach out to me and i will clear your classroom wishlists!” Rain tweeted yesterday. “i’m here to make a real change instead of false promises.” Cockburn loves a happy ending.
Posted on the President’s Truth Social account in the past 24 hours: an AI-generated meme of him dragging the Keystone XL pipeline out of a grave with “buried by Biden” on the tombstone; a picture of him at the briefing room podium, captioned “The Best Press Secretary”; an AI-generated meme of algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool forming the outline of President Trump in the water, and an AI-generated watercolor of him walking in the White House. Thanks for putting in the hard yards, Natalie…
On Wednesday September 30, Cockburn’s colleagues are Nixonmaxxing in Manhattan. Watch our panel discuss the 37th president at the first event at our newly reopened New York office. With Conrad Black, Daniel McCarthy, Geoff Shepard and Freddy Gray.
DC has been buzzing about who will replace Karoline Leavitt since she resigned from her position as White House press secretary. CNN’s Scott Jennings is thought to be a front-runner, but his ties to Mitch McConnell caused others to insist there is no possibility he will be appointed to the role. “It’s not going to be him,” someone close to the Trump administration told the New York Post.
Last month, Jennings said that McConnell, an old-head Kentucky Senator with whom Trump has had his problems, “changed the trajectory” of his life. It is hard to imagine that under such circumstances, a particular fondness for Cocaine Mitch is an actual deal-breaker. Who in the world could be qualified for this job and doesn’t have ties to a Republican figure Trump has made an enemy of? The next press secretary is not coming from inside the house – and even if they were, odds are they’d be tainted somehow.
However, Jennings’s implied stance on the January 6 Capitol riot makes it hard to believe that Trump would choose him, given the fact that potential low-level White House staffers are coached on how to respond to questions about that day. Besides, any potential press secretary should know that coming across as too thirsty will be off-putting to Trump. Perhaps the fact that multiple outlets were alerted to Jennings’s dinner with Susie Wiles this week makes him a less likely candidate.
By Monica Sobchak
The Clancy case is harrowing. Yet a surprising number of women online are eager to put themselves in the accused murderer’s shoes. “Same, Lindsay” is trending on TikTok. The videos follow a template: a phone propped at an intimate, low angle, a woman rocking or nursing her own toddler against her chest, voice catching as on-screen text quotes lines lifted straight from Clancy’s personal diary entries – the same ones read aloud in Plymouth Superior Court – before the caption lands on “Same, Lindsay.”
After one such clip circulated, critics accused the creator of “fake crying” while “using Lindsay Clancy’s diary words read in court” as content. One account, @courageandchaosss, fired back at the backlash: “My children are the furthest from being in danger. They have one damn good mama.”
By Ivo Delingpole
The Tupac murder trial has finally begun. A 63-year-old former gang leader, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, is accused of orchestrating the murder of rapper, actor, and activist Tupac Shakur in a drive-by shooting 30 years ago. Tupac’s reputation – both alive and since – is chequered to say the least. Some still perceive him as one of a cadre of thugs who glorified gun violence and the gang lifestyle in the 1990s (if you’ve ever heard the phrase “Thug Life,” that’s one of his). Others have continued a campaign of quasi-canonization, presenting him as a tortured poet struggling against the strictures of fate. The latter argument gradually won through, with Tupac now closing in on Princess Diana in the global “national treasure” stakes. And in a similar fashion to Diana, it all feels slightly confected and overdone.
The trial already feels like one of those exercises you do in a history class, run by an overly keen young teacher, encouraging debates such as “was Churchill right to” or “was Caesar justified in.” Just like these debates, the real result doesn’t matter. Those involved have become characters of fiction, fetishized so much over the years that we might as well be discussing Odysseus or Captain Ahab: any answers or new information feel purely academic. It also turns out that the best means of neutralizing 1990s gangsta culture was there all along: you neuter it by making it cuddly and universal, turning its Glock-toting villains into doe-eyed saints.
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