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Almost every right-of-center writer claims to be leaving New York. So Cockburn headed up to see what’s left of the Big Apple — and take in a couple of festive ragers while he had the chance.
The book party for Miranda Devine’s Laptop From Hell unfolded at the Beach Café, recently dubbed “the Upper East Side’s Republican Cheers” by New York magazine. After checking his coat and having his vaccine card closely inspected, Cockburn rubbed shoulders with Devine, several of her past and present New York Post comrades and dozens of NYC GOP staples. Cockburn shared a cocktail with Republican fixer Roger Stone, who teased his strategy ahead of his summit with the January 6 Committee next week and reminisced about the stolen election of 1960. Stone also had some choice words about Mark Meadows, claiming the former White House chief of staff is “not America First.”
Elsewhere, Ann Coulter was deep in conversation with the Post‘s Jon Levine, of whom a large portrait hangs on the walls of the restaurant. Also spotted: The Spectator‘s Douglas Murray, Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe, Manhattan GOP chair Andrea Catsimatidis, New York Young Republicans president Gavin Wax, Gettr’s Ebony Bowden and Kingsley Cortes, Open the Books’s Matthew Tyrmand and natcon hotshot Ryan Girdusky.
Cockburn managed to completely mistime a trip to the finger foods — and found himself pinned before a hastily erected stage, where Emma-Jo Morris introduced her former colleague Devine. The Australian-American columnist described the Hunter Biden laptop as “a complete mess — just like his life.” She then turned the stage over to a late arrival: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The seventy-seven-year-old talked at length about the laptop and described the RICO case he is supposedly preparing against the Biden family, before pivoting to, what else, electoral fraud. “This isn’t America anymore,” Rudy cried. On 2020 election irregularities, America’s mayor told a sea of cell-phone cameras that “everything I said about it is backed up by the evidence of other people.” If you look carefully in the background, you may be able to spot a stone-faced Cockburn by the chicken tenders, eyeing the exit.
After his escape, Cockburn headed downtown with New York magazine’s Shawn McCreesh, author of the aforementioned Beach Café feature. The pair were more or less the only passengers on the subway who weren’t homeless. They ended up at the New Criterion and Encounter Books party in their newly redecorated Flatiron offices. Cockburn fraternized with many of his Spectator benchmates, among them: Allison Schrager, Benjamin Riley, Deroy Murdock — who cut a dapper figure in a dark red velvet blazer — Mary Kate Skehan, Peter Wood and Robert Erickson.
The Encounter guestlist was arguably even more eclectic than Devine’s, boasting everyone from MAGA burlesque dancer Martina Markova to a cohost of the Red Scare podcast. Or as the Wall Street Journal‘s Elliott Kauffman put it, “Met Anna Khachiyan at a right-wing party with @NickBurns and she hated us.” Cockburn found himself in one too many conversations about Dartmouth, so made regular trips to the bar for vodka breaks.
As the crowd thinned out, Encounter’s Sam Schneider whipped out a pair of karaoke mics — and Cockburn tortured the remaining stragglers with his rendition of “Road to Nowhere.” Unfortunately, a mere four hours later, he was on the road to somewhere: JFK Airport, to catch an early flight back to DC. No rest for the wicked!
