The inexorable rise of the GOP swimwear models

In there like swimwear

For any readers seeking evidence that, despite the election, we are in the heart of silly season, look no further than this week’s non-troversy concerning Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and her swimwear.

In midweek, TikTok users apparently discovered a 2016 video of APL wearing a “Make America Great Again” one-piece swimsuit. The chatter migrated to X, when a troll posted the clip with the caption, “Anna Paulina Luna should be working at my local Hooters, NOT in Congress!”

This prompted a defiant response from the Florida congresswoman. “I have a confession to make since the TikTok Democrats are onto me: I wear bikinis to the beach and mineral sunscreen… I’m confirming that I have indeed worn swimsuits and you can tell I am biologically a woman. #MAGA, she tweeted. “I was also in featured by sports illustrated and MAXIM. Designed swimsuits and women’s shirts.” Avid students of Cockburn’s writing knew this already, of course: he wrote about Luna’s past modeling for Sports Illustrated and her grandfather’s eyebrow-raising World War Two record over a year ago. 

Kayfabe attacks merit kayfabe defenses, of course. “Pick-me” congresswoman Nancy Mace was among the first. “Thinking of making a swimsuit of my own! @realannapaulina,” she wrote, alongside a picture of her primary results printed on a white one-piece. “BREAKING NEWS: Conservative women wear bikinis too. I stand with the beautiful @realannapaulina,” tweeted model and One America News Network producer Peyton Drew, alongside a picture of herself in a Game of Thrones-y chainmail bikini (not that practical for the beach!) 

“I support @realannapaulina In Florida we wear bikinis!” wrote Florida state representative Michelle Salzmann. “I may just be a panhandle girl, but I can be conservative, intelligent, beautiful ~ AND serve my community.  #Florida #girlpower #freedom”

“I stand with @realannapaulina,” wrote Ada Lluch. “Conservative women are allowed to be hot,” she continued, as if anyone had said they weren’t, with a bikini picture of her own.

“I stand with both of these sluts,” reads one response. 

Taking the cake however, is Ginger Gaetz, wife of Luna’s Florida delegation colleague Matt and sister of Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey. Ginger is showed solidarity by blasting out even more hot pictures of Luna from her swimsuit-modeling days, writing, “APL single-handedly bringing back Women Crush Wednesday  #WCW @realannapaulina.” Ginger has also been tweeting out images of other conservative women in their bikinis, among them Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, and Manhattan GOP chair Andrea Catsimatidis. 

“She ✨ can ✨ do ✨ it ✨: all,” Gaetz points out.

“- Mother
– Wife
– Veteran
– Congresswomen
– TIME 100 Next feature
– Swimsuit designer + model
– Member of the @SAL_Caucus

@realannapaulina ❤️‍🔥”

Cockburn thanks her for her service.

Coming soon: Cockburn in Chicago

Cockburn is packing his keffiyeh and black bloc and readying his liver for another political convention week: he’ll be demolishing wet beefs (beeves?) in Chicago for the DNC. Got any gossip, or a red-hot party planned? Want to score an invite to The Spectator’s super-exclusive Monday night shindig? Email cockburn@thespectator.com

Come on babe, why don’t we paint the town…

Grim up north

Democrats are meddling in a GOP primary, again.

Alaska’s only House district is represented by a Democrat, Representative Mary Peltola, who took advantage of a splintered Republican field and the ranked-choice voting system last cycle. This time, Republicans have two main candidates: the state’s current lieutenant governor, Nancy Dahlstrom and Nick Begich, who ran unsuccessfully for the seat last time. 

Nationally, the GOP has made its preference for Dahlstrom clear: Republicans from President Donald Trump to Speaker Mike Johnson have backed her. For his part, Begich is counting on a large war chest and residual name ID to get him through the primary, but he said that if Dahlstrom finishes above him in next week’s primary, he’ll drop out. 

Beyond ranked-choice voting, Alaska also has a top-four system where the quartet of candidates with the most votes advance to November’s elections — which explains why Democrats are trying to elevate another Republican, Gerald Heikes, a perennial, and underfunded, candidate.

Vote Alaska Before Party is spending around $1 million on TV, digital and radio ads to boost Heikes into one of the top four slots for November, where the expectation is that his presence would pull votes to help Peltola win another tough reelect. In case there was any doubt about the organization’s goals, its primary funder has been the Democrats’ top House super PAC. This cycle, it won’t have to disclose its donors until well after the primary is over — but it’s following the tried and true strategy of convincing Republican voters to vote for the candidate preferred by Democrats. 

Its digital ads make it no secret that the group wants to play up Heikes’s conservative bona fides. “There’s a candidate who’s too conservative on abortion,” a narrator warns in one. “It’s Republican Gerald Heikes. He supported eliminating Planned Parenthood’s funding.” 

If Peltola faces three Republicans in November, her path to winning in a ranked-choice system is far easier than if a left-wing candidate were to make it. Last cycle, in every single instance where Democrats spent in Republican primaries for a specific candidate, that candidate lost in November.

Is this new Ohio congresswoman the worst boss on the Hill?

A new contender has entered the arena to contest the title of worst boss in Congress: Congresswoman Emilia Sykes, a freshman, who has lost almost all senior staff in the few short months she’s been in office. A review of her staff on Legistorm shows that she’s already churned through a chief of staff who lasted ten months, a deputy chief of staff who lasted nine months, a constituent advocate who lasted one month, a legislative director who lasted eleven months, a field representative who lasted five months, an executive scheduler who lasted three months and an operations director who lasted a year, among others. 

While the circumstances of office departures vary, Sykes is already earning notoriety from the nonpartisan site Legistorm for the sky-high turnover her office has seen. On the website’s “Horrible Bosses” page, she clocks in at number nine for the highest turnover in the House from 2001-2023, with a rate that’s well more than double that of the average House office. As goes Ohio… 

Fortunately for Sykes, at least she’s not Republican congresswoman Victoria Spartz, who easily leads the list. In what is hopefully an unrelated matter, Spartz was recently charged with bringing a firearm to Dulles Airport.

Milo goes nuclear

Who would have thought that the partnership between Kanye “Ye” West, and his fellow far-right provocateurs, Milo Yiannopoulos and “groyper” lord Nick Fuentes would end in tears? 

Yiannopoulos returned to X in the Elon era — and has this week been blasting out a series of scandalous accusations regarding his time working as the CEO of Yeezy, alongside Fuentes. He claimed that Ye’s dentist, Dr. Thomas Connelly, got the rapper addicted to nitrous oxide; that Ye gave him a physical “N”-word pass; that Fuentes allowed  “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander to groom his young “groyper” followers and, perhaps most damning, that Fuentes is only 5’6”. He also alleged that both Fuentes and Candace Owens’s husband George Farmer are gay. “What if I told you that eight years ago, while Nick Fuentes was assisting in a Buzzfeed hit piece on me, he was simultaneously sending photos of himself in a maid’s uniform to someone he was obsessed with online?” he tweeted on August 11. “And what if I told you screenshots exist?” 

Cockburn cannot speak to the veracity of this audacious claims — apparently that’s what the Community Notes function is for on X, rather than something that should be expected of a good journalist. He did also notice that Ye’s penchant for pricey fashion appears to have rubbed off on his former CEO: Yiannopoulos is hawking some rather expensive products on his profile, such as a $60 “Cumala” T-shirt and a $50 muscle shirt adorned with the Nazi  “Sonnenrad” made up of a series of cross-legged Nick Fuenteses…

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