Debate night at the strip club

Pole position

Where did you take in last night’s car crash of a presidential debate? Cockburn was holed up in his DC townhouse, washing away the night’s many embarrassments with a glass of Macallan 15. If only he’d known he could have enhanced the viewing experience by watching at a New York gentlemen’s club — as @botticellibimbo, who writes the Strippernomics newsletter on Substack, revealed.

“the worst thing about them playing the debate at the strip club rn is that neither sound nor subtitles are on so its just the vibe of the debate,” she tweeted. “the never ending loop of mindless edm playing over this… i imagine it’s what’s going inside their minds.”

“ok update at our back bar they do have the sound on! our manager is literally standing in front of the tv like a dad who gets captivated by what you’re watching,” she added.

Biden’s glazed-over expression looks all the more forlorn as he gazes out from the bar over the backlit liquor bottles. Trump… seems a bit more at home.

“At our main bar it was on with no sound, most customers were ambivalent; it played in between two screens showing a hockey and baseball game,” @botticellibimbo told Cockburn. “At the ‘restaurant’ bar in the back the sound was on. Mostly it was management and old customers watching.”

“Everyone was laughing,” she continued. “It was a joke to everyone involved, even bartenders, overwhelmingly pro-Trump, but more critical of Biden being clearly in a state of cognitive decline. Nobody seemed swayed in either direction.

“When I told our head manager it seemed like satire he agreed, which is kind of funny because I mean it from probably the opposite political side.”

Hey, it beats the spin room…

Fired Newsmax reporter goes viral for ‘top percentile gay’ proposal

Last month, Cockburn reported on the ouster of Addison Smith from Newsmax. The reporter had posted a clip of a man-on-the-street interview outside a Trump event on his own X account before it had aired on the network. “Stay tuned,” said Larry Klayman, Smith’s legal counsel, in an email to Cockburn, teasing potential legal action against Newsmax — who are no stranger to the odd court case. 

Six weeks on — and crickets. Cockburn emailed Smith and Klayman earlier in the week to see if any complaints had been filed — and heard nothing back. Newsmax sources are unaware of any pending action. There has been one development in Smith’s personal life though: he got engaged… and went viral for it. “Pride month is so defeated,” he wrote in a tweet Sunday, accompanied with pictures of him down on one knee before Charis Edwards, a booking producer on Lou Dobbs Tonight. 

Smith found himself lambasted for choosing to reference Pride Month in his proposal to a woman. “Thinking about gay men while proposing to your girlfriend to own the gays,” reads one response. “There’s an epidemic of Christian girlies marrying the most blatantly gay men imaginable. Do they know and not care?” wonders another. “thinking about gay guys while proposing is top percentile gay,” writes a third. 

“here’s what your wife would look like if she was a man,” tweeted prolific troll @VLONEPREDATOR.

Weddings are expensive: has Addison chosen to give up his fight against his former employer… for love?

Bad times for Bob Good

The mess from Representative Bob Good’s apparent narrow primary loss deepened this week, with the lawmaker saying that he’ll take legal action to stop ballots from being counted in his district’s largest city as he trails his challenger by fewer than 400 votes.

“There is no confidence in Lynchburg’s results,” Good told Steve Bannon on the War Room podcast. “We’re going to make the legal challenge in a couple of days to make sure Lynchburg, the biggest city [in the 5th District], can’t be certified.”

The Trumpian rhetoric is ironic given President Donald Trump’s adamance that Republican voters toss Good for good. However, Good’s other recent actions further suggest that he is not going gently into the good night. He also accused election officials in Lynchburg of improper conduct, which followed up on his bizarre accusations of fires raging in multiple polling stations on Election Day.

While Good went into his election with some high-profile, far-right allies, it turns out that endorsing a scattershot crew of primary opponents to sitting Republicans engendered no good will for the Freedom Caucus’s chair. The Spectator has previously explored Good’s curious endorsement choices — many of whom have gone down in flames.

In the run-up to his seeming defeat, lawmakers such as Representative William Timmons sent busloads of GOP staffers to descend on Virginia’s 5th District — and others sent his challenger, state senator John McGuire, thousands of dollars of campaign checks. With a margin this narrow, every door and every dollar could have been decisive.

Making Gaines

Former University of Kentucky swimmer and women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines made her way to DC this week for a Save Women’s Sports rally and a party for her book Swimming Against the Current at Playa Ocho Cantina. There were numerous female athletes in attendance, plus Daily Wire host Brett Cooper, Daily Signal reporter Mary Margaret Olohan, Cockburn’s Spectator colleague Amber Duke and former Levi’s CEO Jennifer Sey. Sey was pushed out of the company for questioning Covid lockdowns and has since launched her own women’s athletic apparel brand, XX XY. Attendees hoovered up frozen margs, blueberry mojitos, shrimp tacos and elote.

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