Welcome to Washington Secrets, where we saw a full 15 minutes of last night’s State of the Union. Instead we went deep inside the resistance to bring you a dispatch from the frontline in the nation’s war of absurdity, and a night earlier, we tucked into fish and chips (and “Turner Tonic” cocktails) in order to report on the latest addition to Washington’s diplomatic corps
Robby Roadsteamer is part activist, part gonzo comedian, and all in. All the time.
As Donald Trump started his marathon State of the Union address, he entered stage left, twerking, dressed in a giraffe costume. Then he serenaded the resistance rally with his newest one-line song: “Donald Trump was on the Epstein plane. Donald Trump was on the Epstein plane.”
Beside him, 15 people in inflatable frog suits bobbed along the refrain as it echoed around the ballroom of the National Press Club just a block from the White House.
It was a moment of utter absurdity, and in the moment it all sort of made sense.
This was the “State of the Swamp,” one of a growing number of alternative ways to follow Trump’s biggest speech of the year without actually watching the speech.
“He promised he would drain the swamp, the corruption and the grift,” said Miles Taylor, the former Trump official, anonymous author, and administration dissident, who compered the evening. “And instead of draining the swamp, he turned America into the swamp.”
The face of his movement is green and bug-eyed. The frogs bopped along with every speaker.
They have become a key part of protests ever since a video captured the moment federal agents pepper-sprayed a puffy-suited Seth “Toad” Todd via his air intake.
Guests in the ballroom found green, bobble-eyed green caps on their seats.
The line-up was a mix of Trump allies who turned against their boss, comedians, members of the populist Left, journalists who lost jobs for condemning the president, an Oscar-winning Hollywood legend, and besuited politicians who didn’t get the memo about wearing green.
Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump press secretary, spoke for four minutes. Which is four minutes longer than she ever managed in the White House briefing room. A fact she leaned into.
“I’m the one who never stood behind a podium at the White House, and that is because I could never bring myself to lie to you guys,” she said. (This wasn’t the sort of audience that was going to wonder then why she took the job in the first place or point out the difference between a podium and a lectern.)
She brought the house down as she explained that Trump once outlined to her how his rhetorical policy was to repeat lies until people believed them.
“That is his strategy,” she said. “And I can promise you he is lying right now to this country.”
George Conway and his odd-colored hair popped on a big screen above the stage so he could denounce Trump as a “deranged narcissist.”
“THESE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY”: SIX TAKEAWAYS FROM TRUMP’S STATE OF THE UNION
The actual State of the Union made only a fleeting appearance, beamed into the ballroom as it emptied for a 15-minute toilet break.
Instead, the stage included discussions of why pelting federal agents with sex toys was a winning strategy. One speaker described seeing a suitcase of dildos backstage.
The whole thing was delivered with a sort of hokey, homemade amateurism. There was none of the slick production of a Turning Point USA summit, and the night ran behind schedule before it even began.
Broadcaster Mehdi Hassan’s joke about Trump’s bronzer would have landed better if his microphone had been on.
Every so often, someone at the back of the room shouted: “Ribbit.”
Who knows what Robert De Niro made of the production values, but he appeared as the final speaker with a rallying call to act decisively in the midterm elections.
“I’m filled with anger and outrage, but I’m saved from total despair by rays of hope,” he said.
The crowd roared its approval with a chant of, “Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit.”
But it was Roadsteamer who probably summed up the theme of the night
“We do not fight absurdity with valor,” he shouted at one point, “we fight absurdity with more absurdity.”
Rom-com diplomacy
The timing could not have been more awkward.
Hundreds of Washington’s great and good crammed into the finest diplomatic mansion in the city to welcome Christian Turner as Britain’s new ambassador, barely hours after Peter Mandelson, the last one, was arrested on suspicion of passing confidential government information to Jeffrey Epstein.
It meant that Turner, an affable career diplomat, was welcoming guests to the same ballroom where Mandelson (or “the last guy” as one guest diplomatically put it to Secrets) had stood almost exactly a year earlier with Keir Starmer, the British prime minister.
None of that stopped the new ambassador from delivering an upbeat assessment of U.S.-U.K. relations.
And as foreign governments wonder whether to go the full Carney — and turn up the heat on Trump like the Canadian Prime Minister — or shower the president with praise to avoid the Greenland treatment, Turner offered a middle way.
The recent White House National Security Strategy, which has European capitals wondering whether Trump is still an ally, was a simple statement about protecting core national interests, he said. “I have no problem with that,” Turner said.
But he also said he would push back on the sort of Fox News talking points that the administration echoes.
“I won’t shy from debate,” Turner told an audience sipping on “Turner Tonic” cocktails and eating fish and chips from paper cones. “I will tell you why London is the safest city in the G7 — fact — why we’re not curtailing free speech — fact — and I want to hear how you see it too.”
And Secrets can reveal that Turner has a fun pop-culture way of describing that third-way approach in private.
You don’t just want to go all Love Actually, he has told guests of his residence. Nor do you want to take The Thick of It approach, referring to a British TV comedy that featured a ferocious, foul-talking, expletive-throwing, government director of communications by the name of Malcolm Tucker.
Sample Tucker quote: “I think we should use the ‘carrot and stick’ approach. You take a carrot, you stick it up his f***ing arse, followed by the stick, followed by an even bigger, rougher carrot.”
Quite so.
Lunchtime reading
Bill Gates apologizes to foundation staff over Epstein ties: “It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” and bring Gates Foundation executives into meetings with the sex offender, Gates said. “I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made.”
Pentagon threatens to make Anthropic a pariah if it refuses to drop AI guardrails: Pete Hegseth has set a Friday deadline for the artificial intelligence provider to fall into line. Yet his threats seem contradictory: On the one hand, put Anthropic on a government blacklist as a supply chain risk, and on the other, activate the Defense Production Act so that the Pentagon can use its technology with or without the company’s consent.
State of the Union: Here’s what Trump didn’t say: President Donald Trump made the case that happy days are here again in the first State of the Union of his second term, but there was little talk of transition or pain.
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