“Everyone shut the fuck up,” a livid Trump supporter shouted while attendees waited in line at the upstairs bar of the Hamilton, a classy stalwart of dining and drinks for Washington’s political class. “I need to hear this.”
The irate guy was among a group of Trump superfans who had gathered inside, glued to the bar’s TV screens and straining to hear the president’s rambling boilerplate speech at the Capitol One arena several blocks to the east. Amid the pedicabs blasting the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” outside and the MAGA faithful roaming about downtown D.C., the Hamilton’s underground event venue was the site of one of the inauguration’s more curious satellite balls, a veritable Festivus of MAGA’s more conspiracy-minded luminaries. And I was fortunate enough to be there just as things were starting to get weird.
For the uninitiated, it’s worth noting that presidential inaugurations are usually staid affairs. The prayer breakfasts, the swearing-in ceremony, the parade—the giant patchwork blanket of decorum can be stultifying. Then, when the sun sets, the president puts on a tuxedo and some fresh patent leather shoes to awkwardly slow dance with his wife while everyone stares. It can feel like a wedding without any romance: Half the people watching think it will end in disaster.
But everyone gets excited about the inaugural balls, and everyone seems to want to throw one, even if the president won’t show up. These events are hosted by state political parties, advocacy organizations, and the occasional fringe group. Which brings us back to the Hamilton, where all three came together for the Republican Party of Oregon’s 6th Congressional District’s inaugural ball.
The Oregon GOP had a rough 2024 election. In the host party’s district, Democrat Andrea Salinas beat Republican Mike Erickson by nearly 7 points. Nearby, Janelle Bynum unseated Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whom Trump nominated to serve as labor secretary, giving the one-term congresswoman an overnight boost to one of the federal government’s top positions. In nearby Washington, Democratic Rep. Marie Gleusenkamp Perez fended off the QAnon-friendly Joe Kent for a second time. The Pacific Northwest isn’t exactly becoming a MAGA hothouse.
This lack of political and electoral success might explain why the OR CD6 GOP threw open its doors to welcome the conspiratorial far right and, following one of Trump’s very first acts in office, a free-and-clear January 6th insurrectionist to its party: It has nothing to lose anymore.
The guests of honor at the ball weren’t even Oregonians.1 Instead, the night’s honorees were Jim Hoft, founder and editor of the zero-standards Gateway Pundit website; disgraced Gen. Michael Flynn; back-to-back Arizona loser Kari Lake; and several right-wing members of the German parliament. Sorry, I’ll say that last one again: and several right-wing members of the German parliament. What might Oregon’s MAGA failsons have to say to representatives of the AfD—“based poster, guys”?
I had to find out for myself.
Upon entering the party space at the Hamilton, I was confronted by a table full of freebies for guests: American flag lapel pins, Oregon Republican Party CD6 challenge coins,2 and small jars of marionberry jam sourced in the region.
It wasn’t long before I was talking with a fellow guest, a French lawyer living in Miami who helps Europeans and other foreigners—“mostly Russians”—get U.S. or sometimes Mexican citizenship “to make things easier.” (Easier in what respect? This was never made clear.) I then met a woman who introduced herself as “Patty Myers, wife of Tony Myers.” Mrs. Myers is an independent documentary filmmaker working on a film about how the government deliberately killed thousands during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She told me her husband died as a result of “lack of care, malpractice, and restrictive [hospital protocols]” in Florida.
My conversations stopped when the night’s formal program began. We watched as a succession of speakers and performers took the stage, including January 6th rioter Siaka Massaquoi (whose trial seemed likely to have ended that very night when Trump instructed that ongoing prosecutions be pulled) and a kids’ choir from Louisiana.
“It’s hard to find a non-woke choir these days,” the conductor told the crowd as the ensemble of tweens stood awkwardly behind him. After the non-woke children performed a few songs, the Delta Youth Chorale conductor (an adult) presented one of the night’s honored guests, Gateway Pundit’s Hoft, with still another challenge coin and a Mardi Gras king cake. Later in the evening, I saw a kid weaving through the crowd with the whole cake in hand, off to what was presumably a secure location.
I found my way to Hoft, and we chatted for a bit between sets by some of the event’s other musical groups—mostly country-music performers doing covers of post-9/11 jingoist anthems and honky-tonk music.
“They were alright,” Hoft said of the choir. “It’s not the Vienna Boys’ Choir, but they were sweet.”
Hoft suggested that I interview “the black guy,” meaning Massaquoi. I would have been happy to talk with him, but couldn’t find him anywhere after he spoke on stage. While I was looking for Massaquoi, however, I ran into someone else I wanted to talk with—one of MAGA’s most popular recurring characters.
I don’t think about you at all
I’ve met failed Arizona gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake before and have covered her rallies, but I wasn’t sure if she would recognize me, so I introduced myself as a reporter for The Bulwark. While I didn’t mean to put her on full tilt, that’s apparently what happened. Lake reacted visibly and immediately brought up her years-long beef with Tim Miller. Again and again, she told me she despises him, that he is dishonest, and that “he hurt my campaign.”
“Our country needs to heal, and the media is ruining it,” she added. “You can’t just fall back on ‘Oh, I’m a commentator’ anymore.”
At one point, I looked down at my phone, which elicited a panicked question from Lake: “Are you recording me?” I wasn’t, I said; my screen flashed because I had just received a text. Satisfied, she got back to bashing Tim. “He’s a bozo,” she said, grabbing the arm of a Gateway Pundit writer. “He works for bozo,” she told him, gesturing back at me. “You know, bozo?”
Her repeat rejection by Arizona voters notwithstanding, Lake is poised to have an important role in the Trump administration: The president announced in December that he picked her to lead Voice of America, the United States’ federally funded news organization. And she’s hiring, apparently. Lake told me to come work for VOA “instead of working with bozo.”
I respectfully declined. (Then again, Tim, can we chat about a raise?)
Who are you wearing?
It seems as though conservative politicos have never been more obsessed with their clothing than they are now. Their attire may be quite gauche, but members of the far right are preoccupied with it all the same.
Gone are the days in which Republicans were the best dressed in the room. Think of the classic Americana favored by red-state tribunes, from the Western wear of Ronald Reagan to the studied sprezzatura of Bill Buckley’s suits, in comparison with the sloppy styles of Democrats ranging from the unkempt hippies of yesteryear to Senator John Fetterman, who always looks like he’s just getting back from the gym.
While they still care a great deal about how they look to one another, conservatives nowadays dress a decade behind the most current styles, which unfortunately puts them at the furthest remove from classic menswear.3 The early to mid-2010s were simply a wasteland for men’s fashion. For example, skinny suits create rippling fabric up and down the body and remove all drama and flow from the silhouette. Inexperienced tailors then either fail to make (or are prohibited from making) the adjustments necessary for well-fitting eveningwear. Silly pops of patriotic color morph the “black tie” dress code4 into something I can’t help but think of as an AI slop response to the prompt, “George Washington in the style of James Bond and Thome Browne.”
This bleak style is epitomized by Freedom Caucusers like former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who gave up his longshot chance at becoming attorney general in favor of an anchor gig at One America News Network; Gaetz is a regular target of menswear critic and writer Derek Guy (known as @DieWorkWear).
Among the Oregon Republican Party CD6 inaugural ball attendees, I noticed some confusion about the dress code. While it was initially set as black tie, the webpage later updated to the more ambiguous “cocktail+,” which sounds like nothing so much as an alcohol delivery service subscription tier. My fellow attendees did their best. One man wore a bright blue blazer adorned with white stars, a red-and-white striped tie, and red pants. Another wore a regular dark suit, but with one of those visors that have fake Trump hair coming out the top. Another man wore two wristwatches at once. “The world’s rarest Rolex,” he said of one; as for the other: “this one belonged to Bear Bryant.” Beyond that, there were cowboy hats, baseball caps with blade sunglasses on the brim, and a range of what I’m calling Fetterman Chic—a mix of weathered workwear and overwashed hoodies.
It’s all quite awful to look at if you know what you’re looking at. And some of us are condemned to know.
Secure the bag
At the end of the night, as I climbed the stairs to leave, I witnessed distraught guests trying to enter and failing to bypass the security guard. The venue was at capacity and couldn’t hold one more patriot, singer, or pardoned rioter. It didn’t matter that these attendees had purchased the nearly $300 tickets; they had become victims of a decision to oversell tickets or comp too many friends. And the jilted ticketholders were righteously pissed.
“I don’t care about your wristbands, I care about my goddamn money!” shouted one man. “I got the QR code!”
“This is fucking bullshit,” said another woman after a tense back and forth with the restaurant staff. As she stomped off, she called over her shoulder, “I’m gonna get my money back—with a lawyer!”
Those who’d gotten in, meanwhile, were dealing with another problem: a dearth of chairs. I watched guests openly stealing them from the VIP section while others resorted to sitting on stairs or even flat on the ground. I watched chair thievery produce a heated argument. Victory alone is not enough to keep someone with achy feet from feeling aggrieved.
Between the refusals at the door and the fights over chairs, I couldn’t help but see a metaphor for the next four years. People are fighting for places to sit in the Trump White House while others are being left in the cold.
I did meet one Oregonian, though not in a way anyone would want. In the restroom, a man shouted from a row of occupied urinals, “Anyone else here from Oregon?” I was headed for the sink, but felt impelled to break the awkward silence by noting I have family in the state. The Oregonian was still midstream, but he reached over his own shoulder to offer a handshake in medias res. I’ve never left a bathroom faster in my life.
Republicans have a strange infatuation with challenge coins. Many Republican members of Congress have large shadowboxes in their office displaying the ones they’ve collected over the years, and the first Trump administration made ever bigger and flashier ones for nearly every official event and occasion. The president had a personal hand in approving them.
This should not be understood to mean that the roles are now reversed. Democrats in Washington aren’t particularly well dressed, but their styles are not so uniform as to constitute a sartorial subculture.
I wore my tux. I have a personal animus towards “black tie optional” dress codes. Why give the option? Life is black tie optional. And it’s always better to be overdressed than underdressed.
I could eat this with a spoon. You're a good storyteller.
Joe - whatever you are paid is not nearly enough to cover this shit show.
Tim, give the man a raise.