SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Washington: The wreath laying, the pledge signing, the swearing-in, the grand speeches – all that is just artifice. For the movers and shakers of the United States, the real action takes place at the inaugural balls.
While Donald Trump was rallying the working-class true believers at Capital One Arena, the great and the good of the Republican world were pressing their shirts and donning their bow ties for one of the lavish soirees that take over Washington on either side of the presidential inauguration.
An attendee looks at a table of food at an Inauguration Eve celebration.Credit: Graham Dickie/The New York Times
I swung an invitation to one of them, which I thought was pretty good for my second week in town. It was hosted by right-wing cable news channel Newsmax, a rapidly growing rival to Fox News and soon-to-be competitor to Sky News in Australia.
Shortly before Sunday night’s ball, the network held an intimate launch party for the Australian branch, hosted by former ambassador Joe Hockey at the Washington office of his lobby shop Bondi Partners. Alongside Hockey, attendees included two former Liberal state premiers: Dominic Perrottet from NSW and Steven Marshall from South Australia.
Newsmax Australia will subsume some assets and personnel left behind by ADH TV, the fledgling digital television outfit set up in a Chippendale studio in 2022 as a post-2GB outfit for broadcaster Alan Jones. Some members of the Australian contingent continued to the Newsmax ball, including conservative writer Nick Cater and young gun Jack Bulfin, who runs the ADH operation back home.
The inaugural balls showcase political hobnobbing on a scale Australians can scarcely imagine. This one was held in the Andrew W Mellon Auditorium, steps from the National Mall and the Smithsonian, an intimidating beast of a place, with its neoclassical Doric columns dwarfing you as you stand there trying to get a word in with America’s elite.
Attendees listen to President-elect Donald Trump speak during a candlelight dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington.Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Just don’t call them that. Trump’s MAGA army has branded itself as the anti-establishment resistance defending the everyman against the corrupt swamp. And yet here they were, inside this great hall made of stone, cloaked in cocktail attire and quaffing champagne from the open bar, toasting what they like to call the greatest comeback of all time.
Incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio was there, as was Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and incoming treasury secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas whom Trump used to call “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” when they were battling for the Republican nomination in 2016, was mobbed by adoring fans clamouring for selfies.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong and ambassador Kevin Rudd popped in, albeit briefly, with Rudd no stranger to schmoozing the MAGA crowd as he tries to shore up his standing in the new administration. Also mingling was former Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles, now on Gina Rinehart’s payroll, and media personality Erin Molan.
Michael Koziol received an invitation to the Newsmax pre-inauguration ball in Washington on Sunday.Credit: Michael Koziol
The auditorium’s standing capacity is 1000; the crowd would not have been much short of that. This was just one of half a dozen balls scheduled for Sunday night in Washington, the real drawcards being a candlelit dinner at the National Building Museum attended by Trump and Elon Musk, and a shindig hosted by Turning Point USA at the swanky Salamander Hotel, slated to attract the likes of JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr and the Village People.
An Australian political event might take place in the carpeted upstairs function room of a suburban pub, with trays of arancini balls if you’re lucky. At the Newsmax function, there were massive stations piled high with a dozen varieties of cheese, meats, grapes and dips, and a steady stream of servers proffering mini beef wellingtons (delicious) or scallops on crackers (mediocre).
There were no speeches – none that I was present for, at least – and by 10pm the crowd had mostly petered out, heading to the next function or to the palatial lobby of the nearby Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where we spotted Don Jr’s ex-girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle and incoming Trump special envoy Richard Grenell, among others.
After Monday’s swearing-in, there are three official balls in the capital, each with a slightly different bent, and Trump is expected to attend all. They will be bigger and grander events than those marking inauguration eve. And on the sidelines, there’s another slew of unofficial balls to keep the Republican faithful entertained.
There were no calls to “drain the swamp” at Trump’s victory rally on Sunday. No wonder – it’s his swamp now.
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