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 of the 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.
