FRESH HELL Tina Brown's Diary

I had a fascinating evening at Manhattan’s 92Y with Sir Michael Moritz talking about his new book Ausländer: One Family's Story of Escape and Exile, which excavates the history of his German Jewish family, many of whom perished in the Holocaust. A former journalist whose Midas touch as an investor took him to the top of Sequoia Capital, he reflects in the book on how displacement and vigilance can both wound and drive ambition.

This is what the world looked like before it changed forever: Monday, September 10, 2001. As founding editor of the monthly magazine Talk, I take my place in the front row of ultra-chic designer Marc Jacobs’ evening show at Pier 54 on the Hudson River.

Gloria Steinem’s willowy, vanished presence and the grief of so many who were her friends added an electric poignance to this year’s DVF Awards to women of leadership, strength, and courage. It’s 17 years since Diane von Furstenberg first gave birth to the awards as the second night of my Women in the World summit, which ended its run after ten years in 2020 when Covid closed down our venue, Lincoln Center.

Watching Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney clap back with toe-to-toe tariffs against the U.S., after walking away from tense trade negotiations on Friday, is so refreshing, it sent a thrill through international politics. Political courage has become such a rarity, we’ve almost forgotten what it looks like.

Hollywood prestige tanking? Financial desperation? Filial tenderness towards a sick father? A Wind in the Willows nostalgia for Archie and Lilibet to experience an egg-and-spoon race on a sunny Sports Day at a trad British school? There has been a fire hose of explanations for the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ bombshell return to England after six years in the hellishly serene wilderness of Montecito.

Fascinating to see Senator Jon Ossoff drop the H-word in his campaign speech last weekend. “[Trump] doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.” Natalie is Natalie Harp, the leggy, blonde, 35-year-old MAGA mouth who follows Trump everywhere as his executive assistant, feeding him posts that are either flattering or targeted to rile him up for a Truth Social outburst.

I can’t wait to see a movie about the Brad Karp saga. Everyone is talking about last weekend’s riveting NYT narrative about the esteemed chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the titanic white-shoe law firm celebrated for its nine-decade championship of such iconic liberal causes as the wrongly convicted “Scottsboro Boys” and Brown v. Board of Education, who was the first to sell out to Trump’s second-term tsunami of blackmail.

Whatever happened to the reprieve of summer and that heavenly stasis of being missing in action? Mitch McConnell, I totally get it. Sit there in your pajamas and wave. It’s your God-given right to shut the fuck up for a bit. I don’t need to hear your measured monotone or see a close-up of your turtley visage in a FaceTime video. Back off with your proof-of life demands, Governor Beshear. Nothing to say here: Sen.

It’s clear by now that Trump can’t bear to hear anyone clapping and not want to shove his melting face into the mix.

It’s sad for Senator Lindsey Graham that the last person he spoke to on this earth was the president who stole his soul. Graham’s full-on embrace of Trump, the man he once called a “race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot,” was shocking to all those who remembered Graham’s 20 year closeness with and reverence for the American war hero and fellow defense hawk Senator John McCain. McCain enjoyed his company so much he requested his desk be moved next to Graham’s on the Senate floor.