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Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out. Never miss another secret from the D.C. ooze by signing up here to get The Swamp direct to your inbox. Jennifer Newsom’s Republican Family Values Many families will be avoiding politics around the dinner table at Thanksgiving next week. The Newsoms are likely no exception. After a couple of false starts, Gavin Newsom has raced into the lead for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination by becoming Donald Trump’s baiter-in-chief. But he may not have the ringing endorsement of every member of wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s family. The California governor’s wife, 51, grew up in a GOP household. Her investment banker father Ken Siebel, 84, was staunchly Republican and the family trust reportedly donated to campaigns for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as well as GOP senators Tom Cotton and Ron Johnson. Jennifer, who previously dated George Clooney, says she was raised a Reaganite Republican. She’s not alone: her billionaire second cousin Thomas Siebel was a big donor in Trump’s victorious 2024 campaign. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas, founder and CEO of Siebel Systems and founder of C3 AI, held a $500,000-a-table fund-raiser at his Woodside, California home last September. But an even trickier subject for the Siebel Newsom family over the pumpkin pie might be the tech titan’s opposition to Newsom’s successful Proposition 50 redistricting effort. According to Ballotpedia, he donated $1 million to fight the gerrymander. Jennifer also has something in common with her husband’s first wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle. She was registered as a Republican before she met her husband. Of course it’s not so unusual for someone to switch allegiances, especially if your husband is the Dem poster boy, and she’s now a signed-up, all-in Democrat. Before Guilfoyle went fully Mar-a-Lago, she was Newsom’s First Lady-in-waiting. But their marriage imploded in scandal with the then San Francisco mayor having an affair with his secretary Ruby Rippey Gibney (the wife of his close friend and Campaign Manager Alex Tourk) and Kimberly crossing enemy lines to become engaged to Donald Trump Jr. Jennifer graduated from Stanford with a degree in Latin American studies then moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. She did land the part of “Younger Woman in Market” in Something’s Gotta Give which starred Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson but acting didn’t pan out. She turned to documentary filmmaking and scored a big hit (for a doc) by writing, producing and directing Miss Representation. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011 and featured interviews with Condoleezza Rice and Nancy Pelosi, among others. By then, she was already wed to the Next Big Dem Hope and together, they are raising four kids. No doubt, the Newsoms will go around the table giving thanks next Thursday. Just don’t mention Trump…or cousin Tom. About Last Week… The Swamp was inundated with thoughts on our compendium of the foul-mouthed insults leveled at Daily Beast reporters by White House and other Trump-world aides such as Steven Cheung, Sean Parnell and Abigail Jackson. Thanks to all of you inside the White House and elsewhere who were in touch. Our lips are sealed about your identities…but keep those secrets about your colleagues flowing. They are delicious. Dems Go Full Thirst Trap… Even in Chilly NH Democrats may have finally cracked the code to winning over a new generation of voters: thirst. Last week, “Hot Girls for Zohran” helped 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani become New York City’s first Muslim mayor. Now, the blurring of lines between campaign and fandom has moved further north: A New Hampshire state senator has been catapulted into gubernatorial status thanks to his looks. Meet Donovan Fenton, a Democrat busy championing affordable healthcare, clean energy, small-business growth, yadda yadda, in District 10, which takes in towns such as Alstead, Chesterfield and Nelson. Oh sorry, did we mention policies? Who cares about those? Fenton is being urged to run for governor for a simple reason: The X account Boyfriends We Deserve says he will be “the hottest governor in history” (Sorry, Gavin…) Their post, complete with photos of Fenton, 36, in the wild, quickly went viral. “If Virginia is for lovers, then New Hampshire is for… hotties?” quipped LGBTQ publication Queerty, whose readers noted Fenton’s likeness to Antoni Porowski, the dashing food and wine expert from Netflix’s Queer Eye. The state senator—a married father of three—meanwhile, knows how to deal with the thirst—turn it into cash. “Flattered. Terrified. Slightly blushing,” he wrote, with a link to the donations section of his campaign website. “If you want to support whatever this journey becomes, here’s the place to do it.” Mind you, being the hottest Governor in New Hampshire history is not the highest bar to clear unless you go back to 1844. That’s when the Granite state backed handsome textile manufacturer John Hardy Steele, whose name sounds like a porn star. Vote Fenton. Because he looks like he cares. Yass Wanted a Yes and He Got a ‘No’ The off-year elections in Pennsylvania were supposed to be a sleepy little affair—until camera-shy MAGA billionaire Jeff Yass showed up with millions and turned the volume to 11. Known as the “Elon Musk” of the Keystone State, Yass is the co-founder of the trading firm Susquehanna International Group and major investor in TikTok’s parent company. He dropped buckets of cash backing GOP campaigns in the retention races of three state supreme court justices: Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht. The trio were elected as Democrats in 2015 and were up for a “yes” or “no” vote after finishing their first 10-year terms. Yass is a big proponent of diverting public funds towards private and charter schools and his goal was to install Republicans on the court who could push such policies. The trouble is, it didn’t work. Democratic voters rallied to offset the blitz, retention held, the court stayed intact—and Yass’s gamble flopped. But that wasn’t the only race in the Commonwealth that should have the GOP worried. After all, Pennsylvania is the swingiest of swing states, with several bellwether counties that fell to Donald Trump at the last election. This time, they flipped. In Bucks County, for example, Democrats defeated a pro-Trump, pro-ICE sheriff by nearly 10 points. In Dauphin County, where the incumbent Republican district attorney ran for a local judge’s seat, Democrats beat him by nearly 10,000 votes, electing the first ever Black woman to the bench in the county’s history. The party even swept most of the Dallas Town School District elections, an area where Democrats haven’t had a school board member for about 20 years. Pennsylvania Democrat chair Eugene DePasquale crowed, “We ran on Pennsylvania solutions to Pennsylvania problems, and even defeated MAGA billionaire Jeff Yass.” Yass may be a billionaire, but poor Yass is no Musk. Anyone Want to Party With Rupert? Anyone? Gavin Newsom’s victory in Proposition 50 is one sign that the Left Coast is alive and deep, deep blue. Another sign? Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s handlers are struggling to find A-listers to come to a party to launch their California version of the president’s hometown paper, the New York Post. The MAGA-friendly California Post does seem to be launching at a tough time. That sweeping Prop 50 vote is about to seriously reduce the state’s number of elected Republicans. On the upside, that should open some soon-to-be unemployed MAGA politicians’ calendars up… perfect for those willing to sip warm white wine with the real-life Logan Roy. Trump’s Patronage Parade White House aide Sergio Gor (né Sergey Gorokhovsky or Сергей Гороховский in his native tongue of Russian) was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to India on Monday in an Oval Office ceremony. Vice President JD Vance administered the oath of office, as “Judge” Jeanine Pirro held the Bible and Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood at her side. There was a lot to celebrate: after all, nothing says “strategic foreign policy move” quite like Trump installing his former book publisher-turned-White House head of personnel into one of the world’s most important diplomatic posts. But Gor is not the only MAGA acolyte now expected to navigate bilateral relations with finesse, subtlety, and the kind of diplomatic gravitas Trump’s movement isn’t exactly known for. The MAGAs are spreading worldwide. NFL running back Herschel Walker is off to the Bahamas. (You might remember Walker as Trump’s handpicked Senate candidate for Georgia in 2022 whose campaign exploded with allegations—which he denied—of domestic violence and paying for abortions.) Mindy Hildebrand, the megadonor wife of Hilcorp Energy Company billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand gets the plum post as the new ambassador for Costa Rica. And one ultra-loyalist got not one but two ambassadorships. Callista Gingrich, third wife of Newt Gingrich, is now the ambassador to Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Interested in a foreign post? Get donating and sucking up, sunshine destinations Barbados and Seychelles are still available. Or if you’re feeling especially hardy, Afghanistan is in need of one. Make America Cringe Again The acquittal of Hoagie Hurler Sean Dunn has led to a stream of celebratory puns, led by Trump’s arch nemesis George Conway. Conway was lapping it up and declared that he couldn’t beat a pun he received in a text: “The po boy was set free.” And then he tried anyway. The lawyer posted his version of Bob Marley’s I Shot the Sheriff on social media. George can blame his strained voice on years of trying to shout over Trump, but there’s no excuse for the lyrics: I threw the sandwich, but I did not throw the condiments I threw the sandwich, but I didn’t throw the condiments All around Washington D.C. They’re trying to track me down They say they want to bring me in guilty For the spilling of some mayonnaise
