Matthew Donovan told me about the drama I had missed at the “contrarian table” at the New York Young Republicans Club gala, which mostly had to do with VICE co-founder Gavin McInness getting wasted and spun up and picking a fight with the New York Times reporter and stealing the reporter’s notebook on the sly and handing the notebook off to Dasha Nekrasova and arguing some more and eventually storming off in a huff. Donovan spotted Lucian Wintrich, the Press Chairman of the Club of “Twinks4Trump” notoriety, watching the slapstick show with delight—everything according to his plan. Dazzle and distract the journalists by embroiling them in pointless conflict with the racist hipsters while Nigel Farage and Steve Bannon gloat about the imminent end of American democracy. You couldn’t come up with a more perfect microcosm of the downtown scene…
A slight wrinkle in Lucian’s plan: the night before at another party Matthew Donovan had somehow managed to rizz up Elena Velez and squash their beef that started when Donovan had posted Instagram stories criticizing her Gone with the Wind–themed fashion show earlier this year. Lucian perhaps expected them to brawl, with the Red Scare girls and Proud Boy Gavin and Ryder Ripps joining in. (In the past Ryder had also criticized Dasha et al. for being fascist but tonight he was wearing a MAGA hat.) Instead, they were having a gay old time, taking group photos over their steak dinners with Matt Gaetz looming in the background. Only Gavin was a sourpuss, he apparently doesn’t really have a sense of humor other than slurs and getting angry at journalists. Everyone else was acting, it’s all a bit, it’s all just a silly illusion. After Gavin was gone and after Elena and the Red Scare girls had tweeted a picture from the restroom with the Times reporter’s notebook, marking their territory or whatever, teeheehee, they gave the notebook back and apologized, all in good fun…
But I missed all that. Like a good journalist I was intently listening to the grand speeches from the press bleachers, eating scraps of leftovers off the plates the servers were taking from the tables. Eating with my hands. People kept talking about how Eric Adams might show up.