SUBSCRIBE FOR FULL ACCESS

Move over, Meet the Press and C-SPAN. TMZ has come to town to ask elected officials the tough questions, like: Will we ever have a gay president? And what’s the deal with Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry’s budding romance?

VF’s Dan Adler recently spent an afternoon on Capitol Hill with the duo behind TMZ DC, which set up shop in the nation’s capital earlier this year. He found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the Hollywood tabloid is feeling right at home in Donald Trump’s Washington.

In other Washington affairs, former FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, who was fired by Trump, spoke to VF at length about her battle royale to resist executive control. More tomorrow!

CAITLIN DICKSON,
SENIOR EDITOR

TMZ Is Launching Trump’s Washington Fully Into Its Tabloid Era

BY DAN ADLER

The announcement of TMZ DC ignited no shortage of anticipation about a potential clash between celebrity tabloid tactics and a comparatively staid political press corps. But in a Washington ruled by a reality TV character, the two men wielding the cameras have quickly made themselves at home.

Get more as a Vanity Fair subscriber Exclusive offer: Subscribe to get one month of Vanity Fair free START YOUR FREE TRIAL

More From Washington

POLITICS

Rebecca Slaughter Doesn’t Want Your Sympathy

BY CRISTIAN FARIAS

The former FTC commissioner challenged Donald Trump’s decision to fire her all the way to the Supreme Court. She lost, but she thinks the American public lost more.

From the Archive

A First-Class Affair

BY SAM KASHNER

Using Terence Rattigan’s screenplay about a life-altering delay in the VIP lounge at a fogged-in Heathrow Airport, The VIPs starred Orson Welles, Louis Jourdan, Rod Taylor, Maggie Smith, Margaret Rutherford—and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, riding a wave of scandal over the affair begun on their previous movie, Cleopatra.

In the alcohol-fueled filming of this 1963 homage to jet-set luxury, Sam Kashner reveals, the off-camera dramas (the cast’s clashing egos, the Taylor-Burton fireworks) mirrored, and even outdid, those in the script.

In Case You Missed It