The moment I arrive at Ned’s , the glitzy new private club in Washington, DC, that’s become a hotspot for the MAGA crowd, I’m handed a dark green sticker by the concierge and instructed to place it over my phone camera. Still in a daze from the heat, I walk into the elevator and fan myself with my book before the doors open and I’m softly launched into a decadent living room.

Soon, I’m sipping a spicy tequila drink while a State Department official laughs off the agency recently firing more than 1,300 employees , suggesting it should’ve been twice as many. Later, a senior administration official, dressed down in a teal golf shirt and sitting in a velvet armchair, introduces himself as the man “protecting the nukes,” before dipping back into his chat with a young man about weapons of

See Full Page