Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan are more than just golfing buddies, though they have been known to enjoy a round or two of golf together on Martha’s Vineyard during their summer vacations. Jordan, a senior managing director at Lazard and longtime civil rights activist, has counseled Clinton for decades. He took the future president to his first Bilderberg conference, in 1991, and helped clean up the Lewinsky scandal. In the antechamber to his office in New York, Jordan has a scrapbook from Clinton—it’s inscribed to the “first pal”—that is filled with pictures of them golfing.
For a while now, the two men have also been celebrating their birthdays together, courtesy of their friends Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, of the imperial European banking family, and his wife, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a former telecommunications executive. The latest party was held this past weekend on Martha’s Vineyard at Bagehot Backs, the Rothschilds’ tasteful estate in Edgartown—it has been featured in many a shelter magazine—and included quite an A-list cast of characters, including many Democratic party stalwarts.
Hillary Clinton was there with her husband, of course, as was John Kerry, the former Massachusetts senator and secretary of state who recently moved to the Vineyard from Nantucket. So too were Mark Warner, Democrat senator of Virginia, and Terry McAuliffe, the former governor. Billionaire Carlos Slim, the Mexican businessman who owns a large stake in the New York Times, made an appearance. Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. was also in attendance, according to videos sent by a source, although another Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz, who has attended the party in the past, was not. (Notably absent from the celebration were any traces of Barack or Michelle Obama, or Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s senior adviser, who also vacations on the Vineyard at this time of year.)
As the evening progressed, and most everyone was getting deeper and deeper into their cups, it was time to sing. First came a rousing edition of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”—often referred as the black national anthem—based on a 1900 poem by James Weldon Johnson and set to music five years later by his brother. Jordan and Clinton led the assembled group in song. Next up was an even more exuberant rendition of “America the Beautiful.” It is hard not to be inspired watching the videos.
Joining in the song and celebration this year was none other than Anthony Scaramucci, aka the Mooch, who was making his first appearance at the event. Mooch’s presence among the Democratic Party royalty is especially notable given that he is in the midst of a high-profile attempt to defenestrate his former boss Donald Trump from the White House and to defeat him at the polls in November 2020 by organizing what he hopes will be a primary challenge against the president. Not surprisingly, their feud has taken a nasty turn, especially on Twitter, where Trump has publicly attacked Scaramucci’s wife. “I made a mistake supporting @realDonaldTrump,” Scaramucci tweeted on August 19. “I don’t need to be absolved of that. But now I will do what it takes to help make things right.”
Clinton’s birthday party was something of a homecoming for Scaramucci, who became persona non grata in certain circles following his brief but spectacular 11-day tenure as communications director in the Trump White House. More recently, having returned to managing his hedge fund and as a regular TV talking head, he has refashioned himself as a conscientious objector and truth teller. The final straw, he says, was when Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen should “go back” to the countries they came from—even though three of the four were born in the United States.
Plus, Scaramucci told me, “Democrats have more fun!”
For the past two weeks, Scaramucci has been on a high-profile media blitz against Trump, which has been gaining increasing momentum. He has been trying to get other Republicans to join his cause. But the Mooch might dispute the notion that he was ever unwelcome among the grandees of Martha’s Vineyard, before his revelation on the road to Damascus. The Mooch said he has known Lynn Forester “forever,” and was simply unable to attend the festivities last year.
