Businessman Mark Cuban, right, and former senior adviser to the president Valerie Jarrett talk at the Axios gala. (Chuck Kennedy)
The party marking the one-year anniversary of media company Axios on Thursday night was like one of the upstart news organization’s morning newsletters come to life: packed with bold-face political and media types, plenty of insidery buzz about the news of the day (if you had to ask what “the CR” is, you should have just gone home), and some real news developing before attendees’ very eyes. Amid the platters of sushi rolls being passed around at the hip new Nobu outpost were not one, but two men who are being talked about as 2020 presidential candidates, and both were being courted by the Beltway class like they were the most popular guys at the prom.
Surrounded by a halo of handshakes were Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who has long toyed with a political bid, and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, a guy whose talk of patriotism and politics has some observers thinking he might make a go of it himself.
“I’m waiting until after the midterms to decide,” Cuban said when we pressed him about whether he’d take on President Trump. Dimon had been swallowed into the pack of suits, so we couldn’t take his temperature.
Besides the spectacle of watching what could be two presidential bids take shape, there was plenty of other people-watching to be had. Valerie Jarrett was at the coat-check stand, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer and Fox News’s Brett Baier were yukking it up in a corner, and newly elected Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) was making his debut onto the Washington party scene.
Axios co-founder Mike Allen, the Zelig-like reporter who formed the company with fellow Politico alum Jim VandeHei, was working the room. “Thanks for being a supporter,” he says as he stops to greet guests.
The prevailing observation in the crowd? Official Washington can’t believe it’s only been a year since Axios launched. That might be partly a testament to how quickly its bullet-pointed dispatches on Trump White House’s have become a fixture of inboxes across the so-called swamp. But it’s also an indication of the sheer volume of news that’s transpired in the last 365 days in the whiplash-inducing Trump era. In other words, that’s a lot of bullet points.
