The White House on Thursday launched a new arcade website featuring games promoting President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, Trump accounts, and the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, as well as other games with patriotic themes. Arcade.gov includes two games that prompt users to protect the border, one of which asks gamers to…
Page T2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 4 September 2026
White House called a whorehouse and Las Vegas, launches video game to guard border wall from a 'horde'
As it ran on the front
The billions were already moving before the trouble started. On August 31st came word that the border wall — the 'Smart Wall,' stocked with steel, barbed wire, and AI — was expanding on real appropriations, real construction, real money. That was the story the White House wanted running. Then, on September 1st, a different one arrived, from inside the building. Ty Cobb, Trump's own former White House lawyer, said the White House itself — the one the Supreme Court had just cleared for a ballroom renovation — was 'turning into some combination of a whorehouse and Las Vegas.' Not a leak. Not an opposition researcher. A man who used to defend this administration, describing its own house in those words, the same week the wall money hit print.
By Thursday there was an answer, though nobody called it one. Arcade.gov went live: a government website built around Trump's immigration agenda, his branded accounts, the 'Make America Healthy Again' initiative, and games with patriotic themes, two of which ask the player to defend the border. One puts a 'horde' on the other side of the wall and hands over the controls.…
…(cont) Read it in order and the maneuver is obvious. The building gets called a casino. The reply is not a statement about the building, not an inspection of the ballroom, not a word from anyone who works there about what Cobb said. The reply is a video game where the player gets to be the hero holding a line against an invasion that only exists inside the game. Nobody can subpoena a game. Nobody can walk a game through the ballroom and take pictures. A game just runs, and for as long as it's running, the 'horde' is the thing in the headline instead of the whorehouse.
That same week the White House confirmed it would hold its first press briefing in over forty days — confirmed, not held, with no name attached to who'd be standing at the podium when it happened. Forty days of nothing from that podium, ending or scheduled to end in the same seventy-two hours as a video game about a horde and a lawyer's comment about a casino. Line up the dates and it stops looking like three separate stories about a wall, a ballroom, and an arcade. It starts looking like one government, managing one bad week, with the only tool it has left: change what the public is looking at, and call it launch day.
“They call it a whorehouse and Las Vegas one week, and the next week they hand you a joystick and tell you the real danger is a horde outside the fence. That's the oldest trick at the bar — point at the door so nobody checks the register. Same government, same money, same seventy-two hours, betting you won't notice it's one building and one budget.”
“Ty Cobb hasn't worked there in years, so this is just a disgruntled — did I say disgruntled, I mean a concerned former official, sure. And Arcade.gov, that's outreach, that's civic education, gamified, for the kids — okay, it's a website where you shoot at a 'horde,' but that's not what it looks like, I promise you that's not what it looks like.”
The receipts
The White House will host a press briefing on Thursday, marking the first briefing in over 40 days. A White House official who confirmed the plans did not specify who would be briefing the press. News of the upcoming briefing comes days after former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrapped up her final day...
Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb tore into President Trump’s White House ballroom project on Monday, saying the historic building is turning into a “combination of a whorehouse and Las Vegas.” Cobb, who served in the White House during Trump’s first term, made the comment hours after the Supreme Court cleared the way for construction...
Construction along the US-Mexico border is exploding. This is thanks to President Trump’s injection of billions of dollars earmarked for what is being dubbed the ‘Smart Wall’. This border wall is not merely steel and barbed wire, it is jam…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.