When a war leader by the name of Winston Churchill visited the White House, in January 1942, he swapped jacket and tie for a ‘siren suit’, the type of overalls Britons used to put on before taking to their grubby backyard air-raid shelters.
In modern times, the Oval Office dress code has become more casual still. President Trump’s right-hand man Elon Musk even saw fit to wear a T-shirt, overcoat and black ‘MAGA’ baseball cap during a recent photoshoot there.
Volodymyr Zelensky is, for some reason, held to different standards. For when Ukraine‘s President rocked up to the White House last Friday, he was publicly accused of failing to dress sufficiently smartly.
‘Why don’t you wear a suit?’ Ukraine’s President was asked. ‘You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit. Do you own a suit?’
The question, which seemed designed to humiliate, came from Brian Glenn, one of a handful of journalists permitted to attend the ill-fated meeting in the Oval Office.
It was met with a chorus of titters from sycophantic onlookers, plus a wink from President Trump himself, in a spectacle that drew comparisons with a Mafia-style hit.
Zelensky, who has spent the past three years standing up to bullies, responded to Glenn: ‘I will wear [a suit] after the war finishes. Maybe something like yours. Maybe something better. Maybe something cheaper.’
While the scale of the diplomatic fallout remains to be seen, Glenn’s line of questioning, which led one diplomatic observer to describe the encounter as a ‘planned political mugging’, has cemented his status as the Trump White House’s favourite journalist.
The moment when Brian Glenn asked an incredulous Zelensky about his lack of a suit
A man who claims to ‘live, breathe and sleep America First’, he is the ‘face’ of the Right Side Broadcasting Network [RSBN], an upstart online TV news outlet that has in recent years carved out a lucrative niche as the preferred propaganda arm of the Trump movement.
On the domestic front, Glenn, 55, is also one half of what he calls ‘MAGA America’s favourite couple’. His girlfriend is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-Right congresswoman from Georgia.
His output is unashamedly one-sided. At Trump rallies, his standard question to supporters is: ‘What is it that you love most about Trump?’ During his dozens of face-to-face interviews with the man himself, he might offer such probing questions as: ‘Let’s talk about your poll numbers. You are crushing it. Thoughts on that?’
A sample RSBN headline, on the occasion of Trump’s inauguration, read: ‘Bye-bye Joe and good riddance: Biden to give farewell speech to cap off his reign of wreckage.’
In a country where news outlets have traditionally paid lip service to at least vague impartiality, Glenn’s unashamed bias divides opinion. While critics regard him as little more than a cheap propagandist, fans – including some on the Left – believe his output offers a valuable insight into Trump’s line of thinking.
‘I’ve probably posted 50 or 100 Brian Glenn interview clips of Trump, probably even 200,’ Ron Filipkowski, a Left-leaning influencer, told the Politico news website last year. ‘I find those clips incredibly valuable, because you’re getting it unvarnished. That’s when [Trump] lets his guard down, when he’s got a friendly face.’
Glenn’s rise to prominence comes as the Trump camp seems increasingly unwilling to offer access to even vaguely hostile reporters.
Brian Glenn with his girlfriend, hard-Right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene
Last week, it went so far as to announce that the traditional ‘Press pool’, the small number of journalists allowed to be present at key events such as last Friday’s meeting, will henceforth be limited to reporters who the White House ‘determines’ ought to be given access.
The policy has been introduced by Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s 27-year-old press supremo. She is also a regular target of Glenn’s flattery. At a recent news conference, he told her: ‘You look great, you’re doing a great job.’
RSBN is less than a decade old. Founded in 2015 by Joe Seales, a web designer with no journalistic experience, it initially existed to live-stream Trump rallies. But during 2020, Glenn, a former TV and radio news reporter from Dallas, successfully applied for a job as its roving reporter, saying: ‘You need to hire me. I want to save the country.’
Thanks largely to his coverage of Trump during the ensuing years, its audience grew exponentially, turning Glenn into a bona fide MAGA celebrity whose relationship with Greene has generated endless sometimes ugly headlines.
Despite calling themselves conservative Christians, the couple had previously enjoyed colourful marital lives. Greene divorced her husband Perry in December 2022 after the Press exposed her sexual relationships with a ‘polyamorous tantric sex guru’ named Craig Ivey, and a 44-year-old gym manager called Justin Tway. Glenn ended his 23-year marriage to wife Kerry, with whom he has three children, just a fortnight later.
They share an interest in outlandish conspiracy theories. Glenn believes the 2020 election was stolen, and has called the January 6 Capitol riots an ‘inside job’.
Both he and Greene claimed last year that a series of natural disasters were a sign that God was upset with liberal America. She told followers on X: ‘God is sending strong signals to the US to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many other things will come. I pray our country listens.’
Greene is also a follower of the QAnon movement – which believes that Trump is fighting a secret war against a network of elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media – and in 2018 made headlines by endorsing a bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that wildfires in California had been caused by wealthy Jews using a space laser to burn down trees in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project.
Asked about the theory by British journalist Emily Maitlis last year, Greene responded: ‘Really, why don’t you f**k off? How about that?’
Around the same time, gay rights activists responded to a speech Greene had made criticising drag performers by posting a video of Glenn in his previous role, as a roving reporter for a Dallas TV network interviewing stars of a local stage show.
This stickler for workplace dress codes was wearing a blonde wig, white gloves and a pink cardigan and can be heard saying: ‘I’m kicking the shoes off. I may keep the pantyhose on. It does feel kind of good, actually.’
