TMZ, the outlet that built an empire on paparazzi shots of celebrities leaving Nobu, has opened a Washington D.C. bureau and is now cornering sitting U.S. senators to ask whether they passed gas during floor proceedings. This is not a bit. This is political journalism in the year of our lord 2026, and honestly, it kind of rules.
How We Got Here: A Bubble Wand and a Government Shutdown
According to NPR, it started with a partial government shutdown and a photo of the late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham holding a bubble wand at Disney World. TMZ founder Harvey Levin had asked the public to send in photos of members of Congress vacationing while the government was closed, and the internet delivered. Graham said he was in Florida for a Trump meeting and just happened to pop by the park. Sure, Lindsey.
The photos went so viral that Levin apparently decided the moment had arrived. "Now is the time. It's now or never. TMZ D.C. needs to start now," he told his team, according to veteran producer Charlie Cotton. They launched in April. Cotton and colleague Jacob Wasserman, who had recently covered the Sean Combs criminal trial, make up the entire bureau. Two guys. All of Capitol Hill. God help us all.
The Schumer Incident, Explained
Here is what happened, as NPR reports it. Wasserman approached Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as he was climbing into a vehicle outside the Capitol and asked, with full professional conviction, "Senator, Jacob with TMZ. Did you fart yesterday on the Senate floor?" Schumer did not respond. He got in the car and left.
TMZ later acknowledged the mysterious sound on the Senate floor might have been something other than what they initially suspected. But the duo maintains Schumer missed a golden opportunity. "What a great opportunity it is to maybe play it off and show your personality," Wasserman told NPR. Cotton agreed, saying Schumer "would be, like, celebrated." They are not wrong. A senator who could laugh at a fart joke on camera would be untouchable. This is simply a fact of modern politics.
Schumer, apparently, does not want to be untouchable. He wants to get in the car.
Boebert, on Botox and the National Defense Authorization Act
Not everyone fled. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a woman who has never once in her life turned down a camera, sat down with the TMZ duo and discussed both the NDAA and her recent cosmetic work in the same breath. "It's a big issue on the left and the right, and many of my constituents have reached out," she said about the military spending bill debate. "But now I am forced to talk to TMZ. I am talking out of the side of my mouth because my Botox hasn't caught up."
Set aside your political feelings about Boebert for a moment, because that is genuinely a funny line. The fact that she delivered real policy commentary and a Botox confession in the same sentence is exactly the kind of thing TMZ D.C. seems designed to capture. Cotton told NPR they want to ask "interesting, relatable and funny questions while also holding members accountable on tough issues." Boebert, to her credit, gave them both simultaneously.
Is This Real Journalism? Wrong Question.
Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University, told NPR the TMZ D.C. operation is "extraordinary" given how much attention two reporters are generating, and argued it should be taken seriously despite the outlet's tabloid origins. TMZ has always operated by different rules than traditional newsrooms, paying for exclusive photos being one of the more notable examples. But Thompson's point stands: reach matters, and TMZ has reach.
Wasserman framed it this way to NPR: "You might get TMZ even if you're someone who is politically disengaged. So we're speaking to those people who have never heard of Ted Cruz or Elizabeth Warren and might be coming across them for the first time, and maybe that gets them politically curious." That is either a hopeful vision of accessible civic engagement or a terrifying indicator of where American political attention has landed. Probably both. The line between those two things has been dissolving for about a decade now.
Cotton put it more simply: "This place is kind of like a reality show. So we just want to capture some of the natural entertainment." He is not wrong about the reality show part. Congress has been programming itself like one for years. TMZ is just the first outlet to show up with the right crew.
Jon Ossoff Doesn't Look Like Pee-wee Herman, For the Record
NPR's report opens with Cotton ambushing Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff at Reagan Washington National Airport to tell him, approvingly, that he does not resemble Pee-wee Herman. This was apparently newsworthy because President Trump had recently called Ossoff "Pinky Herman," which is either a mangled Pee-wee Herman reference or something even weirder that nobody has fully explained.
Ossoff, who is in a tough reelection fight against Republican Rep. Mike Collins, went along with it. The two bonded over Australia. Cotton is from there; Ossoff's mother is a native Australian. "There is a laid-back culture, I think, in Australia," Ossoff said. "We get a little wound up over here sometimes." A United States senator, at an airport, discussing national temperament with a TMZ producer. This is the content now. This is what we have.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to look at TMZ asking a senator about flatulence and feel embarrassed about the state of American media. That is the expected reaction. But sit with it for a second, because the embarrassing thing is not that TMZ opened a D.C. bureau. The embarrassing thing is that Congress has spent years making itself into exactly the kind of spectacle that TMZ was built to cover, and the traditional press kept writing 800-word procedural pieces about it like that was working fine.
The outlets that spent the last decade wringing their hands about declining trust and audience disengagement did not figure out how to talk to people who had tuned out. TMZ showed up with two guys and a camera and is apparently reaching people who have never heard of Ted Cruz. That should be uncomfortable for everyone who has been Ted Cruz's beat reporter for the last fifteen years. Not because TMZ is doing their job better, but because the audience those reporters lost went somewhere, and now they're learning about Senate procedure through a Botox anecdote.
The fart question is funny. The bubble wand photo was funny. Congress being a reality show that refuses to admit it is the actual problem. TMZ didn't create that. They just finally brought the right cameras.
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