DC Lawmakers Are Getting the TMZ Treatment

TMZ is taking its ambush-camera routine from Hollywood Boulevard to the halls of Congress. The celebrity-news outlet has launched a Washington, DC bureau aimed squarely at lawmakers, with producers already roaming Capitol Hill as Congress returned from a two-week break. "Lawmakers and staffers in DC, look for Jacob, Charlie, and Jakson," TMZ said Monday. "They are nice enough guys, generally smart and sometimes even charming." Their first targets: Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz.

In one clip, Graham shields his face and walks away as a TMZ staffer tries to ask about photos of him at Disney World holding a bubble wand. Another video shows a producer pressing Cruz to pick a side between the pope and President Trump after Trump's criticism of Pope Leo XIV over comments on the war in the Middle East. Cruz deflects, saying both "speak for themselves" and accusing TMZ of trying to drag him into the fight. TMZ founder Harvey Levin has described the new DC bureau as an effort to monitor lawmakers' conduct and show how "politics and pop culture" converge.

Last month, after a TMZ Live interview with a TSA agent who said some agents were struggling so much during the partial government shutdown they had considered ending their lives, Levin urged viewers to send in photos of what lawmakers are "doing at your expense" during their vacations. The "transformation of politicians into celebrities" has created "ideal conditions ... for TMZ to chase elected officials with the same feverish intensity that they employ to snap a rumored celebrity couple leaving the Chateau Marmont together," Paula Mejia writes at the New Yorker.