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Hillary and Bill Clinton were captured in photos enjoying dinner with friends on Manhattan's Upper East Side on Tuesday, May 25 evening. The former presidential pair were seen arriving separately with a Secret Service detail to high-profile restaurant Fleming by Le Bilboquet.

Hillary Clinton reportedly looked glum while sipping her favorite white wine as her husband was deeply engrossed in conversation with Sting's wife Trudie Styler, who was caught resting her head on Bill's shoulder while posing for a group selfie.

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Exclusive photos obtained by the Daily Mail saw the former POTUS rocking a blue suit with a checkered button-down shirt and no tie. Meanwhile, his wife, a former US Secretary of State, wore a three-quarter-length striped wool coat, per the outlet. The famous couple was joined by Trudie and two others in the outdoor seating area of the restaurant. They enjoyed a live conversation and meals at the posh establishment, where entrees reportedly range from $23 to $43.

You can see the photos here.

According to the newspaper, Hillary arrived first at the restaurant at 6.30 pm. Bill arrived in a separate vehicle just a few minutes later, before snapping a few selfies with fans and then heading to the table where his wife was already seated with "a brunette woman and a young man with glasses," who weren't identified. Trudie arrived at the restaurant shortly after.

The merry group of five, at some point, had a waiter take a group selfie. A bystander claimed Hillary did not want to be a part of the photo, per the Daily Mail.

The group was finally seen leaving the restaurant around 9 pm when some well-wishers approached the Clintons for selfies. The couple obliged and took photos, before she and Bill hopped in the same car and went home together.

In 2019, staff at Fleming by Le Bilboquet claimed that their bosses allegedly made them Google the names of guests before handing out reservations. This was allegedly done to ensure the guests were either rich, famous, or both. The posh New York restaurant can accommodate only 50 people across 20 tables inside. Other notable celebrities that have been spotted dining there include Ivanka Trump, Robert De Niro and Paul McCartney.

However, according to a page-long 'Fleming Hostess Reservation Protocol' document, hostesses are required to "pull up each unknown guest on Google." Their staff has previously claimed it's because they "want to keep the restaurant for special people only." But while bosses admitted to carrying out online searches at the time, they vehemently denied it was to filter out diners who weren't rich or famous.

"Yes, we Google people," a waiter at the restaurant told the New York Post at the time on the condition of anonymity. "There are more rich than famous people coming in but we get Robert De Niro, Paul McCartney, Ivanka Trump."

The staff member added that those entering reservations needed to clear it with their manager before confirming their tables. Meanwhile, those who are rejected from the dining list simply don't get their phone call returned, someone who works in the kitchen told The Post.

A rep for Fleming by Le Bilboquet categorically denied the claims. "What the staff is claiming is absolutely not true and whoever said it is making it up," Josh Vlasto told the Post at the time.

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Hillary Clinton looks glum as Bill Clinton cozies up to Sting ...

Hillary Clinton is really drinking in New York Citys post-coronavirus atmosphere.

The former secretary of state was seen using two hands to down a big glass of white wine at a posh Upper East Side restaurant Tuesday evening.

Clinton was enjoying her beverage as she waited at Fleming by Le Bilboquet on 62nd Street near Madison Avenue for her hubby, Bill, and some pals, including rocker Stings wife, Trudie Styler, to arrive.

The 73-year-old former Democratic presidential nominee got to the chic eatery with a team of Secret Service protection around 6:30 p.m., and didnt wait long before her ex-president hubby showed up and took a few selfies with fans before sitting down at their table, according to the Daily Mail.

The former president was dressed in a blue suit with a checkered button-down shirtand no tie, while his wife wore a three-quarter-length striped coat.

The two were filmed chatting and laughing with a brunette woman and a young man in glasses before Styler, 67, arrived.

At one point, a waiter snapped a group photo, though Hillary apparently didnt want to be in it, a bystander told the Mail.

Other photos showed the party engaged in a lively conversation during their meal, with Styler, who married the British rocker in 1992, at one point leaning her head on Bills shoulder.

Well-wishers descended on the Clintons when they left around 9 p.m., according to the report.

The former secretary of state, who was the only one in a mask, was seen taking a selfie with a fan before she and Bill got into a car together.

The chic eatery made waves in 2019, when staffers there told The Post that they were required to Google any unknown guests and make sure they were rich or famous enough to grace the dining room.

Aside from the Clintons, celebrities who have dined there include Paul McCartney, Robert De Niro and Ivanka Trump.

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Bill and Hillary Clinton spotted at posh NYC restaurant with friends - New York Post

Kanye West tried to get tough with Tyson Beckford in 2018, according to the model at a black-tie gala attended by Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.

It all started when Beckford, 50, accused Wests then-wife Kim Kardashian of getting plastic surgery and criticized her on social media about it.

Beckford eventually ran into West, 43, at Ralph Laurens 50th anniversary party, where Beckford revealed he tried to get tough with me.

I was standing in the middle of Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton. He was on the other side of the table, and when I tried to make eye-contact with him, he wouldnt look at me, Beckford recalled on the Instagram show Lets Go Live! with Sharon Carpenter.

He claims West, instead, sent one of his minions to follow him to the bathroom to talk to him, but the male model told the goon, I suggest you get out of this bathroom before I wipe you all over the wall.

West eventually called him out in an Instagram video two weeks later according to Beckford, who suggested he was too afraid to approach him in person at the Ralph Lauren event.

Im like, You did not want no smoke. I had on my tuxedo. I would have undone my tie and got into it if you wanted to, but you didnt. I think you didnt realize how big I was, he said.

Kim and Kanye have since divorced and even though Beckford is exposing the incident now, he wishes them well.

Theyre going through some hard times right now. My whole energy is positive, he concluded.

It would not have been Beckfords first bout of celebrity fisticuffs over a woman.

In 2016, Page Six reported that Beckford had an ugly exchange at a Manhattan nightclub with DJ Ruckus who had recently started dating his ex, Shanina Shaik and then chased the DJ several blocks on his motorcycle.

When they arrived at Ruckus condo building, sources told us, Tyson [got] off his bike, still with his helmet on and [started] confronting Ruckus, and then they went back and forth until the doorman called the cops.

Reps did not comment.

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Tyson Beckford: Kanye West tried to get tough with me over Kim Kardashian - Page Six

On Monday The New York Times put Arkansas politics where it belonged. We were on the front page. We had national implications.

A national political correspondent named Jonathan Martin had parachuted into what he described--and it's the truth--as an uncommon place always peculiar, and still so, for playing above its weight limit in politics.

In 1992, we exported to the nation what Massachusetts couldn't produce, meaning a neo-electable Democratic president. Bill Clinton had honed his skills in our little laboratory of democracy. He'd necessarily found a way in our culture to finesse his unpopular liberal instincts. National Republicans didn't quite know what to do with a Southern Democrat who didn't give the game away.

Since then, people from Arkansas originally or partly--Mike Huckabee, Wes Clark and Hillary Clinton--have run semi-seriously or very seriously for president.

Now the players and party have changed dramatically, owing to an anti-Obama, pro-Trump wholesale Republican takeover occurring over a dozen wild years. But, as The Times said, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton may soon be running into each other more in Iowa, site of the first presidential caucuses of 2024, than Arkansas--Hutchinson to advance a less-angry, more center-leaning Republican Party leaving Trumpism behind, and Cotton scowling through his own mean-spirited right-wingness both tied to Donald Trump and independent of him.

For full Trumpism, as The Times explained, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is likely to be the next governor representing the insurrection.

The Times produced a detail and a couple of quotations I envied.

I had assumed but not known that Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, also running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, had pleaded with Trump not to endorse Sanders, but to let her fight a fair fight of two competing Trump puppets. He paid her no mind. His bed with Sanders had been made.

Hutchinson, usually cautious, seemed to let his hair down a little to The Times' reporter. He said of the state's business behemoths who are worried about right-wing cultural warring by Republican state legislators: "They've [Walmart, Tyson] got to recruit people to this state, and this makes it harder for them. And there's many in the base of the state party that just don't care. They would rather fight the cultural war and pay the price in terms of growth."

Then, of Sanders having forced resume-rich Tim Griffin out of the Republican governor's race, Hutchinson said, perhaps dismissing much substance to Sanders, or at least to her campaign essence, "It shows you the power of media and personality."

Martin quoted Sanders only from a terse text. She's in coasting-to-victory mode, and live interviews with serious reporters are speed bumps best avoided. "I take nothing for granted," she texted.

The rest of us can take for granted that she'll speak in safe clich.

Altogether, this was a splendid take on our politically rich little province, worthy of the nation's finest newspaper. I'd like to have read only three more paragraphs.

One would have been that Arkansas has long had an affinity for populist-seeming demagogues like Trump. Jeff Davis, Orval Faubus and Tommy Robinson come to mind. Clinton's greatest gift to the state was plying his skills to deny the governorship to Robinson in the late '80s and early '90s. Or maybe credit ought to go to left-leaners who crossed over into a small Republican primary to take out Robinson early in 1990. Either way, Trump is, in Arkansas, a mere imitation.

The second additional paragraph would have called attention to the fact that an exhaustive piece capturing the state's current political environment had not mentioned a Democrat or needed to do so. That's because the Democratic Party is comatose here, not on its own local account but because of the toxicity of national liberal positions. It is arguable that the state is pro-Trump only second and that its first instinct is to recoil against national Democrats on abortion, guns, "socialism," the "cancel culture" and the rest.

The third would have been to make the point that, for all the discussion of a Trump-loyal/Trump-resistant competition in Arkansas Republican politics, there isn't much of one. A recent poll of favorable-unfavorable ratings showed that the two most popular politicians in Arkansas by far are Trump and Sanders, and that Hutchinson has flipped upside down abruptly, from prevailing approval to prevailing disapproval, presumably for daring to cross Trumpism.

It all somehow reminds me of a renowned Church of Christ revivalist preacher who came through our family's little congregation in a summer of my childhood, quoting some scripture that included the words "no hope," then slowly repeating those words, droning over and over, until people were ready to walk the aisle and improve his marketing numbers just to get him to stop.

Maybe someday Arkansas will walk the aisle. As former Republican House Speaker Davy Carter told The Times, "I'm convinced that, even in Arkansas, Trump and Trumpism is a slow-sinking ship."

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Where Trumpism's fate lies - Arkansas Online

There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos, said Texas politician Jim Hightower. His comment is humorous, and may be accurate as far as Texas highways are concerned, but it misses the mark when it comes to American politics.

In truth, the middle of the road or political center, if you will is where people come together to get things done. Its where deadlocks are broken.

Centrists once determined the fate of big issues. Ronald Reagan inspired Republicans with his conservative principles, but also made deals with Democrats to get his programs passed. More Republicans than Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights bill proposed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.

Today, few members of Congress operate from the middle. If more did, its likely reasonable compromises could be reached on numerous issues such as infrastructure and immigration.

The partisan gap is widening and each side is increasingly militant. Instant communications, social media, 24/7 news and uninformed punditry, together with a deluge of organized money, deepens the divide. Campaign cash isnt raised online by talking about common ground, its raised by painting the opposition as evil.

There is nothing wrong with Democrats and Republicans battling over legitimate policy differences thats the way democracy works. But each side now makes eradication of the other its priority. When individuals in Congress work with colleagues from across the aisle to find practical solutions, theyre attacked as sellouts, fundraising spigots are cut off to them and primary election challenges are threatened.

Though middle ground is hard to find in Washington, its alive and well among voters across the nation. A recent poll for The Economist finds that 28% of voters consider themselves independents thats equivalent to 45 million votes, a healthy chunk of the American electorate thats not aligned with either party.

Voters are tired of polarized politics. They want an alternative vision. A Gallup poll, conducted earlier this year, showed that 62% of the nations voters think the two major parties do such a poor job that a third party is needed. Thats a stinging rebuke.

Both parties have become reliant on base turnout to win elections, and that makes campaigns less about persuading undecided and cross-pressured voters and more about pushing reliable partisans to the polls. Some analysts and consultants have concluded that voters in the middle dont much matter. The truth is that they do matter; independents, in fact, elected the last two presidents.

In 2020, Joe Biden and Donald Trump each received near-unanimous support (94%) from their partys voters. But, according to exit polling, independents went for Biden by a wide 54-41% margin. In the critical state of Georgia, for example, Biden won by a mere two-tenths of a point and did it by carrying independents by nine points.

In 2016, independents went for Trump by four points over Hillary Clinton. Trump won the critical state of Michigan that year by only two-tenths of a point and did it by carrying independents by 16 points.

In 1992, Ross Perot was one of the few independent candidates in history to run a presidential campaign from the center. Though he lost, he received an impressive 19% of the vote. Whats forgotten is that his voters didnt go away, they became the swing vote in the next midterm election; they handed control of Congress to the GOP in an upset of historic magnitude.

Political labels independent, centrist and moderate are often used interchangeably and incorrectly. Technically, theyre neither the same nor mutually exclusive. Independent is a partisan position and centrist is an ideological position. Moderation is a temperament; politicians are usually viewed as moderates because of their tone, not their voting records.

Regardless of labels, which are built on shifting sands anyway, most voters are not rigid ideologues or lockstep partisans. Theyre cross-pressured. They dont follow a party line on issues and are sometimes more motivated by candidate qualifications and personalities. In 2016, for instance, 18% disliked both Trump and Clinton. They were cross-pressured and they broke for Trump in the end.

While tens of millions of voters still stand in the middle of the political spectrum, there are fewer leaders in the halls of Congress who represent them. Thats a bigger problem than dead armadillos.

Ron Faucheux is a nonpartisan political analyst and publisher of LunchtimePolitics.com, a newsletter on polls. He lives in New Orleans.

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Ron Faucheux: The death of the political center in America is exaggerated - The Advocate