Grievances were aired. Photo: Shawn Thew/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Hosting the Congressional Ball seems like it should be one of the easiest tasks on the Trumps’ agenda. The annual party is a bipartisan event where members of the House of Representatives and Senate gather to celebrate the holidays at the White House. All the president and First Lady have to do is show up in something festive, issue some generic holiday well-wishes, and smile.
Melania’s approach to the holidays has always been weirdly spooky, and her attire on Thursday night kept with her inexplicably goth Christmas aesthetic. She wore a black velvet blazer and pants by Dolce & Gabbana over a sheer, high-necked black lace blouse.
We all know Melania may or may not give a fuck about Christmas, so there’s really no reason to draw attention to her odd vision for the holiday. But the president chose to compliment his wife’s efforts this year by reminiscing about her previous holiday decorating debacles.
“I would say this is the best. Although, I liked the red trees,” he said. “She got criticized for the red trees. Then I liked the white trees and she was criticized for the white trees. Then I liked the green trees and she got criticized and she went back to green, and they love it.”
Donald tested Melania’s ability to remain expressionless again a few minutes later, when he breezily recalled how distraught House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s wife was when he was shot and nearly killed in 2017. He noted that some wives — like maybe the woman standing next to him? — might have had a different reaction.
“I found out that night you have a wife who loves you dearly,” Trump said. “I know many wives who would not even be crying.”
In her own brief remarks, Melania thanked lawmakers for supporting the Take It Down Act, which she proudly called “our greatest triumph in my office, in the First Lady’s office, in 2025.”
She concluded by teasing that she has another legislative project planned for the New Year.
“I hope you will be excited to support my new legislative initiative in 2026,” she said. “Some of you already know about it because it’s already in the works.”
Then Donald Trump took the mic again and quipped that he has no idea what the First Lady is talking about.
“Well, I just heard about that for the first time,” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
“The only thing I can tell you — I know one thing for sure, Mr. Speaker — it’s going to be great for children,” he added. “I don’t know what it is she’s doing, but it’s going to be great for children.”
So clothing and décor choices aside, the person making things weird on Thursday night was really Donald, not Melania. But don’t feel too bad for our First Lady. She (or someone on her social-media team) got the president back by posting this video. Initially, it looks like Melania is helping her decrepit husband as he slowly struggles to get down the stairs.
Other videos show that Trump had no difficulty descending the stairs. The clip posted by the First Lady’s office looks off because the video is in slow-motion but the audio is normal speed. Maybe Melania’s team was just trying to be artsy, but it’s an odd thing to post when people are chattering about the president’s mysterious health issues and a (fake) photo of Trump using a walker is going viral.
Either way, hopefully the Trumps can work out their issues and Be Best this Chrismas (whatever that means).
He’s the narrow type. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
If I had to pick a word to describe Calibri, the sans-serif typeface that was the default font for Microsoft apps from 2007 to 2024, it would probably be “inoffensive.”
Sure, Microsoft’s “extremely readable” font has had its critics over the years, but they’ve mostly just complained that it’s too plain, that it lacks personality. I’d bet that for most people, Calibri became a ubiquitous, thoughtless part of their normal life, from office memos to book reports, and few probably realized it was designed and implemented to be a more readable typeface on digital screens — which it has been. Even Microsoft has said that customers didn’t really have strong feelings about it, unlike with other fonts. Everybody thought it was … fine. But it turns out we were all wrong: According to the Trump administration, this 21-year-old boring font is weak and woke.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday barred the use of Calibri at the State Department and brought back the serif Times New Roman, which was the agency’s official font from 2004 to 2023. This was necessary, he said, to reverse the “wasteful” and distasteful shift to Calibri ordered by his Biden administration predecessor, Antony Blinken. Rubio alleged that change — which provoked little meaningful controversy at the time — was yet another example of woke radicalism run amok, since the change was recommended by the State Department’s now-disbanded DEI office because Calibri is considered to be easier to read for people with disabilities like dyslexia or vision problems. Per the New York Times report:
While mostly framed as a matter of clarity and formality in presentation, Mr. Rubio’s directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed “radical” diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs for what he said was a misguided and ineffective switch from the serif typeface Times New Roman to sans serif Calibri in official department paperwork.
In an “Action Request” memo obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Rubio said that switching back to the use of Times New Roman would “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work.” Calibri is “informal” when compared to serif typefaces like Times New Roman, the order said, and “clashes” with the department’s official letterhead. …
Mr. Rubio’s directive, under the subject line “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper,” served as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to stamp out remnants of diversity initiatives across the federal government. …
Echoing President Trump’s call for classical style in federal architecture, Mr. Rubio’s order cited the origins of serif typefaces in Roman antiquity.
Julius Caesar would never have used Calibri, so neither should Donald Trump’s federal government, where addressing the needs of the disabled is nowhere near as important as demonizing diversity and fetishizing trad aesthetics.
The ballroom construction project at the White House seen from the top of the Washington Monument on November 17. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Add Donald Trump’s architect to the list of people who are upset over the president’s plans to build a massive new White House ballroom that dwarfs the house itself. The Washington Post reports that Trump has argued with his handpicked classical-revival architect, James McCrery II, over the ballooning ballroom design:
[McCrery] has counseled restraint over concerns the planned 90,000-square-foot addition could dwarf the 55,000-square-foot mansion in violation of a general architectural rule: don’t build an addition that overshadows the main building. A White House official acknowledged the two have disagreed but would not say why or elaborate on the tensions, characterizing Trump and McCrery’s conversations about the ballroom as “constructive dialogue.”
But Trump will not be restrained, of course, and now says the ballroom will have an even larger capacity (1,000 people, up from 650) and cost more than $300 million, which is $100 million more than he originally announced:
Trump’s intense focus on the project and insistence on realizing his vision over the objections of his own hire, historic preservationists and others concerned by a lack of public input in the project reflect his singular belief in himself as a tastemaker and obsessive attention to details … Multiple administration officials have acknowledged that Trump has at times veered into micromanagement of the ballroom project, holding frequent meetings about its design and materials.
The Post adds that McCrery has kept his criticism private as he tries to deal with his megalomaniacal client’s revisions and keep the job. He is reportedly “worried that another architect would design an inferior building, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.”
Though Democratscontinue to make as much noise as they can, there remains no indication that anyone will be able to stop Trump from building — and overshadowing — whatever he wants.
“To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life,” Trump posted on social media. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump’s personal physician released a letter claiming that he would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” This assertion (which, we later learned, Trump dictated) has only become more ridiculous as the president has displayed health issues typical of a 79-year-old, from falling asleep in public to showing up to events with a huge bruise on his hand. But these obvious signs of aging have only made Trump, and everyone in his administration, insist more forcefully that he possesses almost superhuman health and energy levels.
So unsurprisingly, Trump was infuriated to wake up to a front-page story in the New York Times on Wednesday that described his declining health.
The story was actually pretty mild. The only big revelation was that compared to his first term, Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and his workday is shorter:
According to a Times analysis of the official presidential schedules in a database maintained by Roll Call, Mr. Trump’s first official event starts later in the day. In 2017, the first year of his first term, Mr. Trump’s scheduled events started at 10:31 a.m. on average. By contrast, Mr. Trump in his second term has started scheduled events in the afternoon on average, at 12:08 p.m. His events end on average at around the same time as they did during the first year of his first term, shortly after 5 p.m.
The number of Mr. Trump’s total official appearances has decreased by 39 percent. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events.
Mr. Trump still regularly comes down to the Oval Office after 11 a.m., according to a person familiar with his schedule. This routine is a holdover from his first term: After he complained about being overscheduled in the mornings, Mr. Trump kept so-called executive time hours in the White House residence before he headed downstairs for work.
The article just summarized thornier Trump health concerns, like the White House’s dubious explanations for his persistent bruising and his lack of transparency about a recent MRI and two “annual” physicals this year. The piece notes that Joe Biden was also vague about his health problems, and it includes a quote from a physician who says it’s “commendable” that Trump can still board Air Force One using a long flight of stairs.
But Trump did not appreciate Times reporters Katie Rogers and Dylan Freedman’s attempts to be delicate while discussing this sensitive issue. He responded with a Truth Social tirade that did not provide any detailed answers to many questions about his health. Instead, he broadly claimed that his capital-E “Energy” is only increasing, and he’s “never worked so hard” in his life.
Trump’s other counter-argument: “The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.” (He did not mention her co-author, Freedman, for some reason. )
So, as you can see from this Truth Social post, Trump remains astoundingly healthy and mentally sharp. Could a man who’s running low on energy tap out such a lengthy diatribe filled with so many forceful capital letters and nearly coherent arguments? I think not!
One of the few good things you can say about our decades-long relationship with Donald Trump is that he still knows how to surprise us. Expect him to tear into the upstart politician he’s branded a “communist lunatic”? He’s so charmed by New York’s mayor-elect that he starts doing Zohran Mamdani cosplay. Assume he has a basic understanding of what magnets are and how they work, since he’s graduated high school? Thinkagain!
His latest unexpected maneuver: using the full power of the presidency to … reboot the Rush Hour movies? Semafor reported on Sunday night that Trump has been pressuring his billionaire friend Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount, to bring back the Jackie Chan–Chris Tucker franchise:
But now Larry Ellison, one of Trump’s most prominent financial supporters, owns a second-tier studio, Paramount, and is on the cusp of taking control of the great Warner legacy, with the giant library and sprawling production that come with it.
… Now, the president is offering some creative input on potential upcoming projects.
Trump appears to want to revive the raucous comedies and action movies of the late 1980s to late 1990s. He’s passionate, for instance, about the 1988 Jean Claude Van Damme sports flick Bloodsport. A person directly familiar with the conversations told Semafor that the president of the United States has personally pressed the Paramount owner to revive another franchise from Ratner: Rush Hour, a buddy-cop comedy starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker that blended physical comedy, martial arts, and gags about racial stereotypes.
In days of yore, no one would expect the president to use his influence to get his favorite Hollywood project made. While that does seem like the kind of weird 12-year-old boy request Trump would make, it’s surprising that he cares so much about Rush Hour in particular. You can picture him demanding a Cats revival, another Home Alone installment, or a Gone With the Wind remake that portrays the South even more positively. But (as far as we know) Trump hasn’t been hosting Rush Hour viewing parties at Mar-a-Lago.
The only recent hint that Trump is a major Rush Hour fan (Rushie? Hour-head?) is that the franchise’s director, Brett Ratner, is directing Amazon’s forthcoming Melania Trump documentary despite being “canceled” following sexual-harassment and -misconduct allegations in 2017. And I guess you could make something of Trump trying to revive the career of Chris Tucker, another celebrity who appears in the Epstein files (and has not been accused of any wrongdoing). But let’s leave that project to the conspiracy theorists. The president just has a passion for ’90s martial-arts/buddy-cop films. Who knew?!
Trump repeatedly came back to how much fun he had “working” as a McDonald’s fry cook during the 2024 campaign. At one point, he claimed that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin told him his “skit” was the most-searched thing ever.
“They called me the following day, after I did that McDonald’s little skit — because it wasn’t a commercial, you got it for nothing,” he said. “And I didn’t know them. They told me … that it received more hits than anything else in the history of Google and that record, it still stands.”
This claim makes absolutely no sense, but conveniently, it’s impossible to verify because Trump offered no details on what “it” meant. Does he think “Trump McDonald’s” is the most-searched term in the history of the search engine? Is he referring to the page views for some campaign video? Who knows!
If a friend was pulling all-nighters, sleeping less than four hours a night, bullying subordinates to do the same, and regularly posting incoherent social-media tirades at 2 a.m., you’d probably urge them to seek help.
But apparently when the president of the United States does it, it’s good — nay, impressive!
During a Thursday night appearance on Hannity, Vice-President J.D. Vance said he’s lucky that due to Secret Service protocols he can’t travel with the president, as President Trump forces Cabinet members to go without sleep, just like him.
“They are always like, ‘You’re so lucky because if we go on a 20-hour trip somewhere, he does not sleep the entire time,’” Vance said. “And of course if he’s not sleeping, if he’s working, he expects everybody else to be working too.”
“The energy that the guy has is really off the charts,” Vance claimed.
A moment later, Vance expressed faux sympathy for Joe Biden, saying that for all his issues with his administration, he wonders if the poor guy had the “physical and mental ability to stay on top” of everything the comes at the president.
“The answer is no, of course not,” Vance said. “And that’s the one thing that, agree or disagree with President Trump about a given issue, every Democrat and every Republican I think deep down would recognize, that [Trump] is a guy who has the energy to do the job. That’s a very, very rare thing.”
Host Sean Hannity agreed with Vance, marveling at Trump’s lack of sleep during a recent golf trip.
“Seventeen hours there, 17 hours back, and he’s awake the whole time,” Hannity said. “And he expects you to be awake!”
Trump’s allies often marvel at his superhuman ability to go without sleep. Of course, we know this isn’t true, since Trump nodded off during an Oval Office press conference just last week, and it’s far from the first time he’s fallen asleep in public:
But let’s go with Trumpworld’s “emperor’s new clothes” vibe for a moment and accept the premise that the president barely sleeps. Is that a good thing? The Cleveland Clinic says chronic sleep deprivation can cause or worsen many conditions, including:
Type 2 diabetes.
High blood pressure (hypertension).
Obesity.
Obstructive sleep apnea.
Vascular disease.
Stroke.
Heart attack.
Depression.
Anxiety.
Conditions that involve psychosis.
We know Trump struggles with at least two of these conditions — obesity and chronic venous insufficiency, a vascular disease. Lack of sleep could also impact Trump’s ability to keep acing those dementia tests he’s so proud of. “There’s also some evidence that sleep deprivation could play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” the Cleveland Clinic notes.
Beyond contributing to various health conditions, sleep deprivation is known to have a huge impact on your mood and mental health. According to SleepFoundation.org, not getting enough sleep can cause issues like “trouble paying attention,” “unplanned naps,” “irritability,” “mood changes,” and “difficulty thinking and being logical.” Sound like any presidents you know?
Just imagine what Trump, and perhaps the world, might be like if rather than celebrating his bad bedtime habits, someone told him to go the fuck to sleep.
In response to a question about voters in last week’s elections citing the economy as their top concern, Trump floated a conspiracy theory about Democrats feeding negative talking points to every major news network. His evidence: Nobody uses the archaic word manufactured anymore!
“More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats,” Trump said. “You know they put out something, ‘Say today, costs are up.’ They feed it to the anchors of ABC, CBS, NBC, and a lot of other, you know, CNN, etc. And it’s like a standard. I’ll never forget, they used a word like manufactured. Remember the word manufactured? ‘It’s a manufactured economy!’ Nobody uses that word. Every anchor broke in, manufactured. They do exactly what they say. It’s such a rigged system.”
The president insisted that, contrary to what you might have heard or experienced firsthand, “costs are way down.”
Later in the interview, he dismissed voters’ economic concerns for an entirely different reason. Americans aren’t worried about the cost of living because they’re falling victim to a fake-news “con job,” they’re actually happy with the economy, but the “polls are fake.”
You’ve certainly heard of the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House. But were you aware that there is also a Lincoln Bathroom? No? Well, it’s probably for the best, because it was a total dump!
As Trump revealed in this Truth Social post on Friday, the bathroom off the Lincoln Bedroom has been renovated as part of his ongoing Midas-like effort to add gold to just about every surface in the White House. Here’s a closer look at the Art Deco–style “before”:
And here’s the “after”:
Trump then sent out an additional sixTruthSocialposts showing off photos of the renovation. Here’s a small sample:
If the goal was to make people using the Lincoln Bathroom feel like they are trapped in block marble, the renovation clearly succeeded. But Trump said his main issue was historical accuracy, complaining that the previous design “was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era.”
“I did it in black and white polished Statuary marble,” he explained. “This was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there.”
Marble walls and floors with polished gold fixtures certainly weren’t common for bathrooms of the time — nor was indoor plumbing. The Springfield, Illinois, home where the Lincolns lived before he was elected president had an outhouse, which you can still visit:
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress
The family quarters in the White House were an upgrade for the Lincolns simply because the residence had indoor plumbing. However, when they moved to Washington in March 1861, Mary Lincoln was disappointed to discover that many areas of the White House were worn down. She embarked on a massive renovation project, according to WhiteHouseHistory.org:
Concluding that it would be “a degradation” to subject her family and her guests—to such surroundings, the new first lady launched a monumental redecorating project, purchasing new carpets, draperies, wallpaper, furnishings, china, and books, and modernizing plumbing, heating, and lighting.
Abraham Lincoln was furious when his wife overran a congressional appropriation allocated for the renovation by about 30 percent. After Mary spent $7,500 on furniture, including the Lincoln Bed, in the fall of 1861, she sent Commissioner of Public Buildings Benjamin Brown French to deliver the bad news to her husband. As the First Lady predicted, he was irate.
“It would stink in the nostrils of the American people to have it said that the president of the United States had approved a bill over-running an appropriation of $20,000 for flub dubs for this damned old house, when the soldiers cannot have blankets,” he shouted at French.
So perhaps Trump decking out a White House bathroom in marble and gold just as millions of Americans are poised to lose SNAP benefits due to a government shutdown actually wouldn’t go over well with “Honest Abe”? But at least we know Mary Lincoln would have loved it!
Trump is so committed to adding Midas-like touches to the White House that he had his Mar-a-Lago “gold guy” flown in on Air Force One, as TheWall Street Journalreported in April:
A cabinetmaker from south Florida who has worked on projects at Mar-a-Lago, John Icart helped add custom-made gold finishes to the Oval Office, including gilded carvings for the fireplace mantel and the molding that wraps around the most famous office in the world, administration officials said. Icart traveled to Washington with Trump on Air Force One, according to one of the officials. He declined to comment, referring questions to the White House.
This involved festooning the Oval Office with gold furniture and various trinkets, and adding gold carvings to the fireplace and crown molding:
Administration officials said Trump personally oversaw the installation of the gold carvings on the mantel in the Oval Office. He also brought gold cherubs from Mar-a-Lago to be installed in the White House.
Prominently displayed next to the Resolute Desk is a large gold FIFA World Cup trophy. Seven gold vases and urns decorate the mantle.
… Trump has affixed a gold Trump crest over the door leading into the White House from the colonnade, a recent visitor said. There are gold coasters with Trump’s name on side tables.
These accents are “of the highest quality” and are being paid for by the president himself, according to a Fox News report that was light on details:
A White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the gold Trump added to the Oval Office “is of the highest quality,” declining to provide further details. The spokesperson also said that Trump personally covered the cost of the gold accents, though did not specify how much gold was added or how much Trump spent.
However, as explained by BuzzFeed, the moldings looks oddly similar to accents available for as low as $30 on Home Depot’s website.
For comparison, this is what the Oval Office looked like in the last year of the Biden administration:
Photo: Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
And this is what it looks like now:
Photo: Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
This is actually pretty impressive, considering that gold paint doesn’t exist:
Trump at Tuesday’s press conference, alive and possibly well. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
The ongoing speculation about Donald Trump’s hand bruise and health issues reached a fever pitch over Labor Day weekend, as the president had not made a public appearance since August 26. So there was already a lot of anticipation for his next appearance heading into the workweek. Then the White House amped things up by teasing that Trump would reveal something big at his Tuesday press conference.
“The president will be making an exciting announcement related to the Department of Defense,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said cryptically.
Multiple theories emerged on what the president might say at his 2 p.m. presser. Would he give a big health update? Announce he was moving U.S. Space Command headquarters? Send the National Guard into Chicago?
The answer was kind of all of the above yet none of the above.
Technically, the big announcement was that Space Command headquarters will be relocated to Huntsville, Alabama. But this decision, a reversal of a Biden-administration decision to keep the HQ in Colorado, isn’t all that “exciting,” considering most Americans can’t tell Space Command from Space Force.
While taking questions at the meeting, Trump did say that it’s a matter of when he sends the National Guard into Chicago, not if.
But it seems the real point of the much-hyped press conference was simply to prove that Trump is still alive, despite what you may have read on social media.
“How did you find out over the weekend that you were dead?” asked Peter Doocy during the Q&A. The Fox News correspondent then explained that he was referring to the viral rumors of Trump’s demise.
Trump claimed, somewhat implausibly, that he was unaware of the posts claiming he was no more. But then he said he had heard the reports that he was in poor health.
“I have heard, it’s sort of crazy, but last week I did numerous news conferences, all successful, they went very well, like this is going very well, and then I didn’t do any for two days and they said, ‘There must be something wrong with him,’” he said. “Biden wouldn’t do them for months. You wouldn’t see him. And nobody ever said there was anything wrong with him and we know he wasn’t in the greatest of shape.”
This prompted forced laughter from Vice-President J.D. Vance and other officials gathered in the Oval Office.
Aside from this denial, Trump did not give any significant updates on his health situation. His hand makeup looked a little better on Tuesday, but it’s clear his big bruise is still there.
So we’ve learned two important things today. First, Trump is still healthy enough to stand up and deliver rants on his usual topics. Second, don’t trust the White House when it promises “exciting news,” as you might wind up watching a bunch of Alabama lawmakers muse about how “space is the ultimate high ground.”
Will Melania Trump appear on the cover of Vanity Fair? The question has been the source of much media gossip this week, after Semafor reported that the magazine’s new global editorial director, Mark Guiducci, “told people he’s potentially interested” in putting the First Lady on the cover as part of a broader effort to woo conservative readers.
Within hours, the Daily Mailreported that Vanity Fair staffers were threatening to revolt if Giuducci followed through with the idea:
“I will walk out the motherf – – – – – – door, and half my staff will follow me,” a mid–level editor told the Daily Mail on Monday, hours after Semafor reported the magazine’s new global editorial director Mark Guiducci was trying to woo Melania to star on his cover.
“We are not going to normalize this despot and his wife; we’re just not going to do it. We’re going to stand for what’s right,” the staffer continued.
“If I have to work bagging groceries at Trader Joe’s, I’ll do it. If [Guiducci] puts Melania on the cover, half of the editorial staff will walk out, I guarantee it.”
“It sickens me,” the staffer added. “Even the idea of it.”
The prospect of unrest at the publication made MAGA world salivate. Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt promised to “buy several [copies] if they would do this, just to prove a point.” And several Trump influencers, including Charlie Kirk and Laura Ingraham, were apparently duped by an obviously fake mock-up of a Melania Vanity Fair cover:
But it seems no one is going to have to have a meltdown or start a new career at Trader Joe’s. It turns out Melania — who is often not seen in public for weeks at a time — is simply too busy to sit for a magazine photo shoot. “Page Six” reported that the First Lady has absolutely no interest in a Vanity Fair cover:
A fashion source familiar with the First Lady’s thinking says she “laughed” at the Vanity Fair request in July and rejected it immediately.
“She doesn’t have time to be sitting in a photo shoot. Her priorities as First Lady are far more important … These people don’t deserve her anyway.”
The First Lady hasn’t said much about what’s on her agenda right now, but she did release a one-minute video this week announcing the Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge. The final judging will take place in June 2026, and it’s unclear if Melania will be personally involved, but perhaps she needs the next nine months to prepare.
As people on the internet who know everything already know, everything Trump says or does is a distraction from something else he doesn’t want you to notice. But in this case, the photo op could have been meant to distractTrump from wanting to go on patrol, since White House advisers may have realized that if the president actually hit the D.C. streets looking for crime — particularly if the patrol was in the same low-to-no-crime areas where most of the federal forces are concentrated —he would be forced to recognize there was no need for a takeover at all, and that everything he believed was a lie.
Or maybe the Secret Service reminded Trump if he did try to do an actual D.C. ride-along, there would be no way to protect him from actual D.C. residents.
Among the many laughably unrealistic images in the original Donald TrumpNFT collection, one stood out: the illustration of the former president in the classic Superman pose, ripping open his dress shirt to reveal a superhero costume underneath. Trump used this image, which was animated to show lasers shooting out of his eyes, to tease a “major announcement” on December 15, 2022 which turned out to be a collection of 45,000 digital trading cards. “America needs a superhero!” Trump proclaimed in the video posted to Truth Social.
For many, this called to mind the report that Trump wanted to wear a Superman shirt when he returned to the White House after being hospitalized for COVID-19 in November 2020. But Trump’s effort to portray himself as the Man of Steel — and encourage others to do so as well — actually goes back decades. Of course, there’s plenty of superhero imagery in politics; leaders including George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Justin Trudeau have jokingly encouraged the Superman comparison. As usual, however, Trump found a way to make it weird. Here, a rundown of the last president’s odd past with the Last Son of Krypton.
Though Donald Trump does not appear to be a fan of the genre in general, he’s made nearly two dozen cameos in comic books over the past three decades. He also served as inspiration for Superman’s archnemesis Lex Luthor in an ’80s reboot of the character, as the Daily Beast reported:
In 1986, DC Comics rebooted the entire Superman mythos in part to better reflect the anxieties and preoccupations of modern America. Instead of a mad scientist, Luthor was re-envisioned as a rich and powerful businessman, an idea hatched by writer Marv Wolfman and realized in the “comics event of the century,” writer and artist John Byrne’s Man of Steel miniseries.
It was a time when anti-corporate public sentiment against real-life Wall Street villains like Michael Milken and Barry Minkow was on the rise (the film Wall Street, featuring the partly Milken-inspired Gordon Gekko, was released one year later). But unsurprisingly, one wealthy ’80s mogul in particular inspired the new Luthor: “Of course, Donald Trump was our model,” Byrne tells The Daily Beast.
Years later, other versions of businessman Lex Luthor became president of the United States — or at least campaigned for the office. In the cartoon series Justice League Unlimited, Luthor admitted to The Question, “My campaign is a farce, a small part of a much larger scheme … Do you know how much power I’d have to give up to be president? … I spent 75 million on a fake presidential campaign, all just to tick Superman off.”
Some believe Trump only ran for president in 2015 to tick off Obama after he mocked the mogul at a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Perhaps, similarly, Trump’s Superman fixation has its roots in being cast as the model for the Man of Steel’s greatest foe.
In a vacuum, this seems pretty innocuous. As New York Times reporter and foremost Trump chronicler Maggie Haberman recalled, Trump’s 50th-birthday party featured a Superman cake.
In an interview shortly after the party, Trump’s then-wife Marla Maples told the Times that she was initially picturing a small and intimate affair, but he wanted “a big blowout.” She put together a party at Trump Tower that featured 400 guests, a Marla-as-mermaid ice sculpture, and, per the Times, a Superman cake:
Then, as the Superman movie theme began to play, the cake was wheeled onto the stage — with all of Mr. Trump’s buildings on it, and a sugar figure of Mr. Trump, dressed like Superman with a money sign on his chest. Ms. [Eartha] Kitt sang “Happy Birthday,” and 600 gold balloons cascaded from the ceiling.
Throughout his career in presidential politics, Trump encouraged his followers to think of him as a superhero. In an October 2015 interview, CNBC’s John Harwood pushed Trump on his grand promises and lack of policy specifics, saying, “But we don’t have Superman presidents!” The mogul replied, “But we will if you have Trump. You watch.”
After Hillary Clinton fell at a 9/11 anniversary event in 2016, the Committee to Restore America super-PAC decided to publicly gloat about Trump’s ostensibly superior physical prowess. The group launched a 55-foot billboard in Times Square featuring Trump as Superman.
“When I was a kid, Superman was my idol because he stood for truth, justice, and the American way, just like Donald Trump,” said tech mogul Dr. Robert Shillman, who donated money for the ad.
During the Trump administration, memes featuring Donald as Superman became popular among the MAGA crowd with the Trump family’s encouragement. One of the weirder examples is this fake Time magazine cover Donald Trump Jr. posted to Instagram in 2017, featuring his dad as an inexplicably bearded Superman.
Ye’s appalling recent remarks have totally overshadowed his weird, rambling 2018 Oval Office soliloquy. But back then, the rapper made headlines when he gushed to Trump about his MAGA hat, “There is something about when I put this hat on that makes me feel like Superman! That’s my favorite superhero. You make a Superman cape for me.”
Trump returning to the White House after being hospitalized for COVID, whipping his mask off, and then heading into the building — though he was possibly still infectious — was one of the most memorable images of his presidency. But it could have been even more shocking, as the New York Timesreported days later:
In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer. He ultimately did not go ahead with the stunt.
The NFT collection wasn’t the only thing keeping the Trump-as-Superman theme alive. During the 2022 midterms, Trump was spotted with a gleeful look on his face as Arizona gubernatorial candidate repeatedly called him “Superman” at a rally, and his Save America super-PAC released “Ultramaga” superhero T-shirts:
A fourth batch of Trump trading cards was released during the last week of August, but you don’t have to throw down $99 per card to see weird images of Trump dressed as Superman. On August 29, the former president posted this poorly photoshopped image of himself as the Man of Steel, with J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr. rounding out the Justice League.
While Trump is literally the inspiration for Superman’s nemesis and his battles against truth, justice, and the American way are well documented, it’s no surprise that he remains invested in pretending he’s an all-powerful hero. Though, it’s possible his Superman fixation is just a cover for a darker delusion.
This piece has been updated to include Trump’s 2024 Truth Social post.
The political career of J.D. Vance has undergone quite the transformation. In 2016 he was fretting to his college roommate that Donald Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” Today the U.S. senator from Ohio is aggressively pro-Trump, and he’s rumored to be one of the top finalists on the VP shortlist (along with Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio, and maybe Tim Scott). But those who believe Vance has excellent odds of becoming Trump’s 2024 running mate are forgetting one very important thing: Vance has a beard, and Trump has a weird aversion to facial hair.
The former U.S. president/beauty-pageant owner puts a lot of stock in who has “the look”; when filling his Cabinet he praised several candidates for being “out of central casting.” And as the Bulwark reported on July 9, it’s likely that in Trump’s mind, a vice-president should not have facial hair.
“J.D. has a beard. But Trump is a clean-shaven guy. He just doesn’t like facial hair,” a Trump confidant told the outlet. “You just never know.”
Trump’s issues with whiskers are well-known. In 2020 he publicly told his son Don Jr. to get rid of his quarantine beard, and John Bolton’s bushy mustache reportedly took him out of the running for secretary of State (in 2018 he became national security adviser, but by then Trump was desperate). Trump is basically a real-life version of Monty Burns shouting at Don Mattingly to “shave those sideburns.” But that solution isn’t going to work for Vance, according to the Bulwark:
So why not shave his face? It’s probably out of the question for Vance because of how young he is and looks. The Ohio senator turns 40 on August 2 and would be the third-youngest vice president to serve. But Trump wants someone who is experienced—or at least looks experienced. And “without the beard, Vance looks like he’s 12,” said another Trump adviser.
So Vance — who admitted it’ll be a “disappointment” if Trump does’t pick him for VP — must have been relieved when Trump denied that his beard is an issue during a July 10 interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio.
“It looks good,” Trump said. “He looks like a young Abraham Lincoln.”
This was generally taken as a “glowing endorsement” of Vance’s look. And sure, to any sane person that’s what it sounds like. But it’s a huge red flag to anyone well-versed in Trump’s bizarre grudges and insecurities .
Trump has a long-running rivalry with Abraham Lincoln. It is a one-sided beef, as the 16th president is dead, and he clearly would not be threatened by Trump even if he weren’t. But on numerous occasions, Trump has pointed to Lincoln as the one possible exception to his claims of being the greatest president of all time.
“I’ve always said I can be more presidential than any president in history except for Honest Abe Lincoln, when he’s wearing the hat,” Trump said at a rally in 2019. “That’s tough, that’s tough. That’s a tough one to beat.”
Trump continued claiming that he’s “always competed” against Lincoln throughout his presidency, and earlier this year he blasted his 19th-century predecessor for failing to use negotiation tactics to prevent the Civil War.
So is it really a good sign for Vance that he reminds Trump of the man he thinks of as his biggest rival? Particularly when Trump has already been publicly warned that Vance could potentially “outshine” him, and even replace him as leader of the MAGA movement?
I’d argue that it’s actually a good indicator that Vance should brace himself for disappointment. Why would Trump pick a running mate who stirs up his deep-seated Lincoln-related insecurities when he could go with Burgum, a guy who most resembles an inoffensive, lesser-known Muppet?
Do you remember how Donald Trump repeatedly used the phrase “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton, even calling for her to be tried, convicted, and sent to jail well after he defeated her in the 2016 presidential election?
According to Donald Trump, you don’t remember any of that.
No, you’re not crazy. And this isn’t aBerenstein Bears thing. The problem is that Trump is now a convicted felon who could potentially be locked up himself (though that probably won’t happen). This is a pretty embarrassing turn of events for a guy who’s been encouraging his supporters’ “Lock her up” chants for years. So in a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Trump decided to simply pretend he had never uttered the phrase himself.
“You famously said, regarding Hillary Clinton, ‘Lock her up.’ You declined to do that as president,” Fox host Will Cain told Trump.
“I beat her,” Trump responded. “It’s easier when you win. And they always said ‘Lock her up,’ and I felt — and I could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing. And then this happened to me.”
President Trump actually couldn’t have ordered law-enforcement officials to lock up Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of State; that’s not how our justice system works. But that’s a minor lie compared to what Trump said next.
“I didn’t say ‘Lock her up,’ but the people said ‘Lock her up, lock her up,” Trump claimed. “Then we won. And I say — and I said pretty openly, I said, ‘All right, come on, just relax, let’s go, we’ve got to make our country great.’”
So it’s still okay to recall Trump supporters chanting “Lock her up.” But please erase from your mind all these examples of Trump himself calling for Hillary’s incarceration, which were compiled by The Atlantic’s David A. Graham:
“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he said in October 2016. “For what she did, they should lock her up,” he said at a rally I attended in Greensboro, North Carolina, a few days later. He used other phrasings at other times. In June 2016, for example, he said, “Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. She has to go to jail,” helpfully adding for the historical record: “I said that.” As he noted in the interview, he eased off the demands once he’d won. But in 2020, running for reelection, he went back to playing the hits. “You should lock her up, I’ll tell you,” he said at an Ohio rally.
And you’re definitely going to want to forget about how Trump was still using the phrase as late as October 2020, saying of Clinton and the Biden family, “Lock them up. You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens.”
I’ll let you take one last look at this video of Trump repeatedly saying “Lock her up” over the years:
But from now on we’re not going to talk about the emperor’s old catchphrase ever again. Sorry, I don’t make the rules — Trump does.
Most Americans see Memorial Day as a time to pay tribute to the U.S. service members who gave their lives for their country, or perhaps fire up the BBQ with friends and family to celebrate the unofficial start of summer, or maybe save some money on a new mattress. According to Google, a lot of Americans also make a point to look up what the “Memorial Day meaning” is. Then there’s Donald Trump.
For years, MAGA’s once and future king has made a tradition of celebrating major holidays — from Christmas to Mother’s Day to Easter — by launching CAPS-littered attacks on his perceived enemies. And if Trump Googled the meaning of Memorial Day on Sunday morning, even the search engine’s bizarrenew AI is unlikely to have answered that the holiday was about “human scum” or a good opportunity to rack up some more defamation damages.
In a Truth Social post, the former president wished a happy holiday to “to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country,” before repeating his attacks on two of the judges in New York who have presided over cases against him and his corporation this year. Trump devoted most of the post, however, to once again defaming E. Jean Carroll, the writer who, according to Carroll — and, last year, a jury in a civil trial — he sexually assaulted in a New York department store in the 1990s, and who has twice successfully sued Trump for defamation, including in January when a jury awarded her well over $80 million in damages.
Trump did not refer to Carroll by name in his post on Sunday, though it was obvious she was the “woman” he mentioned and once again called a liar.
The massive sum the jury awarded Carroll in January — which is Trump is trying to appeal — was largely an effort to deter Trump from further defaming her, but the deterrent lost its effectiveness less than a month and a half later. When he resumed his defamation of Carroll in March, her attorneys indicated they might indeed file another lawsuit. Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan reiterated that point again in response to Trump’s new attack on her client Sunday. “We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today — all options are on the table,” Kaplan said in a statement to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue; Scott Olson/Getty Images
For several years now, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, two of our most volatile rich dudes, have been engaged in an on-again, off-again feud. Trump has dismissed Musk as a “bullshit artist,” and the Tesla–SpaceX–Boring Company CEO has endorsed several of Trump’s political rivals. However, the two men’s anti-Establishment views often align, and when Musk bought Twitter in 2022, Trump celebrated his acquisition of the social-media giant. Musk eventually made good on his promise to reverse Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter (now known as X), but the ex-president mostly stayed off the site, insisting that Truth Social would remain the exclusive home of his social-media ramblings.
So what exactly went wrong between Musk and Trump? Are they back on good terms? And how is the public supposed to follow this drama when one of the participants only posts his “truths” on a site barely anyone uses? Here’s a guide to how it all went down, which we’ll continue to update as long as this chaotic duo keeps at it.
As president, Trump regularly lashed out at CEOs who crossed him, but somehow Musk stayed on his good side even as he repeatedly disparaged Trump’s policies and personality.
Days before the 2016 election, Musk told CNBC that he generally agreed with Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental plans. His assessment of Trump was harsher. “I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy,” Musk said. “He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”
And early in Trump’s presidency, Musk criticized the “Muslim ban.”
Nevertheless, the CEO went on to join two of Trump’s business-advisory councils — only to quit in protest.
In August 2019, Musk said he supported Democrat Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign. That still didn’t keep Trump from heaping praise on the tech billionaire at Davos in January 2020, calling him in a CNBC interview “one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius.” He continued, “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with originally the lightbulb and the wheel and all of these things. And he’s one of our very smart people, and we want to cherish those people.”
In the final year of his presidency, Trump found himself increasingly in agreement with Musk over “Twitter, the moon, and sticking it to the establishment,” as Politico put it. In May 2020, Trump defended Musk’s calls to reopen Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, which had been closed because of COVID restrictions; then he headed to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to watch a SpaceX rocket launch two NASA astronauts. Musk echoed some of Trump’s criticisms of pandemic precautions, adding a new wrinkle to his ongoing drama with Twitter. Per Politico:
From the beginning of the crisis, Musk, the temperamental billionaire leader of SpaceX and Tesla, has frequently questioned mainstream scientific research, reporting and policy on Covid-19, to the point that Twitter was forced to deal with a wave of complaints suggesting the social-media platform remove his tweets for spreading disinformation. He accelerated the proposal of hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure from the backwaters of Bitcoin Twitter discussions into the mainstream, off of two tweets (“maybe worth considering …”), bucked government lockdowns in order to keep his electric cars in production and recently stated that he believed policies designed to keep Americans safe were violating their constitutional rights. As he bluntly tweeted in March: “The coronavirus panic is dumb.”
The announcement of Musk’s deal to buy Twitter prompted speculation that he might let the former president and various other exiles back onto the platform. Sure enough, Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” soon declared that he was against permanent bans in general and Trump’s ban specifically. He said Twitter’s decision to kick Trump off over his January 6 rhetoric was “a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
At this point, Trump had already publicly claimed he was sticking with the flailing social-media network he had barely been using. “Truth Social will be a voice for me,” Trump told Fox News. “And that’s something nobody else can get.”
But he made it clear that he was rooting for the Musk-Twitter alliance. “I think it is good. We want liberty and justice and fairness in our country, and the more we can have open, the better,” Trump said. “I don’t view that as a competition for what I am doing.”
Over the years, Musk has said he’s a registered independent and described himself as “politically moderate” and “somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” But at the All-In tech conference in May 2022, he said Biden’s support for unions and inability to “get a lot done” had driven him to embrace the GOP, though he had mostly voted for Democrats in the past.
“I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats historically,” Musk said. “Like, I’m not sure I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now, this election, I will.”
Although it was unclear whether “this election” referred to the midterms or the 2024 presidential contest, initially this seemed like it could be good news for Trump. A few weeks later, however, the “moderate” tech CEO revealed that the Republican who’d won him over was the Florida governor known for the “Don’t Say Gay” law and for punishing companies that defy him.
Even though Trump initially praised the Musk-Twitter deal, in mid-May he posted on Truth Social, “There is no way Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter at such a ridiculous price, especially since realizing it is a company largely based on BOTS of Spam Accounts. Fake anyone?”
So when Musk’s agreement with Twitter appeared to be falling apart, Trump was eager to do some gloating and settle some political grievances. At a July 9 rally in Anchorage, Alaska, for Republicans Sarah Palin and Governor Mike Dunleavy, he claimed he had predicted the deal wouldn’t happen and accused Musk of lying about voting for him in 2016.
“He said the other day, ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that,’” Trump said. “He told me he voted for me, so he’s another bullshit artist.”
Musk responded in a series of tweets, saying that Trump’s claim was “not true” and that he’s too old to run for president again anyway.
The former president escalated the budding feud on July 12, attacking Musk’s various endeavors in a series of Truth Social posts and claiming he could have made him “drop to [his] knees and beg” when he was in office.
Trump’s “truths” still don’t play nicely with other social-media sites, so Musk responded via another Twitter user’s screenshot of Trump’s post:
On October 28, the morning after Musk officially acquired Twitter, Trump took to Truth Social to wish him well. But he also claimed, dubiously, that his own site has become “somewhat of a phenomena” so it will be his home for the foreseeable future.
While Trump’s tweets were visible again, he refrained from returning to Twitter, claiming that he was perfectly happy on Truth Social.
“Truth Social is through the roof. It’s doing phenomenally well,” he said when asked about his social media intentions. “Truth Social has been very, very powerful, very, very strong, and I’ll be staying there. But I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it.”
Trump also assured his Truth followers, “we aren’t going anywhere.”
Announcing that you’re a fan of the U.S. Constitution used to be innocuous. But in this dark timeline it counts as a political statement.
Musk was clearly criticizing Trump’s Truth Social post from two days earlier, in which he called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, & articles, even those found in the Constitution” to undo Biden’s 2020 win.
On May 24, Ron DeSantis announced he was running for president in an audio stream with Musk on Twitter Spaces. It did not go well. The event was marred by multiple technical issues and failed to answer the fundamental question, “Why should I vote for DeSantis over Trump?”
Trump mocked DeSantis relentlessly on Truth Social and took a few shots at Musk too. For example, he posted what appeared to be a video of a SpaceX rocket labeled “Ron! 2024” falling over and exploding.
As of this writing, it’s the only post Trump has shared on the site since the tweets that got him banned in 2021.
Donald Trump desperately needs money. Elon Musk is absurdly wealthy and loves demonstrating his power. So when the New York Timesreported on March 5 that Trump and Musk had recently met, it seemed like there might be huge consequences for the 2024 election:
Donald Trump, who is urgently seeking a cash infusion to aid his presidential campaign, met on Sunday in Palm Beach, Fla., with Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, and a few wealthy Republican donors, according to three people briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.
… It’s not yet clear whether Mr. Musk plans to spend any of his fortune on Mr. Trump’s behalf. But his recent social media posts suggest he thinks it’s essential that Mr. Biden be defeated in November — and people who have spoken to Mr. Musk privately confirmed that is indeed his view.
Musk has publicly criticized President Biden and his policies multiple times, and he recently posted, “Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a very real disease” in response to a clip of Bill Maher saying he would vote for anyone but Trump in 2024.
But Musk quickly poured cold water on the idea that he’d be funding Trump, writing on X:
On March 12 the Washington Postreported that Trump and Musk communicate more than has been publicly reported — and at one point Trump even offered Musk his flailing social media site. The deal was reportedly floated in the summer of 2023, and Musk declined (possibly because Truth Social is basically a MAGA-y Twitter clone).
When the offer was made in summer 2023, Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, was “trapped in a long-delayed merger process.” But in February 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission signed off on the media company’s merger with a SPAC, and now Trump could potentially make billions if the company goes public.
When contacted by the Post some of the parties involved gave sassy responses that did not address the substance of the report:
When The Washington Post asked Musk about the Truth Social call and his other talks with Trump, Musk responded only that he had “never been to Mar-a-Lago,” Trump’s estate in Palm Beach.
Trump Media & Technology Group did not address any of the facts reported in this story when invited to do so by The Post. In an emailed statement, Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said only, “We heard Trump and Musk were actually discussing buying the Washington Post but they decided it had no value.”
The Trump campaign did not respond at all, but stay tuned. Everything we know about Musk and Trump tells us this won’t be the last word on the subject.
Ivanka Trump at New York State Supreme Court in New York on November 8, 2023. Photo: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Over the past few years, Ivanka Trump has made it very clear that she wants nothing to do with any of the headaches associated with her father Donald Trump’s business and political operations. Ivanka worked in the Trump Organization and then her father’s White House administration for the entirety of her adult life, but she and her husband, Jared Kushner, backed away as his term ended. Then, in November 2022, she skipped her dad’s 2024 campaign announcement and posted a statement online declaring, “I do not plan to be involved in politics. While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena.”
But it turns out she’s not averse to the perks that come with her dad’s political career, like letting his super-PAC cover her legal bills.
Business Insider reviewed Federal Election Commission records and found that Donald Trump’s Save America PAC spent a total of $2.3 million last year for two law firms that solely represented Ivanka:
In 2023, Save America disbursed a total of $1,303,667.11 to the law firm Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders and $1,042,479 to the firm Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel, & Frederick.
Both firms represented Ivanka Trump in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ sprawling lawsuit against the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, his three eldest children, and several executives over its finances. The attorney general’s office alleged that the firm misrepresented its finances to obtain favorable tax, bank-loan, and insurance rates.
The PAC spent another $5.3 million on a law firm that represented Ivanka along with her father, her brothers Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization. None of the suits that incurred the fees were related to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign (unless you subscribe to the idea that every bad thing happening in Trump’s life is the result of political persecution).
Trump founded the Save America PAC days after his 2020 election loss, and repeatedly solicited donated by telling supporters that he needed money for “election defense.” But much of the money Trump collected has gone to covering his legal expenses in various cases that have nothing to do with bogus “election fraud” claims. Save America and MAGA PAC, another political group controlled by Trump, have spent more than $50 million on legal fees, according to Business Insider.
It doesn’t appear that Ivanka really needed PAC donor money to cover her $2.3 million legal bills, as she and Jared have an estimated net worth of over $1 billion. And it certainly seems hypocritical for Ivanka to take money from her father’s political action committee after she dramatically declared that she wants nothing to do with politics. But in her defense, even obscenely wealthy people like free stuff. They essentially drove a dump truck full of money up to her house. She’s not made of stone!
Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
Many people are already getting tired of the Taylor Swift–Travis Kelce discourse, though we still have another 12 days to go until the Chiefs play the 49ers at Super Bowl LVIII. But no one is more frustrated by the tale of Miss Americana and her football prince than Donald Trump. All the talk about the pop star’s staggering popularity reportedly has Trump privately fretting over the possibility that he is not the fairest one of all. And the issue isn’t just that someone is getting more attention than he is; it also seems likely that Swift will support his presidential rival, Joe Biden, again, perRolling Stone:
Behind the scenes, Trump has reacted to the possibility of Biden and Swift teaming up against him this year not with alarm, but with an instant projection of ego. In recent weeks, the former president has told people in his orbit that no amount of A-list celebrity endorsements will save Biden. Trump has also privately claimed that he is “more popular” than Swift is and that he has more committed fans than she does, a person close to Trump and another source with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.
Last month, the source close to Trump adds, the ex-president commented to some confidants that it “obviously” made no sense that he was not named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year — an honor that went to none other than Swift in December.
Trump is famously obsessed with being Time Person of the Year. (While he did actually win this very silly honor in 2016, he later lied about being offered a second title, and had fake Time covers featuring himself in several of his golf clubs). So it’s a safe bet that he’s going to pick a fight with whoever gets the annual Time seal of approval over him.
But Trump’s issues with Swift run deeper. While she initially tried to stay out of politics, she began occasionally speaking out against his policies toward the end of his administration. And in 2020 she endorsed Biden while threatening to vote Trump out:
Earlier this week, the New York Timesreported that Swift is at the top of the Biden reelection campaign’s “wish lists of potential surrogates.” Independent of his relationship with Swift, Kelce has infuriated Trump supporters by starring in advertisements for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine and Bud Light, two of the right’s big culture-war targets.
MAGA World is already having a meltdown over the Swift-Kelce Bowl; various Trump surrogates including Vivek Ramaswamy, Jeanine Pirro, and even the former president’s lawyer, Alina Habba, have gone after the couple in recent days. And according to Rolling Stone, if Swift backs Biden again they plan to wage war against her:
Meanwhile, as Trump has been having a popularity contest with Swift in his own head, others close to him — including GOP operatives, some of his 2024 staff, and Trumpy media figures — have been brainstorming different ways to go after Swift. Since late last year, these Trump allies have repeatedly discussed how to turn the culture-warrior dial up to 11, if she re-endorses Biden this year, the sources recount.
“It would be more fuel thrown on to the culture-war fires,” says an official working on the Trump reelection efforts. “Another left-wing celebrity who is part of the Democrat elite telling you what to think.”
Publicly, members of Trump’s inner sanctum and social circle are already signaling Swift’s prominent position atop their enemies list — a situation that has reached fever pitch now that Swift’s boyfriend will once again be playing in the Super Bowl.
So, to paraphraseThe Dark Knight, let me get this straight. They think that Swift, one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in the world, is so universally beloved that she can swing an election by merely tweeting some positive things about Joe Biden to her 95 million Twitter followers — and their plan is to launch an all-out attack on this person?
