A roundup of everything that happened in Trump World in the last 24 hours that you need to know about – including brags about election rigging and JD Vance getting shouted at
Donald Trump hasn’t been seen in public for a couple of days now.
But he’s still been banging on about his plan to rig the upcoming elections – and falsely claiming the one he lost was rigged.
Meanwhile, JD Vance revealed his “icebreaker” with Zelensky, which sounds a bit like a threat to us.
And speaking of JD, someone shouted something very, very unpleasant at him while he was visiting a Shake Shack.
Here’s everything that went on in Trump World in the last 24 hours that you need to know about.
Everything is fine.
1. Donald Trump boasts his plan to rig elections is so good that ‘politics is over’
Donald Trump wrote on Truth social that his plan to rig next year’s midterm elections is going so well that ‘politics is over’.
He boasted about his wizard wheeze to redraw the map of Texas to create five more seats he can win – despite being the second most unpopular President in history (narrowly beating himself, first time round). More on this later.
And he also bragged about his plan to insist on in-person, paper ballots for the midterms, which will do two things.
Firstly, banning postal votes and insisting people vote in person will create opportunities for the administration to post ICE agents near polling stations to intimidate people. Mark my words, this will happen and it will suppress turnout.
And insisting on hand-counted paper ballots weaponises uncertainty. A messy, drawn-out counting process allows him to question every lost ballot, endlessly pursuing things through the courts and slow-playing the result. He will declare the Republicans winners on the night whatever happens.
So can he insist on the above changes? Well, legally, probably not.
Legal authority over elections resides with the states. He can pressure states to change their voting methods – he’s even tried to do this with Democrat-run states by threatening to deny them disaster relief funding.
But then, when has something being legal ever bothered Donald Trump?
2. He demanded the release of a supporter jailed for tampering with voting machines
Tina Peters, a former election official, who last August was convicted of tampering with voting machines in the 2020 election, is serving nine years in prison.
Republican Peters, 68, helped breach the election computer systems in Mesa County, Colorado, and allowed a man affiliated with Mike Lindell, the pillow magnate, election denier and serial conspiracy theorist, to access them.
But despite her being tried by a grand jury, and convicted by a jury of her peers, Trump this morning demanded her release.
“FREE TINA PETERS, a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians, including the big Mail-In Ballot supporting the governor of the State,” Trump wrote, none of which is true.
He went on, again falsely: “Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election.”
He added: “If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
Trump can’t pardon her, because she was convicted of state crimes, not federal crimes.
READ MORE: Donald Trump demands release of supporter jailed for tampering with voting machines
3. Did JD Vance try to provoke Zelensky into another Oval Office row?
Volodymyr Zelensky’s second visit to the White House on Monday appeared to clear the low bar of not ending up in an Oval Office meltdown.
But from how JD Vance tells it, not for want of trying.
In an interview last night, JD Vance claimed he had an “icebreaker” moment with Zelensky, telling him: “Mr. President, so long as you behave, I won’t say anything.”
Which certainly could be an icebreaker. It sounds a bit more like a threat though. Or even a deliberate attempt to provoke a world leader.
He went on to say Europe should “carry the burden” and take the “lion’s share” of the responsibility for safeguarding Ukraine.
And Defence Undersecretary for Policy, Eldridge Colby said last night that American involvement in future peacekeeping missions would be “minimal.”
READ MORE: JD Vance admits provocative words he said to Volodymyr Zelensky at tense White House visit
4. Vance, Hesketh and Miller drowned out at weird Washington photo op
Speaking of JD Vance, he, along with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump’s Renfied, Stephen Miller, were loudly heckled by a large group of protest as they held a weird photo op in Washington’s Union Station.
Vance said they were there to congratulate troops who have been patrolling the station, a very clean and pretty safe part of the city, with a small, new shopping mall and lots of chain restaurants.
Just 32 actual crimes were reported in the area around the station in the last year, five of them violent.
Compare that to the same radius around (also relatively safe) Dupont Circle in the same period, which had 119 crimes reported, 11 of them violent, and you start to wonder why the military were posted there, other than because thousands of people travel through it every day, making the intimidating military presence very visible.
Also, Union Station is literally the headquarters of the US equivalent of the British Transport Police – the Amtrak Police – so they are not short on law enforcement officers hanging around the place.
Nevertheless, the group, which for some reason included Miller, a deputy chief of staff – not normally a public facing role – took some National Guardsmen to Shake Shack for some burgers.
But asked why the troops were at Union Station at all, Vance claimed: “Crime is actually extremely high here at Union Station. You have vagrants. You have the chronically homeless, you have the mentally ill who harass, who threaten violence, who attack families and they’ve done it for far too long.”
While it’s true that Union Station, like all train stations, tends to be somewhere homeless people congregate, there’s no evidence to support the rest of Vance’s claims – certainly no moreso than other parts of the city.
Anyway, they turned up, and were largely drowned out by people shouting “Free DC”, “troops off our streets” and booing.
One creative and very rude gentleman even shouted “couch f***er” at JD.
5. Stephen Miller got even weirder than usual
Stephen Miller, who again, for some reason, was also there, ended up going on a lengthy rant about protesters being “90 years old”, “elderly white hippies”, communists and having no connection to the city.
None of which was true. Washington DC’s permanent residents and voters famously skew about 90% Democrat. (Seriously, they voted for Harris by 90.28% to Trump’s 6.47% in 2024)
This was just the people who live there.
But here’s his rant, it’s pretty funny.
6. Judge says Trump’s move to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts is a ‘diversion’
A Federal Judge last night denied Trump’s petition to have transcripts from grand jury evidence from the case against Jeffrey Epstein unsealed, declaring it a “diversion” – and saying the government already had plenty of files it could release.
New York Judge Richard Herman became the third federal judge to deny such a petition relating to dead paedophile Epstein and his sex-trafficker ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
He said in his decision that the information available in the grand jury transcripts “pales in comparison to the Epstein investigative information and materials in the hands of the Department of Justice”.
And he (accurately) described Trump’s pretence at “transparency” as a “diversion.”
“The government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein file,” he wrote.
“By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be a ‘diversion’ from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession,” he added. “The grand jury testimony is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conduct.”
7. Backlash against plan to ‘erase slavery’ from US history
Trump’s plan to force museums to include less material about how bad slavery was has met the world’s most predictable backlash.
Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, said on Twitter that Trump was “trying to ERASE slavery from US history.”
And Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern said the move was as “outrageous and un-American.”
He added: “If Trump thinks slavery wasn’t bad, he clearly needs to spend more time in a museum.”
The Trump administration’s purge of exhibits in Washington’s Museum of African American History and Culture that don’t support his worldview appears to already be underway.
Trump signed an order in March demanding museums get rid of “divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”
And in April, the Smithsonian started reviewing, and in some cases quietly removing items from its museums and returning them to donors.
Among the items returned was a bible carried during a civil rights protest and a hymn book owned by Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery and gained international acclaim as an Underground Railroad operator, abolitionist, Civil War spy and nurse, and suffragist.
The museum insisted at the time that the returns were nothing to do with the White House.
An official Trump administration Twitter account last night posted an image of an infographic created by the museum in 2020 that described “white culture” in the US, as evidence that the Smithsonian museums are “out of control.”
The museum acknowledged that they were wrong to publish the infographic, withdrew it and apologised. Five years ago.
8. Is everything alright, mate?
Donald Trump, 79, had no public events on Wednesday, appearing only in a couple of photos.
He was in the background of a photo of Marco Rubio signing former restaurant chain CEO Andy Pudzer in as the new ambassador to the EU.
DC Attorney and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro posted a few snaps of him defacing another bit of the White House, but it’s unclear whether they were actually taken yesterday.
Again, today, there are no public events scheduled for the President.
And on Tuesday night, when he phoned into the Mark Levin Show on (where else) Fox News, he got a little confused about his “peace deals.”
He brokered a deal between feuding Armenia and Azerbaijan.
But in the interview, he referred to them as “Aberbaijan” and Albania, neither of which is right.
On Monday, during his meeting with European leaders he appeared confused, and couldn’t see Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, who was sitting right in front of him.
He also referred to the “Democratic Republic of the Condo” during the same meeting.
Donald Trump is the oldest man ever to be inaugurated as President.
9. Texas passes its election rigging map
Texas inevitably passed its new law, redrawing the map to make it easier for Republicans to win five more seats in the House, as part of Trump’s plan to rig the mid-term elections.
But it’s probably going to be cancelled out as California passes a retaliatory redistricting plan – a law golden boy Gavin Newsom has named the “Election Rigging Response Act”.
They’ll need to be approved two thirds of the California senate, which will almost certainly happen this afternoon, then by voters in a special election on November 4.
More Republican-led states, including Indiana, Missouri and Ohio, are under pressure from Trump to do their own redistricting.
Last night, Barack Obama broke his silence and rowed in behind Newsom’s effort.
Over the long term, we shouldn’t have political gerrymandering in America, just a fair fight between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s got better ideas,” he wrote.
“But since Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House and gerrymandering in the middle of a decade to try and maintain the House despite their unpopular policies, I have tremendous respect for how Governor Newsom has approached this.
“He’s put forward a smart, measured approach in California, designed to address a very particular problem at a very particular moment in time.”
10. Well, this is gross
According to documents seen by the Washington Post, the Trump administration has been pursuing hospitals to force them to reveal sensitive and private information belonging to young transgender patients.
Court documents show they’ve been demanding the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia reveal emails, Zoom recordings, “every writing or record of whatever type” doctors have made, voicemails and text messages on encrypted platforms dating to January 2020, billing documents, communication with drug manufacturers and data such as patient dates of birth, Social Security numbers and addresses.
This was before any states passed any laws banning any gender treatment of minors.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she plans to pursue “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology”.
Whether you agree with that or not, it’s unclear how this could be achieved by demanding private details of their patients.