Meanwhile RFK Jr was back on the mad conspiracy theories, Elon Musk took style tips from Timmy Mallett and Karoline Leavitt welcomed renowned far-right conspiracy theorists into the White House
Donald Trump last night denied he’d made any mistakes in the first 100 days back in office.
But he said parents might have to cut down on their kids toys because of his tariffs. No biggie.
Meanwhile RFK Jr was back on the mad conspiracy theories, Elon Musk took style tips from Timmy Mallet and chatted about sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and Karoline Leavitt welcomed renowned far-right conspiracy theorists into the White House to hurl softball questions about Obama.
Here’s a roundup of the wild and unhinged things that Trump and his team of very fine people did overnight.
READ MORE: MIKEY SMITH: How Americans can remove Donald Trump from office if he keeps getting more unhinged
1. RFK Jr spouted a wild false conspiracy theory about vaccines
RFK Jr, the most famous American nephew since Donald Duck – who coincidentally is vastly more qualified to run America’s health system – used a speech last night to push an entirely untrue conspiracy theory about vaccines.
The roadkill-bear-loving Health Secretary claimed the MMR vaccine contains “aborted foetus debris”, which it does not.
Jr, who insists he isn’t an anti-vaxxer, despite manifestly being one, has presided over an outbreak of Measles in the US the likes of which has not seen in decades.
Asked to clarify his remarks, he said: “There are populations in our country like the Mennonites in Texas, were most afflicted, and they have religious objections to the vaccination … because the MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted foetus debris and DNA particles. So they don’t want to take it.”
He’ll be doubtless glad to hear that he can go back to the Mennonites in Texas and tell them that they needn’t worry, because the MMR vaccine doesn’t contain any aborted foetus debris.
MMR is one of a handful of vaccines that is grown using “foetal cells”.
But these cells are lab grown, and based on cells obtained from two elective terminations that happened in the 1960s. No further sources of actual human foetal material has been needed since then.
Also, there’s an obvious (to most) distinction between something being grown in a foetal cell, and something “containing foetal matter”.
The Vatican has said that where no other option is available, Catholics should take vaccines made in this way, because the protection of the child is sufficient that it is “morally justified”.
Even the (checks notes) Mennonite church’s national top health person, Duncan Smith, wrote in March that while the church opposes mandatory vaccination, they don’t oppose MMR on principle – and believe “God calls us to act in the best interests of our neighbour.” (Matthew 5-7)
The church “does not request vaccine exemption for our members on behalf of our religious beliefs” and adds: “Vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration have been proven to be safe and the most effective way to prevent measles.”
2. Trump doesn’t think he’s made any mistakes, despite some pretty major u-turns
Phoning into a Town Hall event for online news network News Nation, Trump was asked for the biggest mistake he thought he’d made in his first 100 days.
He gave exactly the answer you’d expect him to: “That’s the toughest question I can have, because I don’t believe I’ve made mistakes. We’re in a transition period, I think you’re going to see tremendous economic victories over the next period of a year, like far greater than ever imagined.”
He didn’t mention having performed the biggest u-turn in history, pausing his eye-watering tariffs for 90 days to avoid a meltdown of the global financial markets.
3. Trump tells Americans they’ll be able to afford fewer toys for their kids
Trump attended a meeting of his Cabinet yesterday, which quickly descended into appointees telling their dear leader how great he is for various reasons.
But in the Q&A that followed, Trump made a startling admission to the American people – the biggest consumers of goods in the world – that they won’t be able to buy their kids as many toys.
He said China was having “tremendous difficulty” after his tariffs kicked in because “their factories are just not doing business.”
He went on: “Somebody said ‘oh the shelves are going to be open…’
“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls.
“And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”
Not for the first time, the New York Post has absolutely nailed it…
4. He said any stock market turmoil in the first SIX MONTHS of his presidency was the fault of…you know who
Biden. Of course it’s Biden. Who else would it be?
The Donald has been shouting at anyone who would listen that the dreary quarterly economic figures that came out yesterday were Biden’s fault, despite Trump being in office for all but 20 days of the period.
And he’s getting his excuses in early for the next three months.
“This is Biden,” he said. “And you could even say the next quarter is Biden, because it doesn’t happen on a daily or hourly basis.”
No, it happens on a quarterly basis, and he was President (or President-elect) for both of those quarters.
READ MORE: MIKEY SMITH: 42 wild and unhinged moments from Donald Trump’s first 100 days back in the White House
5. He invited far-right conspiracy theorists into the White House
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, apparently tiring of being asked proper questions by professional reporters trying to hold her and the Trump administration to account, has this week been holding daily “briefings” exclusively for far-right MAGA social media influencers.
These “briefings”, as you might expect, have been half-hour long exercises in blowing smoke – asking the Press Secretary how she manages to be so awesome, how the President manages to be so awesome, and exactly how great America is going to be again.
They’ve been so dreadfully devoid of news so far that I’ve resisted the urge to include them in these roundups. But last night the invited gaggle included a fella known as “Dom Lucre” – real name Dominick McGee – who was banned from Twitter after posting an image of child sexual abuse and torture while pushing a nonsense conspiracy theory that the Obamas murdered their former personal chef.
Elon Musk personally stepped in and reinstated McGee’s account – after the offending picture, a screenshot of a notorious abuse video of a toddler made by an Australian paedophile, was removed.
And now, even as the Associated Press is being banned from some events for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico by its made up name, Pizzagate and QAnon-promoting McKee has been welcomed in. Front row.
The tough question he had for Leavitt?
He wanted to know whether the White House would be investigating “Barack Hussain Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton” to be investigated for “any of the wrongdoings they might have done.”
He didn’t make any specific allegations, but Leavitt said the question was “refreshing.”
I watched the whole event, and the most striking thing about it was how few questions there were about what the current administration is doing, and how many there were about how terrible previous administrations had been. Weird that.
6. Elon Musk channelled Timmy Mallett and told a joke
Sat at the end of the cabinet table, Elon Musk continued his campaign to “legalise comedy” by putting on two Trump hats and making a joke.
“They say I wear a lot of hats,” he said. “Even my hat has a hat.”
Hilarious.
The last person we can remember wearing two hats on television was 80s kids TV presenter Timmy Mallett, who we recall on Wac-a-day encouraging viewers to wear two baseball caps, one on top of the other.
Mallet referred to the trend as “twin peaks”, which is dramatically funnier than Musk’s joke.
Other Mallet inspired trends we half remember, and would love to see Musk try out in a cabinet meeting include rolling up a single trouser-leg (not a gang thing, we don’t think), odd shoes and, of course, the wacky plaster.
READ MORE: How Donald Trump turned the White House into a tacky gold palace full of trinkets in 100 days
7. Pam Bondi claimed Trump had personally saved the lives of three quarters of Americans
Pam Bondi, the Attorney General was another Cabinet Member called upon to expose the Donald’s greatness to the viewing public.
But we can’t help but think she might have slightly overdone the numbers this time.
She claimed Trump’s tougher border controls had stopped 3,400 tonnes of fentanyl coming into America in the last 100 days.
“Which saved,” she said – before turning to pre-emptively berate reporters in advance for critically reporting the absolute guff she was about to pronounce… “Are you ready for this media? Which saved 258 million lives.”
For the record, there are roughly 340 million people in the United States.
Pam needn’t have worried. We’re pretty sure if three-quarters of them had dropped dead in the space of three months, the media would have reported it.
8. Trump let Elon Musk “stay over” in the White House’s famous Lincoln Bedroom
Speaking of the DOGEfather, he’s done a group sit-down interview with a dozen journalists, in which he admitted to having “stayed over” in the famous Lincoln Bedroom, which still features furniture installed by First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln dating back to the 1860s.
But he insists it was Trump’s idea.
“We’ll be on Air Force One, and Marine One, and he’ll be like, ‘Do you want to stay over?’ And I’m like, ‘sure,'” Musk said.
“He’ll actually call, like late at night, and say, like, ‘Oh, by the way, make sure you get some ice cream from the kitchen.'”
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9. Musk’s office isn’t great, but it’s big enough to play Diablo
Musk’s White House office, which he expects to keep despite “stepping back” from day-to-day work on DOGE to try and stop the bleeding at his day job, Tesla, is apparently tiny and has just one window.
The window itself has no view and looks out over an air conditioning system: “Which is fine, makes it harder to shoot me …Not a good line of sight.”
But he claims to have “the largest computer monitor in the White House”, on which he sometimes plays Diablo and Path of Exile.
Cool, man.
10. The “$2 trillion” savings isn’t going to happen
Now, there’s been some re-writing of history here. In recent weeks, there’s been some reporting that DOGE’s target for government savings had been downgraded from the $1 trillion promised before the election, down to $150 billion.
Musk is now denying this, saying the $150 billion was just what had been “saved” so far, and $1 trillion was still the target.
“I think it’s possible to do that, but there’s a long road to go… It’s really difficult,” Musk said. “It’s sort of, how much pain is, you know, the Cabinet and this Congress willing to take? Because it can be done, but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.”
The other problem is, the original promise wasn’t $1 trillion, it was “at least $2 trillion.”
Of course, the pledge was meaningless. Because the entire US discretionary budget was $1.8 trillion in 2024, so the only way of achieving $2 trillion in savings would be to make cuts to defence and pensions.
And good luck with that.
11. Musk says he hasn’t fired as many people as he would have liked
We’ve been writing for a while about Musk’s insane voluntary redundancy emails – offering everyone on the government payroll an enhanced buyout offer by basically replying to an email.
Turns out, they’ve not been as successful as he would have liked.
Only 1% of the workforce has so far been fired, with a further 80,000 taking the voluntary buyouts.
That’s dramatically fewer than the “hundreds of thousands” he expected to take up the offer.
Asked for his biggest regret, Musk said he prefers to think of them as “better decisions could have been made with the benefit of hindsight.”
He added: “In the grand scheme of things, I think we’ve been effective. Not as effective as I’d like ‒ I mean, we could be more effective, but we’ve made progress.”
