Instead of taking a break, Trump spent yesterday publicly interfering with another country’s election, deporting people who were mean about Charlie Kirk and threatening to ban journalists from the White House.
Donald Trump must be pretty knackered.
He spent 40 hours in the air and swanning about the Middle East on his Gaza deal victory lap.
A man half his age would probably have taken a day off, but Trump clearly has too much nonsense he wants to accomplish to do that.
So instead he interfered with another country’s election, threatened to upend the World Cup and the Olympics and bombed another boat from Venezuela.
And tonight he’s got a press conference planned with FBI director Kash Patel – which will almost certainly be about his plan to use the Justice Department to carry out revenge against people he considers to have committed wrongs against him during his first term.
After that, he’s hosting a dinner on his newly paved over Rose Garden.
Meanwhile in Trump World:
- He threatened to scrap World Cup games for a pretty spurious reason
- He handed Argentina $20 billion…on one condition
- He threatened to defund New York, and might actually do it
- He had a hissy fit about a TV broadcaster that had the nerve to ask JD Vance questions and demand answers
- Even Fox News won’t sign up to Pete Hegseth’s new rules for journalists
- So Trump threatened to expel the media from the White House
- He deported people for being mean about Charlie Kirk
- He was creepy with a reporter live on air
- Eric bragged about turning the White House into Mar A Lago
- …and there was another airstrike on a Venezuelan boat
Here’s everything you need to know and more…
The invasion
1. Trump threatened to scrap World Cup games if mayor won’t do what he tells them to
Trump has decided Boston might be too “unsafe” to host games in next year’s World Cup, maybe. We’ll have to see.
Boston’s crime rate is fairly moderate compared to other major US cities – in fact, in terms of violent crime it’s one of the safest large cities in the country.
On the other hand, Trump strongly dislikes Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, whom he describes as “radical left”. She is not.
“We could take them away,” Trump said of games in the city that he said were already sold out.
“If somebody is doing a bad job, and if I feel there’s unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni – the head of FIFA who’s phenomenal – and I would say, “Let’s move into another location” and they would do that.”
Trump meant FIFA head Gianni Infantino. He said Infantino “wouldn’t love to do it, but he’d do it very easily.”
The president didn’t offer specifics, but suggested that crime threats were hurting Boston and that his administration could solve those.
He also suggested he could do the same with the Olympics – though we can’t see the IOC putting up with these kind of shenanigans. FIFA? Sure.
Argentina
2. Trump gave Argentina a $20 billion bailout on one condition
Trump has approved a $20 billion bailout to prop up Argentina’s peso, saying the assistance is to help “a great philosophy take over a great country”.
That great philosophy, he clarified is MAGA, as interpreted by President Javier Milei – the chainsaw guy – who visited the White House last night in person to pick up the cheque from the bank of dad.
“He’s MAGA all the way,” Trump told reporters at the top of a working lunch.
Miles faces crucial midterm elections later this month that will be a referendum on his policies – and the polls are not looking good for him.
“Victory [for Milei] is very important,” Trump said. “Your poll numbers I hear are pretty good. I think they will be better after this.”
He added: “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.”
Which might appear to some to be the United States openly interfering in the elections of a foreign nation, and threatening retribution to its people if it doesn’t support its favoured candidate.
Of course, the US has interfered in other countries’ elections for decades, but usually they get the CIA to do it and at least pretend they’re not.
3. And New York could go the way of Argentina…
Trump outright threatened to pull whatever funding for New York City the White House controls if mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani wins the election on November 6th.
Mamdani is on the left, which of course has led Trump to brand him a communist, which he isn’t.
“The funding for New York, and for every place, comes through the White House,” he said.
“And I’m very generous, and I was always very generous with New York. But I wouldn’t be generous to a communist that’s gonna take the money and throw it out the window.”
This is going to be a big story when it happens.
Freedom of speech
4. Trump had a hissy fit at ABC
Trump flat out refused to take a question from ABC News at the dinner, immediately turning to Brian Glenn of Real America’s Voice – who happens to be in a relationship with MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Green, who asked a gushing softball question.
“You’re ABC fake news,” he said, as cabinet ministers both sides of him smirked with glee. “I don’t take questions from ABC after what you did with Stephanopoulos to the Vice President of the United States. I don’t take questions from ABC fake news.”
5. Here’s why he had a hissy fit at ABC
Explaining his animosity to ABC, and specifically anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump said: “JD [Vance] had a very nasty person interviewing him, and we can’t let that happen. Just is inappropriate to cut off a highly respected Vice President of the United States mid-sentence”
This happened on Sunday, which is my day off, so in case you missed it, here’s what actually happened:
Stephanopoulos asked JD Vance a pretty reasonable question. In September 2024, Border czar Tom Homan was recorded by the FBI accepting $50,000 from an undercover agent, allegedly in return for favours. Stephanopoulos asked whether he gave the money back.
Vance, as you’ll see from the clip below, obfuscated. Instead of answering the question he repeatedly said Homan “did not take a bribe” and that he did not “do something illegal”, then tried to pivot to the shutdown.
To be honest, he let him go on with his nonsense for far longer than I would have.
But then, Stephanopoulos wrapped up the segment, noting that Vance did not answer the question, and went to a break.
And just before the feed cut, you could hear Vance trying to get the last word: “No…I said…”
6. US revoked visas for people who were mean about Charlie Kirk on Twitter
Trump last night held an event on the Rose Garden patio to award Charlie Kirk with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Kirk was famously fond of free speech, and like him or loathe him, his whole schtick was inviting people who disagreed with him to do so in public.
So one wonders what Kirk would have thought about the other thing Trump did in his name last night – revoking the visas of six people – in the country legally – who the White House decided had been mean about the right wing influencer following his assassination.
The State Department says it had determined they should lose their visas after reviewing their social media posts and online clips about Kirk.
On one hand, the things they wrote about Kirk’s death were genuinely distasteful and unpleasant. On the other hand, it was all almost certainly protected speech under the Constitution’s first amendment.
The six people who had their visas revoked were from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa. They were not identified.
7. Every news organisation rejects Pete Hegseth’s rules for reporters (except one)
Every news organisation that covers the Pentagon has refused to sign up to Pete Hegseth’s rules for reporters, which ban them from seeking or publishing any information that hasn’t been explicitly sanctioned for release by the “Department of War”.
(Except one, One America News, which isn’t really a news outlet.)
The Associated Press, New York Times and even Newsmax have refused to agree to the policy, saying it threatens to punish them for routine news gathering protected by the First Amendment.
Most crushingly for Hegseth, Fox News – his former employer – has also refused to sign up to the rules.
Trump gave Hegseth his full backing, saying he thought the press is “very dishonest” and said he could see why the former Fox News weekend host is “bothered” by the press access to the Pentagon.
“It bothers me to have soldiers and, you know, even high-ranking generals walking around with you guys on their sleeve,” he added.
8. Trump threatened to expel the media from the White House
Trump suggested he might move the White House press corps out of the building saying, “You’re lucky I’m president because we could move them very easily across the street.”
It is unclear how Trump’s treatment of the media, refusing to answer questions from outlets who are critical of his administration, berating and belittling them in public, branding them enemies of the people, slapping their parent companies with frivolous lawsuits and using broadcast regulators to strong-arm them into favourable coverage, should make them feel “lucky”.
He added: “They used to be there. They would have more room. We have a beautiful, nice space. You could sit all by yourselves and have fun. Instead, you walk around the White House talking to anybody that can breathe.”
Also…
9. Trump got creepy with a female reporter
Nobody has more resect for women than Trump does, he keeps saying.
And yet in the last few days he’s been acting particularly unpleasantly around women.
I mean, moreso than usual.
Leering at them. Publicly commenting on their appearance – even with a fellow world leader.
And last night, a woman reporter was trying to ask him a question at the end of the Argentina dinner gaggle, and he turned to JD Vance, laughed and said: “I just like to watch her talk.”
He turned back to the reporter, a professional doing her job and trying to hold the most powerful man in the world to account, and said: “Good job. Thank you darling.”
10. Eric brags about turning the White House into Mar a Lago
Eric Trump, the President’s adult son, has a book out. I haven’t read it, but it’s called UNDER SIEGE: My family’s fight to save our nation, and according to the publishers Simon and Schuster, contains “surprising and gripping moments throughout his life and career”.
So of course, Fox News went to Mar A Lago to interview him about it. And during the chat, he took host Steve Doocy out into the grounds.
During the chinwag they toured the ground of the Florida resort, during which Doocy pointed across the way to the “beach club”, where Trump is fond of spending evenings glad-handing and playing music for guests.
“Those are the exact same umbrellas at the Rose Garden,” Eric said with a smirk.
Regular readers will recall that Trump has been gradually transforming the White House into a mirror of Mar A Lago, starting by paving over the historic Rose Garden and installing chairs, tables and umbrellas – which we pointed out at the time were identical to those at the beach club.
And Eric revealed the mirroring didn’t stop there – remember those two massive flagpoles Trump was so jazzed about a few months ago.
“The beautiful flag pole right over there,” he said. “Exact same flag pole we have at the White House.
“I got a call from my father, he said, honey, I need two great flag poles, I want to donate them to the White House. We’re very happy to have the same Mar A Lago flagpoles on the south and north grounds now.”
11. Trump announced another Venezuela boat strike…
Donald Trump last night announced the US had killed six more people in a strike on an alleged ‘drug boat’ off the waters of Venezuela.
It’s the fifth deadly strike the Trump administration has ordered in the Caribbean, the legality of which is increasingly dubious.
The administration claims it is treating the people on the boats as “unlawful combatants” who must be met with military force.
But critics on both sides are starting to complain that these look a little (a lot) like extrajudicial executions which might violate US and international law.