Donald Trump suffered a savage humiliation just days before his birthday. We’ll get to the humiliation in a minute, but first – let’s address the birthday. If you’re just joining us, Trump is celebrating his 80th this weekend – and how else to mark the occasion than by tearing up the White House South Lawn and replacing it with a giant, spider-looking cage in which men will engage in brutal hand-to-hand combat for Trump’s pleasure. In other words, there’s going to be a UFC match outside the White House on Sunday. If that seems weird to you, then cast your mind back a year to when Trump demanded tens of millions of dollars be spent arranging a military parade in his honour to mark his 79th. How else were they going to top that?
Of course, the whole thing screams last days of Rome. And of course, I’ll be in DC watching it all happen so you don’t have to. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, in Trumpworld
- That abject humiliation we were talking about
- Somali World Cup referee denied entry to US
- The BBC defends itself
- Election denial is back, baby
- And a bonus look at one of Trump’s loyal legal army
Here’s what you need to know
In perhaps the most predictable, yet still humiliating news of the last month or so, New Yorkers responded to Donald Trump’s trek to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals series in his home town with gusto.
Maybe it was the fact that the attendance of the President at Madison Square Garden meant fans had to arrive two hours early for the $8,000 a ticket game. Perhaps it was the cancellation of ‘fan-zone’ style big screen parties outside the arena for supporters of the New York Knicks who couldn’t afford the eye-watering ticket price. Or maybe it’s because even when he won the popular vote in 2024, he only got 17% of the vote in New York City.
Either way, the boos that greeted Trump when the jumbotron found him in his box have today been described as “lusty” and “thunderous”.
And the fact that the Knicks lost to rivals the San Antonio Spurs, breaking a THIRTEEN GAME winning streak, probably means he won’t be welcome back at the Garden any time soon.
The World Cup kicks off this week in the US, Mexico and Canada. And for a long time people have been getting nervous about how fans, players and officials from around the world will be treated by the Trump administration. And today we got an early signal of what can be expected when Omar Abdulkadir Artan, a world-class referee was denied entry to the United States. He would have been one of seven African referees chosen for the tournament, and the first Somali to referee a World Cup game. But those hopes were dashed. He was interviewed by border officials for 11 hours, detained for several more and then put back on a flight home. “I had the right papers and everything,” Artan told The New York Times. “I had the right visa.” US Customs and Border Protection said he had been “determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns”, but didn’t go into any more detail.
Trump has repeatedly launched into racist rants about Somalia, calling Somali immigrants “garbage”, and saying their home was “not even a country.” But surely FIFA stepped in to put things right… right? Nah. Course not. FIFA is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and has been informed by authorities that Mr. Artan’s status will not be changed at present,” they said in a statement.
The BBC has reportedly issued a wave of subpoenas, compelling dozens of members of Trump’s inner circle to testify as part of its defence to Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit. According to Bloomberg, 47 subpoenas have been issued to members of Trump’s cabinet, his family and officials at the Department of Justice. They’re said to be looking for answers on the “president’s intent and state-of-mind” ahead of his infamous January 6th speech at the Ellipse. The BBC actually defending itself for once might be a pleasant surprise for some.
Trump today vowed to “respond” to the shooting down of an American Army Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, which he said had been committed by Iran. He said the armed forces had “just” informed him of the incident, and that two crew members are safe and unharmed. “Nevertheless,” he added. “The United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.” It’s not yet clear what form such a “response” would take, but any escalation in military action would likely scupper the fragile ceasefire in the region.
As we predicted last week, Trump and his cronies have been using the fact that California takes a long time to count votes as an excuse to drum up conspiracy theories about election rigging. This peaked in an explosive moment of television on Sunday night, when Trump stropped out of an interview with NBC’s Meet The Press after he was challenged to provide any evidence at all that election rigging had ever taken place – either now in California or in his 2020 defeat. Trump’s ire was directed to the Golden State, where some people had convinced themselves that preposterous reality TV star Spencer Pratt had a chance of winning the Los Angeles Mayor. He was handily knocked out of the running by two democrat candidates, obviously. But in the gubernatorial* race,Trump-backed Republican, former David Cameron lackey and narrative imagineer Steve Hilton managed to squeak into second place, which many thought would undermine Trump’s arguments for fraud. Which would only be an issue if facts were at all important in Trumpworld. Nope, an increasing number of people in Trump’s orbit have either huffed enough of what the President has been brewing for the last six years that they now believe that election fraud is something that actually happens, or – more likely – they’ll still say pretty much anything to please Daddy.
Step forward House Speaker Mike Johnson, who never lets an opportunity go by to enthusiastically agree with whatever nonsense Trump has come up with this week, and who said “everybody knows instinctively something is wrong.” “I’m not saying it’s rigged,” Johnson said. “I’m saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that.” Asked for evidence, Johnson replied: “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it’s impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively, something is wrong here, and that’s a concern.” On Friday First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said federal prosecutors were working with the FBI on “multiple election fraud investigations,” but didn’t get any more specific than that.
* Which means an election for governor. Not just a funny word.
OK, before I go catch a plane, let’s have a talk about First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli. He’s not actually assistant to anyone. There is not US Attorney for the Central District of California. From April until October last year, Essayli was Acting US Attorney for that district – appointed by former US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is allowed to fill vacancies without Senate confirmation for up to 120 days. During his tenure acting up in the big role, he was spectacularly ineffective. Of 38 felony cases brought by him between April and July, only seven secured indictments from a grand jury. We’ve talked about the grand jury process before, but in case you missed it, grand juries are like our Crown Prosecution Service – they decide which police charges have enough merit to go forward to trial. Except that instead of being officials, they’re members of the public drafted in for sort of pre-trial trials. It is incredibly unusual for a grand jury not to return an indictment for trial – not least because grand juries only ever hear the prosecution case, not the defence. Like, 99.99% of grand jury cases return indictments. The old joke is that an American prosecutor could secure an indictment for a ham sandwich.
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Essayli’s running percentage in the top job was 18.42%. And in October, some people started to notice his 120 days had very much expired, and a judge ruled he was serving in the role unlawfully and that he was now disqualified from serving in the role. He has held the title of First Assistant US States Attorney ever since, and still has yet to be Senate confirmed. There is no indication that the Trump administration intends to appoint an actual US State Attorney in the largest legal district in the United States. Why go into so much detail on this? Because this is how Trump is going to try to overturn elections he doesn’t like – by installing incompetent loyalists. And when the state’s checks and balances get in the way, by simply ignoring them.