On top of his increasingly messy and stubbornly unending war, Donald Trump has had a really bad few days.
Bad enough was when his wife, first lady Melania, made a rare, barely announced broadcast from behind the presidential podium at the White House to deny she had ever had a relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which only served to remind the watching public that her husband did.
As Sean O’Grady pointed out, Melania’s intervention in the Epstein scandal “wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card for 2026, least of all that of her husband ‘Daa-nald’, as she calls him, enchantingly”. So why did she do it? “Quite gratuitously, she invites us to reread the true account of how she met Daa-nald in her autobiography. Anything to help book sales, I suppose.”
Then, Trump’s last remaining friend in the European Union, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, was kicked out of office. In his analysis, Ben Judah said that “Hungarian voters have risen to the occasion to defeat not just an idea and a model that fascinates both Trump and Putin, but the very vassalisation they wish to impose”.
Doing his best to distract from such negativity, Trump started a feud with the American pope – which went as badly as you might expect. Describing Leo XIV as “weak” and “terrible” (“I’m not a fan”), he also posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Messiah-like figure, descending from the heavens in white and red robes, hand on the head of a sick man.
“In more uncharitable times, if someone declared himself to be Jesus Christ, there was a good chance that room would be found for him in an asylum,” noted David Aaronovitch. “These days, he is more likely to end up as president of the United States.”
It was only when a mass of Catholics – the Maga-supporting ones, especially – whispered “blasphemy” and called out the image as offensive, Trump deleted it, saying he thought it showed him as a doctor, and blamed the “fake news” for any confusion.
But you know your stock price is tumbling fast when Rachel Reeves thinks it safe to have a pop. On a visit to Washington, the chancellor said it had been a “mistake” for Trump to start a war with Iran, “folly” not to have an exit strategy, and that she was “very frustrated” and “angry” with President Trump. Which, in the week that a Pret’s ham sandwich became a salutary reminder of how Britain’s economy is in a pickle – almost makes you feel sorry for the daft old warmonger.
On Sunday, our leader column called vice-president JD Vance’s Islamabad peace talks “a failure on all fronts”. Trump must have come to the same conclusion, for, after having again declared peace, he announced a military blockade of the already blockaded Strait of Hormuz.
Somewhere, in a wing of the White House that hasn’t yet been bulldozered, the gold leaf is really coming off that Fifa Peace Prize. Until next week.
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