Donald Trump's week started a lot sooner than expected. He signed off last Saturday night, expecting a nice easy weekend, a couple of fancy dinners and a clear run up to King Charles' arrival on Monday morning. But that night, while a mind reader was doing close-up magic for him and the first lady, shots rang out in the ballroom of the Hilton hotel in Washington DC. A third attempt on Trump's life was apparently underway and was quickly thwarted by the hard working police, security and secret service agents who watch over him every day.
Perhaps because the King's visit was so momentous, even an attempted assassination wasn't enough to knock the Trump juggernaut off the road this week. The few days Charles and Camilla spent in DC were widely applauded as a diplomatic triumph. Sadly, the rest of the week wasn't quite that simple.
1. What if Trump's feud with Jimmy Kimmel is really about Mickey Mouse?
There's nothing funny about the attempt on Trump's life that happened last weekend. However, one amusing aspect is how quickly Trump's MAGA faithful rallied around to use it as evidence for why his vanity ballroom needs to be built, even though it's going to be about half the size of the place the White House Correspondents dinner was held, and there are already loads of secure venues that size in DC.
Melania Trump got very upset about a joke Jimmy Kimmel told on his show a couple of days beforehand. Melania, and later Trump, claimed this was an incitement to violence, which it obviously isn't. It's a joke about Trump being old and Melania being significantly less old. We know it's not an incitement to violence because Trump made pretty much the same joke in front of King Charles on Tuesday.
Trump has continued through the week to demand ABC and its parent company Disney sack Kimmel, which they have not done. Meanwhile, America's broadcast regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, is forcing Disney to re-apply for its broadcast licences early, an unprecedented move which looks a lot like retaliation.
But is this actually all about him not liking Jimmy Kimmel? Or is it about Disney being the last major media corporation that's refusing to bend the knee to him? Paramount Skydance, which owns CBS and is soon to own CNN, is hosting dinners in his honour and refashioning CBS to be nicer to him. Amazon bankrolled the Melania movie and is talking about bringing back the Apprentice with Don Jr. Even Apple's Tim Cook turned up to the Oval Office with a massive gold trinket. But aside from a $15 million legal settlement back in 2024, Disney has done basically nothing in public to try and curry his favour, and he hates that.
The resistance over Kimmel, even as their broadcast licences are under threat, makes Disney the only big American media company who have come under pressure from Trump and decided that the embarrassment and brand damage from censoring themselves to make this giant man baby happy is much worse than any financial damage he could inflict. For that, we say long live the house of mouse.
2. The King did his best... but Putin did his worst
Aside from all the pomp and ceremony, the King's visit to the US was a masterclass in diplomacy. He was flattering to Trump in person, yet still sent some barely coded messages of disapproval on his America First policy, on the environment and on his authoritarian tendencies in his speech to congress. The King also made very clear that America should have Ukraine's back.
It's hardly surprising that almost the second Charles and Camilla had got on the plane to Bermuda, Trump got a call from an old friend. We only know what was discussed in the most basic terms, but it doesn't sound like Putin's position on Ukraine has changed. He's still pouring guff in Trump's ear about the "root causes of the war" needing to be addressed, which is Putin for "Ukraine isn't a real country, it's a region of Russia." Trump appears to have been brought entirely back to heel, because the most powerful man in the world at any given moment is the last person who spoke to Donald Trump.
3. Here's a refreshing moment of honesty from Donald Trump
Trump was asked if there were any changes planned for his personal security, particularly if he was going to start wearing a bulletproof vest. Trump pooh poohed this idea, saying: "I don't know if I can handle looking 20 pounds heavier." A rare moment of honesty.
4. Keep an eye on Comey
This week Donald Trump has been using the US legal system to persecute his enemies again. This time, it's the return of James Comey, who was his FBI director in his first term, whom he fell out with so spectacularly that they made a TV miniseries about it. Comey posted a picture on Instagram with the caption "86" and "47". To normal people, "86" is restaurant slang for "to get rid of" or "remove," and 47 refers to Trump, the 47th president. But nearly a year after he posted the picture, acting attorney general Todd Blanche announced a grand jury had secured an indictment against Comey, claiming it was a threat to Trump's life and that "86" was mob slang for "kill."
Trump is misremembering his gangster movies here. ABC news did a study of the American Film Institute's top 10 gangster movies, and the phrase "86" doesn't appear in any of them. He might be getting it confused with "deep six," which means to remove without trace in mob parlance, but even that doesn't necessarily mean "kill." The grand jury system is basically the equivalent of the crown prosecution service, deciding whether there's enough evidence to pursue a prosecution, except it's decided by a jury of normal people rather than officials. About 95% of grand jury hearings produce an indictment because the bar for indictment is much lower, "probable cause," than for conviction, "beyond reasonable doubt." And because grand juries only hear arguments from the prosecution, there are no defence lawyers in the hearing. The old saying goes that an American prosecutor could secure an indictment against a ham sandwich.
In any case, the James Comey indictment is a ham sandwich, but that doesn't mean it's not worth paying attention to. The important bit is the "acting" in "acting attorney general Todd Blanche's title. He really wants to keep the job on a permanent basis. And the reason Trump grew so frustrated with Pam Bondi was that she had repeatedly failed to persecute his enemies. Blanche is trying to impress the boss, and we're going to see more indictments like this one.
5. Trump wants all Presidential candidates to take a dementia test, just like he had to
In a flurry of Truth Social posts on Thursday was this absolute gem: "Anybody running for President or Vice President should be forced to take a Cognitive Examination prior to entering the Race!" He went on to brag that he'd taken the test "three times during my ('THREE!') Terms as President, and ACED IT ALL THREE TIMES -- An Achievement that, even on a single Exam, according to the Doctors, has rarely been done before!" A lot to unpack here, not least that Trump still insists he was elected president three times, which he wasn't. But what he didn't mention, and what his doctors apparently didn't have the heart to tell him, is that the Montreal Cognitive Test, the one they keep giving him, is not an intelligence test. In fact, it's most frequently used to check for signs of dementia in the elderly. It stands to reason that Trump, being the most elderly President of all time, would be asked to take the test from time to time.
Trump also claimed: "By doing so, we wouldn't be surprised at people like Barack 'Hussein' Obama, or Sleepy Joe Biden, getting 'ELECTED.' Our Country would be a much better place!" I'm not sure which bit of this is my favourite, the suggestion that Barack Obama, a man who was in his late 40s when elected, might have been at risk of dementia, or the quotes around "Hussein," which is just his middle name.
Anyway, he was still on a tear about this last night, when he gave a rambling speech to pensioners in Florida. "I took three of them. I'm the only president total a cognitive test," he bragged. "I don't think Obama could pass it. Didn't he get into Harvard with a C average?" (Obama's grades have never been publicly released, but reports suggest he was a B or B+ student in high school, rising to a 3.7 grade point average in college, which is a very good record. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, which means with great distinction.) Trump went on: "The first question is a lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark." It's not, and this has come up a lot. I looked up all the official variations of the test, and a shark doesn't show up on any of them. The standard set is a lion, a rhino and a camel, and there's a variant that has giraffe, bear and hippopotamus in case you've taken it repeatedly. But as far as I can ascertain, it does not include a shark. Thing is, the people he's speaking to are about his age. They know the test he's talking about, and they know what it's for.
6. AND FINALLY...
Not satisfied with slapping his name on the Kennedy Centre, the Institute of Peace, the TrumpRX drug exchange and Trump Accounts, America's version of the Child Trust Fund, Trump has decided to slap his face on American passports. New passports featuring Trump's mug will be produced as a limited edition to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. So why does he keep putting his name and face on things? Well, aside from the textbook narcissism, it's been quietly suggested this week that he's self aware enough to know that he has to make monuments to himself while he's here, because absolutely nobody will when he's gone.
