Boris Johnson has wished Donald and Melania Trump a 'strong recovery', hours after the US president revealed he and his wife had tested positive for coronavirus
The president has been cavalier throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Now, a month before the election, this changes everything
It is likely to go down as the biggest “October surprise” in the history of US presidential elections. Yet anyone who was paying attention could have seen it coming.
Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus after claiming “it will disappear”, telling the journalist Bob Woodward he was downplaying it deliberately, failing to develop a national testing strategy, refusing to wear a face mask for months, floating the idea of injecting patients with bleach, insisting to one of his many crowded campaign rallies that “it affects virtually nobody” and, at Tuesday’s debate, mocking his rival, Joe Biden: “He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”
Continue reading...Brad Downey says first lady shows contradiction between US’s position on race in 2020
The American artist behind a controversial statue of the US First Lady Melania Trump, unveiled this week in bronze in her native Slovenia, has defended the work as a representation of the contradictions of her husband’s presidency.
Brad Downey, a conceptual artist from Kentucky based in Berlin, said the statue that replaced an earlier wooden carving destroyed in an arson attack in July, was motivated by his “frustrations with the policies of my birth country.”
Continue reading...Original carving near US first lady’s hometown in Slovenia was badly damaged in fire
A bronze statue of the US first lady, Melania Trump, has been unveiled near her hometown in Slovenia, to replace a wooden carving of her that was burnt in an arson attack two months ago.
The new work – like the original – is a collaboration between Brad Downey, a Berlin-based artist from Louisville, Kentucky, and a local craftsman, Ales “Maxi” Zupevc, who have invited residents of Melania’s hometown of Sevnica to see the work in nearby Rozno, south-eastern Slovenia.
Continue reading...Former senior advisor claims she corresponded multiple times a day with the first lady on state business via private channels
Melania Trump used private email and messaging while in the White House, according to a former senior advisor and estranged friend.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, speaking to the Washington Post, claims she corresponded multiple times a day with the First Lady via private channels.
Continue reading...Speakers – including three members of the president’s family – spouted falsehoods about his character and his opponent
The best courtroom dramas involve a defence lawyer who can work miracles of persuasion and, no matter how damning the evidence, convince the jury that their client is innocent.
A week after Democratic prosecutors presented their “open and shut” case against Donald Trump, the virtual Republican national convention is not only attempting to get him off the hook but argue that he deserves a medal – and four more years in the White House.
Continue reading...Stephanie Winston Wolkoff reportedly taped the first lady’s ‘harsh comments’ and plans to share them in a book, Melania & Me
Melania Trump will speak at the Republican national convention on Tuesday night, in the shadow of an extraordinary report that she was taped making derogatory comments about her husband’s adult children and even Donald Trump himself.
Related: RNC 2020: a two-hour glimpse into the upside-down world of Trump TV
Continue reading...So much, yet so little, has happened since lockdown, not least Grant Shapp’s ruined holiday
Monday
You can’t help but feel a little sorry for Grant Shapps’s family. After all, if you can’t trust the transport secretary not to ruin his own holiday, then who can you? Back in April, Grant told the Today programme that he definitely wouldn’t be travelling abroad this summer, but some time between then and last Saturday he must have changed his mind after having negotiated safe “air corridors” between Britain and various countries.
Continue reading...Melania Trump delayed coming to the White House after her husband Donald Trump won the 2016 election because she was renegotiating her prenuptial agreement, a new book has claimed.
Related: Trump’s joke about Melania is just one of their many awkward moments
Continue reading...Statue had two faces, a ‘nice’ one and ‘that of a vampire’, and was a tourist attraction but was unpopular with some locals
A wooden statue mocking Donald Trump that had been erected in Slovenia – the birthplace of his wife, Melania Trump – has been burned to the ground.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has launched fresh attacks on the congressional architects of his impeachment, even as the standoff intensified between Democrats in the US House and Republicans in the Senate over the president’s impending trial, and appeared set to last well into the new year.
And on a less grave note, Trump revealed in a video conference with US troops to deliver Christmas greetings that, despite it being the morning of 24 December, he had not yet bought his wife her Christmas present.
Continue reading...Republican representative Matt Gaetz fiercely criticised the Stanford law school professor Pamela Karlan for a pun during the second round of the Trump impeachment hearings.
The Democrats' witness and impeachment expert had said: 'While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.' She later apologised for her comment, which Melania Trump highlighted in a tweet
Pamela Karlan’s reference to Trump’s son Barron offered Republicans a chance to claim righteous outrage
Finally, a smoking pun. A simple play on words told us everything about the impeachment inquiry, the current mindset in Congress and the state of the nation.
The witness Pamela Karlan cracked a joke that delighted liberals and infuriated conservatives. Or rather, it delighted conservatives because it gave them a talking point to whip up outrage.
Continue reading...In Free, Melania, obtained by the Guardian, Kate Bennett also reports that president and first lady sleep in separate rooms
Melania Trump suspects Roger Stone, a longtime ally and adviser to Donald Trump, of being behind the release of nude photos from her modelling past, a new book claims.
Related: Trump's 'demeaning fake orgasm' made me speak out – ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page
Continue reading...Melania Trump has received a frosty reception at a youth event in Baltimore, with attendees booing and audibly talking throughout her speech.
Trump was attempting to discuss her 'Be Best' initiative at the B'More Youth Summit, which aims to raise awareness about the US opioid crisis.
In July, Donald Trump tweeted that Baltimore was a 'rat and rodent infested mess'
Continue reading...Australian PM Scott Morrison received a full-blown welcome from the US president. Katharine Murphy was on hand for an inside account
Scott Morrison has made his first visit to the United States as prime minister. It was a trip that included a close encounter with the unpredictability of the Trump White House, a foreign policy pivot, and a backlash about a lack of climate policy action. Guardian Australia’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, travelled, with the prime minister. Here is what she witnessed:
Continue reading...A backlash is building over a picture posted by Melania Trump on Twitter that showed her and Donald Trump smiling broadly while holding a baby who was orphaned in the mass shooting in El Paso.
Related: Ice raids stir fear as Kamala Harris says they demonstrate 'insensitivity' – live
Continue reading...Life-size image on the outskirts of Sevnica, the US first lady’s home town, was carved into a tree using a chainsaw
After Melania cake, Melania honey and even Melania slippers, the Slovenian home town of the US first lady will now boast a statue of its most famous daughter – albeit one that has faced decidedly mixed reviews.
The life-size statue on the outskirts of Sevnica was inaugurated on Friday and is the brainchild of the 39-year-old American conceptual artist Brad Downey, who says it’s the first monument anywhere dedicated to the wife of Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Some welcomed the rare plea for unity but others said the show of military might was the moment Trump went full Roman emperor
All men are created equal. But one is created more equal than others. And his name is Donald Trump.
The US president’s unique interpretation of the declaration of independence was on full display on Thursday when he staged a militaristic, jingoistic and untraditional jamboree at the Lincoln memorial in Washington to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Continue reading...It’s hard to imagine men enduring decades of pain and long-term physical injury just to “look the part” in the workplace – after all, many bemoan the necktie as too restrictive for the daily grind.
Now consider this: millions of women around the world, at all levels of the workplace hierarchy, have consistently spent their working hours tortured by blisters, bloodied flesh, foot pain, knee pain, back pain and worse, as a result of the pressure to conform to an aesthetic code – sometimes explicitly written into contracts or policy, more often subliminally expected as a societal and cultural standard – that deems it appropriate to wear high heels.
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