Sleepy Donald Trump’s weird day as he rants about not nuking Iran and takes intention at Prince Harry
All the wildest and weirdest moments from Trump’s America in the last 24 hours – including his bonkers plan to make huge changes to a very well known historical location
Travis Smith, 2, speaks for the world(Image: AP)
Donald Trump spent this evening fighting wokeness from the Oval Office. By which I mean, he nearly dropped off a bunch of times on camera at an event.
In fact, the most animated he appeared at the “Health Care” affordability event was when he told everyone about his plan to turn an American monument into a swimming pool. Not a joke. Also, the Iran ceasefire is going tremendously well, apart from all the shooting and mines and stuff.
Meanwhile, in Trump World
- Trump looked particularly sleepy
- He tried to one-up Martin Luther King
- He’s turning a world-famous American monument into a swimming pool
- Turns out not all of Iran’s Navy is at the bottom of the sea
- Trump keeps getting rid of his Military bosses in the middle of a war
- Tennis Menace hits White House event
- High stakes for King visit
Here’s what you need to know
1. Trump looked particularly sleepy while reclassifying medical marijuana
Donald Trump held an event in the Oval Office this evening to announce his government was reclassifying medical marijuana to make it easier for scientists to study its effects and interactions with other drugs. Trump arranged the event, inviting a string of people to stand around him and give a string of lengthy speeches about how good an idea this is, and how wonderful he is in general. The downside of this is that he was on camera almost constantly, and spent a good chunk of the event visibly nodding off behind the Resolute desk.
He may have looked sleepy, but not as sleepy as Travis Smith, 2, who was there as part of the event – having recovered from the OTOF mutation under treatment from an experimental therapy. Little Travis decided it was all a bit much, and decided to have a nap under the portrait of Ronald Reagan.
2. He tried to one-up Martin Luther King
After a brief detour on the subject of the newly laid granite path to the Oval Office – carved in Italy, sourced in Africa, he told a reporter at the end of the session., Trump turned to another subject – the world-famous reflecting pool leading up to the Lincoln Memorial. You may know it as the location of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. We’ll come to why in a moment, but first…he still can’t let go of the size of his 2017 inauguration crowd. “He had a million people,” Trump said. “And I had the same exact crowd, maybe a little bit more. I actually had more people.”
3. He’s turning the Reflecting Pool into a swimming pool
Back to the reflecting pool, which Trump claims is in terrible shape, having surveyed it personally – something which I’m pretty sure never happened. There was, he said, a plan to refurbish the world famous landmark, restoring its granite surface to its former glory. But nah, Trump said, let me get one of my contractors on it. He explained that he went to one of his swimming pool contractors and asked him to take a look at it. And long story short, what was supposed to be a 3 year, £300m refurbishment of a central part of America’s heritage, is no longer taking place. Instead, Trump’s guys are going to fix up the grouting, give it a clean, and POUR SWIMMING POOL LINING on top of it. Not only that, but it’s no longer going to be the natural grey/white colour of the granite. Trump initially wanted it to be turquoise, but instead it’s going to be “American Flag Blue”. The whole bodge job is going to take a week and cost $1.5m.
So yeah. He’s literally turning an American monument into a giant swimming pool.
4. Trump rules out nuking Iran
Trump ruled out using nuclear weapons in Iran, saying the mere question was “stupid”.
Asked by a female reporter whether he would consider it, Trump reacted angrily, barking: “No. Why would I need it? Why would a stupid question like that be asked? Why would I use a nuclear weapon when I’ve totally and in a very conventional way decimated them without it. No I wouldn’t use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anyone.
Meanwhile, Trump made a big deal in the opening weeks of his war in Iran of the mess the US military had made of that country’s Navy – repeatedly insisting it was “at the bottom of the ocean”. Well, turns out, that’s not entirely true. Iran still has a few boats left – just enough to fire on ships trying to travel down the Strait of Hormuz – and apparently enough to lay mines along the crucial waterway.
In a Truth Social Post this morning, Trump said he had ordered the US military to “shoot and kill” small boats being used by Iran to block the strait. Still, otherwise, that ceasefire is going swimmingly.
5. ‘I speak for the UK more than Prince Harry’
Trump claimed he speaks for the UK more than Prince Harry on the subject of Ukraine.
Asked about Harry’s comments calling on him to do more to bring the war to an end, Trump initially said: “How’s he doing? How’s his wife? Please give her my regards, OK?”
He went on: “I don’t know. I know one thing, Prince Harry is not speaking for the UK, that’s for sure. I think I’m speaking for the UK more than Prince Harry, that’s for sure. But thank him for his advice.”
On the State Visit, Trump said: “We’re having King Charles come, he’s a friend of mine. We’re really looking forward to it, we’ve spoken and we’re going to have a great time. I tell you, if we’d had that ballroom built it would be full. I wish we had more seats.”
“I love the UK,” he added, before returning to his time-worn gripes about us ending oil drilling in the North Sea.
6. Navy nonsense
To lose one armed forces chief during a war can be put down to misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth then, it seems, is careless, as it emerged last night that he’d ordered the Secretary of the Navy to either step down or be fired. It’s just a few weeks since the Army Chief of Staff departed in circumstances that are still not entirely clear. But reporting last night suggested a pretty bizarre chain of events leading to the ousting of Navy Secretary John Phelan. Hegseth and Trump are said to have been meeting to discuss shipbuilding and come to the conclusion Phelan had been moving too slowly. It’s also said that Hegseth had become irked by Phelan having a closer relationship with Trump than he expected when he hired him, to the point where he would talk to the President directly.
So according to CNN, Trump became convinced in this meeting that Phelan had to go and told Hegseth to “take care of it”. Hegseth then sent a message to Phelan telling him the bad news.
Phelan, according to CNN’s sources, simply did not believe the Secretary of War’s assertion that Trump was aware of his sacking. He began phoning other White House officials asking them what they’d heard. And even then he wasn’t convinced – and literally turned up to the White House lobby to try and speak to the man himself.
Trump reportedly came out and spoke to him, confirming he was out of a job.
Phelan, a businessman with no prior military service, and who appears on the flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet, was installed as Navy Secretary after raising millions of dollars for Trump’s campaign.
He’ll be replaced – for now at least – by Undersecretary Hung Cao, a veteran who ran twice, unsuccessfully, for office in Virginia as a Republican.
7. Anything we should know about the new guy?
Oh just this clip of a TV interview where he warned there was a wave of Wiccans and “witchcraft” taking over California, and was about to sweep the country. Nothing to worry about.
8. Tennis Menace
Trump hosted a bunch of champion college sports teams at the White House the other night. He gave a speech in the East Room, which mostly consisted of the president introducing each team, then banging on about how much he won their state by in the 2024 election. Usual fare.
But a picture has since emerged that goes some way to summing up Trump’s attitudes.
The image is a celebration of the University of Georgia’s women’s tennis team – who won the NCAA championship this year. It depicts 11 members of the team standing on a riser, almost entirely obscured by the university’s enormous male sports executives, and on a little riser of his own, Trump himself giving a thumbs up.
Tennis star Martina Navratilova was among the first to comment on the photo, writing on Twitter: “A photo is worth a thousand words.”
9. Epstein files release under review
The Department of Justice’s watchdog is reviewing whether it complied with the law when it released a fraction of the files it holds on paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The review from the inspector general’s office will focus on how the department collected, reviewed and redacted materials in preparation for release and its process for addressing privacy concerns that arose after the files were made public, when Epstein survivors complained that personal information about them was disclosed.
The audit will focus on one of the more politically sensitive chapters of the Trump administration’s Justice Department, when officials bowed to public pressure and to a law from Congress to release millions of pages of records that the executive branch had initially said would not come out. It marks the first significant effort by the watchdog — since Trump took office for a second time — to scrutinise the actions of a department that has been riven by tumult, including mass firings of employees and allegations of politicisation of investigations.
10. High stakes for King visit
Donald Trump says the King’s visit to the US could “absolutely” repair relations between America and the UK – and has a hint for Keir Starmer’s survival. Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday, saying Peter Mandelson was a “really bad pick”, but that Starmer had “plenty of time to recover.” Asked what he meant by that in a phone interview with the BBC today, Trump gave a familiar suggestion. “If he opened the North Sea and if his immigration policies became strong,” Trump said. “Which right now they’re not, he can recover, but if he doesn’t, I don’t think he has a chance.” Trump has frequently moaned about the UK’s decision to halt licences to drill in the North Sea for a number of reasons. Restarting drilling would almost certainly benefit American companies bidding for licences. But another major factor is his decades-long vendetta against wind farms, which stems from the Scottish government erecting turbines off the coast of Aberdeen next to his luxury golf course. Trump said next week’s state visit could help fix the rift between the US and UK that erupted in the early days of his bombing campaign in Iran. Asked if the relationship could be repaired by Charles and Camilla’s visit, he said: “Absolutely. He’s fantastic. He’s a fantastic man. Absolutely the answer is yes.” “I know him well, I’ve known him for years. He’s a brave man, and he’s a great man. They would absolutely be a positive.”
