It’s been a solid seven days since he’s been seen in public. And the only vaguely public engagement he has on his agenda today is a pre-taped TV interview. Here’s a roundup with more on that and all the other weird things happening in Trumpworld
Donald Trump has disappeared again.
It’s been a solid seven days since he’s been seen in public. And the only vaguely public engagement he has on his agenda today is a pre-taped TV interview. Now, before I went on holiday a week ago, I made a series of predictions. And while Greenland isn’t (yet) the 51st state, I correctly guessed that America would still be at war with Iran upon my return. I wouldn’t have dared predict that Trump would take almost the entire length of my holiday off too. And this is happening more a lot, so people are understandably curious. It may be a coincidence, but Trump has disappeared from the public eye for a week or so roughly once a month for several months. This has coincided with a series of checkups at Walter Reed military hospital, as well as a couple of dental appointments in Florida (There is a dentist who works in the White House, not to mention a number of doctors capable of performing routine checkups.) It’s fair to note that the reason we notice this is because Trump does genuinely appear in public more than any other President – regardless of what he chooses to do with that exposure. But it’s still worth keeping an eye on.
Meanwhile in Trumpworld
- Dr Oz gives a spectacular excuse for Trump’s “medical checkups”
- The White House Correspondents Dinner has been rescheduled with a surprising choice of venue
- Rubio denies being at a party during Iran negotiations
- Random Trump golf buddy named Director of National Intelligence
- California’s elections are just so very weird
- Trump has a late-night tantrum about how innocent he is
Here’s what you need to know
1. Dr Oz gives a spectacular explanation for Trump’s repeated medical checkups
TV’s Dr Oz, who in case you haven’t been keeping up, is now one of America’s top health officials, because why on Earth not, has been the latest member of the administration to stand in for Karoline Leavitt to brief the White House press corps today. Among other things, he was asked repeatedly why he keeps going for medical checkups despite being in “perfect health”. He brushed it off the first time, saying the appointments were “routine”. But asked a second time, he came out with a spectacular excuse for Trump’s repeated trips to the Doctor. “I think he likes the results,” he said. “He does really well. He aces the test every single day. I do actually believe he’s curious to make sure everything is going in the right direction.” Perhaps Trump also likes getting a lollipop.
2. The White House Correspondents Dinner has been rescheduled with a surprising choice of venue
A date has been confirmed for the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ dinner – after the event was abandoned due to an attempt on Trump’s life. The re-run will take place on July 24th – and Trump confirmed he’s still going to attend. He also confirmed where the event is going to take place – the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. Which until a few years ago, was known as the Trump Hotel.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This announcement is a very good thing in that we cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling. I was asked to be there, and speak, by Weijia Jiang, President of The White House Correspondents’ Association, and have accepted. I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out. In any event, it will be a “HOT” ticket!”
3. Rubio denies being at a party during Iran negotiations
Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio gave a remarkably defensive turn at a congressional committee today, when asked about the humiliating spectacle of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner leading the negotiations with Iran, while he was at a “party” in Miami. Rubio insisted that he had not, in fact, been at a party. He had, he said, been “co-located” with Trump, so that he could relay messages from a secure phone to Trump. And while it’s still pretty humiliating to be relegated to message boy in this scenario, it’s actually true that this didn’t take place at a party in Miami. It took place at a UFC match in Miami. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!,” Rubio said. “I was co-located with the president. I was where I needed to be at that moment.”
4. Actually containing drugs wasn’t a targeting requirement for blown-up drugboats
Democrat Senator Tim Kaine, during the same committee session, not unreasonably asked him in his capacity as National Security Advisor about the targeting criteria for drugboats the Trump administration had been blowing up in the waters around Venezuela late last year, which led to the deaths of an estimated 200 people. But it wasn’t actually Rubio’s answer – he barely gave one – that was interesting.
Kaine pointed out that he’d been briefed the targeting criteria on a classified basis, so he couldn’t talk about what was in them. But, he said, he reckoned he could talk about what wasn’t in them. For example, there was no requirement for all of the sailors aboard to be right handed. Neither was there any requirement for there to be evidence of actual drugs aboard the boats. Which is slightly more surprising.
5. Random Trump golf buddy named Director of National Intelligence
Trump slipped out this afternoon that his golf buddy, Bill Pulte, would be made acting Director of National Intelligence to replace ousted predecessor Tulsi Gabbard. While Pulte had a fair amount of experience for his current role as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, he has absolutely no known experience of National Intelligence whatsoever. Dr Oz was asked repeatedly about this at the press briefing, but was spectacularly unprepared, and seemed baffled that people were asking about that rather than his pet project of systematically defunding hospices.
Democrats noted that Pulte’s major qualification appeared to be his enthusiasm for fulfilling Trump’s requests. “The concern is not only that Mr. Pulte lacks the ‘extensive national security experience’ required by statute for the job, which was created after intelligence failures led to the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in a statement. “It is that he appears to have been selected precisely because the White House believes he will provide the narrative it wants, not the intelligence we need.”
Not everyone in the administration is a big fan of Pulte’s. Politico reported in September that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to punch Pulte in the face during a showdown at a private dinner. The treasury secretary claimed that he had heard Pulte had been badmouthing him to Trump. Pulte has a reputation for cultivating enemies. In a legal feud pursued by Pulte that involved his family namesake’s homebuilding company, he accused his grandfather’s widow of insider trading. He was believed to be the driving force behind a website trashing an aunt as a “fake Christian.” And he publicly blasted another relative as “a fat slob,” “weirdo” and “grifter,” according to court records.
6. California’s elections are just so weird
There are two elections happening in California tonight, and they’re both pretty weird. Let me explain.
In Los Angeles, a city preparing to host the Olympics next year, there’s a mayoral election taking place. The sitting Mayor, Karen Bass, is being challenged by one of her former Allies, Nithya Raman, a city council member. But that’s not the weird bit. The weird bit is the “Republican” Challenger, one Spencer Pratt – who you might recognise from I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, Celebrity Big Brother, and The Hills. And the super-weird bit is that after a Trump endorsement and a campaign based on criticism of Bass’ response to last year’s Palisades wildfires, he’s kind of doing alright.
Meanwhile, the race for Governor of California hits a similarly weird inflection point tonight. A statewide “top-two” primary election is held tonight ahead of the general election in November. See, the way this particular election works is weird. There’s a vote to see who makes it on the ballot – and it doesn’t matter which party they come from. If the top two candidates in tonight’s vote are both Democrats, there will be no Republican on the ballot. Which in a massively blue state like California is not entirely impossible. So after an already tumultuous race stuffed with twists and scandal, the top three candidates according to the polls are Tom Steyer, a billionaire who has run to the left, and Xavier Becerra, who was Joe Biden’s Health Secretary. And sitting between them in the polls is the last viable Republican – step forward Fox News host Steve Hilton, who has been granted Trump’s endorsement. And Hilton is the other weird thing here – because he’s British. Not only that, he was a senior advisor to former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron. He was Cameron’s “blue sky thinking” guy, beautifully parodied on sweary TV comedy The Thick Of It with the portly narrative imagineering guru Stewart Pearson.
7. Trump has a late-night tantrum about how innocent he is
Trump had a 1am meltdown, demanding his criminal convictions be overturned, because his former lawyer and fixer had claimed he felt “pressured” to testify against him. Posting overnight on Truth Social, Trump insisted he was an “an innocent man who has been horribly treated,” and called for the “swift and immediate dismissal” of cases against him. Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal alleged affairs during his 2016 presidential campaign. But Trump wrote: “When a Star Witness totally recants, and in every way reveals that he was pressured and coerced to give testimony, and when the Prosecutor admits that this Witness was the single reason that the case was brought, there was no other, how can that Case not be immediately dismissed?”
Cohen has not recanted any of his evidence. He did write a Substack post several months ago in which he indicated the prosecutors were only interested in elements of his testimony that helped their case, and asked leading questions of him in a bid to get the answers they wanted…which just kind of sounds like what lawyers do.