Speculation about US president’s executive assistant sparks furious backlash from White House

Wearing shoulder-length blonde hair, gold earrings and a red dress, cancer survivor Natalie Harp introduced herself to the 2020 Republican national convention as “a formerly forgotten American from California” and compared Donald Trump with George Bailey, the everyman hero played by James Stewart in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.

“George Bailey’s father was right,” smiled Harp, her voice echoing in the Andrew W Mellon auditorium in pandemic-hit Washington. “All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away. Mr President, that makes you the richest man in the world.”

‘Complete unraveling’ of Trump and Republican project reflects attitude of not caring at all about governance

He was always one step ahead. Donald Trump won the US presidency as a wildly unlikely outsider in 2016 and staged an astonishing comeback to win it again in 2024. Even his foes grudgingly called him a political savant with an intuition for exploiting grievances that left so-called experts floundering.

But now they are asking if the dark genius has lost his touch. Trump is trapped in the quagmire of an unpopular war, obsessing over monuments in Washington and looking for a new spokesperson after his White House press secretary quit. If the 80-year-old was deliberately trying to sabotage his Republican party in November’s midterm elections, it is not clear what he would do differently.

Group backs Elijah Manley in primary election in bid to unseat veteran Democrat in newly drawn district

A progressive group has endorsed a 27-year-old substitute teacher who overcame childhood homelessness in his bid to unseat the veteran Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) said it was backing Elijah Manley in next week’s primary election in Florida’s newly drawn 20th congressional district, casting the race as a contest between a young economic populist and a stalwart of the Democratic party establishment.

US president announced departure on social media, saying Leavitt was leaving to ‘spend more time’ with family

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Karoline Leavitt will step down as White House press secretary at the end of August, Donald Trump announced.

The US president revealed her departure on social media, saying Leavitt was leaving “so she can spend more time” with her family. The 28-year-old gave birth to a daughter, Viviana, in May, and returned from maternity leave last month.

Journalists and others were allowed to fly on presidential jet despite security threat while Trump was spirited away

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Democrats called on Tuesday for a congressional briefing over a stunning charade in which Donald Trump was secretly spirited to a different plane than the one the public and press believed he was travelling on. Critics now question why reporters and the public had been deliberately misled.

When US intelligence allegedly found a credible threat that Iran plotted to kill him last month, Trump left Air Force One in a catering truck, an episode first reported by the Washington Post and also by the New York Times. While the president was reportedly snuck out the side door of the plane, more than a hundred aides, officials and reporters were kept onboard to fly towards Britain, without being told there was a threat to their lives.