Donald trump

Why Trump can’t control the price of a burger

Good news, burger lovers. Help is on the way. Last month, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he has “concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef.” Well, it’s about time. As someone who covers the barbecue beat, I’ve been keeping a close eye on beef prices the past few years, especially brisket. They’ve kept going up. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of ground beef nationwide has risen 24 percent, from $5.55 per pound in January 2025 to $6.89 this summer.  Fortunately, that’s about to change – and just in time for football tailgating season.

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The unlikely defenders of Milo Yiannopoulos

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained and deported British provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos last week. The official X account of the Department of Homeland Security posted his unflattering mugshot online, which has roughly 24 million views as of this writing. You would never guess, looking into that defeated face, that Yiannopoulos had been one of the earliest supporters of the President whose administration ultimately sent him packing.   Yiannopoulos built his brand as a habitual line-stepper who danced through the highest halls of right-wing celebrity, pioneering political provocation through the power of the internet.

How Denmark’s royals could help defend Greenland from Trump

Donald Trump’s bloviation about Greenland has been near-constant since he became president elect in November 2024. In the intervening period, the demands for the territory's acquisition have varied in tone and substance, from menacing statements to social media memes that are best thought of as bizarre. The response from both elected governments of Denmark and Greenland has been a consistent rejection of Trump’s demands. Meanwhile, European NATO allies have rallied around the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, who came through a hard-fought election in March this year. Frederiksen used last month's NATO summit in Ankara to reiterate that Copenhagen was ready and willing to defend the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.

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Why stop at Lake America?

The Irish Rovers sang about the biggest mixup that you have ever seen: he was christened David Anthony, but still in spite of that, his father called him William while his mother called him Pat. Picture the feelings of Lake Ontario this morning. It was christened Lac Saint-Louis by Samuel de Champlain, but it's woken up to Canada calling it William and the US calling it Pat – or rather, Lake America (without the “of,” as Trump helpfully specified in his video on Truth Social). Do you really need two Dakotas? Although Lac Saint-Louis is surely a better and more historically founded name than Lake America, one can sympathize with the American compulsion to rename things. After all, what would Texas be without a little American intervention? (Mexico, as it happens.

Darline against the machine

It’s poetic that the same day Darline Graham won her primary to seek a full term in the United States Senate, the Wall Street Journal admitted it had published an AI-written op-ed and, based on opinion page editor Paul Gigot’s remarks about it, would happily do so again. “AI is a fact of modern life. People will use it to assist in their work and their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing and more.” On social media, journalists at the New York Times and elsewhere were quick to voice objections to Gigot’s leniency, but others, including one at the Washington Post, shot back at the critics: how was publishing an AI-written op-ed any different from publishing a ghost-written one? She’s gaffe-prone.

Carney’s defiance of Trump could destroy the Canadian economy

Canada and the US were once great friends, allies and trading partners. They had disagreements on various domestic and international matters, wars and military conflicts. They didn’t always see eye-to-eye on trade negotiations related to the auto sector, acid rain, softwood lumber and more. Nevertheless, the two countries always found a way to return to the same page. Yet this historic and economic relationship has now been torn apart. Canada and the US are engulfed in a full-fledged trade war, and there’s no end in sight.  Canada and the US are engulfed in a full-fledged trade war, and there’s no end in sight There have been tensions between the two countries since Donald Trump was elected President.

The stock market crash is coming

From our UK edition

Margaret Thatcher famously told the Commons in 1988 that ‘there is no way in which one can buck the market’. She meant that it would have been pointless to deploy policy tools to try to quell the pound’s then strength against the deutschmark, but she has never been proved wrong in a broader sense. One cannot even tell the market what to think, someone might have added for the benefit of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, before he said that yields on American government bonds ‘don’t reflect the underlying fundamentals’. What yields reflect is what markets collectively think about fundamentals – and what traders do next impacts every aspect of economic life.

Lee Greenwood is Trump’s court bard

The stage lights flicker. The MAGA faithful whoop at the first tinkle of piano keys. They’ve been here a hundred times. They know what’s coming. If tomorrow all the things were gone I’d worked for all my life And I had to start again With just my children and my wife “God Bless the USA” has been through several iterations since it first appeared on Lee Greenwood’s third album, You’ve Got a Good Love Comin’. It was a Gold-certified single in May 1984 and the soundtrack for a short film about Ronald Reagan, which was shown at that summer’s Republican National Convention. Greenwood performed the song at the 1988 RNC – and it resurged in popularity after the First Gulf War and the 9/11 attacks.

What Natalie Harp does for Trump

A beautiful and superfluous woman is the mark of a king. Why, then, did the Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff want the American people googling Natalie Harp? Did he think that the American people would suddenly turn on Donald Trump over suspicions as to his marital fidelity?  Trump doesn’t trust men and enjoys the platonic company of women Last month, as is now well known, Trump was smuggled from Air Force One in a catering trolley in order to confound a possible Iranian assassination plot. Other White House staff, including Marco Rubio, remained on the official jet. But Harp, reportedly after some internal dramas, traveled with the President on a second plane.  This is useful information for Democrats looking, as ever, to do down the President.

Natalie Harp, aide to President Donald Trump, steps off Marine One (Getty)

There’s a logic to Donald Trump’s incendiary diplomacy

On his very first day as Colombia’s new President, Abelardo de la Espriella received a dramatic house-warming gift: a billion dollars, courtesy of Donald Trump. Three days later, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the country – but correlation is not causation. The President’s ten-figure donative arrived as aid for the militarized crackdown de la Espriella has promised against Colombia’s fearsome drug cartels and jungle guerrillas. And de la Espriella quickly showed himself eager to align with President Trump by adding Colombia to the Shield of the Americas, Trump’s signature new venture in Latin America. With this old-fashioned exchange of gifts, de la Espriella became the newest member of the eclectic global club of Trump allies. This is not a stable alliance.

Is Donald Trump becoming the new Jimmy Carter?

One day President Trump wants to dial down hostilities with Iran. “We’re low-keying” the conflict, he said Sunday. A day later, though, he was keyed up. After Tehran demanded reparations from Washington as part of its attempt to resurrect June's Memorandum of Understanding, Trump said on Truth Social that it was the Iranians who should: Compensate America for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands of others killed in combat. Now it is Trump who has become a hostage of Tehran The problem is simple. For all his bluster about staring down the mad mullahs, Trump is on the run.

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Trump’s White House helipad do-over

Get to the chopper... but not yet. More construction is underway at the White House, as President Trump has directed contractors to redo their work on the new helipad, a project that started at the beginning of July. Photos taken show crews taking apart their hard work. According to the Washington Post, Trump is "frustrated with its appearance”, and is questioning its placement on the sloped lawn of the White House. Two anonymous sources say he’s debating whether “the slope of the White House lawn needs to be changed.” You cannot question an artist's process. Construction began on the helipad even before it was announced publicly, with the goal of completing the project before President Xi Jinping visits in late September.

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Trump’s posts aren’t alpha

For up to $100,000 a month, investment banks, hedge funds and algorithmic trading firms can now buy access to President Trump's Truth Social posts milliseconds before they are made public. The premise is that Trump’s posts move markets so much that getting access to these posts mere milliseconds earlier is enough to gain an edge in the market – the elusive alpha that hedge funds are so obsessed with.  Critics are labeling it a blatant violation of insider information laws. Without going into the legality of the offering, I want to challenge Trump's claim about the actual value of early access to his posts. We found no evidence of any systematic trading strategy that could deliver a profit Given Trump’s continuous impact on markets, I decided to run an experiment.

My top tips for Andy Burnham

I am cautiously optimistic about our new leader. For one thing, the fact that Mr Burnham went to Cambridge not Oxford, did not study PPE, is not a lawyer and did not grow up in Surrey makes him something of a diversity hire among our more recent UK prime ministers. This gives us hope. It is a near-universal law of problem-solving that you cannot think your way out of problems using the same mindset that created them in the first place. Occasional catastrophes cause much less annoyance than frequent peeves One tip. Government needs a marketing function. Rather than explaining itself to the public, it has endlessly sought to cadge publicity by ingratiating itself with the news media.

Can Trump improve the ‘terrible’ Dulles Airport?

Air Force One may not use commercial airports, but Donald Trump has nonetheless taken the initiative to plan a major overhaul of Dulles International Airport, the government-owned DC area international airport. Alongside Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, Trump revealed the plans of the $22.5 billion renovation in the Oval Office this afternoon. The President emphasized the "bipartisan" nature of this project, which is included alongside the administration’s other efforts to “Make Washington DC Safe and Beautiful Again.” “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you don’t want to go and be subjected to this airport. Because this airport – it’s a terrible place to be,” Trump said.

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The media will miss Trump when he’s gone

Hats off to President Trump! At the conclusion of his speech to the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump donned a red cap with 2028 emblazoned upon it and declared that he had hit upon a scheme to “save” the ratings of the new media. “I am pleased to announce my intention to run for a fourth term as President of the United States,” he said.  Trump evoked a few titters from the assembled press corps at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, but that was about the extent of the hijinks. In one sense, it’s no laughing matter. What will the press do without Trump? He’s correct in viewing himself as its savior. Without the 24/7 entertainment provided by the Donald, views would dwindle.

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Will Trump’s ‘massive attack’ be on Yemen?

It is my solemn duty to report that, as ever in Trumpworld, the news zone has flooded and we are paddling through a reality-bending time loop. Last night, the government reapplied tariffs on more than 80 countries, on this occasion using dubious concerns about "forced labour" to justify the charges on Britain, the EU, Australia and elsewhere. Tonight, the President will attend the rearranged White House Correspondents’ Dinner, three months after the last one was canceled following another assassination attempt. The dinner will be held at the Waldorf Astoria, DC, which used to be the Trump International Hotel. The guest list and security will be tighter this time, and Donald should have a chance to make some good jokes.

Should politicians have tans?

The cult economist Adam Tooze generally discusses matters far beyond my understanding on his podcast Ones and Tooze. While roasting in my flat during London’s heatwave, however, I found myself gripped by a segment he did on the economics of beach recreation. Did you know that 50 percent of Americans going on holiday regard getting a tan as more important than the actual holiday? This correlates with the rise of the “tanfluencer” and “tanmaxxing” among Gen Z and the revival of the full-on, George Hamilton-style tan. As a bit of an old tanorexic myself (remember, fellow boomers, the smell of Bergasol?), I’m quietly thrilled. First, because if this is a competition I will almost certainly win it – spot the brownest white person in the room: that’s me!

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Burnham’s solutions must not lie in the 1970s

Andy Burnham is right. The cost of living is foremost in people’s minds just now. Naturally his electricity bill VAT holiday and freeze of bus fares find agreement in television news vox pops and focus groups. But he offers no explanation for the causes and concentrates only on the symptoms. Obviously, the removal of the 5 percent VAT will be nice for consumers. But underlying inflation today relates to government debauchery of money and disruptions of supply caused by Donald Trump’s tariffs and his short war, by Vladimir Putin’s long war and Ed Miliband’s net-zero trap, which makes us pay expensive green levies and bans new domestic fossil-fuel production. The remedy does not lie in the 1970s-style pretense that things can be made cheaper by fiat.

Picnicking in the park on July 4

Our July 4 was low on bombast and high on fraternity this year. There were no stealth-bomber flyovers, no tanks treading ominously down Main Street or any other minatory displays of military hardware straight out of a Soviet-era Moscow May Day. Even Lee Greenwood left us alone. I’m told Washington was another story. For the first time since Covid, “Picnic in the Park” was back in Batavia. This much-loved festival of food, music, and smiling, “hey, how ya doin’?” encounters fills the bosky park across the street from the New York State School for the Blind. (One of Batavia’s many ironies is that the best view in town is from the blind school.) For years, my wife, daughter and I manned the Landmark Society’s strawberry shortcake stand at Picnic in the Park.