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US President Donald Trump after speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Alamy Stock Photo
7 deadly reads
Sitdown Sunday: Is Donald Trump losing the plot?
Settle down in a comfy chair with some of the week’s best longreads.
IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. Is Trump losing it?
In case you missed it, US President Donald Trump’s 70 minute rambling speech went about 30 minutes over his allocated time at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week. During the course of his speech, he insulted a number of world leaders, doubled down on his plans to take over Greenland and falsely claimed that NATO “did nothing” for the US. The New Yorker journalist Susan B Glasser thinks that this latest example of Trump being Trump means it might be time to start asking the hard questions. Namely, is Trump losing it? Glasser thinks the President has the world’s “most consequential case of logorrhea” – excessive and often incoherent talkativeness.
(The New Yorker, approx six minutes reading time)
“Donald Trump is an editor’s nightmare and a psychiatrist’s dream. Amid all the coverage marking the first anniversary of his return to the White House, one story—which did not get the attention it deserved—stood out for me: a Timesanalysis of how much more the President has been talking and talking and talking. The findings? One million nine hundred and seventy-seven thousand six hundred and nine words in the Presidential appearances, as of January 20th—an increase of two hundred and forty-five per cent compared with the first year of Trump’s first term in office, back in 2017.”
2. Why did Margaret Loftus wait 13 years for justice?
Former garda Margaret Loftus made headlines this week when it emerged that her garda ex-husband would receive no jail time for a “terrifying” assault he carried out on his then wife. The Examiner’s Mick Clifford looks into why exactly Margaret Loftus had to wait so long to receive justice for the brutal assault.
(The Examiner, approx five minutes reading time)
“But why did Ms Loftus have to wait so long for justice? The case was, she stated outside the Criminal Courts of Justice building on Friday, before the courts on 58 occasions. Why did a woman have to live in suspension all that time before she could be allowed to effect closure and put it all behind her?“
3. The massacre of Iranian protestors
Earlier this month Iran was rocked by demonstrations sparked by anger over economic hardship that exploded into the biggest protests against the Islamic republic in more than three years. A Norway-based rights group said over 3,400 protesters were killed by Iran’s security forces in their violent crackdown response, though other estimates place the death toll at over 5,000. Here are some accounts from people who survived the violence in Mashdad.
(The New Yorker, approx ten minutes reading time)
“One pediatrician, who was on duty at a children’s hospital on January 9th, told me that her staff transported more than a hundred and fifty corpses from their emergency ward to one of the city’s main cemeteries, Behesht-e Reza, that night. At least thirty of the dead were under the age of eighteen. “I saw an eight-year-old child who was shot in the chest,” she told me, over the phone. “This regime has no sense of humanity.” Families have been forced to pay fees for their relatives’ remains. Many could not reclaim them unless they signed fake death certificates confirming that their loved ones had been murdered by violent protesters or had died of natural causes.”
4. In defence of Brooklyn Beckham
In other earth-shattering news of the week, Brooklyn Beckham spoke out on his ongoing feud with parents David and Victoria. In a six-post Instagram series no less. The internet is split on whose side to take, but this journalist thinks people are going too easy on Posh and Becks. She’s penned her reasons about why Brooklyn may have some fair points.
(Friday Things, approx ten minutes reading time)
“The specific examples Brooklyn gives of his parents’ behaviour do sound pretty annoying, and the Posh-specific bits very much give Boy Mom™️. But these things were also irritating in pretty regular, wedding-adjacent ways, tbh. (Aside from his comment about Victoria “danc[ing] very inappropriately on [him] in front of everyone,” which was confusing wording and had icky implications that a particular subset of the internet is now running with, of course.) The more interesting parts, to me, were his statements about ‘Brand Beckham.’”
5. Love in a time of… attempted assassination?
The inside story of the 85-year-old widower who tried dating again, and fell head over heels with someone who had tried to kill a US president. Sara Jane Moore and Philip Chase were married in 2010, after Moore had served more than 30 years in a federal prison for shooting at President Ford in 1975. The relationship tore his family apart.
(The New Yorker, approx 18 minutes reading time)
“Suzy Googled that name and the name of her father’s girlfriend. When she saw the results of her search, she started shaking: Sarah Kahn was better known as Sara Jane Moore. On Sept. 22, 1975, she had tried to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford with a .38 caliber revolver. She had been paroled in 2007, after having served more than 30 years of a life sentence in federal prison.
Suzy called her brother and got his voice mail. She screamed into the phone: “Cru! Call me as soon as you get this! Oh my God!””
6. YouTube men
YouTube is by no means a snazzy new app on the market, but apparently one group in society are obsessed with it. Young men are consuming YouTube videos while they sleep, eat, work, rest, cook, bathe, and poop. And they just can’t seem to get enough. What is going on?
(GQ, approx ten minutes reading time)
“YouTube launched in 2005 after its founders realized there was no way to rewatch the Janet Jackson–Justin Timberlake Super Bowl incident. Two decades later, YouTube is the most-watched video provider on televisions in the US, surpassing Netflix and Amazon Prime. With an estimated annual revenue of $52 billion in 2024, it is second only to Disney among entertainment companies. These days, the platform legitimately challenges the major TV networks for live-sports viewership, especially since it obtained lucrative exclusive rights for certain NFL games this season, and in late December, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the Oscars, which have aired on ABC since 1976, will exclusively stream on the platform starting in 2029. But for all of YouTube’s newfound business bonafides, it’s the niche, rabbit-holeable content—the four-hour ASMR deep dives on the Roman Empire, for example—that keeps us coming back.”
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
7. The Hollywood Smear Campaign
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively made headlines again this week after messages between the actress and her superstar best friend Taylor Swift were unsealed as part of Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni and his company Wayfarer for alleged sexual harassment on the set of the 2024 movie It Ends With Us. This 2024 piece of investigative journalism made waves when it came out shortly after news of Lively’s lawsuit. The article alleges that some of Hollywood’s most famous faces can pay for others to be cancelled. The private messages included in this piece show an alleged campaign to tarnish Lively after she made accusations against Baldoni.
(The New York Times, approx 15 minutes reading time)
“Last summer, as the release of “It Ends With Us” approached, Justin Baldoni, the director and a star of the film, and Jamey Heath, the lead producer, hired a crisis public relations expert.
During shooting, Blake Lively, the co-star, had complained that the men had repeatedly violated physical boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her. Their studio, Wayfarer, agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator, bring in an outside producer and put other safeguards on set. In a side letter to Ms. Lively’s contract, signed by Mr. Heath, the studio also agreed not to retaliate against the actress.
But by August, the two men, who had positioned themselves as feminist allies in the #MeToo era, expressed fears that her allegations would become public and taint them, according to a legal complaint that she filed Friday. It claims that their P.R. effort had an explicit goal: to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation instead.”
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