“The record is quite remarkable. The President has faithfully followed the agenda he campaigned on in 2016. People should focus on the results, and they’re extraordinary!” James Freeman - Wall Street Journal

Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump.” Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!

Trump downplays his endorsement of losing candidate in Wyoming race
By Brett Samuels

President Trump in an interview published Wednesday attempted to downplay his endorsement of a Republican candidate who lost his primary, attributing his embrace of a Wyoming gubernatorial candidate to his son Donald Trump Jr.

Trump touted his track record in primary endorsements during an interview with The Daily Caller and noted that his only defeat to date came when he endorsed Foster Friess on the day of last month's primary in Wyoming.

"I was asked to do that, by my son Don, and I did it, but I did it — I was asked the morning of — and by the time I did it I guess 70 percent, almost 70 percent of the vote was already cast," Trump said.

"So, I don’t consider that to be, maybe I’ll take a quarter of a loss on that one," he added. "But I think it’s 48 and a quarter, it’s 48-1 which is pretty good, right? Pretty good.”

Indian supreme court decriminalises homosexuality | World news
Michael Safi

India’s supreme court has struck down a colonial-era law that effectively banned homosexual sex acts in a landmark ruling for gay rights.

The court announced the verdict in Delhi on Thursday morning, drawing cheers from a crowd of LBGT Indians and their supporters gathered on a lawn outside the building.

“It’s in our favour,” a young woman, Smriti, shouted as she embraced three others before they were mobbed by television cameras. They had seen a text message from a journalist inside the court. "That's when we knew they had lifted it," she said.

“It’s a positive. I mean there’s so much work to be done, but it’s a great first step,” the university student, 19, said. “We’re not criminals in our own country.”

Ritu Dalmia, one of the five LBGTI Indians who put their name to a legal petition that succeeded on Thursday, said the verdict made her feel hope once again.

“I was turning into a cynical human being with very little belief in the system, but honestly this has really shown once again that, at the end, we are a functional democracy where freedom of choice, speech and rights still exist,” she said.

The former mayor’s theatrical, combative style of politics anticipated—and perfectly aligns with—the President’s.


Giuliani, like the President, is not seeking converts but comforting the converted.

Although it has been almost a generation since Rudolph Giuliani was the mayor of New York, there is one place in the city where he still presides: the Grand Havana Room, a tatty cigar club that occupies the top floor of 666 Fifth Avenue. Giuliani is on the Grand Havana’s board of directors and is a regular presence at the club. The room is filled with overstuffed armchairs, oversized ash trays, and the persistent haze of smoke. Thick velvet drapes, many the worse for wear, block out the view of the city, and ventilation machines wheeze from the ceiling. One afternoon this summer, Giuliani sank into a chair, pulled the knot of his tie down to his chest, and removed a Padrón fiftieth-anniversary cigar (retail price: forty dollars) from a carrying case. At seventy-four, Giuliani often seems weary. He limps. He has surrendered his comb-over to full-on baldness, and, as his torso has thickened, his neck has disappeared. He lit the Padrón with a high-tech flame lighter. “It works in the wind—good for the golf course,” he told me. He drew his first puffs and placed an even larger stogie—a gift from his thirty-two-year-old son, Andrew, who works in the White House Office of Public Liaison—on a cocktail table in front of him. “Andrew got it when he was playing golf with the President this weekend,” Giuliani explained.

Cigars have played a recurring role in Giuliani’s career. When he joined the Grand Havana, the club was struggling to find members. In 2002, his successor as mayor, Michael Bloomberg, banned smoking in restaurants and bars. “Mike didn’t realize it, but he saved us,” Giuliani said. “It became the only place you could smoke.” Giuliani met his third wife, Judith Nathan, at another cigar venue, Club Macanudo. (The couple are now divorcing.) The Grand Havana has also been a point of good-natured contention for Giuliani in his latest incarnation—as an intimate of, and a defense attorney for, the President of the United States. In 2007, the family business of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, paid $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Avenue, which promptly fell dramatically in value, imperilling the Kushner real-estate empire. One of Kushner’s plans to salvage the investment involved tearing down the building and displacing the Grand Havana. “I always tell Jared I’m rooting against him,” Giuliani told me, chuckling. “There’s nowhere else in the city that wants hundreds of cigar smokers.” (Kushner’s family recently received a financial lifeline from a real-estate investment firm, and current plans call for the club to remain.)