Trump's alarming week as he won't rule out declaring a national emergency

Trump's alarming week as he won't rule out declaring a national emergency Donald Trump is facing his most humiliating electoral catastrophe since he lost to Joe Biden - and some wildly antidemocratic methods of clinging on to power are apparently on the table There are now 80 days to go until Donald Trump faces his most humiliating electoral catastrophe since he lost to Joe Biden. A year ago, when Democrats looked forward to the midterms, the most they'd let themselves hope for was to retake the House. Since then Donald Trump has embroiled America in a lengthy war that nobody asked for, and for which there is no end in sight. The war has contributed to skyrocketing oil prices - which in turn has increased the price of petrol, the one thing you never want to be blamed for if you're a politician in America. Meanwhile, his team is slowly falling apart - with attack dogs like Jeannine Pirro, who Trump set up as state attorneys to prosecute his enemies - have singularly failed to do so. And his attack dog in chief - press secretary Karoline Leavitt - is leaving the administration, possibly because of the unreasonable demands put on her family by Trump. It's been a rough week to be Donald Trump. Let's catch you up with what's happened. Trump won't rule out declaring a national emergency to take over the Midterms In a terrifying preview of what many people think is exactly what's going to happen in 81 days time, Trump wouldn't rule out declaring a state of emergency in order to seize control of November's midterm elections. Interviewing the President on Real America's Voice, a propaganda outlet with former aide Steve Bannon as its figurehead, host Wayne Allyn Root suggested: "If you declare a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can't challenge it. It can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress. So if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship (for voter registration) and a limit to mail-in ballots." These measures are included in the "SAVE America Act", the draconian voter suppression bill Trump has tried and failed to get Congress to sign off for months. Trump was coy about it, but indicated it was on the table. "Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?" Trump said. "I'll leave it at that." Todd Blanche has some brass neck Speaking ahead of Trump's speech at a police academy on Long Island, Todd Blanche - Donald Trump's newly minted full-time Attorney General - promised, apparently seriously, that law enforcement officers would be protected on his watch. "In my Department of Justice," he said, "if anybody touches a federal law enforcement officer in any way inappropriate, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law." This is quite the pledge for the man who, not a couple of months ago, was helping Trump arrange a slush fund to pay out millions of dollars in cash to reward the loyalty of people convicted of being involved in the January 6th attempted coup, who were then pardoned by his boss on his first day back in office. Including those who battered police officers. Trump has big plans for the Strait of Hormuz Donald Trump threatened to make the Strait of Hormuz a "territory of the United States" if he defeats Iran. He said he would "pretty soon" claim the waterway for America, despite dwindling hopes of victory in the conflict. Speaking at the aforementioned police academy, he said: "After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz strait a territory of the United States." He added: "Essentially, that's what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to." It's unclear whether Trump meant his vow to claim the strait as a serious policy announcement, or if he was just engaging in one of his trademark "weaves" - an unplanned detour from prepared remarks. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi was characteristically withering in response, saying on X: "This strait will be opened and closed only under Iran's command, and so long as you do not accept the reality of defeat and stop indulging in fantasies, Iran will continue to enforce the blockade." Trump will not apologise for making petrol more expensive Trump also said during his speech that Americans should accept paying a "tiny little bit more" for petrol because of his Iran war. Refusing to apologise for starting the war, Trump said: "What we're doing is a great service for the world, not only for ourselves … and we're really doing a great job." Trump's war on the BBC got even funnier There's an old rule of thumb in courtrooms. Never ask a question you don't know the answer to. Donald Trump just found out why. Regular readers will recall that last week Donald Trump had to have a mad scramble to rewrite his preposterous lawsuit against the BBC, because if he didn't, he'd have to send the BBC all his bank statements. The judge let him off the hook and earlier this week we saw the newly unsealed, rewritten lawsuit. It accuses the BBC of a "brazen" attempt to interfere in the 2024 election, because...about 300 Americans may have seen the Panorama episode with a slightly dodgy edit. His TEN BILLION DOLLAR lawsuit is predicated on his reputation and political standing had been damaged by showing footage of him saying things he actually said - to an audience that would barely fill a medium sized pub. The docket includes a deposition from Richard Cooper, the BBC's director of digital distribution. He revealed the programme had been watched 570,000 times on iPlayer. But of those, only 285 are from IP addresses that could have been based in America. Not 285,000 - 285. And 34 of those were from Florida, where the case is being heard. And it somehow gets funnier. Cooper said the US-based IP addresses didn't necessarily mean the viewer was actually in the United States. For example, of those 34 streams from Florida, most were traced back to an IP address in Slough, via the cruise ship company Carnival...which has its HQ in Florida. That 285 is also over the ENTIRE period the documentary was available online, which is about a year. And only a week of that was before the election. In case you're wondering, if you assume all 285 viewers were by American voters, which they weren't - the damages Trump's asking for per view comes to $35,078719.30 In proper money, that's £25,974,385.96. EACH. Leavitt Out Farewell, then, to Karoline Leavitt, who is stepping down as Donald Trump's Press Secretary at the end of the month. She has, of course, done a string of things a Press Secretary should never do. She has lied, repeatedly. She has berated and insulted members of the media from the podium. She presided over an influx of right-wing propagandists diluting the real reporters in the press room. And she was the face of the decision to exclude the Associated Press from some Trump events in retaliation for their refusal to change their stylebook to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. But none of those was the reason she left. A source reportedly told CNN that when she took a month off in May following the birth of her daughter, Trump would often contact her "and, at times, asked when she planned to return". It would be a terrible shame if she had been forced out of the job because she had a young family, rather than for all of the manifest reasons she's a terrible Press Secretary. Who will replace her? Anna Kelly would be among the obvious choices, to the point of being a bit boring. She is among Leavitt's deputies and would keep continuity. Steven Cheung, the White House Comms Director is one of the most combative people in the White House. In fact, he's one of the most combative people on Planet Earth outside of the UFC. He might be a bit noisy for the role. But the top bets on America's prediction markets are going on Alina Habba. A former Trump advisor and lawyer, she stepped down as acting US Attorney for New Jersey after an appeals court found she'd been continuing in the role despite her interim appointment having expired, and the Administration failing to get the Senate to confirm her. She's one of a string of "interim" Trump administration prosecutors who have had their appointments challenged. You can get more stories, analysis and gossip like this straight to your inbox by signing up to The U.S. Dispatch with Mikey Smith newsletter, exclusively available to Mirror+ subscribers. Click here to subscribe to Mirror+ now As a Mirror + subscriber, you’ll have: - Unlimited access to the Mirror's app - Cleaner, faster reading online with fewer adverts - Access to exclusive newsletters only for subscribers - These will include unique insight from our writers alongside thought-provoking opinion - Exclusive in-depth features and unmissable columnists for Mirror+ members Click here to subscribe to Mirror+ now Trump ripped up America's childhood vaccine regime In an executive order this week, Trump made a bid to scale back the number of lifesaving vaccines given to children in America. The schedule of jabs for kids, for which there is no evidence of widespread harm, and huge amounts of evidence of efficacy and safety, is being torn up, the President said, "based on what I feel." Neither Donald Trump nor his health secretary, embarrassing nephew and croaky anti-vaccine advocate Robert F Kennedy Jr, are doctors. RFK Jr admitted in 2012 that a parasite "ate a portion" of his brain. But for well over a decade, Trump has expressed his view — against medical groups’ guidance — that childhood vaccines should be administered in smaller doses over a long period of time. The executive order sought to bear out that discredited theory. “This is based on what I feel,” Trump said last September when he called for splitting the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine into three single-disease vaccines. On Monday, he again pushed for separating the MMR shot into three, ordering the US Department of Health and Human Services to work on developing that option for children, since it doesn’t currently exist in the United States. Public health experts have warned that spacing out shots could increase the risk of infection with a vaccine-preventable disease before a child returns for the next visit. Medical experts said Trump’s order is misguided and likely to stoke fear and confusion among parents at a time when measles is raging, immunisation rates are falling and children are heading back to school. Trump downplays the strain on the sailors he sent to Hormuz Trump on Friday downplayed the toll on American sailors enduring nearly nine months at sea on the USS Abraham Lincoln as concerns escalated about mental health and supply issues aboard the aircraft carrier supporting US operations against Iran. After reports emerged that sailors on the Lincoln are struggling with mental health concerns, the Navy said it has “not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship,” though officials have declined to provide data, citing operational security and patient privacy concerns. A Navy official said a sailor aboard the Lincoln went overboard in early August but the person was quickly recovered, treated by the ship’s medical department and transferred off ship for follow-on care. The official would not say whether it was being considered a suicide attempt. In a brief exchange with reporters before flying to New York for an event to highlight falling violent crime rates across the US, Trump refuted that family members have raised concerns about the deployment’s length and even said that the deployment — which includes a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days — is “not nearly long enough.” "That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship,” Trump said when asked about the lengthy deployment. The acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, said the Lincoln “will return home soon” in a social media post on Friday.