He met with NATO leaders, and a judge ordered him to pay $5.8 million for defamation.
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Here’s what happened under President Donald Trump’s administration this week that you may have missed.
Trump flew to Turkey and met with nervous European leaders for a meeting of NATO allies, an alliance formed in the wake of World War II to counter Russian aggression.
It says an attack on one is an attack on all. Yet Trump has toyed with not only breaking from NATO but also seizing Greenland, which could be considered an attack on a NATO ally (since the Arctic island is a semiautonomous Danish territory). He’s also been upset that Europeans didn’t join the fighting against Iran, a war he started alongside Israel without consulting other allies.
The meetings went better than many allies feared. Trump praised those nations who had stepped up their defense spending and appeared to recommit to helping Ukraine push back against Russia’s invasion. He seemed touched by NATO leaders’ flattery, by now a common tactic Europeans deploy when dealing with Trump. At the last meeting, the head of NATO compared Trump to a “daddy.”
“They said, ‘We love, sir, we love you.’ These are grown people saying that. Isn’t that nice?” Trump told reporters this week after meetings. “Maybe, I don’t know, maybe they’re trying to get to me, and in a way, they did, because there was tremendous unity in that room.”
A defining focus for Trump in his second term has been trying to root out what he says are liberal views in law, education, national parks and museums.
The Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., which are largely federally funded, have been a big target. Shortly after he got in office, Trump signed an executive order demanding that “improper ideology” be eliminated from the museums. That has resulted in changes big and small: Last year, mentions of Trump were briefly removed from an impeachment exhibit before being replaced after an outcry from Democrats. This week, the White House released a report accusing the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History of “extreme political activism.” It accused the museum of not creating exhibits recounting the nation’s 250 years of history, despite a new exhibit designed for just that.
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Critics say Trump is using patriotism as code to frame the American story as one that won’t offend conservative, White Americans. The Smithsonian’s director defended the museum in a note to staff, citing an “uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s story.”
“In many ways, the report’s real complaint isn’t necessarily inaccuracy; it’s that the museum isn’t celebratory enough,” Beth English, the executive director of the Organization of American Historians, told my Washington Post colleagues. “And that’s a demand for a single version of history, dressed up as a defense of balance.”
While Trump was out of office, the election-related cases against him fizzled. But he was convicted in New York of falsifying business records, and two separate juries ordered him to pay nearly $90 million to writer E. Jean Carroll, who sued him over her allegation and his response to it.
Carroll said Trump raped her in a dressing room in the mid-1990s. A jury found him liable for sexual abuse (though the judge said there was little real-world difference between sexual abuse and rape) and for defaming her with his denials and attacks. Trump denies knowing her and says the claim is a hoax.
Carroll framed her wins in court as “a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down.”
Trump has since appealed up to the Supreme Court, which declined to take the case. This week, a judge ordered the release of the $5 million judgment to Carroll, plus nearly $800,000 in interest, that the first jury awarded her. Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed, yet an appeals court rejected their case in just hours. Trump is expected to ask the Supreme Court to review the second, separate $83 million judgment by the end of the month.
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
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