How Trump made his name

April 27, 2024 | Read Online

Life

Trump with his second wife, Marla Maples, in 1992. Vinnie Zuffante/Getty

How Trump made his name

Donald Trump made his name in Manhattan power circles by making his life a "fixture in the city's vibrant tabloids", says Sarah Ellison in The Washington Post. When Marla Maples was about to give birth to his fourth child, Tiffany, in 1993, New York Daily News's gossip columnist, Linda Stasi, had simple orders: "Get in the room to see the baby." Maples objected, but Trump invited Stasi into the couple's private hospital room after the birth for a quick interview. When she asked for a photo, Maples "shooed her out". But Trump soon followed, holding an empty blanket. "Here, take my picture," he told her. "Just pretend there's a baby in here."

Trump gave the tabloids juicy bits of gossip and bombastic quotes to craft his image as a billionaire playboy, says Jill Brooke in The Hollywood Reporter. He impersonated other people, including a made-up PR representative called John Barron, to plant stories about himself and his enemies. During his acrimonious divorce from Ivana Trump, he reportedly phoned up the New York Post demanding a front-page story. "Donald, you just don't demand a front-page story," editor Jerry Nachman told him. "There has to be a story." "What gets a front-page story?" Trump asked. "Usually murder, money or sex," Nachman replied. Donald fired back: "Marla says with me it's the best sex she's ever had." "That's great!" said Nachman. "But you know I need corroboration." "Marla," Trump yelled into the background. "Didn't you say it's the best sex you ever had with me?" A faint, high pitched voice replied: "Yes, Donald."

Food and drink

Getty

Sumac – the small, shrub-like tree common in English gardens – was once used by Native Americans to make a "refreshing beverage", says Elisabeth Luard in The Oldie. Mash whole clusters of red sumac berries roughly in a bowl, cover with cold water and leave to soak for 10 to 15 minutes until the liquid is "thoroughly soured and blush pink", and then strain. The flavour is more "sour apple" than citric, more delicate than lemon, and less aggressive than vinegar – perfect for a fish soup, say. For a quenching drink or to freeze as a sorbet, sweeten with honey or sugar syrup, or use a dash of undiluted sumac water in cooking as you would a squeeze of lemon.

Advertisement

Murray International Trust
To deliver a strong, rising and reliable income from equities, we believe it's important to target exceptional companies. That's why our investment process is built to interrogate every potential company's management, finances, and business model. Capital at risk. Click here to learn more.

Inside politics

Johnson: an "obvious affection" for London. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

The Tories need to fall back in love with London

If there's one "iron law in politics", says Robert Shrimsley in the FT, it's that "people will not vote for parties that do not seem to like them". Which makes it hard to understand why the Tories are so down on London. They snarl at the capital's "metropolitan" values and rail against the evils of north London elites. For the forthcoming mayoral election, they have chosen as their candidate Susan Hall, a "spiky" nobody who'll struggle beyond the suburban base and tries to depict Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan as some sort of "demonic figure". There is no optimism, no love for this "vibrant metropolis". Recent Tory HQ campaign ads supporting Hall depict the city as a "crime-ravaged hellhole".

The Tories don't need to "go woke" to reclaim the affection of Londoners. They just need to demonstrate that they actually care about the capital: a post-Brexit strategy to attract investment; a proper plan to build more homes. Previous leaders have shown that you can follow mainstream Conservative values and still be viable in London. Boris Johnson won two mayoral elections in part because of his "obvious affection" for the city; David Cameron and his allies were happily known as the "Notting Hill set", and used issues like gay marriage and environmentalism to look at ease with the times. This is not to argue that winning London is the path to a future Tory victory. "But being chased out of it will certainly herald defeat."

🇷🇼 Will the Tories' Rwanda plan work? Click here to read our explainer

Zeitgeist

Katherine Birbalsingh: discouraging prejudice. Dan Kitwood/Getty

No wonder kids today hate Britain

In a recent after-school detention, says an anonymous teacher in The Sunday Times, a handful of pupils did their best to convince me that "Afghanistan was much nicer now the Taliban were in control". They do let girls go to school, one boy insisted, "but they stop them when they turn 11, which is very fair". It turned out these children not only supported gender inequality but were "fans of executing all manner of criminals too". My school is a large academy in the south of England, catering to those from poor families. Most are Muslim, and their hero is the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate. The more I get to know them, "the more distressed I am" by some of their views.

I asked a class of 13-year-olds if they hated Britain. "Thirty hands shot up with immediate, absolute certainty." Many of the boys hold "shocking views on women" – one of them regularly interrupts lessons with diatribes about how Western society is "brainwashing young men" into becoming more feminine. A Kurdish boy tells me he admires Saddam Hussein. "Iraq's just a bit rubbish now," he reasons. Due to the Gaza war, no group is more despised than the Jews, with pupils "regularly making comments of pure hatred". As repugnant as this all is, the fact that our children hate Britain is hardly a surprise. Their curriculum is "packed with hand-wringing about Western imperialism and institutional racism". I once taught at a school for mostly white, middle-class children, and even there, without the influence of Islamism, the kids were "imbued with a sense that their country is particularly bad". Solving this problem is tricky. But it might help if – like at Katherine Birbalsingh's Michaela academy – schools started dissuading students of these prejudices, instead of confirming them.

Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share

Share via WhatsApp

Share via email

Life

Chamberlain proclaiming "peace for our time" after meeting with Hitler in 1938

It's time we gave Chamberlain his due

When most people hear the name Neville Chamberlain, says Kevin Williamson in The Dispatch, they think only of the British PM's worst and most consequential mistake: believing he could "buy off Adolf Hitler and thereby avoid an unprofitable war". Only last week, a US lawmaker joked that a political opponent who opposed sending aid to Ukraine should have her office renamed the "Neville Chamberlain Room". But Chamberlain wasn't a bad man. Pursuing peace with Germany was a mainstream view at the time, and trying to avoid unprofitable wars had long been a key plank of British foreign policy. "We have a clear conscience," he said when war broke out. "We have done all that any country could do to establish peace."

Contrary to his cartoonish historical portrayal, Chamberlain was "a patriot and a statesman". After standing down as PM, and despite suffering "excruciating pain" from intestinal cancer, he continued to serve in Winston Churchill's war cabinet for the few months he had left to live. Churchill himself was in little doubt about his predecessor's qualities. "It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events," he eulogised in parliament. "But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed… they were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart – the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour." When Churchill offered Chamberlain the Order of the Garter, he refused. "I prefer to die plain 'Mr Chamberlain'," he said, "like my father before me, unadorned by any title."

Weather

Quoted

"My mother had a theory about Englishmen: they are permanently all two gin and tonics under par. They need two gin and tonics to become human."
Hugh Grant

That's it. You're done.

To find out about advertising and commercial partnerships, click here
Been forwarded this newsletter? Sign up for free
Enjoying the Knowledge? Click to share

Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here

Westbourne Studios
London, Greater London W10 5JJ, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Readers back Abbott's show of force at UT

houstonchronicle.com

View in Browser

Reactions to Abbott's actions

Gov. Greg Abbott's tough stance against student protesters on college campuses is provoking a lot of response from Texas Take readers.

More than a dozen responses have already poured into the Texas Take world headquarters and, by the looks of it, Abbott is winning the day after state troopers stormed the University of Texas at Austin and arrested more than 50 people — most of whom were later released.

"It's a rare day that I agree with Abbott on anything, but I agree those protestors have no place and antisemitism has no place anywhere, especially in Texas," Gregory G. wrote.

Paul C. also said he welcomed Abbott's response to anti-Israel protestors.

"These 'students' (if they really are) are brainwashed fools with no understanding of history and of what Israel has to deal with," he wrote. "Those who advocate 'death to the Jews' and 'death to America' should be arrested and expelled."

While most of the responses seemed to back Abbott, some worried about the images they were seeing of troopers confronting students.

Gene F. said it gave him a flashback to May 1970, when Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes deployed the National Guard at Kent State University. They opened fire on students, killing four and wounding nine.

"...a governor ordering state troopers to quell a student protest with disastrous results tells us we don't learn from our history," he said.

Add John D. who was worried about students getting hurt for expressing their views.

"It's a sad state of affairs that you risk physical harm if you don't support Israel. AIPAC has gotten their money's worth with Abbott," he said.

Check out the latest about the protests here from our team in Austin, and keep the comments coming!

Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter

jeremy.wallace@houstonchronicle.com

Who's up, who's down

Up: John Cornyn.

And the Grammy goes to… John Cornyn? Well, kind of. On Tuesday the Recording Academy will honor the Republican U.S. Senator, and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., during the annual Grammys on the Hill Awards for their work in leading the effort to provide $16 billion to music venues during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Cornyn is being saluted for the Fans First Act, where he is pushing for reforms to the concert ticket industry to fight against predatory resellers and secondary platforms that inflate ticket prices. More on that effort via Edward McKinley here.

Down: Palestine Solidarity Committee.

The University of Texas announced it was placing the group on interim suspension for breaking UT rules in relation to Thursday's protests on campus, the latest fallout from the demonstrations where at least 57 arrests were made, though many had charges dropped later.

What do you think? Hit reply and let me know.

What else is going on in Texas

Keith Giblin, Jefferson County District Attorney at a news conference about the fentanyl crisis, April 24, 2024

Photo by: Megan Zapalac/The Enterprise

Texas officials using new law to charge fentanyl dealers with murder

In 2023, the Texas Legislature ramped up penalties for people dealing drugs laced with fentanyl. Jefferson County explains why two men are facing murder charges.

Workers unpack medicine at a 'mega-pharmacy' warehouse on its inauguration day in Huehuetoca, Mexico, Dec. 29, 2023. A new report released by the Mexican government Friday, April 12, 2024, says the country is facing a dire shortage of fentanyl for medical use, even as Mexican cartels pump out tons of the illicit narcotic.

Photo by: Fernando Llano, AP

Top Mexico official apologizes for saying his country is 'champion' of fentanyl production

The comments Tuesday appeared to contradict past statements by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has denied any fentanyl is produced in Mexico.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo attends a trilateral meeting with President Joe Biden, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, April 11, 2024.

Photo by: Mark Schiefelbein, AP

US Rep. Castro backs federal restrictions on US firearms exports

Federal officials announce new restrictions on U.S. firearms exports in an effort to prevent the guns from ending up in the hands of criminals in other nations.

Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, April 26, 2024. (Dave Sanders/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

Photo by: Dave Sanders, AP

Trump's lawyers try to discredit testimony of witness in hush money trial

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was grilled about his memory and past statements as the defense tried to poke holes in the potentially crucial testimony.

Spring Brook Village, a master-planned community, is built several feet higher than the surrounding neighborhoods. It was photographed Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, in Houston.

Photo by: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

Nearly half of Harris County property tax appraisals decrease in 2024

Most homeowners who have gotten 2024 property tax appraisals saw either no change or a decrease in property values, according to early numbers from the Harris County Appraisal District.

Pick of the day

Jeremy Wallace and Scott Braddock talk all things Texas politics on the Texas Take podcast, released every Friday.

Photo by: Nadya Hassan

Scott Braddock and I are back with another new edition of the Texas Take Podcast where we will catch you up on the protests in Austin, one of the hottest GOP primary battles in the state and a look at why Ted Cruz voted against the big Ukraine aid package this week.

What else I'm reading

In two separate incidents, U.S. Border Patrol officials have been shot at from across the Rio Grande River. The Laredo Morning Times reports an agent there was shot with a pellet gun from Nuevo Laredo and returned fire. Meanwhile, much further west, the El Paso Times reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are investigating a similar incident there.

Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences | Privacy Notice

Alert: Is UT banning arrested student protesters from campus?

chron.com

View in Browser

Alert: Is UT banning arrested student protesters from campus?

Even though the Travis County district attorney dropped all criminal trespass charges against students arrested at the University of Texas protests Wednesday, the university confirmed Friday that the arrested students will not be allowed freely on campus.