Donald Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a “bawdy” 50th birthday card featuring a drawing of a naked woman, according to The Wall Street Journal. The US president allegedly wrote “may every day be another wonderful secret” in the note, which he has claimed is fake. He has since asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to release transcripts of the grand jury testimony in the Epstein case. Diane Abbott says it is “obvious this Labour leadership wants me out” after the party suspended her for a second time. The veteran left-winger had the whip withdrawn yesterday for saying she didn’t regret the comment she made in 2023 – that Jews experience racism differently to black people – which led to her first suspension. A married CEO and his chief people officer have been caught in a suspected affair after the pair tried desperately to swerve the “kiss cam” at a Coldplay concert in Boston (pictured). “Oh look at these two,” said singer Chris Martin. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”

Liberals may miss Trump when he’s gone

When Donald Trump bombed Iran last month, says Janan Ganesh in the FT, “Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon revolted”. A president elected to end America’s Middle Eastern misadventures was turning into a “third President Bush”. Another crack in the MAGA movement opened up over Jeffrey Epstein – many believe the sex offender, who killed himself in 2019, had dirt on high-profile individuals, who had him murdered. After fanning the flames of this conspiracy for years, Trump has now tried (unsuccessfully) to convince his followers to “move on”. Perhaps most explosively, the president is warming to Ukraine and Nato and has become newly critical of Vladimir Putin. The many “Kremlin-admirers” on the US right must be wondering what happened to the man who ambushed Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office a few months ago.

These tiffs will pass, but they expose an important truth: “Trump and MAGA are no longer the same thing.” His movement – the intellectuals, the donors, the more-online grassroots – have “intense beliefs”. Apart from a lifelong misapprehension that running a trade deficit with another nation constitutes “losing”, he doesn’t. Trump is uniquely able to paper over these differences with charisma, electoral success and “dutiful enactment of key MAGA priorities” like vaccine scepticism. But unless the Republicans can find another candidate whose star power “overwhelms all philosophical reservations” about him or her, the next leader will be truer to the cause. That means “more Christianist, more nationalist, more paranoid”. In other words, we may very well look back on Trump as a “moderating influence” on a movement that will become “much more doctrinal” when he’s gone. On the plus side for liberals, such a movement will also be far less electable.