Trump, Melania

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    Melania Trump Suits Up for the Military Parade

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    The first lady’s outfit was fully in line with the controlled and contained public image she had been crafting since the end of her husband’s first term.It wasn’t exactly dress whites, but it was dressy and white, with thin blue pinstripes and shiny silver buttons. And while it may not have had epaulets, it did have shoulder pads.As Melania Trump took her place next to her husband in the presidential viewing stand to watch the Army’s 250th anniversary parade, her suit suggested that if he was the commander in chief, she was his general. As he has his own uniform of Pavlovian patriotism (navy suit, white shirt and red tie), she has hers. Regalia takes all forms.As such, the suit was something of a riposte to those who would still see her as a reluctant political spouse: Whether or not she spends all her time in the White House, she’s there, and appropriately costumed for key scenes like this one.And it was fully in line with the almost militantly controlled and contained public image Mrs. Trump had been crafting since the end of her husband’s first term, when she wore an army green Alexander McQueen skirt suit to give her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2020. She even wore a trench coat, a garment originally made for British soldiers in World War I, to the White House Easter Egg Roll in April.Politics is a battlefield, she has always seemed to be saying, and you have to armor yourself accordingly. Even if only in a buttoned-up skirt suit, with stilettos on your feet instead of in your pockets.If this particular skirt suit — a double-breasted cotton twill blazer with a matching high-waisted pencil skirt — was a little more navy (or country club navy) than army, it still had an awfully regimental vibe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Was Already a Crypto Czar in 2024

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      Financial disclosures for 2024 filed by the president on Friday show that digital coins had already become one of his family’s most successful ventures.Donald J. Trump got a small taste last year of life as a cryptocurrency mogul. His stake in World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency firm that he unveiled during the presidential campaign, earned about $57 million, making it one of the Trump family’s most lucrative investments in 2024. And a licensing deal involving a related industry, NFT collectibles, produced another $1.2 million.Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, contributed to the family income, receiving $217,000 in licensing fees related to a digital token.The results, detailed in Mr. Trump’s mandatory financial disclosure report for 2024 and released on Friday, previewed the crypto riches he is now poised to reap as president.Since Mr. Trump took office a second time this year, his crypto fortunes have skyrocketed through a series of business ventures that pose unprecedented conflicts of interest. Not only is Mr. Trump a major operator in the crypto industry, he is also its top policymaker — and a symbol of its rising stature in Washington.Even as the president seeks to deregulate and promote the industry, Mr. Trump’s personal net worth has soared through crypto.Though the information in the financial disclosure ends as of Dec. 31, 2024, World Liberty announced this year that it had sold more than a half-billion dollars’ worth of its coin, a significant portion of which the Trump family was entitled to. Separately, Mr. Trump developed a personal cryptocurrency known as $TRUMP, a memecoin launched days before his inauguration, that on paper could be worth billions of dollars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Meaning of a Trump-Inspired Style

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      The Times’s chief fashion critic unravels the Trump-inspired style that has spread quickly across Washington.President Trump has changed a lot about Washington over the past four months, including how it looks.I’m not talking about the city’s architecture, although he has made clear his disdain for the brutalism of many federal buildings (an aesthetic that I’m personally quite fond of).I’m talking about the city’s style.Trump and his inner circle of aides and family members cannonballed into Washington’s ocean of understated suits and blouses with a bold and strikingly consistent approach to clothing, cosmetics and, well, personal enhancements. (Nothing points up its consistency so well as the occasional departure, like the T-shirts and blazers Elon Musk has worn to the Oval Office, including today.) If style is a way to send a message, and politics is largely a matter of communication, the maturation of a “MAGA style” in Trump’s second term is a development worth understanding.So I reached out to our reigning expert: Vanessa Friedman, The Times’s chief fashion critic, who has covered political image-making for years (and who, as it happens, writes an excellent newsletter). We discussed the language of Trumpist fashion, the way it has evolved since Trump’s first term and what it means for men as well as for women.OK, let’s start with some visual aids. Who, to you, really embodies the aesthetic of the people around President Trump?Why don’t we take a look?Clockwise from top left: Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times, Sarah Blesener for The New York Times, Doug Mills/The New York Times, Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Melania Trump, Prince William and Zelensky Among Famous Faces at Pope Francis’ Funeral

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      President Trump, Melania Trump, Prince William and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine were among those who paid respects to the pontiff in St. Peter’s Square.Among the tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square on Saturday for Pope Francis’ funeral were monarchs, world leaders, at least one former president and other familiar faces.Filling up the rows of nondescript chairs, according to Vatican protocol, reigning monarchs went first, including King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain. Then came heads of state, in alphabetical order according to the name of their country in French.Only Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and President Javier Milei of the pope’s native Argentina had priority seating toward the front.Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron of France sat across an aisle from President Trump, and Melania Trump, the first lady, and the two presidents shook hands at one point in the service. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Catholic, sat farther away with Jill Biden, the former first lady.Crowds watching on big screens around the square applauded when President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine took his seat. Leaders from Africa and Asia, regions where the Catholic Church is growing, also took their seats, including President William Ruto of Kenya and President Droupadi Murmu of India.Other royals who aren’t heads of state, including Prince William, sat in a group just in front of visiting government ministers and other dignitaries.Away from the world leaders, among the crowds, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who was imprisoned after his website published secret government documents in the 2010s, paid tribute to Francis with his family.“Now Julian is free, we have all come to Rome to express our family’s gratitude for the Pope’s support during Julian’s persecution,” read a message on social media attributed to his wife, Stella Assange. The post said that the pope had written to Mr. Assange while he was in prison. More

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      Trump’s Crypto Venture Introduces a Stablecoin

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      World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company started by Donald J. Trump and his sons, announced on Tuesday that it was planning to sell a digital currency called a stablecoin, deepening the president’s financial ties to crypto as his administration relaxes enforcement of the industry.The stablecoin would be known as USD1, the company wrote in a social media post, without revealing when it would go on sale. Stablecoins, a popular form of cryptocurrency, are designed to maintain a constant value of $1, making them useful for many types of crypto transactions.“No games. No gimmicks. Just real stability,” World Liberty Financial posted on its X account.The stablecoin is the fourth digital currency that Mr. Trump and his business partners have marketed to the public over the last year. World Liberty already offers a cryptocurrency called WLFI. This month, World Liberty announced it had sold $550 million of those digital coins. A business entity linked to Mr. Trump receives a 75 percent cut of the sales.Days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump also started selling a so-called memecoin — a type of digital currency based on an online joke or a celebrity mascot. Melania Trump put her own memecoin on the market that same weekend.Mr. Trump has made aggressive forays into the crypto market as his administration eases enforcement of crypto firms and rolls back regulations. His efforts to profit from an industry he oversees amount to an enormous conflict of interest, with virtually no precedent in American history, government ethics experts have said.World Liberty’s stablecoin adds to that messy knot of business conflicts. Congress is considering legislation to regulate stablecoins that could reach Mr. Trump’s desk before the end of the year. In a speech at a crypto conference this month, Mr. Trump called for “simple, common sense rules” for stablecoins, saying they would “expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inflation Is Rising. What Will That Mean for Trump’s Tariffs?

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      Consumer sentiment has turned south as high prices weigh on households. Could that crimp big pieces of the president’s economic agenda, including tariffs?Stubbornly high inflation is beginning to weigh on households, with sentiment souring fast, economists note.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesRising prices hit a trade war President Trump isn’t backing off his tariff threats, despite the potential risk to the U.S. economy and financial markets.That puts additional focus on the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures report, the Fed’s favored inflation measure. It’s due for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.The question is whether lingering inflation also will have big implications for the Trump agenda, with some economists predicting that tariffs will raise inflation and lower growth, even if the target countries don’t retaliate. Friday’s report is expected to show only slight relief for consumers.Economists worry about a hot P.C.E. reading, which could push the central bank to keep borrowing costs higher well into the second half of the year, even as consumer confidence and the mood in the C-suites increasingly turn south and the economy shows signs of slowing.A recession is seen as unlikely, but there are other concerns. Recent data shows a growing affordability crunch with egg prices spiking (more on that below), home sales plummeting and jobless claims climbing. Watch next week’s jobs report for more, including which parts of the country could be hardest hit by Elon Musk-led cuts to the federal government. (Alaska is among them.)“With 3 million federal employees potentially worrying about their jobs and 6 million federal contractors worrying about their jobs, the risks are rising that households may begin to hold back purchases of cars, computers, washers, dryers, vacation travel plans, etc.,” Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, wrote in a research note on Thursday. Sentiment, he added, is “bad.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Donors Who Give at Least $1 Million or Raise $2 Million Get Inaugural Access

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump is raising money for his inauguration in increments as high as $2 million, according to materials from fund-raisers for the inauguration.A flier titled “Trump Vance Inaugural Committee Benefits” lists the perks of donating $1 million or raising $2 million for the event. Donors who reach that elite level receive as many as a half-dozen tickets to eight inaugural events from Jan. 17 to Jan. 20.After a divisive election, donors and corporations typically put big money into presidents’ inaugural committees as a way to support the president and also to curry favor with an administration that will be in power for four years. There are no limits on the donations that can be made to the Trump committee, which is structured as a political nonprofit for tax purposes, but gifts over $200 are disclosed to the Federal Election Commission.Highlights of the schedule of events for the elite donors and fund-raisers include a reception with cabinet picks and a dinner with Vice President-elect JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, on Jan. 18, and an “elegant and intimate dinner with President Donald J. Trump and Mrs. Melania Trump” on Jan. 19, described as “the pinnacle event.” Before the dissemination of this flier, Mrs. Trump had not confirmed her plans to attend the inaugural festivities, which include a Sunday morning interfaith service that the materials say she plans to attend with Mr. Trump.On Monday, Jan. 20, the big donors will receive six tickets each to attend the inauguration itself.Mr. Trump’s first inaugural committee, which was investigated by federal prosecutors for illegal foreign donations and resulted in a 12-year prison sentence for one donor, raised $107 million in 2016 and 2017. The current inaugural committee is being led by Steven Witkoff, a billionaire real estate mogul who has given nearly $2 million to Mr. Trump’s political causes over the past decade and who has been named a special envoy to the Middle East, and Kelly Loeffler, a former Republican senator from Georgia.Mr. Trump is continuing to raise money for his political efforts, too. On Dec. 19, he is expected to headline an event at his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, for a pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., where tickets cost $1 million a person, according to a copy of the invitation seen by The New York Times. More

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      Trump’s New Cologne: Eau de Musk

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      I was feeling sad that Melania may not care to come play first lady in the second Trump administration.She visited the East Wing only a couple of times during her husband’s first term, turning into the first lady of absenteeism, according to Katie Rogers, the author of “American Woman,” a history of modern first ladies. Her office there was so empty, her staff used it as a gift-wrapping station.Even so, I thought we might get a little comme il faut from “the Portrait,” as Ivanka nicknamed her stepmother — a small bow to protocol.But not likely. As some in the Trump orbit point out, it’s no accident that Barron is going to New York University, not a university here, like Georgetown or American.Melania will probably “move in” to the White House and drop by the capital, looking impervious and gorgeous. But in general, the Slovenian Sphinx is going to get even more sphinxy this time. She has made her disdain for D.C. clear. She skipped the ritual torch-passing of having tea in the Yellow Room of the White House with Jill Biden as the two presidents met. Jill had to settle for handing a note to Donald to take back to Melania in Palm Beach.The New York Post reported that Melania abhorred the Bidens because of the Mar-a-Lago documents raid in 2022, when she felt violated by F.B.I. agents with a search warrant snooping in the drawer with her fine washables.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Melania Trump Declines Jill Biden’s White House Invitation

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      Melania Trump, the former and incoming first lady, will not accompany President-elect Donald J. Trump to the White House on Wednesday, a person briefed on the plans said.Mrs. Trump had been invited by the current first lady, Jill Biden, for a traditional meeting between the incoming and outgoing presidential spouses as President Biden hosts Mr. Trump at the White House.But Mrs. Trump is declining the invitation, the person said, rebuffing a tradition that’s part of the transition of power.An aide to Mrs. Trump did not respond to a message about her plans.Mrs. Trump sometimes eschewed tradition in her first stint in the White House. She has not yet outlined how she plans to go about the role in the next administration.She has frequently been in New York as the president-elect’s youngest son, Barron, attends college there. In 2017, she didn’t move to Washington for several months while his school year was going on. More