Mamdani’s Maduro Misstep

 Zohran Mamdani has made his first big mistake. The new mayor of New York had barely put his head through the office door when US President Donald Trump decided to take Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro out of the game. Mamdani didn’t do what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did or mainstream Democrats: criticise Trump’s M.O. but not be an apologist for the thuggery of Maduro and his regime.

Mamdani, instead, called Trump and “spoke with him directly to register my opposition to this act and to make clear it was an op­position based on being op­posed to a pursuit of regime change, to the violation of federal and international law.” Trump will remember. And a politician at home or abroad cannot do worse than underestimate Trump. Mamdani’s little drama is not merely proof of his political inexperience. It has undone some of the charm and flexibility New York’s first South Asian and Mus­lim mayor had shown in the White House photo-op. If this is Democratic Socialism, haven’t we been here before? Democratic Socialists prom­ise to take socialism beyond social democracy and away from the history of socialist tyranny. While the first objective is questionable in itself, Mamdani has thrown the latter out of the mayoral window.

The Other Trump Kennedy Center

For the last five years, 54-year-old Toby Morton, a screenwriter and producer, has been purchasing internet domains tied to politicians and making them parodies of the life and times of the self-same personalities. Last August, he intuitively bought the url TrumpKennedyCenter.org when the US president purged several board members of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and installed himself as its chairman. Morton bet on an imminent name change. And won. As the change faces federal lawsuits and a boycott by high-profile artists, Morton’s website is drawing scores of visitors, many taking it to be the Kennedy Center’s new url. Instead, they encounter a notice for a show by the ‘Epstein Dancers’. The website says: “Beginning January 2026, TrumpKennedyCenter. org enters a new era of devotion, unity and inherited authority.” Morton told the New York Times, “I’ve been... building sites that mirror and expose political power by using its own language against it.” He added, “It’s almost performance art in itself.” For now, Morton has received words of encouragement from some members of the extended Kennedy family, with obvious exceptions, of course.

Brigitte’s Blues

Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron have never had it too easy from the press. A Paris court’s verdict finding 10 people guilty of cyber bully­ing the French first lady over her gender, sexuality and the 24-year age gap between her and the president said the guilty had intent to do harm. Although two of the defendants were cleared by an appeals court since their claim that Brigitte Macron was her brother who had changed his gender wasn’t deemed an attack on honour, the Macrons are appealing against it. After years of silence, the Macrons decided to take action because the scale of the online attacks had changed to sinister.