The Weekly WTF: Icky presidential bedroom

Plus, crypto bros enrich Trump, pregnant women vex Republicans, and New York socialists bungle air conditioning.

THIS STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED:

Cryptobrohaha. President Trump made more than $2 billion in 2025, increasing his net worth by roughly one-third in a single year. It wasn’t from presidential pay. Most of that money came from crypto ventures he and his family formed after Trump won a second presidential term in 2024. Trump made money by licensing his name and likeness to meme coins that other people buy and selling stakes in his companies to others. Many critics see these businesses as pump-and-dump schemes peddling bogus assets as a way of collecting tribute from wealthy people seeking presidential favors.

Did crypto investors share Trump’s success in 2025? Um … no, it’s more like they just gave Trump their money. The Trump memecoin spiked in value for a couple of days after it launched on January 17, 2025, kind of like a hot IPO. Insiders who bought early and sold during the frenzy made bank. But the coin quickly tanked, and most of the people who bought the coin lost money. If you bought at the peak, by the end of 2025, you were down 97%. Analysts estimate buyers of the coin lost around $4.5 billion. Some of that went right into Trump’s pocket.

[If the AI bubble bursts, it might look like this]

Even bitcoin, the most established cryptocurrency, has lost value under Trump. Crypto bros backed Trump in 2024, because he promised looser rules for crypto and other ways to make it more mainstream. Bitcoin surged for a while in 2024, but ended the year down 7.5%. It has since plunged in value, and is now 35% lower than it was at the start of 2025. The Trump crypto pump seems to have run its course. Trump rarely talks about crypto anymore. He made his killing, mission accomplished.

Trash of the United States. Trump’s bedroom is a mess, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. They report that Trump leaves junk food wrappers scattered about while noshing at night, and stains the carpet with spilt food. Trump also has carpeted bathrooms, they say, which grosses people out because carpets can get defiled with bathroom fluids (🙄). Haberman and Swan imply that Trump is kind of a pig.

When I see stories like this, it makes me wonder who is leaking (sorry, groan) and why. Is it current or former housekeeping staff at the White House or Mar-a-lago? Or are Trump’s sloppy personal habits an open secret among his inner circle? If somebody is trying to embarrass him, why? Could it be Melania? Is the bathroom carpet really a problem, like does it regularly rot away? And will presidential historians be studying this in 50 years?

[America 250 isn’t as grim as it seems]

Election goons. The FBI is rushing several hundred agents to Georgia to investigate election fraud that never happened. It’s all part of Trump’s fixation on his 2020 loss to Joe Biden in the state. Is the FBI going there to plant evidence and claim Trump won? Maybe. But this is probably about the 2026 midterms, with Trump and his crony thugs running the FBI trying to intimidate election workers and possibly set the stage for Trump to cheat in November, when Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff faces a Trump-backed challenger. Trump’s megalomania would be comical if he weren’t vastly abusing federal power in the service of his fragile ego.

Birthright ruckus. The latest emergency among extremist Republicans is the Supreme Court’s appalling refusal to overturn birthright citizenship, which has been enshrined in the Constitution since 1868. The court killed a Trump order that would have limited birthright citizenship to certain people, so now some fringier members of the party are talking about legislation that might do the job.

[The Trump economy is barely improving]

One idea is to ban pregnant women from entering the country, just in case they’re coming here to give birth on American soil. How would that work? Declare your pregnancy status at customs? Would there be physical exams and pregnancy tests to make sure nobody’s lying? And Trump’s ever-trusty customs agents are going to handle this? Will they shoot pregnant women who step out of line?

It’s a dumb idea that can’t die fast enough.

Sweaty socialists. With temperatures in New York City soaring toward 100°, mayor Zohran Mamdani urged city residents to conserve energy and set their air conditioners at 78°.

Wrong temperature! He should have said 68°, or maybe 58°.

Republicans immediately attacked Mamdani:

• “The Social Democrats are coming for your AC.” (Sen. Lindsey Graham)

• “This is communism at work.” (Sen. Rick Scott of Florida)

• It’s “an act of war against women in menopause.” (Rep. Nancy Mace)

• “Telling New Yorkers to set their air conditioning at 78 degrees is an open admission of the failure of the left.” (Windbag Newt Gingrich)

Funny, though, the federal government’s own guidelines for AC say to set it at 78°. Many states recommend the same thing, including Trumpy-red Texas and Florida. Maybe they don’t get heat waves there.

At least it wasn’t an obituary. Did you hear that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is retiring? He isn’t, but NPR published a story on June 30 saying that he was. Famed Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg told her editors Alito was retiring because somebody at the Supreme Court told her there was a retirement announcement and she assumed it was Alito. So NPR published an Alito profile she had prewritten in anticipation of his farewell.

[Tech inflation is now a problem]

The story was only live for five minutes and Totenberg apologized to Alito, plus NPR fully explained itself. So they made amends. Still, this is a journalist’s nightmare scenario. I’ve made published mistakes, and you endure a kind of panic until making the correction. Then you sulk for awhile, feeling stupid.

That’s for small mistakes. This was one the entire journalism world noticed. Somebody obviously cut corners at NPR, but the underlying problem is the rush to be first with a story, which can be a perverse incentive that forces hasty and incomplete reporting. Most people don’t care who’s first, they just want a timely and trustworthy account.

There’s been a lot of speculation about Alito retiring this year after the court’s term ends, which it just did. It would be kind of funny if he retired sometime soon and Totenberg turned out to be right, just premature. Would NPR publish the same Alito retrospective some readers already got a glimpse of? Or does she have to start all over and write a fresh one, to make it seem spontaneous?

Enjoy a real cartoon.

Cartoon by Christopher Weyant

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