Donald Trump's chaotic week of wild outbursts, sinister purges and getting ghosted by Iran

Donald Trump's chaotic week of wild outbursts, sinister purges and getting ghosted by IranDonald Trump's week ended almost exactly where it started - but took a pretty wild route to get there. Here's all the mayhem you might have missedCommentsNewsopinionMikey Smith Deputy Political Editor07:00, 25 Apr 2026View ImageTrump has had a chaotic week - but didn't really accomplish anything(Image: AP) Donald Trump's week ended almost exactly where it started. And the week before that, for that matter. ‌ There's tentative murmurs of peace talks starting up again in Iran, after a fractious seven days of will they-won't they which would make Mulder and Scully say "come on lads, get on with it." A plane is primed to take Witkoff and Kushner, two halfwit property developers with delusions of diplomacy to Pakistan. And maybe this time they'll come to some kind of unified agreement. Or maybe Iran's fractured "government" will just...fracture again. Or maybe Trump will heave something onto Truth Social again that offends everyone involved and sends them all home. Here's a roundup of how we got here - and some of the other unhinged things the Trump administration has done this week that you might have missed. ‌ Content cannot be displayed without consent‌ Iran talks were almost certainly off... and JD Vance got ditched at the airportLast-ditch peace talks with Iran looked uncertain, with both sides warning they were all set to continue fighting if they couldn't reach a deal. Trump hadn't indicated he's gearing up for genocide, as he did the last time a deadline loomed. But he did say he didn't want to extend the ceasefire, warning "lots of bombs" would "start going off" if there's no agreement. And JD Vance who was inexplicably expected to lead the talks, was all set to stop on Air Force Two bound for Pakistan when he was told not to bother. Aaaand then it was Taco Tuesday againAs everyone kind of half expected, Trump walked back down the hill hours before the deadline - declaring the ceasefire would be extended until Iran could get its act together. "Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured," he wrote. "Not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal." Which was a weird position to take given he'd been telling everyone for days that the US has been working with the new Iranian administration, and that regime change had happened and everything was going fine. Fast forward to today - and once again, planes are being readied to take the dream team of Kushner and Witkoff back to Pakistan - this time to meet with Iran's Foreign Minister. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been idly sending emails round mulling the idea of expelling Spain from NATO in retaliation for its refusal to get involved in Iran. And just days before the king's visit, officials were openly mulling rescinding America's support for the UK's claim to the Falkland Islands - something Trump buddy and Argentine President Javier Milei was VERY excited about. Trump ruled out nuking IranTrump ruled out using nuclear weapons in Iran, saying the mere question was "stupid". Asked by a female reporter whether he would consider it, Trump reacted angrily, barking: "No. Why would I need it? Why would a stupid question like that be asked? Why would I use a nuclear weapon when I've totally and in a very conventional way decimated them without it. No I wouldn't use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anyone. Meanwhile, Trump made a big deal in the opening weeks of his war in Iran of the mess the US military had made of that country's Navy - repeatedly insisting it was "at the bottom of the ocean". Well, turns out, that's not entirely true. Iran still has a few boats left - just enough to fire on ships trying to travel down the Strait of Hormuz - and apparently enough to lay mines along the crucial waterway. In a Truth Social Post on Thursday, Trump said he had ordered the US military to "shoot and kill" small boats being used by Iran to block the strait. Still, otherwise, that ceasefire is going swimmingly. ‌ President Bone Spurs claims he would have won Vietnam "very quickly"Trump, who was given five military deferments so he didn't have to serve in Vietnam, claimed in an interview this week that he would have won that war "very quickly" if he'd been in charge at the time. "I just looked at a little chart: World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years -- I'm five months [in Iran]," Trump said in a phone-in interview with CNBC, apparently confused about how long it has been since the start of the war nearly two months ago. "I would have won Vietnam very quickly. I would have, if I were president." He was granted his first four deferments from the military draft due to being a student. But in 1968, after he graduated, a podiatrist who rented office space from his father in New York wrote a letter to the draft board that he had "bone spurs" in his heels, so he couldn't possibly fight for his country. The podiatrist's daughter has since come forward and said he'd given the diagnosis as a favour to Trump's father. In 2019, Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, said he'd never seen any evidence of his infirmity. "Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery," Cohen said. "He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment." Content cannot be displayed without consentThe Lincoln Memorial Splash 'n' Play ParadiseNot satisfied with making the White House look like a low-rent Atlantic City casino, Trump has decided the world-famous reflecting pool leading up to the Lincoln Memorial looks a bit grubby. You may know it as the location of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Or maybe from Forrest Gump. I'm not here to judge. There was, Trump said in the Oval Office a plan to refurbish the world famous landmark, restoring its granite surface to its former glory. But nah, Trump said, let me get one of my contractors on it. He explained that he went to one of his swimming pool contractors and asked him to take a look at it. And long story short, what was supposed to be a 3 year, £300m refurbishment of a central part of America's heritage, is no longer taking place. Instead, Trump's guys are going to fix up the grouting, give it a clean, and POUR SWIMMING POOL LINING on top of it. Not only that, but it's no longer going to be the natural grey/white colour of the granite. Trump initially wanted it to be turquoise, but instead it's going to be "American Flag Blue". The whole bodge job is going to take a week and cost $1.5m. ‌ So yeah. He's literally turning an American monument into a giant swimming pool. And yesterday the first images emerged, and it's worse than anyone could have imagined... Content cannot be displayed without consent‌ Trump sacked his Navy chief - who kind of made a sceneTo lose one armed forces chief during a war can be put down to misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth then, it seems, is careless, as it emerged last night that he'd ordered the Secretary of the Navy to either step down or be fired. It's just a few weeks since the Army Chief of Staff departed in circumstances that are still not entirely clear. But reporting last night suggested a pretty bizarre chain of events leading to the ousting of Navy Secretary John Phelan. Hegseth and Trump are said to have been meeting to discuss shipbuilding and come to the conclusion Phelan had been moving too slowly. It's also said that Hegseth had become irked by Phelan having a closer relationship with Trump than he expected when he hired him, to the point where he would talk to the President directly. So according to CNN, Trump became convinced in this meeting that Phelan had to go and told Hegseth to "take care of it". Hegseth then sent a message to Phelan telling him the bad news. Phelan, according to CNN's sources, simply did not believe the Secretary of War's assertion that Trump was aware of his sacking. He began phoning other White House officials asking them what they'd heard. And even then he wasn't convinced - and literally turned up to the White House lobby to try and speak to the man himself. Trump reportedly came out and spoke to him, confirming he was out of a job. Phelan, a businessman with no prior military service, and who appears on the flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein's private jet, was installed as Navy Secretary after raising millions of dollars for Trump's campaign. He'll be replaced - for now at least - by Undersecretary Hung Cao, a veteran who ran twice, unsuccessfully, for office in Virginia as a Republican. ‌ Trump declares anti-vote rigging referendum 'rigged'We're all used to Trump declaring elections to have been rigged - usually the 2020 election, which he lost fair and square to Joe Biden. There is absolutely no evidence of any widespread irregularity in that election, or any other election in recent history. Neither is there any evidence that this week's referendum in Virginia was beset by fraud or malfeasance ...though election rigging was the reason it took place. The referendum sought to redraw electoral boundaries in the state, effectively creating a few more winnable seats for Democrats - but only because Trump had set a precedent, doing the same thing in Texas and other states. For once in their lives, the Democratic Party decided not to turn up to a drag race with a pushbike, in order to level the playing field ahead of November's midterm elections. So, of course, when the vote pushed through a delightfully aggressively gerrymandered map last night, it made Trump pretty mad. "A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!" He wrote on Truth Social this afternoon. All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive "Mail In Ballot Drop!" Where have I heard that before -- And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!" There is, of course, no evidence of any nefarious behaviour with postal ballots. Neither has there ever been any evidence of fraud in mailed ballots on the scale necessary to tip an election. Trump went on to complain that the language in the referendum was confusing. ‌ "In addition to everything else, the language on the Referendum was purposefully unintelligible and deceptive," he continued. "As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the Referendum, and neither do they!" And in this one Truth Social post, Trump gave a preview of what's likely to happen after the midterms. Trump finds - or invents - some reason, some inconsistency, some false claim of ballot stuffing or foreigners voting. And he pushes it to the courts, asking them to overturn the election. In the meantime, some people fear the House and Senate, which would remain in Republican hands until January, even if they get the drubbing that's widely expected, will be under pressure from the White House to take unconstitutional measures to prevent the election being certified and block newly elected Democrats from taking their seats. Trump's Truth Social post this afternoon is laying the groundwork for what is known as an "auto-coup", where a leader or party puts conditions in place - legally or not - to make it increasingly difficult to remove them from office. And if you think he's going to stop at the midterms, I've got a ballroom to sell you. Anyone for Tennis?Trump hosted a bunch of champion college sports teams at the White House the other night. He gave a speech in the East Room, which mostly consisted of the president introducing each team, then banging on about how much he won their state by in the 2024 election. Usual fare. But a picture has since emerged that goes some way to summing up Trump's attitudes. The image is a celebration of the University of Georgia's women's tennis team - who won the NCAA championship this year. It depicts 11 members of the team standing on a riser, almost entirely obscured by the university's enormous male sports executives, and on a little riser of his own, Trump himself giving a thumbs up. Tennis star Martina Navratilova was among the first to comment on the photo, writing on Twitter: "A photo is worth a thousand words." ‌ Content cannot be displayed without consentHigh stakes for King visitDonald Trump said the King's visit to the US could "absolutely" repair relations between America and the UK - and has a hint for Keir Starmer's survival. Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday, saying Peter Mandelson was a "really bad pick", but that Starmer had "plenty of time to recover." Asked what he meant by that in a phone interview with the BBC later in the week, Trump gave a familiar suggestion. "If he opened the North Sea and if his immigration policies became strong," Trump said. "Which right now they're not, he can recover, but if he doesn't, I don't think he has a chance." Trump has frequently moaned about the UK's decision to halt licences to drill in the North Sea for a number of reasons. Restarting drilling would almost certainly benefit American companies bidding for licences. But another major factor is his decades-long vendetta against wind farms, which stems from the Scottish government erecting turbines off the coast of Aberdeen next to his luxury golf course. Trump said next week's state visit could help fix the rift between the US and UK that erupted in the early days of his bombing campaign in Iran. Asked if the relationship could be repaired by Charles and Camilla's visit, he said: "Absolutely. He's fantastic. He's a fantastic man. Absolutely the answer is yes. I know him well, I've known him for years. He's a brave man, and he's a great man. They would absolutely be a positive." ‌ Kash Patel denies everythingKash Patel is suing the Atlantic for $250 million over an article which contained allegations about his conduct. I don't have $250 million, but it would be remiss of me not to show you his denial - in direct quotes Kash Patel from a press conference. In response to a question about whether he'd ever been intoxicated on the job, Patel said: "I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake news mafia." He added: "I've never been intoxicated on the job." He was also asked about an alleged incident where he was unable to log into the FBI computer system, and messaged colleagues in a panic, thinking he'd been fired. He became combative in his answer: "Let's have a survey. How many people believe that's true? The problem with you and your baseless reporting is that is an absolute lie. It was never said, it never happened and I will serve in this administration as long as the President and the Attorney General want me to do so." Meanwhile the Justice department goes after America's biggest anti-racist organisationLast night Kash Patel (more of whom later) and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, announced they were pressing charges against the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC). For 50 years, the SPLC's business has been to root out, expose and neuter racist, white supremacist, nazi and far right groups such as the KKK and Neo-Nazi National Alliance in America. And they've been very successful in that regard. So the Trump administration wants to shut them down. Since the 1980s, part of the SPLC's operation was allegedly to nurture and fund a network of undercover informants within said extremist groups. This alleged work was, for obvious reasons, kept secret and not disclosed to donors. The project is now defunct, but the Justice Department has decided to go after them on charges of wire fraud, claiming bank accounts set up under fictitious names for the purposes of paying the clandestine operatives amounted to defrauding donors. The SPLC said the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants. “When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” interim CEO and president Bryan Fair said in a statement. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.” Justifying the charges, Blanche claimed that far from trying to dismantle the groups, the SPLC's cash was "manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose." So the KKK, neo-Nazis, the Unite the Right march that descended on Charlottesville, Virginia during Trump's first term - all of that? Manufactured. That is the position of the US Department of Justice. Why are they pressing these preposterous charges, which will almost certainly be tossed out of every court they are brought to? Because the SPLC included Turning Point USA, the group run by Charlie Kirk, in their "Year in Hate and Extremism 2024", describing the group as "A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024." After that, and following pressure from far-right influencers, Kash Patel announced the FBI - which had worked with SPLC throughout its use of the secret informant network - was severing relations with the group. Some have noted that this all ties up quite neatly with a deeply sinister order Trump gave last September, known as "NSPM-7", which - citing the assassination of Kirk, declared "Antifa", which doesn't exist, a terrorist organisation. It also brands "anti-Christian", "anti-capitalism" and "anti-American" views, as well as "extremism on gender" and "hostility towards those who hold traditional views on family" as signs of radical leftist violence. It directs the Justice Department, the FBI and national security agencies to focus on "leftist" political violence in America. In effect, it allows - nay demands - the Federal Government to pursue and harass activists, researchers and journalists whenever they do anything Trump doesn't like. Which is...all the time. Article continues below