It is not hard to imagine how Biden must have seethed as Trump bullied and berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last week and threatened to tear up the 80-year transatlantic alliance that Biden strove to renew. Yet he offered no public reaction.

David Litt, an author and former Obama speechwriter, said: “There’s the question of is this protocol or is this patience. Protocol is pretty clearly out the window at this point, including Trump spending a good chunk of his address to Congress bashing Joe Biden. That is just not done and yet it’s done now.

“Certainly Trump was not shy about criticising the current administration when he was an ex-president. I suspect that in 2029, if he is still physically able to tweet what he thinks about whoever’s in office, he will do so.”

The death of George HW Bush in 2018 left his son, George W Bush, as the only living Republican president apart from Trump himself, raising the question of when Bush could join Clinton, Obama and Biden in a powerfully symbolic show of bipartisanship.

Litt added: “You get one moment when that has the greatest impact so you want to pick that moment carefully. Trump going further in selling out our allies and also forging a new alliance with Putin and Russia to me sounds like the kind of thing that might cross a line where a bipartisan group of former presidents would say this isn’t right.”

There is traditionally reluctance among presidents to criticise a successor, especially during the opening honeymoon period. However, history is littered with exceptions to the rule.

Theodore Roosevelt lambasted William Taft in a series of speeches, even though Roosevelt promoted Taft as his successor in 1909. Carter eviscerated Ronald Reagan, who beat him in 1980, for sending arms to Iran in hopes that Americans held captive in Lebanon would be released.

Clinton had a dig at his successor, George W Bush, for failing to achieve democratic progress in Iraq, saying in a 2007 interview: “The point is, that there is no military victory here.” Bush, in turn, reportedly told a closed-door meeting in 2015 that Obama’s decision to lift sanctions on Iran was a mistake.

Obama denounced his successor Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration. He also warned that the “rule of law is at risk” under the 45th president.

But none of it compared with Trump’s constant and vicious attacks on Biden during the Democrat’s four years in the White House. Trump mocked his successor as “Crooked Joe” and “Sleepy Joe” and claimed that he had caused “more damage than the last 10 worst presidents combined”.

Whether a return of fire from Biden, who left office with an approval rating in the 30s and could be accused of being a sore loser, would benefit his party at this moment is questionable. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “The answer for Democrats is not backwards. It’s not in the past. It’s got to be somewhere forward-looking and that’s what they’ve got to figure out here.”

Bardella said of the former presidents: “If I were them I would get behind someone right now and say this is the guy or girl that I believe in. Stop playing the ‘I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or prematurely step out of line’. We don’t have time for that crap. Get in the game or don’t ever talk again. If you don’t have anything to say now, while this is going before our very eyes, I don’t want to hear from you ever again.”

New Questions Emerge About Whether Barack and Michelle Obama Are ‘Soft Launching’ a Divorce

Barack’s Solo Outings

The forty-fourth president spent some time in the Golden State this week seemingly without his wife of three decades. And while that alone is not usual, many believe the circumstances, in their entirety, were.

According to TMZ, Barack was spotted at Anajak Thai restaurant in Sherman Oaks with his daughters, Malia and Sasha, but without Michelle on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the ex-commander in chief was prominently seated at the Los Angeles Clippers game alongside owner Steve Ballmer and his wife, Connie Snyder.

His attendance was reportedly announced on the Jumbotron at the Intuit Dome and he received cheers from the crowd as he rose to his feet and waved. That marked the latest solo public appearance for Barack, who was also by himself at the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

While the Obama team claimed a scheduling conflict kept Michelle from Carter’s funeral, no official reason was given for her absence from Trump’s swearing in. “I’m trying to think how a publicist or a crisis manager would spin it,” Callahan said. “Let’s say she had had some plastic surgery and Jimmy Carter happened to die during her recovery. Could you not say ‘health reasons’ and leave it at that? Most people will respect that and not go near it. But she didn’t even say that, which made it seem like a very petty, vengeful move on her part.”

Soft Launch?

While Megyn said she was prepared to write-off the basketball game, she was surprised Michelle would miss a chance to see her kids. “When I first saw that he was seen at a basketball game without her, I’m like, well, that’s no big deal. Doug would go to a basketball game without me,” she explained. “But then I heard he went on to meet with their daughters… Every parent who has girls who are in college is dying to spend time with their daughters. This is an opportunity to see both of them, and she is not there.”

And then there were the social media posts. Amid the speculation about their marital status, the couple coordinated Valentine’s Day messages last month, posting the same picture with different captions.

Barack wrote, “Thirty-two years together and you still take my breath away. Happy Valentine’s Day, @MichelleObama!” Michelle, meanwhile, went with, “If there’s one person I can always count on, it’s you, @BarackObama. You’re my rock. Always have been. Always will be. Happy Valentine’s Day, honey! ❤️”

Megyn wasn’t buying it. “That Valentine’s Day message was so ridiculously choreographed,” she said. “It just doesn’t feel organic at all.”

Callahan wondered if all of this is the couple’s way of testing the waters. “I think they seem to be soft launching their divorce,” she concluded. “If it were the opposite and all of these rumors are flying, wouldn’t they make a concerted effort to be seen together or just absolutely issue a statement saying there is no truth to these rumors?”

I Really Need You All to Cut It Out With the Barack and Michelle Obama Divorce Rumors

It’s no time for this!

I want to draw your attention to something incredibly suspicious Barack Obama did on social media last week. He wished his wife of 32 years a happy birthday.

“Happy birthday to the love of my life, @MichelleObama,” the former president wrote, shadily. “You fill every room with warmth, wisdom, humor, and grace—and you look good doing it. I’m so lucky to be able to take on life’s adventures with you. Love you!”

What exactly is so outrageous about this post? Well, for reasons I don’t fully understand but will attempt to summarize anyway, some tea-leaf readers decided that it’s evidence that the Obamas’ marriage is in trouble. See how weird it is that he said “love you!” instead of “I love you”? See how awkward it is that in the accompanying photo the two are sitting on opposite sides of a dining room table, their hands stretching to meet in the middle? It’s giving divorce, you might say, if you were the kind of person who used the phrase “It’s giving …” (I’m still not sure if I am.) Coming so close on the heels of Michelle mysteriously skipping Jimmy Carter’s funeral, this post was an obvious attempt at damage control, according to some, only it hadn’t worked.

I don’t want to be a “many people are saying” guy, so let’s talk about who specifically is saying this. Meghan McCain is among the most prominent; as reported in the Daily Beast, this week she went on one of the website Puck’s podcasts and told host Tara Palmeri that there were “very serious journalists telling me that they’re hearing that the Obama divorce rumors are true.” If this still sounds like hearsay to you, I agree, it very much is, but Palmeri, a political reporter, offered some validation. “We’ve heard that for a long time,” she said. “Like I just heard that they live separate lives.” Palmeri added that she thought the rumors could be politically motivated.

That would make sense coming from McCain, who usually doesn’t have many nice things to say about Democrats, and for Jessica Reed Kraus, the influencer turned conservative Substack writer who recently sent her 400,000-plus subscribers a newsletter about the rumor. She included the further completely unsubstantiated tidbit that Obama is having an affair with Jennifer Aniston, which Aniston denied months ago. Otherwise, the gossip hasn’t been picked up much by mainstream publications, meaning it exists in that sort of nether region where it’s not a real story, but it also hasn’t been fully debunked (because it can only really be debunked with time anyway); for that reason, you may have seen your friends who don’t have conservative agendas speculating about it on social media.

Listen, I get that engaging in a little irresponsible rumormongering about people’s relationships can be fun. I’ve even been known to partake in it myself from time to time. I also get that it’s been a hard week, and a hard month, and it’s poised to be a hard four years. I totally understand the temptation to feel cynical. So I’m going to try to be nice when I say the following: Guys, I think some of us have lost the plot. A perfectly nice birthday message a boomer wrote for his wife is evidence of marital strife now? Oof. Are we really going to take Meghan McCain’s word for anything? “I would kill Ben [Domenech, her husband] if he put a picture of me looking like no makeup with that lighting on social media,” McCain also said on the podcast, which is both mean—Michelle looks fine!—and, to be a little mean ourselves, surprising, given ample photographic evidence of McCain’s many hair crimes over the years.

It’s not that it’s so hard to believe that the Obamas would be having marital problems; staying happily married is hard for anyone, and it’s surely even harder when you’re in the public eye. Factor in adult children who render the cliché of staying together for the kids moot, and you start to see the vision. Michelle, as Palmeri pointed out, has professed to have never liked politics, but as evidenced by Obama’s reported role in engineering Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race, Barack can’t stay away. Is this Tom Brady refusing to retire from football and losing his wife over it all over again? It certainly could be. But is there any real evidence that it’s true, beyond that Michelle didn’t show up at a funeral, and then didn’t show up a few days later to an inauguration that any right-thinking person would not want to attend? What are the chances they even write their own Instagram captions, anyway?

I’m not going to pretend I don’t have a vested interest in this news not being true. I like the Obamas together. I want to believe in love. While I don’t consider them a full personal emotional support couple the way I do, say, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, I think it would be sad for one of America’s few remaining old-school political powerhouse couples to break up in the Trump years. I’m aware that makes me a parasocial freak—so be it. I guess I’d just rather not put the thought into the world. Have I finally found the one worry I’m unwilling to borrow? If the Obamas do break up, feel free to remind me of this post with a big fat “Told you so!,” but I hope future me will understand present me’s position that we can cross that bridge when and if we come to it.

In September of 2014, the Secret Service found itself embroiled in scandal when a fence jumper managed to trespass on White House grounds and nearly made it to the building itself.

A month later, a second person breached the perimeter, but this time they were quickly apprehended.

This swift response was partly due to Hurricane, a Belgian Malinois who served as a Special Operations Canine for the Secret Service. Hurricane, who served from 2012 to 2016 during President Obama’s second term, later became the most decorated dog in U.S. history. He died this week at the age of 16.

Three things to know:

1. Following his heroism (alongside his canine partner Jordan), Hurricane was awarded the USSS Award for Merit, the DHS Award for Valor, the PDSA Order of Merit, and several other honors, including being the first dog in history to receive the Animals in War and Peace Distinguished Service Medal in 2022.
2. Hurricane was medically retired from service in 2016 after sustaining injuries during the White House incident. He lived the rest of life with his handler and owner, Marshall Mirarchi.
3. After Hurricane’s retirement, Mirarchi founded Hurricane’s Heroes, a nonprofit organization aimed at providing subsidized veterinary care for retired law enforcement and military dogs in their later years.

Saying goodbye

On February 12, Hurricane’s Instagram announced his passing. In the caption, they wrote:

“Hurricane was not only a badass, amazing Secret Service dog and led to the amazing [organization] that does so much for the K9 community, Hurricane had this uncanny ability to read people. Even in his old age, he knew I was the decoy. The guy to bite. And then he would sniff my wife and crawl into her lap for pets. Rest easy Hurricane. You were a damn good boy.”

Trump reveals whom Biden blamed for Dems’ 2024 election defeat — and it’s not Kamala Harris

Former President Joe Biden told President Trump that he blamed fellow former President Barack Obama for the Democrats’ knockout loss in the 2024 election, the commander-in-chief revealed in a new interview.

Trump told the Spectator World he had visited the White House to meet with an “angry” Biden shortly after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris — who took Biden’s place on the Democratic ticket after he was forced out of the race due to concerns over his age and abilities.

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“I asked him, I said, ‘So who do you blame?’ Because he was very angry, you know, he was a very angry guy, actually. And he said, ‘I blame Barack,’” Trump said.

“And he said, ‘And I also blame [former House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi.’ I said, ‘What about the vice president?’ He said, ‘No, I don’t blame her,’ which was interesting.”

“He didn’t blame [Harris]. He blamed … he told me he blamed those two people,” the president said.

Obama had initially encouraged Democratic allies to stick with Biden in the wake of his disastrous debate performance on June 27. But by mid-July, Biden’s old pal had reportedly turned on him in the face of mounting concerns about his mental and physical fitness.

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The 44th president had met with Pelosi (D-Calif.) to discuss their growing concerns.

Biden, 82, dropped out of the race on July 21 and promptly endorsed Harris — who was ultimately unable to overcome Trump in just a few frantic months on the campaign trail.

Biden has previously admitted that he was nudged out of running for a second term by Pelosi and other party elites, but has avoided pointing a finger at Obama.