Latest news with #MichaelWolff
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump has brutal two-word nickname for Stephen Miller, report claims
President Donald Trump famously has a penchant for making up nicknames to mock his enemies. There's Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Lyin' Ted Cruz, and Little Marco Rubio. There's now another to add to the list: 'Weird Stephen.' The epithet has been applied to the deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, according to biographer Michael Wolff. 'There is an awareness that Stephen Miller is a problem,' Wolf said on The Daily Beast podcast. 'And even Trump calls him 'Weird Stephen.' Because he is weird, by the way. I mean, you can't spend a moment with him and not say, 'Oh, something's off here.'' 'He doesn't make eye contact,' Wolff added. 'And then he talks to you in this monotone voice, and it feels very revvy, you know, the engine of his voice keeps going, and you kind of step back.' Wolff was discussing the possibility that Miller might lose his standing in Trumpworld if his efforts to deport large numbers of immigrants fail. Miller has called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest at least 3,000 migrants a day. However, Trump at one point wavered in his stance on the removals. The Washington Post reported on Monday that the administration was reversing a planned pause on immigration raids on worksites connected to the agricultural, hotel, and restaurant industries. The Department of Homeland Security announced that raids would resume at such worksites during a Monday morning call with representatives from 30 ICE offices. Miller battled the initial pause on the raids. Wolff noted that the president's spectacular falling out with Elon Musk, the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is what can happen if someone within Trump's orbit acquires too much power. 'Trump, who is lazy, lets other people be in charge, until they're perceived as being in charge. Then they're no longer in charge,' said Wolff. 'Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s*** and has been proven to be a fraud,' a White House spokesperson told The Daily Beast in response to the claims regarding the nickname. 'He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination—only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.' Top ICE officials had a heated discussion with Miller late last month as the Trump adviser berated them for falling short on the number of arrests. 'Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. 'You guys aren't doing a good job. You're horrible leaders.' He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,' an official who spoke to those in the room during the meeting told the Washington Examiner. 'Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. 'Why aren't you at Home Depot? Why aren't you at 7-Eleven?'' the official added, recounting what happened. 'Stephen Miller did not say many of the things you state,' ICE deputy assistant director of media affairs Laszlo Baksay told the Examiner. Following the ouster of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Trump said he was considering Miller for the role. Secretary of State Marco Rubio currently serves as the national security adviser in an interim capacity. "I think he sort of indirectly already has that job. Because he has a lot to say about a lot of things, he's a very valued person in the administration, Stephen," Trump said last month. A former Trump adviser told NBC News last month that 'Stephen is the president's id. He has been for a while. It's just now he has the leverage and power to fully effectuate it.' Trump told NBC News that it would be a 'downgrade' to appoint Miller to be national security adviser. 'Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that,' said Trump. 'I don't know that there is any policy area where his guidance is not sought,' the adviser added. 'The president might not always go with exactly what he wants, but his input is always listened to.' A top Trump adviser added to NBC News that 'President Trump built much of his current political success by standing with the American people on immigration, and doing what others have been unwilling or unable to do — close the border.' 'There has been no bigger advocate of that in the history of the country than Stephen Miller,' the adviser said. 'That, at its core, is why the president trusts him so much and relies on him to a degree that is matched by very few.'
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump has brutal two-word nickname for Stephen Miller, report claims
President Donald Trump famously has a penchant for making up nicknames to mock his enemies. There's Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Lyin' Ted Cruz, and Little Marco Rubio. There's now another to add to the list: 'Weird Stephen.' The epithet has been applied to the deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, according to biographer Michael Wolff. 'There is an awareness that Stephen Miller is a problem,' Wolf said on The Daily Beast podcast. 'And even Trump calls him 'Weird Stephen.' Because he is weird, by the way. I mean, you can't spend a moment with him and not say, 'Oh, something's off here.'' 'He doesn't make eye contact,' Wolff added. 'And then he talks to you in this monotone voice, and it feels very revvy, you know, the engine of his voice keeps going, and you kind of step back.' Wolff was discussing the possibility that Miller might lose his standing in Trumpworld if his efforts to deport large numbers of immigrants fail. Miller has called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest at least 3,000 migrants a day. However, Trump at one point wavered in his stance on the removals. The Washington Post reported on Monday that the administration was reversing a planned pause on immigration raids on worksites connected to the agricultural, hotel, and restaurant industries. The Department of Homeland Security announced that raids would resume at such worksites during a Monday morning call with representatives from 30 ICE offices. Miller battled the initial pause on the raids. Wolff noted that the president's spectacular falling out with Elon Musk, the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is what can happen if someone within Trump's orbit acquires too much power. 'Trump, who is lazy, lets other people be in charge, until they're perceived as being in charge. Then they're no longer in charge,' said Wolff. 'Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s*** and has been proven to be a fraud,' a White House spokesperson told The Daily Beast in response to the claims regarding the nickname. 'He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination—only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.' Top ICE officials had a heated discussion with Miller late last month as the Trump adviser berated them for falling short on the number of arrests. 'Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. 'You guys aren't doing a good job. You're horrible leaders.' He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,' an official who spoke to those in the room during the meeting told the Washington Examiner. 'Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. 'Why aren't you at Home Depot? Why aren't you at 7-Eleven?'' the official added, recounting what happened. 'Stephen Miller did not say many of the things you state,' ICE deputy assistant director of media affairs Laszlo Baksay told the Examiner. Following the ouster of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Trump said he was considering Miller for the role. Secretary of State Marco Rubio currently serves as the national security adviser in an interim capacity. "I think he sort of indirectly already has that job. Because he has a lot to say about a lot of things, he's a very valued person in the administration, Stephen," Trump said last month. A former Trump adviser told NBC News last month that 'Stephen is the president's id. He has been for a while. It's just now he has the leverage and power to fully effectuate it.' Trump told NBC News that it would be a 'downgrade' to appoint Miller to be national security adviser. 'Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that,' said Trump. 'I don't know that there is any policy area where his guidance is not sought,' the adviser added. 'The president might not always go with exactly what he wants, but his input is always listened to.' A top Trump adviser added to NBC News that 'President Trump built much of his current political success by standing with the American people on immigration, and doing what others have been unwilling or unable to do — close the border.' 'There has been no bigger advocate of that in the history of the country than Stephen Miller,' the adviser said. 'That, at its core, is why the president trusts him so much and relies on him to a degree that is matched by very few.'
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump raged at Hegseth over birthday parade where military had too much fun: ‘He's p***ed off at the soldiers'
President Donald Trump raged at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over Saturday's military parade, arguing that the soldiers were 'hamming it up,' biographer Michael Wolff has said. saying that the president wanted a 'menacing' show of force in honor of the Army's 250th, and his 79th, birthday on June 14. Instead, Trump got a 'festive' parade, said the author. 'He's p***ed off at the soldiers,' he said. 'He's accusing them of hamming it up, and by that, he seems to mean that they were having a good time, that they were waving, that they were enjoying themselves and showing a convivial face rather than a military face.' Social media users noted that the soldiers weren't marching in lockstep during the parade as they made their way down Constitution Avenue in downtown Washington, D.C. Wolff claimed that Trump blamed Hegseth for the lacklustre performance. 'He kind of reamed out Hegseth for this,' Wolff said of the president. 'Apparently, there was a phone call, and he said to Hegseth, the tone was all wrong. Why was the tone wrong? Who staged this? There was the tone problem. Trump, he keeps repeating himself.' 'It didn't send the message that he apparently wanted, which is that he was the commander-in-chief of this menacing enterprise,' the biographer added. The White House called Wolff a 'lying sack of s***' and a 'proven … fraud.' 'He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,' Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, told The Daily Beast. Trump, meanwhile, has claimed that the parade was a 'tremendous success.' 'Last night was a tremendous success with a fantastic audience,' Trump told the press on Sunday. 'It was supposed to rain. They gave it a 100 percent chance of rain, and it didn't rain at all. It was beautiful.' The parade didn't attract as many people as expected, while thousands of 'No Kings' demonstrations were held across the country on Saturday. On Monday, Trump appeared alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta. 'We had the parade the other day. They said 100 percent chance of rain. It didn't rain,' Trump told Carney. The president departed from the summit early to return to Washington, D.C., pointing to the conflict between Israel and Iran.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How Nigeria's 2018 shirt became the holy grail of modern football kit releases
This article is part of our Kitted Out series, an exploration of the impact of soccer kits on culture and fashion. Club teams and national teams from around the world release two, three and sometimes more football kits a year. Some clothing brands even add to the market by selling football-kit-inspired merchandise. So to make a shirt that stands out, that becomes iconic, means standing out from thousands of other creations and designs. Advertisement In 2018, ahead of the FIFA World Cup in Russia, designer Michael Wolff and Nike made a Nigeria home strip that went on to drive significant demand and became a modern trailblazer in the football kit market. 'It was probably the first football shirt to have this drop moment that transcended football,' Doug Bierton, CEO of Classic Football Shirts, tells The Athletic. 'It wasn't just Nigeria fans or even just football shirt enthusiasts who wanted it — it was something where everybody who became aware of it wanted one and a secondary market for that shirt was almost instantly created. 'It was the first football shirt that went straight over its RRP (recommended retail price) on launch. Prior to that, it was just sneakers doing that kind of thing.' When the kit was released on June 1, 2018, lines wrapped around the block at Nike's London store, and it received three million pre-orders, according to the BBC, meaning it was sold out within minutes. The green and white home shirt was accompanied by other gear, including track jackets, bucket hats and shorts, which also rapidly sold out. While it ended up appealing to the masses, being an international kit that people could get behind, for Wolff and Peter Hoppins, Nike senior design director from 2016 to 2020, the focus had to be on pleasing the Nigerian fans, players, and federation. Nike's official media release described the kit as 'a tribute to Nigeria's 1994 debut on the world stage, the 2018 home kit features the traditional green torso, with the Super Eagles-inspired black-and-white sleeves. To modernise the jersey, the feather pattern has been abstracted and the colours updated, for a bold look on pitch'. For Bierton, it was 'innovative and ahead of its time' as one of the first modern-era designs to directly reference the 90s, bringing that era's vibe in a forward-thinking way and evoking fan nostalgia. It was also nominated for the 2019 Beazley Designs of the Year award. In previous years up to 2018, a darker green was used for Nigeria's home kit, but this was switched to the brighter, lighter green, along with white and black. Advertisement Hoppins told The Athletic's Brooks Peck in 2018: 'We said: 'OK, keep it traditional on one of the kits (the 2018 Nigeria away kit was a largely plain dark green design) and on the other one, just go all out. 'I've been looking back at some of the original designs and they were definitely not as full-on as where we landed. We just kept on pushing it. As we were doing this research in Nigeria and the culture, we were like: 'Just keep on pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing' and we eventually landed where we landed, and that kit really popped.' Other countries would not stray far from tradition, but Nike and Nigeria were able to innovate and create a strip that defined the summer of 2018 and beyond. 'A lot of the clubs and federations are pretty old-school,' Hoppins said. 'They're run by… older… gentlemen, so it can be tough to explain why you want to do a bright green-and-white kit with feathers on it. We brought the players in with the president of the federation so they could almost, like, convince him that this was the thing to do. That was a little bit of a tactic on our part.' Nigeria's 2018 release came as a new wave of talent fronted the national team, the youngest at the World Cup in Russia, with Alex Iwobi, Kelechi Iheanacho and Wilfred Ndidi all 21 years old at the time. Sports marketer Desmond 'Dez' Ebohon from Southern Nigeria, Edo State, thinks that Nigeria have had hyped kits since their first World Cup in 1994 but described the 2018 edition as 'cultural and beautiful'. As a shirt designed for a national team to wear, it couldn't simply stand on its own as a striking holy-grail design for kit enthusiasts — it also had to embody the identity of one of West Africa's biggest sides. 'It feels the kit providers try their best for Nigeria to deliver a crazy kit,' Ebohon tells The Athletic, 'one that incorporates culture, the vibes, the colourfulness and joy that Nigerians bring to football, and we appreciate that.' The chevron-esque patterns on the shirt remind Ebohon of Adire, a type of resist-dyed cloth and a Yoruba word which translates to 'tie and dye'. This kit put an exclamation point on the increased demand for football shirts in the late 2010s that has helped boost the second-hand market in particular, as football fans and casuals alike wore shirts that reflected their personality and identity — and, bottom line, to look cool. Even still, it is rare for shirts to sell out and be higher than their RRP the following week. Brierton says the most sought-after kits can sell out in the period after Christmas to the end of the season, and then increase in value. For example, Ajax's 2021-22 'Three Little Birds' third shirt. Through Classic Football Shirts, the Nigeria 2018 home kit typically sells for at least double its RRP (£64.95, $88.35) in excellent condition. Advertisement But not every shirt can be a cult classic, nor should every shirt try to be one. 'The way it's going, maybe it is a bit overdone and every brand, every team trying to have a Nigeria moment is not sustainable. It has to be organic,' Brierton says. 'There's a limited space for very bright, lime green, bold design. You would think: 'Oh, that's a small subsection of people who have got the balls to wear that type of shirt'. I don't think that type of shirt could win every year, but it did that year, in that moment.' Frequent football-shirt leaks mean the surprise factor on bold designs can also take the sting out of launches. Respective fans, though, have their own styles and kits can remind them of different players and memories, so value is in the eye of the beholder and can vary from person to person. At the 2018 World Cup, the Super Eagles fell in the group stage despite having the most desirable kit around. 'The game against Iceland,' says Ebohon as he recalls his best memories of his team in their famous strip. '(Ahmed) Musa scored two goals. It was a great win because Iceland went very far in the 2016 Euros and knocked out England. 'When the World Cup came, people were saying 'giant-killers' Iceland, with Argentina and Croatia (were in Nigeria's group), so it got me scared a bit. When we beat them, I said: 'They are not giant killers' — it was just England being bad. 'I would say the Argentina game, Musa also scored but (Lionel) Messi being Messi broke our hearts in the end.' (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson/The Athletic;) Kitted Out is part of a partnership with VW Tiguan. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Is Calling Handcuffed Senator Vile Racial Slur: Author
Donald Trump is trying to justify federal agents handcuffing California Senator Alex Padilla by suggesting that he 'looked like an illegal,' his leading biographer has revealed. 'Trump saw these pictures and then has been on the phone saying to people, 'Nobody's ever heard of this guy,'' Michael Wolff, the bestselling author, said this week on The Daily Beast Podcast. 'As though that's an excuse. And then he's gone on to say, 'and he looks like an illegal.'' Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, was thrown to the ground Thursday after going to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference in Los Angeles and trying to ask her a question. Noem was bashing California lawmakers after mass protests in Los Angeles erupted against ICE raids when the attack started. Padilla decided to interrupt the conference to demand why she was 'exaggerating and embellishing.' He was in the middle of asking his question when Noem's security shoved him out of the room. He could be heard repeatedly identifying himself as a United States senator. Once in the hallway, the agents—who included Secret Service and FBI—pushed him to the ground and handcuffed his hands behind his back. Wolff said that Trump excused the assault by dismissing Padilla as an immigrant nobody. 'If you are famous, that would obviously put you in a different category and ICE agents would not have tackled you,' said Wolff, explaining Trump's rationale. 'Padilla is actually a relatively new senator from California, nobody knows about this person. Therefore, perfectly understandable that the ICE agents would tackle him. And of course he looks like 'an illegal.' 'This is just his visceral response: Nobody's ever heard of him,' Wolff added. 'We can take the blame off the ICE agents because they haven't heard about this guy.' Wolff said that Trump was 'a little unsettled by the Padilla thing' and is attempting to sweep it under the rug. Democratic lawmakers had seized on it as an unconstitutional outrage and even two Republican senators—Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and Maine's Susan Collins, both on-off Trump critics—had spoken out against it. 'He's rationalizing this in some way which might brand him as a complete racist once more,' Wolff added. 'Although I'm sure he doesn't particularly care about that.' In response White House Communications Director Steven Cheung recycled a previous attack on Wolff and said, 'Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.' Padilla was the first Latino president of the L.A. City Council. He was elected to the Senate in 2022 and is now the senior senator from the state. Trump has indulged in anti-immigrant stereotypes long before this year's mass immigration crackdown. When announcing his presidential bid in 2015, he said that Mexico was sending criminals and 'rapists' across the border. 'They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us,' he said at the time. 'They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.' He also raised eyebrows during his final 2016 presidential debate saying that he wanted to get the 'bad hombres' out of the United States. A key pillar of Trump's second presidency has been immigration. He has upended immigration policy through executive orders and an aggressive campaign of raids, detentions, and deportations. Noem's excuse for her agents tackling Padilla was that the senator lunged at her despite them being far apart and several videos showing no evidence to back up her claim. The manhandling of Padilla has incited a wave of backlash from 2028 presidential hopefuls like Governor Gavin Newsom, who called the assault 'outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful.' 'Trump and his shock troops are out of control,' he said. 'This must end now."
