Desperate state of health system means unnecessary amputations being done on kids as young as 1, surgeon says

Before the war started in Gaza, Moustafa Ahmed Shehda would run around and play with his friends. Now, the 12-year-old is one of a growing number of Palestinians in the territory who've lost a limb in a bombing.

Moustafa is from Jabalia in northern Gaza, which has been hit particularly hard in the fighting. Early on in the war between Israel and Hamas, he was visiting his uncle when the apartment building was bombed.

"I was under the rubble. I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't breathe," Moustafa told Mohamed El Saife, a freelance journalist in Gaza working for CBC News.

His uncle was killed, and Moustafa was pulled from the rubble. Because of the extent of his injuries, his right leg had to later be amputated below the knee.

"Before the war, I used to play with my friends," he said. "I can't play because of my injury. I can't play, and I don't have friends, and I don't have anything."

Palestinian health officials said on Saturday that 26,257 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombing the small enclave of 2.3 million people in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas-led militants while nearly 65,000 have been wounded.

An oldie, but a goodie - in honor of the news with that Max model losing its Window at high altitudes.

It turns out engineering is important. Who could have known? /s

Henry Kissinger’s death has brought out some bitter epitaphs from Latin America where the legacy of US intervention helped saddle the region with some of the most brutal military regimes of the 20th century.

Nowhere has been the reaction been more damning than in Chile, where Kissinger was instrumental in the 1973 coup that led to the death of a democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende and the installation of a dictator, Gen Augusto Pinochet, and his military junta.

Kissinger was a man “whose historical brilliance was never able to conceal his profound moral wretchedness”, wrote Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s ambassador in the US, on X, formerly Twitter.

The coup was seen a major victory by Richard Nixon’s White House, but it marked the start of 17 years of autocracy in Chile.

“Henry Kissinger was an incredibly important figure in the breakdown of Chile’s constitutional order,” said the historian Gabriel Salazar. “He provoked the downfall of [Allende’s] developmental policies, and then the installation of the neoliberal economic model which is still in place today – that’s why we associate Kissinger with Pinochet here in Chile.”

Kissinger’s influence in Latin America spread far beyond Chile. He played a role in Operation Condor, which linked the military regimes in an intelligence-sharing network to hunt down leftwing dissidents.

“Henry Kissinger did not believe in the sanctity of self-determination. He didn’t believe in the sanctity of sovereignty for Latin American nations or the smaller nations of the third world. He believed in superpower might makes right – realpolitik,” said Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive (NSA) in Washington DC, which pressured the US government into declassifying Kissinger’s voluminous records. The veteran statesman did not want them made public until five years after his death.

“He didn’t believe in the sanctity of human rights either, which led him to embrace repressive authoritarian regimes as strategic chess pieces in the global chessboard of the cold war,” Kornbluh added.

“Latin America was – for the arrogant policymakers of whom Kissinger was the top dog – our backyard. If we did not have control of what happened in our sphere of influence, Kissinger’s argument went, the rest of the world would not take our exercise of power seriously further away.”

Myriam Bregman, a lawyer in Argentina’s ongoing human rights trials and a candidate for the leftwing FIT party (Leftist and Workers Front) during Argentina’s presidential elections this year, described Kissinger’s legacy as “tragic”.

“Encouraging coups d’état in the region, justifying them, being aware that these coups implied a genocide against workers and students,” she said.

“His trip to Argentina during the 1978 World Cup leaves no doubt regarding his support for these dictatorships,” said Miriam Lewin, a survivor of the ESMA death camp that was close by the River stadium where Kissinger attended matches. “I could hear the cheering when goals were scored, from inside the concentration camp.”

Kissinger even boycotted efforts during Jimmy Carter’s 1977-81 pro-human rights presidency to stop the killing in Argentina. In secret meetings with the dictator Jorge Videla and top Argentinian diplomats during the 1978 World Cup games in Buenos Aires, Kissinger said that “in his opinion the government of Argentina had done an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces”.

In answer to a question about Videla during one of the World Cup matches, Kissinger said: “He’s a very intelligent, very dedicated man who is doing what is best for his country.”

The files published by the NSA make clear Kissinger’s central role in the Chilean coup. In 1970, he warned Nixon that Chile could become the “worst failure” of his administration, and that it might develop into “our Cuba” without US intervention. He chaired the committee that oversaw CIA operations to undermine the Allende government.

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” he said. “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Having failed to prevent his election, Kissinger became desperate to avoid Allende’s ratification of his presidential win. Days before the vote, President Nixon met with a rightwing Chilean media mogul, Agustín Edwards, owner of the conservative El Mercurio media group, to discuss blocking Allende’s path to the presidency.

They hatched a plan that involved the kidnap of Gen René Schneider, the then head of the Chilean armed forces, who was considered loyal to the constitution. The attempt was botched and Gen Schneider died three days later of the gunshot wounds he sustained when his car was ambushed on 22 October 1970.

The following day Kissinger dismissed the Chilean armed forces as a “pretty incompetent bunch”. Eventually however, the military did step in, using jets to bombard the presidential residence, where Allende died, apparently by suicide. Many of the soldiers involved in the putsch had been paid by the CIA.

El Mercurio, Edwards’s conservative daily which was closely linked to Kissinger in that period, announced the death on Thursday of a “key figure in 20th-century global diplomacy” on its front page. It did not mention his legacy in Chile.

Signs touting ‘auto workers for Trump’ at Michigan rally found to be fake – report At least two people holding signs saying ‘union members for Trump’ and ‘auto workers for Trump’ turned out to be neither

Martin Pengelly in Washington @MartinPengelly Thu 28 Sep 2023 10.48 EDT When Donald Trump gave a speech in Michigan on Wednesday, seeking to capitalise on the United Auto Workers strike, at least two crowd members holding signs saying “union members for Trump” and “auto workers for Trump” turned out to be neither.

The Detroit News reported: “One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said ‘union members for Trump’ acknowledged that she wasn’t a union member when approached by a reporter after the event.

“Another person with a sign that read ‘auto workers for Trump’ said he wasn’t an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn’t provide their names.”

The paper said between 400 and 500 people attended the event, at a non-unionised automotive parts supplier in Clinton Township.

Trump skipped a Republican debate in California to visit Macomb county. Politico pointed out why, saying Macomb “occupies a unique role on the political map.

“Of the more than 3,000 counties in the US, it’s hard to find one that’s a better barometer of the atmospheric conditions affecting the 2024 election [than] Macomb county, with its high percentage of UAW workers.

“… The blue-collar suburb is often referred to as a bellwether, though … it’s more like an indicator species in biology, offering important clues on the environmental health of an ecosystem.”

One attendee at Trump’s speech who was an auto worker, Doug King, 55, told the Detroit News: “The four years under Trump were the best years that we had in the auto industry.”

Trump told workers negotiations between the UAW and Ford, General Motors and Stellantis “don’t mean as much as you think”.

Railing against the shift to electric vehicles, he added: “You can be loyal to American labour or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics. But you can’t really be loyal to both. It’s one or the other.”

A spokesperson for Joe Biden, Kevin Munoz, called Trump’s speech “incoherent”, “pathetic” and “recycled”.

Trump went to Michigan a day after Biden. On Tuesday, in a historic moment in neighbouring Wayne county, Biden joined a UAW picket line and expressed support for striking workers.

The president did so at the invitation of the union president, Shawn Fain. Fain did not meet Trump, telling CNN the former president, the Republican presidential frontrunner, “serves the billionaire class”.

“I see no point in meeting with him because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” Fain said. “He serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”

Donald Trump has been on a prolific Truth Social tear, calling for the execution of a top US military general, vowing revenge on NBC Networks and demanding that Republican leaders take action against automatic voter registration to protect him from once again losing the popular vote. All of that was over the weekend. On Monday, the former picked up apace with attacks on New York Attorney General Letitia James.

"I have been unfairly sued by the Trump Hating Democrat Attorney General of New York State, Letitia James," he cried on his social media site.

James' office has claimed that Trump has represented his worth as being $2.2 billion greater than it really is. Trump called that a "false fact."

He then called the judge in the case a "Trump Hater" and cried out for help.

"It is very unfair, and I call for help from the highest Courts in New York State, or the Federal System, to intercede."

I am not even allowed a Jury!"

Trump was already dumb, but he's getting worse — yet MAGA doesn't care. The press should cover his decline anyway

Donald Trump is skipping another GOP primary debate this week and the theories abound as to why. Some paint it as a smart strategy, setting his opponents to take each other apart while he sails into the presidential nomination. Others, including the right-wing editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, have accused Trump of being afraid to debate. But watching clips of some recent Trump speeches, I have a different theory: His team is worried Trump will start talking about how he bested Teddy Roosevelt in a bear-hunting competition, before trouncing the 26th president in the 1904 presidential election.

To be sure, Trump was never playing with a full deck. Never forget when he recommended bleach injections for "cleaning" COVID-19 from lungs. Lately, however, his brain functioning, as impossible as it may be to believe, seems even worse. He appears to believe he's won every presidential election in the last two decades, instead of that one electoral college-based win against Hillary Clinton in 2016. During a campaign stop in South Carolina, Trump spun out a whole story about defeating a famous military leader named "Bush."

"When I came here, everyone thought Bush was going to win," he rambled, saying it was "because Bush supposedly was a military person." Then he added, "He got us into the, uh, he got us into the Middle East. How did that work out, right?"

Trump did prevail over Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida in the 2016 GOP primary. But he appears to believe he defeated President George W. Bush, Jeb's older brother, who is actually the guy who "got us into the Middle East," when he invaded Iraq.

Before bragging about besting two-term winner George W. Bush, Trump gave another speech boasting about his imaginary win against another two-termer, President Barack Obama. "With Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn't be won," he prattled on in a speech in Washington, D.C. last week. In the same speech, he confused Obama with President Joe Biden, and warned that, if he didn't win in 2024, we would enter "World War II," which famously ended the year before Trump himself was born.

While Trump, who likes to call Biden "cognitively impaired," got widely mocked on social media for this, the audience he's speaking to doesn't seem to notice their god is brain-farting. That's because Trump fans, as I've written about before, don't actually listen when Dear Leader is talking. Instead, they wait for him to say buzzwords they can cheer, like "lock her up," but otherwise they tune him out. After all, MAGA is an authoritarian movement based on tribalist politics. Merit-based systems allow women and people of color to rise up, which is intolerable to the GOP base. What Trump says is not imporant. What they like about him is he's rich, white, male and a bully.

There's no way to know from afar what's going on with Trump. On one hand, he's 77 years old, and his own father died of Alzheimer's. On the other hand, Trump's narcissism has long fueled a willingness to lie shamelessly about his own supposed accomplishments, from making up golf scores even pros can't achieve to pretending he had a chance with women who hated him to falsifying charitable donations to claiming his inauguration drew crowds it didn't.

But claiming to have won elections he didn't run in would be next-level lying, even by Trump standards. Plus, it doesn't explain really his confusing Biden with Obama, or confusing the two Bush brothers. The likelier explanation is he's confusing his fantasies with memories. Nor does it explain how his social media presence, which was always ungrammatical and silly, has become even more unhinged and incoherent. Perhaps we've all become numb to it, but stepping back, it's really remarkable that he regularly issues violent threats on Truth Social that get ignored mainly because they're as incomprehensible as they are terrible.

That the press understands Trump isn't doing well is evident in the way they all politely ignore him screaming for the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, much like one would smile patiently at a dementia patient yelling invective about long-dead relatives. But of course, this is unbelievably unfair, because the very same press is in an endless hype cycle about "concerns" that Biden, who does not issue grammar-challenged murder threats regularly, is slowing down from age.

"Biden is old" is swiftly turning into one of those self-perpetuating B.S. media cycles that only end up seeming to smear Democrats unfairly, such as "Hillary Clinton's emails." First, the press runs a million pieces on this non-story, creating the illusion of controversy where none exists. Then voters start to parrot the "concerns" back in polls, concerns they only have because they're being told by a 24/7 news cycle to worry about this. Then those polls are used to justify even more coverage of a non-controversy, making sure a candidate is defined by something that was never a real problem.

With Biden, the rejoinder is "but he actually is old!" But of course, so is Trump. Worse, Trump, who is only 3 years younger, is clearly feeling his age a lot more than Biden, who does not forget what elections he ran in or how many world wars there were. Crucially, Biden isn't displaying the loss of impulse control we see with Trump, whose baseline of self-control was not good to begin with. Trump struggles to get through interviews without confessing to his crimes. Good for prosecutors, but also a reminder that a man who can't be a passable steward of his own freedom has no business running the country.

As Salon's Heather "Digby" Parton pointed out on Twitter, the press actually knows they're treating Biden and Trump very differently, even though the latter is way worse.

A lot of the double standard is driven by perceptions of what the two voting bases care about. Mainstream journalists believe, with good reason, that Democratic voters care about qualities like intelligence, competence, and mental fitness. They also believe, with good reason, that Republican voters don't care if their candidates are babbling morons, so long as they a rich, white men. Indeed, being seen as "too" smart can hurt you with the GOP base, which suspiciously eyes intelligence as a gateway drug to rationality. So the Beltway press, in an attempt to be "objective," ends up covering candidates through these perceived partisan biases. A Democrat saying something wrong or off is "news" because his own party members won't like it, even if the mistake is inconsequential. Meanwhile, flat-out dumbassery or overt bigotry from Republicans is shrugged off, because of the belief that their base voters don't care anyway.

And it's true enough that most Democratic voters care about competence and most Republican voters do not. But that doesn't excuse the press's wild double standard on this. For one thing, it's basic journalistic ethics to report the truth without worrying whether their most loyal voters care. But also, it's foolish to think that giving audiences greater context doesn't matter. There are a lot of swing voters, independents, and people who haven't decided if they're going to vote yet. Those folks can actually have their opinion shaped by the information they're taking in. If the media focuses on Biden's age while ignoring that Trump is worse, a lot of those fairweather citizens may vote in ways they come to regret — or not vote at all.

That's bad news in any environment, but especially bad considering how much of a threat Trump is to our democracy and the nation's future. He was bad enough in his first term where he, as much as the media might often forget, attempted a coup. If, as all public signs indicate, his already fragile mental state is getting more disjointed and reckless, that's terrifying. What may be more dangerous than Trump's idiocy is that, while he's always been sociopathically impulsive and evil, he seems to be getting worse in his late 70s. If he gets power again, there's little that could contain him.

WASHINGTON—In an effort to address voters hurt by recent actions that resulted in her being thrown out of a theatrical performance, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) announced Friday that she would personally jerk off any constituents she offended. “In the past week, I’ve heard from many supporters who were concerned by my behavior in recently released footage, which is why I’m offering to make things good between us by jacking you off,” said Boebert, instructing supporters to contact her office with proof of Colorado residency and she would personally travel to their home to deliver an on-the-house tugjob. “As a disclaimer, I will be wearing a latex glove and you need to wipe yourself off afterwards. I’m not going to do that. I’m serious about making amends, however, so feel free to rest your hand on my breasts, if necessary. Just know that this a one week only deal. So get in touch soon.” At press time, Boebert also warned her constituents that she planned to vape the entire time.

A New York judge has found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud, saying the Trumps provided false financial statements for roughly a decade.

Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling came days before the civil case involving the New York attorney general’s office and the former president was set to go to trial.

Engoron granted Attorney General Letitia James’ motion for summary judgment, finding Trump, his sons, and others “to be liable as a matter of law for persistent violations” of New York state law. He found the financial statements the Trumps provided to lenders and insurers for about a decade to be false and said they repeatedly engaged in fraud.

In the order, the judge rejected Trump’s deposition testimony in which the former president said that the financial statements were not fraudulent because they contained disclaimers. Trump said the statements contained a “worthless clause” in them warning lenders and others that they shouldn’t be relied on.

Tuesday, the judge said that “the defendants’ reliance on these ‘worthless’ disclaimers is worthless.”

James has alleged that Trump, three of his children, his companies and his business executives defrauded lenders, insurers and other entities.

In the lawsuit, James claims that Trump reaped a “substantial” financial benefit by putting forward faulty information in his financial statements, including $150 million in the form of favorable interest rates he obtained from the banks that the attorney general said his team misled.

Engoron said the remaining issues for trial are determining liability on other claims in the lawsuit, as well as how much Trump and the other defendants should pay.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

On a damp and windy day, members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) picketed outside a sprawling Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, burning logs in barrels for warmth.

The plant makes the Ford Bronco, and workers there were among the first to strike when union contract negotiations between the UAW and the car companies collapsed earlier this month.

Strikers wearing red shirts and carrying signs chanted: “What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now!” and “No pay no parts,” as drivers passing by on the busy highway blared their horns in support.

The UAW strike has pushed into its third week, and unlike many strikes, it has managed to stay in the news – not least because on Tuesday, Joe Biden became the first US president to join strikers on a picket line in what feels like the unofficial kick-off to the 2024 campaign season.

“Stick with it. You deserve a significant raise,” Biden told the crowd in a minute-long speech. “We saved them [the car companies]. It’s about time they step up for us.”

The speech may have been short and sweet but the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

Walking the picket line, Larry Hearn, a 61-year-old UAW committee member, said: “We’re out here on the frontline taking the brunt for everybody, losing money. The support feels good. We don’t need him to get in our business and secure us a contract, but his support is enough. It hits home with people.”

The Donald Trump campaign called Biden’s visit to the picket line a “cheap photo op”, but at least some workers disagree with that assessment.

“It’s about time a president stood up for workers instead of the billionaire class and donor class,” said Quintin Tucker, 57, who works in the plant’s final assembly department.

Trump will visit a non-union auto shop tomorrow, a fact that was not lost on those outside the Wayne plant.

“That’s where his loyalties lie,” Walter Robinson, a 57-year-old quality inspector, said. “If he wants to be with working people who are struggling, then he would be here. I don’t know who he is playing for – is he playing for working people, or corporations?”

“He has to go to a non-union plant because if he came here, we wouldn’t let him in,” added Hearn. “If he pulled up in his motherfuckin’ motorcade right now, we would not let him in.”

But it’s too early to count Trump out, said Robinson. The former US president did beat Hillary Clinton in the state in the 2016 election and still has his fans.

Trump gets a lot of support among union members because of “guns, gays and taxes”, Robinson said, and inflation has not helped Biden.

“That resonates with a certain sector of people,” he added, estimating that there is about a 60-40 split at the plant in support for Biden and Trump respectively.

Hearn said he is a Democrat and that most union members will say they are, but added, “You never know what someone is going to do when they get behind the booth.”

Frank Wells, a 27-year plant veteran, is a Democrat who is not impressed by Trump, especially because he is visiting a non-union shop.

“Let’s be real. He doesn’t support what we’re doing. He’s corporate. He’s a billionaire, a businessman, but we’re out here fighting for our lives,” Wells said.

Tucker estimates support for Biden and Trump in the plant is closer to 50-50, and that Trump draws support for his “cult of personality” and effective use of social wedge issues.

Trump does not really support the UAW, Tucker said, because “he is from the billionaire class and it’s against his interest”. Still, he added: “People vote against their economic interest in favor of cultural issues.”

He scoffed at Trump’s planned visit to a non-union shop. “The anger that we’re feeling right now - he doesn’t want that to rub off on him so he went somewhere safe, where they don’t have any skin in the game.”

Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year.

In response, one progressive group said the former US president and current overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican 2024 presidential nomination race had “gone full fascist”.

The Biden White House said Trump threatened “an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law”.

The US media was “almost all dishonest and corrupt”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, “but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC News, and in particular MSNBC … should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’.”

Listing familiar complaints about coverage of his presidency – during which he regularly threatened NBC, MSNBC and Comcast – Trump added: “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I win the presidency of the United States, they and others of the lamestream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”

Trump also used familiar terms of abuse for the press: “the enemy of the people” and “the fake news media”.

Observers reacted to Trump’s threat to NBC, MSNBC and Comcast with a mixture of familiarity and alarm.

In a statement, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, said: “President Biden swore an oath to uphold our constitution and protect American democracy. Freedom of the press is a fundamental constitutional right.

“To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Presidents must always defend Americans’ freedoms – never trample on them for selfish, small and dangerous political purposes.”

Elsewhere, Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, pointed to Trump’s symbiotic relationship with outlets he professes to hate, given that only last week Trump was “the featured interview guest last week on Meet the Press, the signature Sunday morning news program on … NBC”.

Others noted that on Monday night, the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited, was due to be interviewed on MSNBC.

“Female political or media antagonists really cause blood to come pouring out of Trump’s eyes,” wrote Howard Fineman, a columnist and commentator.

Sounding a louder alarm, Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, said Trump had gone “full fascist” with an “unhinged Sunday-night rant”.

“There you have it, folks,” it said. “While Trump and his Republican enablers love to falsely accuse Democrats of ‘weaponizing’ the government against Trump, Trump himself is now openly threaten[ing] to weaponize the presidency to completely remove entire news channels from the airwaves simply because they expose his rampant criminality.”

Juliette Kayyem, a Kennedy School professor and CNN national security analyst, pointed to a previous warning: “To view each of Trump’s calls to violence in isolation – ‘he attacked Milley’ or ‘he attacked NBC’ or ‘he attacked the jury, the prosecutor, the judge’ – is to miss his overall plan to ‘introduce violence as a natural extension of our democratic disagreement’.”

Trump’s rantings were also coupled with threats to Gen Mark Milley, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff whose attempts to cope with Trump were detailed in an Atlantic profile last week.

They come after a Washington Post poll gave Trump a 10-point lead over Joe Biden, who beat him in 2020, in a notional 2024 general election matchup.

The Post said the poll was an “outlier” but Trump dominates the Republican nomination race and generally polls close to Biden despite facing 91 criminal charges – for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments – and civil threats including a defamation trial arising from an allegation of rape a judge said was “substantially true”.

Another new poll, from NBC, showed Trump and Biden tied at 46% but Trump up 39%-36% if a third-party candidate was added. A “person familiar with White House discussions” about the prospect of a candidacy from No Labels, a centrist group, said it was “concerning”, NBC said. Biden, the report added, was “worried”.

Mark Meadows burned so many papers in his office fireplace as Donald Trump’s presidency came to its chaotic end that the then White House chief of staff’s wife complained about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the “bonfire” smell, Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her eagerly awaited memoir.

The New York Times reported the passage about Meadows burning documents, before MSNBC confirmed it.

Hutchinson, a senior aide to Meadows, emerged as a key witness before the House January 6 committee, which investigated the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited in an attempt to stay in power.

Hutchinson’s book, Enough, will be published on Tuesday. Last week, the Guardian first reported Hutchinson’s description of being groped by Rudy Giuliani backstage on January 6. Giuliani denied it.

For the Times, Robert Draper wrote: “It was, by [Hutchinson’s] telling, an administration awash in paranoia, with Mr Meadows and others refusing to dispose of daily litter in ‘burn bags’ for fear that someone from the ‘deep state’ might intercept the contents.

“Instead, she writes, Mr Meadows burned so many documents in his fireplace in the final days of the Trump presidency that his wife complained to Ms Hutchinson about how expensive it had become to dry-clean the ‘bonfire’ aroma from his suits.”

Meadows’ habit of burning documents was previously known. In May last year, the New York Times and Politico reported that Hutchinson had in testimony described Meadows burning papers. Politico said he did so after meeting Scott Perry, a hard-right Pennsylvania Republican congressman involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.

Later, transcripts released by the committee showed Hutchinson saying she saw Meadows burn documents around a dozen times between December 2020 and January 2021.