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Bari’s Picks of the Week: Personnel Is Policy
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz speaks during the Hill & Valley Forum in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2025. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Plus: Melania Trump phoning it in, baby-making as a political project, and the influencer making antisemitism cool again
By Bari Weiss
05.02.25 — Bari’s Picks of the Week
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This week marked President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. Or, rather, the first 100 days of his second, nonconsecutive stint in office. He gave lots of interviews. He said he should be pope. It was all pretty standard Trump stuff.

But the real star of the week, to hear Suzy Weiss tell it, is Melania, the least ambitious—and therefore most relatable—first lady in history. Weiss (some relation) has an amazing culture roundup (according to intrepid editor Freya Sanders) Saturday (tomorrow) to top off her first month of her (still unnamed) newsletter. Sign up for it here.

Once again, with much reluctance and against my will, below I choose my must-reads of the week from all the excellent stories we’ve published. First up: some of the president’s men.

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Bari Weiss
Bari Weiss is the founder and editor of The Free Press and host of the podcast Honestly. From 2017 to 2020 Weiss was an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times. Before that, she was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal and a senior editor at Tablet magazine.
Tags:
Melania Trump
Antisemitism
Marco Rubio
Harvard
Bari's Picks of the Week
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