By now you probably know every detail of Donald Trump’s fight with the cast of Broadway’s “Hamilton” — but you may not have heard about all the serious stories it overshadowed this weekend. Here are five of them.
Alt-right leader Richard B. Spencer led a gathering in a federal building three blocks from the White House where he quoted Nazi propaganda and declared, “To be white is to be a creator, an explorer, a conqueror,” according to the New York Times. The attendees chanted “Heil Victory!” and some did the Nazi salute, the paper said. (Activists report 700 cases of “hateful harassment” since Trump’s election.)
Trump met last week with three Indian business partners building a Trump-branded complex in that country, which raised conflict-of-interest questions about whether he will separate his business dealings from his new job: being president. A Trump spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Trump and his business partners talked business, the Times said.
Trump said the $25 million he agreed to pay to settle a fraud lawsuit against his now-defunct Trump University was only “a small fraction of the potential award” he would have had to pay his he had lost the case. (He also said he would have won.) No other president in history has had to settle a massive fraud case before taking office.
Trump took credit Friday for keeping Ford keeping a plant in Louisville, Ky. instead of moving to Mexico — but Ford had never planned to move it to Mexico or to cut Louisville jobs, the Detroit Free-Press explained.
It turned out Trump hasn’t actually signed the 1,000 “signed” hats he offered on his Facebook page in exchange for campaign contributions. They were actually signed by a machine, ABC News reported.
But never mind all that, because all anyone talked about this weekend was “Hamilton” — as several Trump critics noted. “Don’t let Trump bury his fraud case with this ‘Hamilton’ noise. This is what he does every damn time. Stop letting him get away with it,” said Calvin Stowell, the chief growth officer at Do Something, which urges young people to volunteer for good causes.
If you enjoyed this gallery, check out our list of possible 2020 Presidential Candidates, Ranked by Vegas Odds.