The White House this weekend gloated about the Kennedy Center Honors medals—historically designed by a local business in Washington, D.C.—being redesigned by a multinational luxury brand.

Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has sought to use the power of the presidency to mold American culture to his will, including at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he was elected chairman in February after purging the board of trustees.

On Sunday evening, Trump will host the center’s annual honors gala, becoming the first president to do so. He claims to have been “very involved” in selecting the honorees, who were recognized at a medallion ceremony on Saturday.

Since 1978, those medallions were crafted by local artisan James Baturin, who, along with his wife and children, have made more than 250 awards—large, multicolored ribbons with gold name plates—as a family business over the years, according to WUSA9.

That is, until this year.  

On Tuesday, the Kennedy Center unveiled new medallions, created by Tiffany & Co. Somewhat less distinctive than the previous design, the new one features a gold disc hanging from a navy-blue ribbon.

Prior to Saturday’s ceremony, the White House fired off a tweet slighting the mom-and-pop operation that was jilted for a luxury-goods giant. The post celebrated the “new, far more classy design” as a “MASSIVE upgrade from the tacky rainbow sash design of medallions past.”

When a reporter pointed out the storied history of the awards described so sneeringly by Trump’s White House, one social media user quipped: “Taking work from a small family business and outsourcing it to a large corporation? That adds up, yep.”

Donald Trump Jr. weighed in on the Russia-Ukraine war this weekend with this ominous message: No one should bet on his father, the president of the United States, to stand by Ukraine.

As Politico reported Sunday, the president’s eldest son made several comments at the Doha Forum, a gathering of politicians and international figures, that cast Ukraine in a negative light, and President Donald Trump’s position as a changeable, unpredictable thing.

In response to a question about whether his father might walk away from the embattled country, Trump Jr. said, “I think he may.”

The president’s son also shared thoughts about corruption in Ukraine, and criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, calling him “one of the great marketers of all times.” He said that Zelenskiy had become “a borderline deity, especially to the left, where he could do no wrong, he was beyond reproach.”

Trump Jr. remarked that his father’s mercurial nature was actually a positive trait, and one of the things that made him unique. “The fact that he’s not predictable … forces everyone to actually deal in an intellectually honest capacity,” he said, per Politico.

Trump Jr.’s comments in Qatar about his father’s shiftiness and lack of predictability come at a particularly fraught time. The U.S. president has been pressuring Russia and Ukraine to sign a peace deal, but negotiations have dragged on, with no clear end in sight. Many people have also criticized the plan that Trump recently put forth, saying it favors Russia.

Meanwhile, Moscow warmly welcomed President Trump’s newly issued “National Security Strategy” this weekend, saying that it coincides with its political view of the world.

And against a backdrop of ongoing peace talks, Russia is ramping up the aggression.

The country carried out a huge aerial attack on Ukraine this weekend, targeting the country’s infrastructure and energy facilities, and wounding at least eight people.

Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah on Sunday offered a mealymouthed excuse for President Donald Trump’s xenophobic attacks on the Somali community.

“We don’t want ’em in our country,” Trump said of Somali immigrants at a Tuesday Cabinet meeting. “Let ’em go back to where they came from.”

Asked about the remarks on CNN, Curtis refused to criticize them. “I can’t control anybody but me, right?” the senator said.

Rather than address the president’s comments head-on, Curtis took a philosophical detour, urging every American to live as a positive role model for others—to “wake up every morning, look........

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