A Manhattan federal jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages.
Obama ordered a cheeseburger with dijon mustard at a Virginia burger restaurant. Cable segments and columns spent days on the condiment choice.
A Manhattan jury convicted former President Donald Trump on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records tied to a 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. He is the first former U.S. president to be criminally convicted.
President Barack Obama wore a tan suit to an August 2014 White House briefing on ISIS strategy, prompting days of cable news commentary. Rep. Peter King called the outfit "unpresidential."
At a campaign rally in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Donald Trump waved and jerked his arms while impersonating New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting his joints. Kovaleski and the Times said the gesture mocked his disability; Trump denied it.
Stepping off Marine One in New York, President Obama raised his right hand, still holding a coffee cup, to salute two Marines. Fox News and other outlets covered the gesture as disrespectful to the military for several days afterward, a cycle that became known as the "latte salute."
A federal grand jury indictment unsealed June 9, 2023 charged former President Donald Trump with 37 counts related to retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office. The indictment included photographs showing boxes of documents stacked on a ballroom stage and stored in a bathroom and shower at the resort.
A White House photo showing President Barack Obama resting his foot on the historic Resolute Desk while on a phone call with House Speaker John Boehner circulated over Labor Day weekend 2013. Conservative commentators and outlets called the pose disrespectful to the desk, a gift from Queen Victoria in 1880.
The Washington Post published a 2005 recording in which Donald Trump described grabbing women by the genitals without their consent, saying "when you're a star, they let you do it." The recording, made on an Access Hollywood tour bus, prompted bipartisan condemnation and a wave of Republican defections from his campaign.
First Lady Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless purple dress to President Obama's February 24, 2009 address to a joint session of Congress, and again went sleeveless in her official White House portrait days later. The choice drew sustained commentary about formality and appropriateness, with outlets dubbing the episode "Sleevegate."
President-elect Donald Trump agreed to pay $25 million to resolve the New York attorney general's civil fraud suit and two federal class actions alleging Trump University defrauded thousands of students. The settlement included no admission of wrongdoing.
During a Rose Garden press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Obama called over two Marines to hold umbrellas as rain fell. Marine Corps regulations prohibit uniformed Marines from carrying umbrellas, and conservative commentators criticized the move as disrespectful of the tradition.
President Trump showed reporters a National Hurricane Center forecast map for Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black marker to extend the storm's projected path into Alabama, days after the National Weather Service publicly corrected his claim that Alabama would be affected.
Beginning early in his presidency and continuing through his re-election campaign, conservative outlets and Republican politicians ran a recurring theme portraying President Obama's use of a teleprompter as a "crutch," nicknaming the device "TOTUS" (Teleprompter of the United States) and treating routine teleprompter use as proof he could not speak without a script.
A New York state judge ordered Donald Trump to pay $2 million in damages after finding he misused Trump Foundation charity funds, including to benefit his 2016 campaign. The foundation was dissolved and its remaining assets distributed to eight charities under a court-supervised agreement with the New York Attorney General.
President Barack Obama played golf shortly after delivering a televised statement condemning the execution of journalist James Foley, drawing days of media criticism over the timing. Obama later said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he should have anticipated how the images would look.
A Manhattan federal jury awarded writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages after finding Trump liable for defaming her when he denied, and attacked her over, her sexual assault allegation. The verdict followed a separate 2023 jury finding that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and an earlier defamation claim.
The Wall Street Journal published an opinion column by Joseph Epstein addressing incoming first lady Jill Biden, who holds a doctorate in education, as "kiddo" and urging her to stop using the title "Dr." The piece drew multi-day criticism from public figures, academics, and news outlets, and Biden's spokesperson called it a "disgusting and sexist attack."
In an hour-long phone call on January 2, 2021, President Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn his loss in the state, telling him "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have." The recording was released the next day.
President Obama's family left for a 17-day Christmas vacation in Honolulu on December 20, 2013, drawing coverage tallying the taxpayer-funded travel and security cost at roughly $4 million. Fox News and other conservative outlets ran the trip as a recurring taxpayer-waste story through the following weeks.
New York Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay roughly $354 million, a sum that grows daily with interest, after finding he used fraudulent financial statements to obtain favorable loan terms. The ruling also bars Trump from serving as an officer or director of a New York company for three years.
President Biden stopped for ice cream with late-night host Seth Meyers in New York and, cone in hand, told reporters he hoped for a Gaza ceasefire by the end of the week. Fox News and other outlets spent days criticizing the optics, and Meyers later devoted a full "Closer Look" segment on his own show to the backlash.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack presented testimony that President Trump remained in the White House dining room for 187 minutes, from the end of his Ellipse speech until a recorded video statement, without calling the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, or the Secretary of Homeland Security. The committee's final report later titled the episode "187 Minutes of Dereliction."
At a rural issues forum at the Van Fossen farm in Adel, Iowa, Sen. Barack Obama cited the price of arugula at Whole Foods to argue farm policy should support specialty-crop growers, prompting mockery that he was out of touch since Iowa had no Whole Foods stores. The remark, dubbed "Arugula-gate," was repeatedly invoked by the McCain campaign, the Clinton campaign, and the press through the 2008 general election as evidence of elitism.