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Former US president Donald Trump celebrated his 75th birthday on Monday and the event was a low-key affair. Trump marked his 75th birthday with a dinner at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Donald Trump Jr, the son of former US president, took to his Instagram account to share some photos of the birthday party. The guests included Donald Jr.s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, former NFL star Herschel Walker, Indiana congressman Jim Banks and Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert.

The most notable absentee was Donald Trump's wife and former First Lady, Melania Trump.

Ex-wife Ivana Trump once said in an interview that "Donald hates his birthdays", and a source also told People magazine that Melania "keeps her own schedule and leads her own life" away from her husband.

The absence of Melania has once again sparked the divorce rumors between the couple but writer Kristyn Burtt said that it is wrong to say that Melania has decided to part ways with Donald Trump.

She said: "She did that at the start of his administration when she and son Barron remained in New York City so he could finish out the school year before they moved to Washington, D.C. The couple has very different hobbies and seems to prefer their independent activities, but no one should read too much into her absence. This shouldnt be seen as a sign that there is trouble in their marriage."

Notably, the only family members who were present during Donald Trump's 75th birthday celebration were Donald Jr. and his girlfriend. Daughter Ivanka Trump was also not present at the event.

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Melania Trump to divorce former US president Donald Trump ...

The explosion at the Kabul airport - which killed at least 72 Afghans and 13 US service members - would never have occurred if he were president, Former US President Donald Trump said in a statement that was sent to Fox News and later posted Friday on social media.

In his speech, he started by giving his condolences to the families and friends of the terror attack victims.

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"These noble American warriors laid down their lives in the line of duty. They sacrificed themselves for the country they loved. Racing against time to rescue their fellow citizens from harm's way."

Shortly after these remarks, the former president made the political statement claiming that the terror attack would not have happened had he won the 2020 presidential election against Joe Biden.

"This tragedy should never have taken place, it should never have happened, and it would not have happened if I was your president," Trump remarked.

The ISIS jihadist terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Simcha Pasko, Anna Ahronheim and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Trump claims Kabul explosion wouldn't have happened if he were president - The Jerusalem Post

Trump sues Facebook, Twitter over 'blacklisting and canceling'

Claims that tech companies are biased against conservatives have emerged as a top issue to rally the GOP base ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Associated Press, USA TODAY

Twitter blocked and labeled some of Donald Trump's claims ofelection fraud in the run-up and aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

The tweetsspread on and off Twitter anyway.

Thats according to a new study from New York University researchers published Tuesday in Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review and shared exclusively with USA TODAY.

The study is raisingquestions about the ability of social media companies to halt the flood of falsehoods on mainstream social media platforms during election cycles.

NYU researchers say Trump tweets withfact-check labels spread further on Twitter than those without. And when Twitter blocked engagement with the former presidents tweets, they leapedto Facebook, Instagram and Redditwhere they were more popular than tweets that Twitter labeled or did not flag at all.

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It's not clear if Twitter intervened on social media posts that were more likely to spread or if it was the intervention itself that gave the tweets a boost, the researchers said.

But they say their studyunderscores how harmful misinformation can hopfrom platform to platform with too little coordination among social media companies to curb its spread.

Misinformation halted on one platform does not halt it on another, said Megan Brown, research engineer with NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics.

Blocked on Twitter, Trumps tweets turned up on Facebook in the form of links, quotes andscreenshots, where they garnered an average engagement of more than 300,000, said Zeve Sanderson, executive director of the NYU center.

That phenomenon shows that political actors seeking to advance a narrative online are not limited to working within a single platform, said Joshua Tucker, co-director of the center.

We are in a world where people who are trying to control information environments and who are trying to push political information environments are in a multiplatform world, Tucker said. Right now, the only way we have to deal with content is on a platform-by-platform basis.

In a statement, Twitter saidit took a number of steps to limit engagement on tweets that violated its rules.

"As election conversation reached record highs, it was critical that we took swift enforcement action on misleading content that could contribute to offline harm," the company said.

From Oct. 27 to Nov. 11, Twitter labeled some 300,000 tweets as disputed or potentially misleading and saw an estimated 29% decrease in quote tweets.

"We continue to research, questionand alter features that could incentivize or encourage behaviors on Twitter that negatively affect the health of the conversation online or could lead to offline harm," the company said.

Twitter'smost significant intervention waspermanently banningTrump in the final days of his presidency after the Jan. 6Capitol attack, a move that raisedthorny questions of free speech and censorship on social media.

At the time, Trumphad 88.7 million followers who retweeted him at an astonishing rate, giving him near unprecedented power to shape the national conversation.

After his followers stormed the U.S. Capitol Building to block Congress from certifying Joe Bidens presidential win, all three of the nations top social media platforms Facebook, Googles YouTube and Twitter banned Trump over concerns he would incite more violence.

YouTube said it would lift the suspension after the "risk of violence" decreases. In June, Facebook said the earliest Trump would regain access to his accounts would be 2023. Even if Trump runs for president and wins in 2024, Twitter said it would not reinstate him.

Trump attacked social media companies forlabeling, restrictingorremoving his poststhat spread falsehoods about the outcome of the presidential election.

In July, Trump filed suit against Facebook, Google,Twitter and their CEOs, claiming the companies violated his First Amendment rights.

In a backlash from conservatives, dozens of states are considering legislation that targets how social media platforms regulate speech. One bill passed in Florida but was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

Another in Texas had the votes it needed in a special session of the Republican-controlled legislature,but it has beenin limbo after Democrats left the state for Washington to protest a GOP effort to overhaul the state election system.

NYU researchers say they focused on Trump's tweets because of evidence that he acted as a central vector for spreading election-relation misinformation.

They examined tweets from Nov. 1, 2020, through Jan. 8, 2021, that were flagged by Twitter.

Blocking engagement with Trumps tweets limited their spread on Twitter but not elsewhere, researchersfound. The tweets were posted more often and were more popular on other social media platforms.

When Twitter slapped a warning label on Trumps tweets, they were more popular than his tweets that had no label, researchers said.

The finding does not necessarily mean that warning labels were ineffective or had the Streisand effect, when an attempt to hide or remove information draws even more attention to it,Sanderson said.It may be that the types of tweets that Twitter labeled were also the type that would be more likely to spread.

In the future, especially with respect to the ongoing pandemic and the 2022 midterms coming up, it will be really important for the platforms to coordinate in some way, if they can, to halt the spread of misinformation, Brown said.

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Twitter blocked and labeled Donald Trump's tweets on election fraud. They spread anyway. - USA TODAY

Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images

When are celebrities going to understand the actual impact of celebrity? Its getting embarrassing. TikTok-star-slash-actress-slash-musician-slash-bad-bleep Addison Rae has begrudgingly responded to online backlash for introducing herself to former president Donald Trump at a UFC match back in July. I mean, I dont support Trump, Addison Rae, last name Easterling, told the Los Angeles Times. And if someone does, thats their opinion and I respect everyones opinion, for each their own. But its very rare on occasion that you ever get to meet a former president, and I think most people could agree with me on that. Its very uncommon. And I consider myself a friendly person, and so introducing myself does not mean I stand behind anything that any respective person condones. Basically, retweets arent endorsements and, apparently, neither is walking up to someone while theyre watching a UFC match, tapping them on the shoulder, and saying, Hi, Im Addison. Nice to meet you. I have to say hi. Hello. Its so nice to meet you. The 20-year-old Hes All That star has been accused of being a Trump supporter more than once since breaking out on TikTok last year. Just last September, a TikTok user claimed to find her registered to vote in Tarzana, California, as a Republican. First Im from Louisiana, second Im not even registered to vote and never have been Im actually doing it for the first time with someone important and Im excited to do so, she commented at the time. Heres some useful information you can actually take away from this: Dont meet your heroes or your villains. And register to vote!

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Addison Rae Says Trump Is Not All That, But She Still Wanted to Meet Him - Vulture

Believing youre uniquely capable of bending things to your will is practically a requirement for becoming president of the United States. But too often, in pursuit of such influence over foreign policy, presidents overemphasize the importance of personal diplomacy. Relationships among leaders can build trust or destroy it but presidents often overrate their ability to steer both allies and adversaries.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had built such a solid relationship that during the Reykjavik summit most of Reagans administration worried he would agree to an unverifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. Bill Clinton believed his personal diplomacy could deliver Palestinian statehood and Russian acceptance of NATO expansion. George W. Bush believed he looked into Vladimir Putins eyes and saw his soul, and Barack Obama believed he could persuade Mr. Putin it wasnt in Russias interests to determine the outcome of the war in Syria.

But in both hubris and folly, none come close to matching Donald Trump. For someone who prided himself on his abilities as a dealmaker and displayed an I alone can fix it arrogance, the agreement he made with the Taliban is one of the most disgraceful diplomatic bargains on record. Coupled with President Bidens mistakes in continuing the policy and botching its execution, the deal has now led to tragic consequences for Americans and our allies in Kabul.

Mr. Trumps handling of Afghanistan is an object lesson for why presidents of both parties need to be better constrained by Congress and the public in their conduct of foreign policy.

Mr. Trump never believed Afghanistan was worth fighting for: as early as 2011 he advocated its abandonment. Once in office, his early infatuation with my generals gave the Pentagon latitude to dissuade the president from exactly the kind of rush to the exits were now seeing in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump wanted to abandon the war in Afghanistan, but he understood atavistically that it would damage him politically to have a terrorist attack or a Saigon comparison attached to his policy choices.

Thus the impetus for a negotiated settlement. The problem with Mr. Trumps Taliban deal wasnt that the administration turned to diplomacy. That was a sensible avenue out of the policy constraints. The problem was that the strongest state in the international order let itself be swindled by a terrorist organization. Because we so clearly wanted out of Afghanistan, we agreed to disreputable terms, and then proceeded to pretend that the Taliban were meeting even those.

Mr. Trump agreed to withdraw all coalition forces from Afghanistan in 14 months, end all military and contractor support to Afghan security forces and cease intervening in its domestic affairs. He forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters and relax economic sanctions. He agreed that the Taliban could continue to commit violence against the government we were there to support, against innocent people and against those whod assisted our efforts to keep Americans safe. All the Taliban had to do was say they would stop targeting U.S. or coalition forces, not permit Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to use Afghan territory to threaten U.S. security and subsequently hold negotiations with the Afghan government.

Not only did the agreement have no inspection or enforcement mechanisms, but despite Mr. Trumps claim that If bad things happen, well go back with a force like no ones ever seen, the administration made no attempt to enforce its terms. Trumps own former national security adviser called it a surrender agreement.

Mr. Trump and his supporters clearly considered the deal a great success until just days ago, the Republican National Committee had a web page heralding the success of Mr. Trumps historic peace agreement. Really, the Trump administrations deal with the Taliban deserves opprobrium even greater than what it heaped on the Iran nuclear deal struck by the Obama administration.

Mr. Trump wasnt unique among American presidents in the grandiose belief that he alone could somehow change behaviors of our enemies and adversaries. Ever since Theodore Roosevelt brought an end to the Russo-Japanese war and won the Nobel Peace Prize, most American presidents have found irresistible the siren call of personal diplomacy.

Instead of banking on other countries being charmed or persuaded that American leaders know their interests better than they do, presidents should return to the practice of persuading their fellow Americans of the merits of agreements with foreign powers. Congress can begin by reasserting its role in diplomacy and requiring specific authorizations for the use of military force rather than continuing to acquiesce to claims that existing executive authorizations can be endlessly expanded. It should refuse the shifting of funds previously authorized and appropriated for other purposes (Mr. Trump made such shifts to construct the border wall). It should reject foreign policy changes enacted by executive order rather than congressional approval, and it should force the Supreme Court to clarify the extent of the presidents war powers.

Agreements with foreign powers, whether states, international institutions or organizations like the Taliban, should be submitted to Congress for a vote. The best way to prevent catastrophic foreign policy mistakes is to require the 535 representatives of the American people to put their jobs on the line, become informed, and support, reject or modify a presidents program. Congress tried to slow or block Mr. Trumps planned drawdown of U.S. forces. Members who supported the Taliban deal should be explaining why they thought the outcome would be different than the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan now. Apathy and unaccountability are the real enemies of good foreign policy. Presidents get around oversight by offering unilateral policy actions or claiming international agreements arent formal treaties. Congress shouldnt let a president from either party get away with that.

Addressing foreign agreements as stand-alone votes would raise the profile and stakes even more. Supporting Mr. Trumps Taliban agreement would have been and should have been a tough vote. There are reasonable arguments on the side of continuing the war and on the side of concluding it. America would be more secure today if Congress exerted its prerogatives more forcefully both when Mr. Trump agreed to the Taliban deal, and when Mr. Biden continued it.

These are not partisan issues. They get at the heart of the constitutional separation of powers, a division that makes America strong and resilient. Restraining presidential fiat may mean that some foreign policy opportunities are missed, that some deals will remain out of reach. But it also insulates the president, and the American public, against bad deals by allowing for greater public scrutiny and oversight. As the debacle in Afghanistan shows, closer evaluation of Mr. Trumps Taliban deal and of Mr. Bidens withdrawal plans would have been preferable to the tragedy now unfolding.

Kori Schake worked for the National Security Council and as deputy director of policy planning at the State Department during George W. Bushs administration. She is director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Opinion | What Trumps Disgraceful Deal With the Taliban Has Wrought - The New York Times