First Lady’s Gaza bombshell stuns Melania

Emine Erdogan asked Donald Trump’s spouse to write to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to show mercy to Gaza’s children.

In a letter presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Alaska Summit earlier this month, she appealed to him to make peace in Ukraine for the sake of the children.

Turkey’s First Lady wrote: “I have faith that the important sensitivity you have shown for the 648 Ukrainian children who have lost their lives in the war will be extended to Gaza as well, where, in the span of two years, 62,000 innocent civilians, including 18,000 children, have been brutally killed.

“As a mother, as a woman, and as a human being, I deeply share the sentiments expressed in your letter, and I hope that you will give the same hope to the children of Gaza, who also yearn for peace and tranquillity,” Emine wrote to Melania.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tried to act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine during the war, which is in its fourth year.

On Tuesday, he accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon in Gaza, saying the images coming from the Palestinian enclave were worse than “Nazi camps”.

The United Nations on Friday officially declared a famine in Gaza, which Netanyahu dismissed as a “blatant lie”.

National Guard troops will soon carry weapons

It comes as news emerged that National Guard troops will soon carry weapons in Washington, DC, where Trump ordered their deployment as part of a crackdown on crime, a US defence official said Friday.

Trump has said Washington was a “crime-infested rat hole” before he sent troops onto its streets last week and said Friday that Chicago and New York – two more major Democrat-led cities – are set to receive similar treatment.

“At the direction of the secretary of defence, JTF-DC members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons,” the defence official said on condition of anonymity, referring to the Joint Task Force-DC.

The US Army previously said as troops began to arrive that “weapons are available if needed but will remain in the armoury.” There are now more than 1,900 National Guard troops in Washington, both from the city as well as the Republican-led states of West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee, which have also sent forces.

On Friday, Trump said Chicago and New York are also on his list of targets. “We’re going to make our cities very, very safe,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think Chicago will be our next and then we’ll help with New York.”

Lowest violent crime in years

The US president also discussed declaring a national emergency to keep troops in Washington for longer than 30 days.

Republican politicians – led by Trump – have claimed that the overwhelmingly Democratic US capital is overrun by crime, plagued by homelessness and financially mismanaged.

Data from Washington police, however, showed significant drops in violent crime between 2023 and 2024, though that was coming off a post-pandemic surge.

A Justice Department statement from January said that based on that data, “total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35 per cent from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years.”

But Trump has accused Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser of “giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures,” threatening “bad things” including a total federal takeover of the city if she does not stop doing so.

In addition to the deployment of the National Guard, federal law enforcement personnel – including Immigration and Customs Enforcement – have also recently surged their presence on Washington’s streets, drawing protests from residents.

The deployment of troops in Washington comes after Trump dispatched the National Guard and Marines to quell unrest in Los Angeles, California, that was sparked by immigration enforcement raids.

That was the first time since 1965 that a US president deployed the National Guard against the wishes of a state governor, who are usually responsible for those forces