‘If only Mark Meadows had even half Cassidy Hutchinson’s courage’

(Image credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

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1. Cassidy Hutchinson could read the ketchup on the wall
2. Men have to stop killing women – we should feel safe and free, not alarmed
3. Nicola Sturgeon is playing her cards to maximum effect
4. Emma Raducanu has everything except experience – so let’s be patient with her
5. Going on holiday by yourself isn’t fun – anyone who says otherwise is lying

published 29 June 2022

1. Cassidy Hutchinson could read the ketchup on the wall

Dana Milbank in The Washington Post

“Before Tuesday, few outside of Trump World had ever heard of Cassidy Hutchinson,” writes Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. That was before “the young woman’s extraordinary two hours” in front of the House select committee on the 6 January Capitol riots. The former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was “understandably nervous” but “had a preternatural poise”. She “spoke softly but with a command” leaving “no doubt that her testimony about what she had witnessed in the Trump White House was the horrible truth”, says Milbank. Hutchinson recounted that the former president had grabbed for the steering wheel of a vehicle and lunged at his head of Secret Service when he refused to drive him to the Capitol that day. Milbank says there were “gasps” and “stunned glances” from reporters watching her testimony. “Hutchinson had everything to lose by defying Team Trump’s pressure for her to remain silent.” If her former boss Meadows “had even half” of Hutchinson’s courage, “the country would be in a much better place”.

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“For every woman murdered, countless lives – her parents, her family, her friends – are shattered beyond repair,” writes Polly Hudson in The Mirror. Zara Aleena was killed by a stranger while she walked home on Sunday. Chief Superintendent Stuart Bell “urged the female population ‘to be alert but not alarmed’”. “Yet another innocent woman” has been “randomly murdered”, says Hudson. “Surely the natural, appropriate reaction is to be massively alarmed. For all of us. Even men,” she says, who “presumably have women in their lives that they’d prefer to remain alive”. How, she asks, “should this alertness manifest itself, exactly?” Going out with other people “won’t save us”. Hudson wonders “if the weather’s nice in Cloud Cuckoo Land, where Mr Bell lives”. Women “change their behaviour, all the time, and it’s still not enough”. Aleena’s “poor, heartbroken friend” was “obviously right” when she said “something needs to be done”.

“When it comes to Scotland’s independence debate, Nicola Sturgeon has been caught between a rock and a hard place for what must now feel like a lifetime,” says The Scotsman’s Joyce McMillan. One one side, “there is the implacable demand of many in her party” that she “take advantage” of the “shambolic, disreputable and morally compromised” government in Westminster to hold a second referendum. On the other, there is Boris Johnson’s “adamant refusal” to consider allowing a referendum on the same terms as 2014 – and Sturgeon, “a lawyer to her fingertips, is not the woman who would want to preside over a referendum with any inferior legal status”. Scottish voters are “in the middle”, says McMillan, “traumatised by the triple crisis of Brexit, the pandemic, and war in Europe”. This writer says it’s possible that Sturgeon’s “shrewd manoeuvres” will bring the UK to the point where “it either has to reform” to fully recognise the right to self-determination “or face the possibility of full constitutional meltdown” by 2024.

Mere “minutes” before Emma Raducanu’s Wimbledon Centre Court debut, “experts were doing their best to play down expectations”, says Allison Pearson in The Telegraph. The tennis player is only 19 years old, and “everyone agrees” that she “shouldn’t be put under any pressure so we mustn’t get our hopes up”. Except “we get excited and hope too much anyway”, says Pearson. “Can’t help it.” In her first match against Alison Van Uytvanck, there were “definitely patches where Raducanu was outplayed, fluffing the basics”. But then, “a flash of cross-court brilliance, beautiful and astonishing as a kingfisher across a lake”. When she won the match 6-4, 6-4, “she literally jumped for joy”. Pearson says “few things are more wonderful than youthful promise – or more easily bruised.” Tim Henman was “right” when he warned that “we have to be patient”. Raducanu has “everything it takes, except experience”.

While “desperately” attempting to apply suntan lotion to her back, Ania Magliano “caught a horrifying glimpse” of herself in the mirror, “standing half naked” with “arms contorted like some sort of Victorian optical illusion”. This, she writes in the Metro, was “not really the image of chic serenity” she’d had in mind for her first solo holiday. Magliano had long “idolised solo holidays as the pinnacle of sophistication”. Instead, she spent a week in Greece alone, “reading, eating and trying to figure out how to style my terribly cut fringe”. It was “fine”, but “not the groundbreaking experience” she’d expected. The logistics were “draining” and decision-making was “non-stop”. “It was a useful experiment” but this writer has “made peace with the fact that solo holidays” aren’t for her. She’s looking forward to a trip to New York with her best friend this summer, a “week of laughing, chatting and applying suntan lotion to each other’s backs”.

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