Donald Trump has given a wild interview to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, declaring, “Almost all countries in this world take tremendous advantage of the United States, it’s unbelievable!”
The president claimed Japan would watch a Third World War “at home on a Sony TV” rather than come to America’s aid (ahead of a trip there for the G20 summit), attacked Twitter, accused retired FBI special counsel Robert Mueller of deleting incriminating Justice Department text messages and said Iran “does not have smart leadership” and is “going down the tubes”.
On Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives passed an emergency spending bill late last night securing $4.5bn (£3.6bn) to address the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border, as a horrific photograph of a drowned migrant father and daughter emerged provoking new public anger. Mr Trump’s son Eric has meanwhile been spat on while out dining in public.
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The president has also been talking about international trade. He claimed on Wednesday he's under little pressure to reach a trade deal with China when he meets later this week with Xi Jinping, and is prepared to impose further tariffs on Chinese imports.
“The Chinese economy's going down the tubes,” he told Fox Business Network. “They want to make a deal more than I do.”
“The Chinese economy's going down the tubes,” he told Fox Business Network. “They want to make a deal more than I do.”
And he's also been talking more about Iran. "Iran can do whatever they want it’s just fine, I have plenty of time - they have a country that is economic distress right now." he told reporters. He said he does not think Iran’s leaders respect its people.
and again:
and again....
POTUS is tweeting again:
I recently had the chance to travel to Honduras to speak to would-be migrants who were planning to travel to the US, and those who had returned or been deported. It's a complicated situation. I don't think it's correct simply to blame the US president for the deaths of Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter. Here's what I wrote earlier today: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-mexico-border-us-rio-grande-photo-drowned-father-daughter-migrants-a8976606.html
Reddit limited access to a pro-Trump forum on Wednesday, saying users in the message board had posted content that could incite violence, most recently "in the form of encouragement of violence toward police officers and public officials in Oregon," according to a statement from the website.
Called "The_Donald," the subreddit is now "quarantined," meaning site-goers must click through an extra barrier to enter.
“The reason for the quarantine is that over the last few months we have observed repeated rule-breaking behavior in your community and an overreliance on Reddit admins to manage users and remove posts that violate our content policy," Reddit's statement read, "including content that encourages or incites violence."
Hi there. This is Andrew Buncombe in Seattle. So much news today but without doubt the story people should read first is this one about another migrant tragedy:
Here's everything you missed in Trump's speech to the evangelical Faith and Freedom Coalition this morning, including jabs at John McCain, an ardent fan moment, and a number of rounds of chants for "four more years."
North Korea and US officials are holding "behind-the-scenes talks" in attempt to hold a third summit between Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump, according to the AP. In February, their second summit ended confusingly, with little accomplished.
Before departing for Asia on Wednesday, the president answered coyly to a question on whether he'd be meeting with his North Korean counterpart.
“I may be speaking with him in a different forum," he said. "I will be going, as you know, to South Korea after the summit.”
Here's the full video of Trump speaking on the photo of the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez died with his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria.
It's a very long and rambling message, even by Trump's standards, which includes mention of guards, laws, loopholes, and conditions of rivers.
Trump to reporters on his upcoming conversation with Putin during today's White House lawn briefing: "What I say to him is none of your business."
(It goes without saying that in fact, it is.)
The senate has voted yes on their own replacement of the previous bill.
The senate voted no on the House-passed $4.5b humanitarian assistance bill.
Notably absent from the vote: the seven Democratic senators currently running for president.
Trump's plan to live-tweet the Democratic debates, which begin tonight, hasn't been noticed much by the candidates involved in the said debates. Representatives for Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke took little notice in interviews with Vice, but Julian Castro's spokesperson, Sawyer Hackett, was more explicit.
“We don’t give a s*** about that at all,” he told the website.
The president also mentioned Robert Mueller's report during today's White House lawn interviews, likely because of the announcement that Mueller will be testifying before congress on July 17.
It's also possible that Trump was just thinking about "the Mueller thing" in general, as he is wont to do.
Reporters say Trump has responded to the image of the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martínez and his 23-month-old daughter Angie Valeria facedown in the Rio Grande, saying “It’s like I’ve been saying. If they fix the laws, we wouldn’t have that.”
Here's Zamira Rahim on the national outcry the photo has created.
Stephanie Grisham, the new White House press secretary and communications director, has a history of questionable practices with the press. According to a report from the Washington Post, Grisham asked members of the Arizona press corps to consent to an "'invasive' background check into reporters’ addresses, driving records, and criminal and civil histories" when she was a spokesperson for the state's Republican house majority.
In the same role for the current first lady, she developed a reputation for being incredibly combative towards journalists, especially as people criticized the East Wing's "Be Best" campaign, which hopes to stop internet bullying, as being suspect while the president himself continues to berate his enemies on Twitter.
Add Highlights Magazine to the list of organisations that have denounced Trump's family separation policy. In a statement released by the magazine's Kent Johnson on Wednesday, the pediatrician's office favourite said that their company's core belief that "children are the world’s most important people” is meant to be applied to “ALL children.”
"We denounce the practice of separating immigrant children from their families and urge the government to cease this activity," the Johnson wrote, "which is unconscionable and causes irreparable damage to young lives."
Read the full statement below.
The speech veered into Trump's family separation policy with migrants at the Southern border, where conditions are far from humane. In a blatant lie, the president told the evangelicals: "I'm the one that put people together."
