Category Archives: Donald Trump

Kim Jong-un signals North Korea could resume nuclear missile tests

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Trump says he trusts leader to refrain from testing, despite Kim’s criticism of Washington’s ‘gangster-like demands’

Kim Jong-un has signalled that North Korea will lift its moratoriums on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests in a move likely to anger Donald Trump.

The North Korean leader told a four-day meeting of party officials in Pyongyang that the test ban, which Kim agreed to in talks with the US president, was no longer needed, state media said on Wednesday.

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Embassy protesters in Iraq deal symbolic blow to US prestige

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Washington humiliated as hundreds storm American compound chanting slogans in support of pro-Iranian militias

Protesters in Iraq have dealt a symbolic blow to US prestige after they stormed the American embassy compound in Baghdad, trapping diplomats inside while chanting “death to America” and slogans in support of pro-Iranian militias.

In a humiliating day for Washington, hundreds of supporters of Iraqi Shia militia, many wearing military fatigues, besieged the US compound, at one point breaching the main gate and smashing their way into several reception rooms. They lit fires, battered down doors, and threw bricks at bulletproof glass.

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Donald Trump says he will sign first phase of US-China trade deal

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Prospect of agreement lifts stock markets but experts question impact on long-running tensions

Donald Trump has said he will sign the first phase of a long-awaited trade deal with China on 15 January, in a move that de-escalates the tariff war between the world’s two biggest economies.

In a tweet on Tuesday, the US president said “high-level representatives of China” would attend an official ceremony at the White House, adding he would also be travelling to Beijing for talks on the second phase of the deal.

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2019: the year in US protests – in pictures

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Tens of thousands of teachers walked off the job in Los Angeles, American women gathered for their third annual march in Washington, Iowans protested abortion bans, Texans declared Donald Trump ‘not welcome’ in El Paso and students in New York City rallied around Greta Thunberg in calling for action on climate change

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US isolationism leaves Middle East on edge as new decade dawns

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With Trump deciding against protecting allies, old rivalries are converging across the region

Throughout the Middle East’s modern history, a constant remained – the US held a prominent stake and would throw its weight around to protect its interests and allies. The maxim held true as ideologies rose and fell, Gulf monarchies, Israel, and Arab nationalist police states took root – and war and insurrection periodically raged.

But it ended during Donald Trump’s third year, a time when an isolationist, unworldly president began to see regional interests through a much narrower lens. The effect has been profound and 2020 will continue the process of recalibration by traditional friends of the US without a country whose clout they used to defer to and whose agenda they could more or less understand.

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Trump fights to keep evangelicals on his side ahead of 2020

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Recent, high-profile defections have left the president and his campaign spooked about losing a key component of his base

The US president going to church on Christmas Eve should not have attracted much attention. But it was the specific church Donald Trump chose to attend on Tuesday that raised eyebrows.

Instead of attending his usual service at the liberal church in Palm Beach, Florida, where he married his third wife, Trump instead went to a conservative Baptist-affiliated church in West Palm Beach.

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Trump condemned for tweets pointing to name of Ukraine whistleblower

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President posted link to article that identifies official – then sent a further tweet containing the name

Donald Trump has retweeted material that publicly names the purported whistleblower whose complaint about the US president’s dealings with Ukraine led to his impeachment.

The president on Friday night sent a retweet from one of his supporters containing the alleged name of the individual. Trump drew the attention of his 68 million Twitter followers to the post which, along with publicising the name, inaccurately claimed that the whistleblower “committed perjury by making false statements” and is being protected by Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee. There is no evidence to support these assertions.

Earlier, on Thursday, Trump had also retweeted a post by his re-election campaign’s “war room” that linked to an article by the conservative Washington Examiner news website. The article, published on 3 December, has the name of the alleged whistleblower in its headline.

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Navy Seal pardoned of war crimes by Trump described by colleagues as ‘freaking evil’

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Eddie Gallagher ‘OK with killing anything that moved’, Iraq veterans told investigators in testimony obtained by New York Times

A Navy Seal platoon leader controversially cleared of war crimes by Donald Trump was a “toxic” character who was “OK with killing anything that moved”, according to fellow Iraq veterans who reported his conduct to military investigators.

Related: 2019: the year US foreign policy fell apart

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Home Alone 2: Trump scene cut in Canada, angering supporters

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CBC removed president’s cameo in 2014 to save time, but Trump’s son says move is ‘pathetic’

Canada’s national broadcaster has riled Donald Trump’s conservative base by airing Christmas movie favourite Home Alone 2 without a scene involving the president.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) says it removed Trump’s brief cameo – and eight minutes of the film in total – in 2014 to make room for commercials.

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Trump condemned for trivializing homeless crisis in attack on Pelosi

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  • President’s tweets denounced as ‘vile and reprehensible’
  • Trump: speaker’s ‘filthy dirty’ district is worst for homelessness

Donald Trump has been condemned for “vile and reprehensible” tweets that trivialize America’s homelessness crisis in an attempt to rebuke the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the architect of his impeachment.

On Thursday the president, holed up at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida over Christmas, went on the offensive against Pelosi, whose home district includes San Francisco.

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Meet the Americans called Trump … who aren’t related to the president

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They come from across the US and different walks of life, but they share a name that has become synonymous with a divisive age of politics

On the first day of class each semester, Kris-Stella Trump is sure to tell her students at the University of Memphis one thing about herself: “Dr Trump is not related to the president. It’s a complete coincidence.”

For Kris-Stella, who grew up in Estonia, the need for clarification is not just in the classroom – it’s everywhere. In hotels, restaurants, bars, conferences and the airport.

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Trump impeachment: Lisa Murkowski ‘disturbed’ by Mitch McConnell’s stance

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Republican senator unhappy with Senate leader saying he was working in ‘total coordination’ with White House

Republican US Senator Lisa Murkowski has said she was “disturbed” by the Senate leader’s approach to working with White House counsel on the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, saying there should be distance between the two.

The comments by the Alaska lawmaker come after Mitch McConnell, majority leader of the Republican-led Senate, said during a Fox News interview earlier this month that he was working in “total coordination” with the White House on the upcoming trial.

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Donald Trump spends Christmas Eve railing against impeachment

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  • President claims Democrats ‘in real doubt’ about evidence
  • Trump tells troops he has yet to buy a present for Melania

Donald Trump has launched fresh attacks on the congressional architects of his impeachment, even as the standoff intensified between Democrats in the US House and Republicans in the Senate over the president’s impending trial, and appeared set to last well into the new year.

And on a less grave note, Trump revealed in a video conference with US troops to deliver Christmas greetings that, despite it being the morning of 24 December, he had not yet bought his wife her Christmas present.

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2019: the photographs that defined America’s year – in pictures

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A look back at some of the biggest moments of the past year.

Warning: Some of the following images are graphic in nature and might be disturbing to some viewers.

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‘I never understood wind’: Trump goes on bizarre tirade against wind turbines

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President’s nonsensical rambling remarks about ‘windmills’ in segment from weekend speech raised eyebrows

He says he knows more about Isis than his generals, and claims to understand politicians “better than anybody”. Now there is another subject in which Donald Trump’s expert knowledge surpasses that of everybody else: wind turbines, though he calls them windmills.

“I’ve studied it better than anybody I know,” the president asserted in a bizarre segment from a weekend speech to young conservatives in West Palm Beach, Florida, close to his winter retreat at Mar-a-Lago where he is spending the holidays.

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Navy Seal accused of war crimes meets Trump and thanks him for pardon

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Eddie Gallagher convicted of posing with dead boy of teenage Islamic State terrorist posts photographs with Trump

A former Navy Seal controversially granted clemency for war crimes by Donald Trump last month was photographed with the president in Florida at the weekend, and handed over a gift to thank him for reversing his demotion.

Chief petty officer Eddie Gallagher, who was convicted of posing with the dead body of a teenage Islamic State terrorist he had just killed in Iraq in 2017, posted photographs to his Instagram account showing himself and his wife Andrea meeting the president and first lady, Melania Trump, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

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Ukraine aid blocked soon after Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy, emails show

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Trump acted about 90 minutes after the ‘do us a favor’ phone call behind the scenes to freeze aid from the Pentagon

As Republicans and Democrats continue to squabble on the terms of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, newly-released government emails show that it took only about 90 minutes after Donald Trump’s infamous July telephone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy for White House officials to order the Pentagon to freeze military funding for Ukraine.

Related: Republican rush to defend Trump reveals a party in thrall to its leader

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Republican rush to defend Trump reveals a party in thrall to its leader

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The GOP has become the prisoner of an erratic leader known for demanding loyalty but not famous for repaying it

As the action wound to a climax on the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday night, Republicans warned the impeachment of Donald Trump was “tearing this country apart”.

Then, just to be sure, they put the crowbar in and pulled at the breach, declaring that by impeaching Trump in 2019, Democrats were seeking to “disenfranchise” everyone who had voted for the president in 2016.

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Donald Trump launches space force for ‘world’s new war-fighting domain’ – video

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Donald Trump launched the US space force, the first new US military service in more than 70 years. ‘Space is the world’s new war-fighting domain,’ Trump said during a signing ceremony of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that includes the force.

The move is part of a $1.4tn (£1.1tn) government spending package reversing automatic spending cuts to defence and domestic programmes

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Donald Trump officially launches US space force

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US president approves funding for America’s first new military service in 70 years

Donald Trump has launched space force, the first new US military service in more than 70 years.

In signing the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that includes the force, Trump claimed a victory for one of his top national security priorities two days after being impeached by the House of Representatives.

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