The ‘exhausting’ work of factcheckers who track Trump’s barrage of lies

Since taking office, Trump has made 7,645 ‘false or misleading claims’. In the month of October he said 1,200 things that were false or misleading, according to Fact Checker database

Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency has presented problems for journalists the world over. But spare a thought for the people whose job it is to keep track of his lies: the Trump factcheckers.

Since taking office, the president has lied about everything from immigration figures to the number of burgers he served to the Clemson football team at the White House last week.

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Shutdown: Trump ‘amnesty’ hint angers right and fails to draw Democrats

Donald Trump raised the possibility of one day granting amnesty to migrants living in the US illegally, after Democrats rejected his latest plan to fund a wall along the southern border and reopen the US government.

Related: Trump whisperers: are Stephen Miller and Fox keeping the shutdown alive?

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Forget the ‘border crisis’ – it is Trump’s shutdown that’s made us less safe

With thousands of FBI and TSA staff furloughed and critical functions hit, the shutdown is a disaster for national security

President Trump closed the US government over a fabricated border crisis, and in doing so has sparked a real national security emergency. By shutting down the government, Trump has disabled America’s defenses against threats to national security.

Trump decided to shut down the government over the claim that America needs a wall to deal with a crisis at the border with Mexico. But there is no crisis on the border other than the humanitarian crisis of his own making, best illustrated by the thousands of children separated from their parents and the two children who died in Customs and Border Protection custody. Trump’s claims of more terrorists and crime flowing across the border are lies and the vast majority of hard drugs coming across the border come through official ports of entry, not between ports of entry where a wall might stand.

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America is retreating from world affairs and circling the wagons…

For all its rhetoric, the US under Donald Trump is on a clear path of disengagement in international matters

America’s ambivalence about engagement with the world beyond its shores is nothing new. Isolationist instincts are deeply rooted in the national psyche. Large constituencies opposed US involvement in both world wars. Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign was the most recent manifestation of a longstanding desire to avoid the “foreign entanglements” that the first US president, George Washington, warned against in his 1796 farewell address.

Yet, as US power expanded, this yearning for separateness grew increasingly at odds with another national urge – to demonstrate America’s pre-eminence, and propagate its values and interests, through global leadership. This process climaxed in the early 1990s when America’s main rival, the Soviet Union, imploded and the US claimed the mantle of sole superpower.

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Pelosi rejects Trump shutdown deal before president announces it

  • President offers temporary concessions and demands wall
  • Little chance of progress as House speaker says no

Donald Trump forged ahead on Saturday and proposed a deal to end the US government shutdown, despite Democrats having rejected it before he began to speak.

Related: Republicans’ lack of alarm over the shutdown reveals a disturbing truth | Ross Barkan

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Mueller breaks silence to dispute parts of bombshell report on Michael Cohen

Special counsel says elements of BuzzFeed story, claiming Trump told his former lawyer to lie to Congress, are ‘not accurate’

In a rare public remark, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller disputed a bombshell report alleging that Donald Trump had directed his former attorney to lie to congress.

BuzzFeed News reported Thursday evening that Trump had personally directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a real estate project in Moscow. The report cited two federal law enforcement sources and said the special counsel’s office had learned of Trump’s alleged directive from multiple witnesses, Trump Organization emails, text messages and other documents.

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Trump and Kim Jong-un to meet again at second nuclear summit

  • Location of summit between leaders to be announced later
  • Decision comes in wake of talks between Trump and envoy

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will hold a second summit near the end of next month, the White House has announced, after the president held an Oval Office meeting with a North Korean emissary.

Related: Kim Yong-chol: the ultimate North Korean regime insider

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Nancy Pelosi: Trump endangered lives by leaking details of war zone trip – video

The Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has accused the White House of leaking information about a planned congressional trip to Afghanistan, saying it was 'very, very irresponsible on the part of the president'

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Friday US briefing: Trump escalates feud with Pelosi amid shutdown

How the president’s two years in power have changed key US policies ... North Korean envoy to meet Pompeo ... Democrat takes charge of Flint water crisis investigation

Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

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Trump stamp: how have his first two years marked five key policy areas?

Guardian reporters chart the president’s impact on foreign policy, the economy, the judiciary, the environment and immigration

If there has been one defining trait in the foreign policy of the Trump era, it is confusion – not only in the frequent gaps between the paths taken by the president and his own administration, but also in the morass of contradictions and U-turns in his own impulses.

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Trump uses clash over State of the Union to fundraise – live

President highlights Pelosi’s proposal to delay speech in letter to supporters as he cancels her trip to Afghanistan

According to CNN, President Trump wasn’t pleased to learn that his AG pick was so close with special counsel Robert Mueller. AG nominee William Barr referred to Mueller as “Bob” during the first day of his Senate confirmation hearing, and said that “the Barrs and Muellers were good friends and would be good friends when this was all over”. He also described Mueller as a “straight-shooter”.

While Barr said during his hearing that Trump ‘was interested’ in hearing about the friendship, the details that emerged this week caught the President off guard, the three sources said. He bristled at Barr’s description of the close relationship, complaining to aides he didn’t realize how much their work overlapped or that they were so close”.

Reuters is reporting that four Volkswagen managers from the car company’s luxury Audi unit have been indicted for their role in the 2015 scandal over the automaker’s attempt to evade US exhaust emissions tests.

The four are charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiring to evade U.S. emissions standards in diesel vehicles sold in the United States with 3.0-liter engines. The vehicles include the 2009-2015 Audi Q7 vehicles as well as other Q5, A6, A7, and A8 diesel models. They are accused of wire fraud, violating the Clean Air Act and conspiracy.

Volkswagen spokesman Pietro Zollino said the company continues ‘to cooperate with investigations by the Department of Justice into the conduct of individuals. It would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases’”.

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Trump announces huge expansion of US missile defense system

Arms control experts fear system review, unveiled at Pentagon, could fuel arms race with Russia and China

Donald Trump has announced plans for a huge expansion of US missile defense with aim of destroying enemy missiles “anywhere, anytime, any place”.

The missile defense review, which Trump unveiled on Thursday in a speech at the Pentagon, calls for a major upgrade in land and sea-based missile interceptor systems, as well as the development of a layer of satellite sensors in low orbit that would help track new types of cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) countries like Russia and China are developing.

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Trump intensifies feud with Pelosi by calling off her trip abroad

President denied speaker the use of a military aircraft to visit US troops day after she suggested he postpone State of the Union

Donald Trump has dramatically escalated his feud with House speaker Nancy Pelosi amid the US government shutdown by canceling her previously undisclosed trip abroad and denying her the use of a military aircraft to visit American troops in Afghanistan.

Related: Rudy Giuliani: 'I never said there was no collusion' by Trump campaign

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Rudy Giuliani: ‘I never said there was no collusion’ by Trump campaign

  • Trump’s lawyer denies president himself conspired with Russia
  • Cohen reported to have tried to rig polls in Trump’s favour

Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has insisted that he “never said there was no collusion” between Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign and Russia – only that Trump himself was not involved.

The former New York mayor said he did not know if others involved in the campaign had worked with Russia.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez uses first house floor speech to lambast shutdown – video

‘It’s not normal to shutdown the government when we don’t get what we want,’ says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during her first speech on the house floor. ‘The truth of this shutdown is that it’s actually not about a wall. The truth is, this shutdown is about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms’

• Pelosi asks Trump to delay State of the Union address, or deliver it in writing

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Top Democrat claims the State of the Union ‘is off’ – live

Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House, State of the Union address is off in an interview with CNN

Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House, makes plain “the State of the Union is off” in an interview with CNN.

.@KateBolduan: "The letter sounds like she’s asking, but isn’t she just telling him?"
Rep. Hoyer: "The speaker is the one who invites the president…”
Kate: "So, the State of the Union is off?"
Hoyer: "The State of the Union is off."

It’s worth looking at this time capsule at the shock felt in Washington in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson became the first president to deliver the State of the Union in person since John Adams.

WASHINGTON IS AMAZED. Pelosi proposal to delay the SOTU gives me a chance to once again tweet my favorite WaPo story ever, about how the city was "agape" when a pressident (Wilson) showed up to give a speech at the Capitol: https://t.co/8A1qsRYbsl

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Trump’s economy is great for billionaires, not for working people | Bernie Sanders

Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations, we must demand that they pay their fair share

Donald Trump tells us the US economy is “absolutely booming”, the “strongest we’ve ever had” and “the greatest in the history of America”.

Well, at his Mar-a-Lago country club where the price of admission has doubled to $200,000, he is right. The economy could not be better for the top 1% and corporate America.

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William Barr hearing: attorney general pick questioned over Trump and Mueller – live

Trump’s nominee says he would not fire Mueller without good cause. Watch live and follow the latest

The office of Robert Mueller, the special counsel, submitted a new court filing on Tuesday detailing communications between former Trump aid Paul Manafort and alleged Russian intelligence operative Konstantin Kilimnik.

New filing from Mueller's office: Paul Manafort said in Jan 2017 he was using intermediaries "to get people appointed in the Administration", Rick Gates has told investigators. pic.twitter.com/yv5ypLdrpL

At a taping for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” this evening, Sen. Gillibrand shared that she was officially joining the race for the white house. Announcing that she was assembling an exploratory committee and will soon be on her way to Iowa, she told Colbert she was running as a mom as she outlined key parts of her platform:

“As a young mom, I’m going to fight for other people’s kids as hard as I’d fight for my own, which is why I believe health care should be a right, not a privilege; it’s why I believe we should have better public schools for our kids because it shouldn’t matter what block you grew up on; and I believe that anybody who wants to work hard enough should be able to get whatever job training they need to earn their way into the middle class” she said.

Tonight I announced that I’m preparing to run for president, because I believe we’re all called to make a difference. I believe in right vs. wrong – that wrong wins when we do nothing. Now is our time to raise our voices and get off the sidelines. Join me: https://t.co/I1vp93u0wh

Ms. Gillibrand, a 52-year-old former corporate lawyer, has been criticized by opponents as a politician without a firm ideological bearing of her own, having transformed from a pro-gun, conservative upstate congresswoman with deep ties to Wall Street financiers to a crusading liberal who rails against guns and refuses corporate political action committee money.”

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