Trump says he ‘wouldn’t mind’ cutting ODNI jobs
Donald Trump said that he “wouldn’t mind” cutting the number of people working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“I wouldn’t mind. [The size of the office has been] way too high for way too long,” the president said, reiterating what he told the Wall Street Journal earlier today. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”
The WSJ reported that Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence with no national intelligence experience, to cut the size of the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during his second term.
Key events
Lauren Gambino
Xavier Becerra has advanced to the November general election in California’s gubernatorial race, cementing a stunning come-from-behind primary victory in one of California’s most turbulent campaign seasons in recent memory.
Election officials are continuing to count ballots to determine whether he will face fellow Democrat Tom Steyer, the environmental activist who championed progressive policies like universal healthcare and more taxes on billionaires like himself, or Republican Steve Hilton, the former UK political operative turned Fox News personality who was endorsed by Donald Trump, in the fall.
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken – loudly and proudly,” Becerra said in a statement, after the Associated Press declared that he had clinched one of two spots in the general election. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”
Becerra’s advance in the nation’s largest Democratic stronghold was, in his own words, a “Hollywood ending” few saw coming. Just months ago, mired at 3% in the polls, the former California attorney general and US health secretary faced pressure from his own party to drop out of the contest to allow voters to consolidate behind a more viable candidate. “The underdog stayed in the fight,” an ebullient Becerra told supporters at his election night party on Tuesday, as early returns showed him with a strong chance of pulling off a top-two finish in the primary. If elected in November, he would be California’s first Latino governor since 1875.
Despite the ongoing count, and the strong expectation that the so-called “late-mail” ballots would favor Democrats, Donald Trump prematurely declared Hilton the winner and, without evidence, accused the state of election rigging.
Xavier Becerra projected to advance to general election in California governor’s race
Democrat Xavier Becerra was projected to advance to the general election in the California governor’s race by the Associated Press, which determined that he is likely to secure one of the two top spots when all the votes are counted in the nonpartisan primary election held this week.
Because California allows voters to cast ballots by mail on election day, which was on Tuesday, and counts the millions of ballots slowly, it can take days or weeks for final results to be determined in close elections.
Becerra, a former state attorney general, US congressman and Joe Biden’s health secretary, is likely to face either Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator endorsed by the network’s number 1 fan, Donald Trump, or Democrat Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist who poured $215 million of his own money into his campaign.
Hilton has a lead in the count so far, but it is believed that a larger share of ballots cast late in the process were from Democrats, leaving open the possibility that Steyer could still close the gap and finish second in the primary.
Becerra’s campaign celebrated the AP projection, noting in a statement sent to reporters that it makes him “the first Latino candidate to break through to the general election in a California gubernatorial race.”
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Becerra said. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”
US says Iran radar sites struck and drones intercepted, in latest threat to fragile ceasefire
The US military said it shot down four Iranian drones that were launched toward the strait of Hormuz and struck coastal surveillance radar sites in response.
“The attack drones posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic,” US central command (Centcom) said on social media. The military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports in response to Tehran’s chokehold on the strait – a crucial corridor for global oil and natural gas shipments – which has sent energy prices spiking.
It was the latest in a series of back-and-forth attacks that have strained the tenuous ceasefire in the war and harmed efforts to reach a deal to extend the truce.
Earlier this week, Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person, wounding dozens and briefly closing the airfield.
Despite the attacks raising new concerns that the ceasefire could collapse, Donald Trump told reporters on Friday “the situation with Iran seems to be going quite well”.
“We’re going to come out of Iran very quickly and it’s going to be very strong one way or the other, whether it’s a piece of paper or the very tough way,” Trump said at an event with farmers in Wisconsin. “The very tough way is maybe the easier way, but we’re going to come out, and your fertilizer prices are going to go way down, just like they were four months ago.”
Platner thanks his wife in remarks at rally, pledges to defeat Susan Collins in Senate race
At a rally in Bar Harbor, Maine on Friday, US Senate candidate Graham Platner choked up briefly as he pointed to his wife in the crowd, and made a glancing reference to the recent revelation that she found sexual messages to other women on his phone last year, but they had worked through the strain that caused on their marriage.
After Platner first mentioned the support of his mother, who, he said, had loved him “even when it hasn’t been the most fun, or the easiest”, he added: “and I have my wife Amy”.
As the crowd burst into applause and cheers, Platner seemed to choke up and wipe away a tear and pointed to her with gratitude.
Platner’s supporters then broke into a chant of “Amy! Amy!” which he joined.
“I often say that if you believe in transformational politics, you have to believe in the ability for people to transform”, he said, looking down at written remarks for one of the few times during his speech. “And I would not believe it, because I would not have lived it, if it was not for my wife, Amy Jane”.
The Democrat made no reference to dropping out of the race, over that revelation or the allegations by a former romantic partner that he was physically abusive with her on two occasions, and was aware that a tattoo on his chest was a Nazi symbol. Instead, he pledged to defeat Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, in November – should he win the Democratic primary on Tuesday.
Platner was followed by a prominent supporter, Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California.
In NBC interview, Trump blames Obama for his failure to negotiate a deal with Iran
In an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, to be broadcast on Meet the Press this Sunday, Donald Trump tried to shift the blame for his failure to make a deal with Iran to end the conflict he started to his predecessor, Barack Obama.
In an excerpt from the interview, recorded in a barn in Wisconsin on Friday, Welker confronted Trump with the fact that he has “been saying for months … that Iran is begging to make a deal”.
“If they are so desperate to make a deal, why haven’t they made a deal with you yet?” she asked.
The president said the difficulty was that the main factor was that Iran’s leaders had previously “dealt with very weak and ineffective leadership on behalf of the United States and other countries, frankly, that were – that allowed them to get away with murder. And I don’t – I think they can’t believe they’re in the situation where they’ve been virtually decapitated.”
Pressed further by Welker as to what was taking so long, Trump blamed Obama, and repeated his entirely false claim that the 2015 nuclear deal, between Iran and world powers, including the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the European Union, known as the joint comprehensive plan of action, would have enabled Iran to build a nuclear weapon.
The first paragraph of that agreement, known as the JCPOA, includes this unambiguous statement: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.”
Trump, however, has repeatedly claimed the opposite, to justify pulling out of the agreement during his first term, in 2018, which removed the guardrails that had kept Iran from enriching uranium that could be used for a bomb.
He told Welker on Friday:
You’re talking about 47 years of getting away with whatever they wanted. I mean, we should, this should have been done long ago. This should have been done by other presidents or other countries. Doesn’t have to be us, other countries. But they were very close to having a nuclear weapon twice. That was when I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which was a path – that deal, the JCPOA, that deal was tantamount to giving them a nuclear weapon. It was a horrible deal given by Barack Obama, and really penned by him. It was a horrible deal.
It was, you know, it expired long ago. Had I not, had I – I terminated it, but had I not terminated it, it expired long ago. It was a short-term deal. It was a road to a nuclear weapon. They would have had a nuclear weapon five years ago.
The NBC host did not point out that the deal was not, in fact, written by Obama, and would not, in fact, have let Iran develop a nuclear weapon five years ago. But she did ask Trump why he did not, as he had promised on the campaign trail in 2016, to “negotiate a better deal”, when he pulled out of the agreement in 2018, despite the fact that his own administration said that Iran was honoring its terms.
“Why didn’t you negotiate a better deal at the time? Because after it was ripped up, there weren’t guardrails,” Welker said, “And they escalated their production of enriched uranium.”
“Excuse me,” an indignant Trump replied. “It takes years to do these things.”
“I’m moving very fast. I’m into three months,” he said, referring to the war with Iran he started at the end of February. “You know, Vietnam lasted 19 years,” he continued, in reference to the US war he managed to avoid serving in as a young man, by getting a medical exemption for a diagnosis of bone spurs from a foot doctor in Queens who rented his office from Trump’s father.
“I’m into my third month, and all they do is say: ‘Whoa, when are you going to win?’” the president complained to Welker.
In fact, Trump has now been president, across two terms, for more than four years in total since he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, but he has yet to negotiate a better deal, or even one just as good, with Iran despite multiple rounds of talks, and two military attacks that have cost the lives of thousands of Iranian civilians and at least 13 US service members.
Dani Anguiano
The justice department on Friday sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles, as Donald Trump continues to make baseless claims that California Democrats were “rigging” the results to win primary elections in the nation’s biggest blue state.
State officials have rejected the allegations, but the delay in results immediately fueled misinformation about the integrity of California’s elections, with the president, who has long fanned election-conspiracy theories, accusing the state of “cheating”.
In a statement to CNN on Friday, a spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder said “our office was notified late yesterday that the US Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities”.
“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez, told the network. The county registrar-recorder’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier on Friday morning, Bill Essayli, the US attorney, announced that his office, along with the FBI’s Los Angeles office, had “multiple election fraud investigations underway”, and that the state’s election systems had “serious structural vulnerabilities”.
Three days after Californians headed to the polls, key races in the primary election remained too close to call and experts warned the counting could continue for days.
Trump roundtable discussion on American agriculture ends with 15 minutes of praise for him from 12 guests, then YMCA
The president’s event in Wisconsin is over. Although it was described as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture, it began with a 45-minute speech from Donald Trump, identical in tenor to remarks he makes at partisan rallies, in which he recited familiar boasts, false claims and grievances, almost none of which had to do with agriculture.
He then invited 11 other participants to speak during the last 15 minutes of the event. All of them used the opportunity to praise and thank the president.
At the conclusion of the event, Trump basked in the applause of his supporters at the venue, as the strains of YMCA blared out.
At the end of the event, Trump did, in fact, take off speed skater Jordan Stolz’s gold medal and return it to him.
Trump jokes that he is keeping gold medal won by speed skater Jordan Stolz
Donald Trump finally ceded the floor after more than 45 minutes of opening remarks at his roundtable on agriculture in Wisconsin, after introducing Jordan Stolz, the gold-medal-winning speed skater from the state, who is participating for some reason.
Stolz had both of his Olympic gold medals with him, and, when Trump invited him to shake hands, put one around the president’s neck. Trump then joked that he was keeping the medal, and has continued to wear it as the roundtable continues.
“I’m keeping it, Jordan. I’m not giving it back. I’m a very good guy for keeping gold,” Trump said. “I’m never giving this back. Congratulations. I forgot to touch his leg. I didn’t want to do that. But I can tell you one thing: his leg is like a rock.”
The president then asked the dozen members of the roundtable, beginning with the speed skater, to make some remarks, but told them to keep it short.
“We’ll go pretty quickly because I have to get back to fighting a war with Iran,” Trump said. “Fellas, I got to get back to a place called Washing- and protect you. OK, so if you go very quickly, we don’t need your life story, other than, I like the Olympic guy.”
Trump veers from subject to subject in long opening speech at agriculture roundtable
Donald Trump is still talking, 45 minutes into his opening remarks at what is supposed to be a roundtable discussion on American agriculture in Wisconsin.
To give a sense of how rambling and tangential his remarks have been, here is a section in which he veered away from talking about the price of eggs to saying that he endorsed the Republican congressman Tom Tiffany, who is now running for Wisconsin governor, because his last name was the same as that of the famed jewelry store in Manhattan whose air rights he purchased when he built Trump Tower nearby.
“I called this young lady right over here, Brooke Rollins, secretary of agriculture. I said: ‘Brooke, get the egg prices down, please.’ And she got them down. And by the way, speaking of Tom, Tiffany is one of the best congressmen in our country,” the president said. “And I was there, I don’t know, seven, eight years ago, right at the beginning, I endorsed this guy I didn’t know, I had no idea, but I liked his last name. You know why? Because I bought the air rights many years ago off Tiffany, and I made a lot of money. So I saw Tom, Tiffany, and I backed him, and he went like a rocket ship, and he won. And you’ve kept winning. And now he’s running for a thing called governor.”
Trump begins remarks in Wisconsin by complaining that his speechwriters want him to talk about affordability
In extended opening remarks at what was billed as a roundtable discussion of American agriculture in Wisconsin, but so far is identical in content to a rally speech, Donald Trump began by running through a series of familiar false claims, including that his war with Iran is not a war, that 25 million undocumented immigrants arrived during the Biden administration, and that many people do not know that the word dumb has a “b” in it.
The president blithely dismissed concerns about the spike in fuel prices caused by the war in Iran, and promised that fertilizer prices, which have also spiked because Iran closed the strait of Hormuz in response to being attacked, will come down.
Echoing Vladimir Putin’s claim that his war in Ukraine is a mere “special military operation”, Trump said the war in Iran was just “a military conflict, I call it that, because it’s really not much of a war. But it’s a military conflict. It’s practice.”
Trump then went on to complain that his speechwriters had told him not to focus on immigration but to speak instead about the cost-of-living crisis his Iran war, and his tariffs, have exacerbated.
The president then repeated his odd claim that Democrats “made up the word” affordability, which he enunciated in a mocking tone.
Recounting what he said was his conversation with speechwriters, Trump said: “I say: ‘Let’s talk about the border.’ ‘Sir, nobody cares about the border.’ I said: ‘I won the election on the border. Let’s talk about the – .’ ‘Sir, I’m telling you, nobody cares. Nobody cares about the border. You fixed the border.’ ‘I want to brag about it.’ ‘Sir, they want to hear about other things, like fertilizer.’”
Trump’s bizarre claim that Lincoln Memorial was constructed back to front undercut by original plans
As we await the start of the roundtable on American agriculture Donald Trump has traveled to Wisconsin to host, we have discovered some new information which reveals, in a stunning development, that something the president said yesterday turns out to be false.
In a rambling set of remarks on Thursday, Trump said that he planned to build a promenade on the west side of the Lincoln Memorial, possibly to be named for himself, before suggesting that his intervention was inspired by the original plans for the memorial, which he claimed, aimed to connect the monument to the Potomac River to its west.
The president then suggested, in a comment that baffled historians, that the memorial was for some reason constructed back to front. “At the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back, and the back was supposed to be the front”, Trump told reporters.
In fact, the original proposal for the memorial, submitted as a competition entry in 1912 by Henry Bacon, the New York architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial, is available on the National Archives website, and it shows that the plan was always for the monument to face the new reflecting pool to the east.
Bacon’s later drawing on the “East Elevation of Lincoln Memorial”, which looks more like the finished structure, also clearly shows that the current east-facing front was always supposed to be the front.
Where, exactly, Trump got the idea that the memorial was constructed backwards is not known, but his bizarre assertion of this invented history was offered weeks after he was mocked on social media for sharing an AI-generated image of the memorial facing the wrong way.
The justice department sent one of its attorneys to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles this morning, the county’s elections office told CNN, a day after Donald Trump baselessly alleged “cheating” in California’s elections and claimed that the US attorney’s office there was investigating the vote counting.
A spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder told CNN, “our office was notified late yesterday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would send an Assistant US Attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities.
“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez, told CNN in an email, noting that ballot processing in the county is open to public observation.
Trump claimed in a Truth Social post yesterday that there was “BIG cheating” going on in California, supposedly because of how long it was taking to count the votes. Several key races in the state have yet to be called and may take days or even weeks, in part because of the significant number of mail-in ballots.
No court has authority to block Trump’s White House ballroom, DoJ lawyer says
George Chidi
No court has the authority to halt construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project.
The Trump administration has asked the Washington DC circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court decision which blocked construction of a $400m ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. Construction of a secure bunker for staff underground at the site was allowed to proceed while the dispute between Washington DC preservationists and the White House continues.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the National Park Service and the administration in October, after Trump ordered the East Wing’s demolition. Construction began without completing – or really even beginning – what can be a lengthy process of review and approvals, as required by district and federal statute.
The administration has cited national security imperatives for the construction, which Trump has repeatedly emphasized, while using the failed assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Association event in April as an example of the security threat.
Congress appears unpersuaded. The US Senate voted to advance a long-delayed immigration spending bill early on Friday morning only after Republicans removed $1bn in funding for US Secret Service security upgrades to the proposed ballroom.
The case before the appellate court tests the limits of presidential authority.
In a hypothetical posed to Yaakov Roth, principal deputy assistant attorney general, during a hearing this morning, Justice Patricia Millet asked when the construction of the ballroom and bunker complex became a fait accompli for his purposes.
Was it when the destruction happened? Was it when you started doing the underground work, which we’re now told is completely integral and connected and inseparable from a massive ballroom on top? When did it become impossible for courts to stop this project?
If the project amounted to “complete lawlessness by the government”, she asked, could it still not be stopped by the courts?
“On these theories, I think that’s right,” Roth replied, arguing that US Congress could instead pass a law to authorize or block the specific action that a court would have to respect. “If Congress has weighed the equities in this particular instance, and reached a conclusion, I’m not sure a court would have the authority to second-guess that, but if we’re just talking about a general statute and application. I think a court would not second-guess a congressional decision that addressed the equities in that way.”
The argument left Thad Heuer, representing the historic trust, aghast.
“Under Marbury v Madison, it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is,” Heuer said. “The government’s position, apparently, is that even a lawless action of this type could never be stopped by the court. That is entirely wrong. That’s exactly the court’s job. In this case, it’s about who controls federal property. Is it Congress, its owner, or is it the president, its temporary tenant?”
Donald Trump also told reporters that his team is looking into the idea of AI companies giving the American public a stake in their firms.
Senior US officials held preliminary decisions with AI companies about the potential for the government to buy some shares in their firms, digital news outlet Notus reported. Trump made the comment in response to a question from a journalist about the topic.
“There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” he told reporters. “We’ll look into that.“
Trump also told reporters that he will meet with AI executives at the White House “probably next week”.
Asked which companies, he said “all the big ones”.
Trump also claimed that “a lot of people” have asked him to stay involved with the Kennedy Center and “get it fixed” (we just don’t know who they are).
The president said last week that he has “no interest” in the Kennedy Center after a judge ordered his name to be removed from its facade and website.
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