Trump news: Impeachment calls grow as top Democrat endorses removal, while Planned Parenthood rejects funding over abortion restrictions
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Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on Anthony Scaramucci, his short-lived communications director, branding him a “highly unstable nut job” and a “mental wreck” on Twitter.
The president and his advisers have meanwhile moved to reassure Americans over the state of the economy amid growing recession fears, with Mr Trump insisting: “We’re doing tremendously well. Our consumers are rich. I gave a tremendous tax cut and they’re loaded up with money.”
He is also facing further ridicule after confirming his interest in buying Greenland, telling reporters in New Jersey on Sunday: “Strategically it’s interesting and we’d be interested... It’s not number one on the burner, I can tell you that.”
The president has also stepped back from his position calling for background checks for gun sales, and has begun focusing once again on mental health's part in mass shootings. He has done before as well.
Mr Trump has also ramped up his claims that the 2016 election results were impacted by fraudulent efforts, this time going after Google and claiming the search engine flipped millions of votes in favour of Hillary Clinton.
Trump protests: President visits Texas and Ohio after mass shootings
Show all 31In making the claim, Mr Trump cited a right-wing conspiracy website, Judicial Watch.
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In perhaps the biggest twist ending of the summer blockbuster season, USA Women's World Cup star Megan Rapinoe has revealed her own father voted for Trump.
“Go look at President Trump’s Twitter. He talked about Portland, said he’s watching Antifa. That’s all we wanted.”
So said Joe Biggs after the far-right rally he helped organise in the Oregon city went ahead on Saturday with 13 people arrested and at least six injured in sporadic violence breaking out between the likes of the Proud Boys and anti-fascist demonstrators (collectively known as Antifa).
Biggs was referring to the president's tweet below, threatening to have Antifa classified as a terror group without a word about neo-Nazi organisations or the Proud Boys, who actively epouse violence as a means to an end.
Chris Baynes has more on the latest disturbing scenes courtesy of a movement only emboldened by Trump's refusal to admonish them post-Charlottesville.
More on the threat posed by white nationalism in the US, where one James Reardon Jr has been arrested after allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish community centre in Ohio via a sinister post on Instagram.
The 20-year-old was arrested at his home in Mahoning County on Saturday on telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing charges.
Rounds of ammunition, semi-automatic weapons and antisemitic information were found at his home, New Middletown police said. He is also known to have been at Charlottesville in August 2017.
Reardon's arrest came just two weeks after a suspected white supremacist shot dead 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in an attack aimed at the city's Hispanic population.
Alarmingly, Reardon's was one of three potential mass shootings foiled this weekend.
Here's Tom Embury-Dennis's report.
One of Trump's contentions over the weekend to cause concern was that "we do have a lot of background checks right now", which some have interpreted as an attempt to walk back his already vague and non-commital stance on tougher gun controls in the wake of the deadly mass shootings in Texas and Ohio earlier this month.
"It's the people that pull the trigger, not the gun that pulls the trigger so we have a very, very big mental health problem and Congress is working on various things and I will be looking at it," Trump told reporters on the tarmac at Morristown.
Florida politician Andrew Gillum has had enough and accuses him of being "not a person of his word".
"The emperor has no clothes on," he says, which is a ghastly thought to be sure.
Here's more from Tom Embury-Dennis.
An even stronger condemnation of the president came yesterday from another star of last November's Midterms, Georgia Democrat Stacy Abrams, who told ABC's This Week: "I have said many times he's a racist, but, more importantly, he does not value Americans and he does not value humanity."
Trump privately suggested stationing US Navy ships around Venezuela to form a blockade and pevent goods from entering and exiting the country, Axios reports.
The administration moved in January to recognise National Assembly leader Juan Guaido as the country's interin president in the hope of forcing incumbnent Nicolas Maduro out of office, whom it accuses of winning office illegimiately.
Five current and former officials told Axios they had either directly heard the president discuss the idea - which would represent a significant escalation in the ongoing standoff with Maduro - or been briefed about it.
Trump has reportedly raised the idea for at least a year and a half, and as recently as several weeks ago, after stringent sanctions and the threat of US military intervention failed to budge Maduro.
Earlier this month he answered "Yes, I am" when a reporter asked whether he was considering a blockade, according to Reuters, although he declined to elaborate.
"He literally just said we should get the ships out there and do a naval embargo," one source who heard the president’s comments in private told Axios. "Prevent anything going in."
Rhode Island Democratic congressman David Cicilline brings the bants on Trump's unnervingly influential senior adviser Stephen Miller, architect of the administration's most heartless "zero tolerance" immigration policies, including family seperations.
Conservative pundit, podcaster and failed Republican politician Dan Bongino, often retweeted by Trump, has been on Fox and Friends this morning accusing the press of misleading the public over Antifa before misleading the public himself by giving a bogus explanation of their name.
God this is depressing.
Trump visited Dayton, Ohio, two weeks ago in the guise of "national healer" after nine people were gunned down in cold blood.
The city's mayor Nan Whaley now has to have a security detail after standing up to the president on the need for tighter gun controls.
In the last hour the president has gone in big on The Mooch, accusing him of being a "highly unstable 'nut job'" and "mental wreck" who "made a fool of himself, bad on TV. Abused staff, got fired". Wow.
Here's Tom Embury-Dennis with more.
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