Trump news – President complains about daytime TV amid claims he will hold spoiler event during inauguration
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Donald Trump is reportedly weighing whether to launch a 2024 re-election bid on the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration.
On Saturday, The Daily Beast cited three sources who confirmed he is considering a 2024 run, and two of them said he had floated the idea of holding an event on 20 January.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the president has privately bragged that he would still remain in the spotlight, even if Mr Biden is in the Oval Office, because the media finds Mr Biden “boring.”
The report comes after the Trump campaign suffered a humiliating court defeat in Pennsylvania, where Republican-appointed judges unanimously ruled to toss out the campaign’s attempt to challenge the election result there.
“Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” judge Stephanos Bibas wrote in the court's ruling.
By Saturday evening the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had also dismissed a case brought by Congressman Mike Kelly and others to disallow millions of mail-in ballots in the state.
Iran vows retaliation over killing of top nuclear scientist
Iran's supreme leader promised on Saturday to retaliate for the killing of the Islamic Republic's top nuclear scientist, who the West and Israel believed was the architect of a secret Iranian programme to make weapons.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's top authority who says Tehran has never sought nuclear arms, also pledged in his statement on Twitter to continue the work of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who died on Friday after gunman ambushed him in his car near Tehran.
The killing, which Iran's president was swift to blame on Israel, threatens to spark a new Middle East confrontation in the final weeks of US president Donald Trump's term.
It could also complicate any efforts by President-elect Joe Biden to revive a detente with Tehran that was forged when he was in Barack Obama's administration. Mr Trump pulled Washington out of the 2015 international nuclear pact agreed with Tehran.
Mr Khamenei said in his Twitter post that Iranian officials must take up the task of “pursuing this crime and punishing its perpetrators and those who commanded it”.
Israel's N12 news channel said Israeli embassies had been put on high alert after the Iranian threats of retaliation. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said the minister did not comment on security regarding its representation abroad.
Israel has declined to comment on the killing. The White House, Pentagon, US State Department and CIA also declined to comment, as did Mr Biden's transition team.
Reuters
Former CIA director condemns killing of top Iranian nuclear scientist
Former CIA director John Brennan has condemned the “criminal” and “highly reckless" killing of a top Iranian nuclear scientist.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s death has already sparked promises of revenge by Iranian authorities, who have blamed Israel for the attack. Neither Israel nor the US has commented on the death, but the incident threatens to renew tensions between Iran and America.
ICYMI: Trump declares Twitter national security threat after #DiaperDon trends following meltdown at miniature table
Donald Trump has angrily declared Twitter a national security threat after #DiaperDon went viral following a news conference in which he repeatedly complained about perceived injustices.
“Twitter is sending out totally false ‘Trends’ that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world. They make it up, and only negative ‘stuff’,” the US president tweeted without providing evidence in the early hours of Friday morning.
Mr Trump did not say which trending topic upset him, but following Thursday’s press briefing, which saw him furiously assail a reporter from behind a surprisingly small desk, the hashtag #DiaperDon surged towards the top of Twitter’s trending list in the US and UK.
Read more:
Trump declares Twitter national security threat after #DiaperDon trends following meltdown
US president demands fundamental change to internet in angry late-night tweets
Trump shrugs off Pennsylvania lawsuit defeat by falsely claiming he won state ‘by a lot’
Outgoing president Donald Trump has shrugged off his latest election lawsuit defeat in Pennsylvania by falsely claiming he won the state “by a lot”.
Mr Trump alleged, without evidence, that president-elect Joe Biden's votes in Pennsylvania were created “out of thin air” in early morning tweet on Saturday.
The post, flagged by Twitter as misleading, came hours after a Philadelphia federal court dismissed his legal team's challenge to the election result there.
Read more:
Trump shrugs off Pennsylvania lawsuit defeat by falsely claiming he won state ‘by a lot’
‘The Pennsylvania votes were RIGGED’, claims president
Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London, has given his view of the Trump campaign’s court defeat in Pennsylvania.
A panel of three judges on Friday voted unanimously to toss out the case, saying that team Trump had provided no evidence of voter fraud.
“Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” judge Stephanos Bibas wrote in the court's blistering ruling.
Kamala Harris says Biden will be president ‘our children can look up to’
In a tweet in praise of Joe Biden, and a rather conspicuous subtweet of Donald Trump, Kamala Harris has promised the President-elect will be a leader “our children can look up to”.
“A commander in chief who will respect our troops and keep our country safe—and a president for all Americans.” she added.
Top cybersecurity official fired by Trump says allegations of foreign interference in 2020 election ‘farcical’
Chris Krebs, the cybersecurity director who Donald Trump terminated over claims the 2020 election was the most secure on record, has said recent allegations made by the president and his allies were “farcical”.
Mr Krebs, who was removed as director of the Department for Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on 17 November, made the remarks in an interview with CBS News, which will air on Sunday.
In a pre-released excerpt, Mr Krebs told the CBS 60 Minutes program that Trump campaign allegations around foreign interference with US voting machines, as well as the tabulation of votes in foreign countries, were both baseless.
Read more:
Top cybersecurity official fired by Trump says allegations of foreign interference in election ‘farcical’
Ousted cybersecurity official speaks for first time since firing, says president’s fraud claims without basis
According to US news reports, the Bidens will be getting a cat for the presidency. Donald Trump was the first president in at least a century to have no pets … so yet another return to normality.
Trump supporters call for boycott of Georgia senate races Republicans are desperate to win
Republicans are increasingly concerned by calls from some Trump supporters for conservative voters to boycott Georgia’s senate races next month.
Following his election defeat to Joe Biden, Donald Trump has repeatedly accused election officials of presiding over systemic fraud in Georgia, a state he won in 2016 but narrowly lost this year.
These baseless claims have triggered a number of the president’s most ardent supporters to suggest writing in Mr Trump rather than the two incumbent Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. The senators were both forced into runoff elections after failing to get more than 50 per cent of the vote, a requirement in Georgia.
Read more:
Trump supporters call for boycott of Georgia senate races that Republicans are desperate to win
Democratic victories in Georgia would give the party control of Congress
Sahil Kapur, a national political reporter for NBC News, has provided interesting data on how voters split between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Mr Biden comfortably won voters earning less than $100,000 per year, whereas Mr Trump comfortably won the support of those who earn more than that.
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