Trump-Mueller investigation: New Manafort hearing as President lashes out over chief of staff, border wall and Democrats
Potential successors to John Kelly rule themselves out of job as Russia probe moves closer to White House
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Your support makes all the difference.President Donald Trump is scrambling to find a new chief of staff after his first choice to replace John Kelly rejected the role at the last minute and several other potential successors signalled they did not want the job.
Leading contender Nick Ayers, said to have been in talks over taking the position for several months, ruled himself out of the running amid mounting chaos at the White House.
Mr Trump is reported to have been “super pissed” by the development, which leaves him racing to fill a job described as “one of the toughest in DC” at a time when Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is getting ever nearer to the Oval Office.
Five people linked to the president have pleaded guilty to federal charges as investigators probe whether Mr Trump’s campaign coordinated with the Kremlin in the 2016 election campaign.
Prosecutors in New York have also for the first time linked the president to a federal crime, accusing him of orchestrating hush-money payments by his long-time lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to a porn star and a former Playboy model.
Mr Cohen is due to be sentenced on Wednesday, and is likely to face years in prison after admitting campaign finance offences.
Mr Trump's follow-up tweet praises US authorities, but calls again for his "great wall". This is something likely to come up in his meeting with Democratic congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi later today.
Mr Trump's follow-up to the follow-up blames the "far left" Democrats for his lack of wall funding, then goes on to accuse migrants of bringing "crime and disease" to the US - again without citing any evidence.
Mr Trump's fourth tweet addresses his meeting with Democratic congressional leaders today, as well as a promise that the wall "will get built".
The US president next claims much more of his border wall it built than the citizens realise, before threatening again to use the military if congress does not give him funding for it.
Donald Trump's tweet in the post below appears to be another case of misdirection by the president. The truth is the border wall he wants is not being built because he cannot get the funding for it.
It is true there has been renovation of existing barriers and fencing, but simply put, his wall does not exist. It is also highly unlikely the Department of Defense would ever agree to fund it.
He has tried this once before:
Donald Trump's approval rating at this stage in his presidency is worse than any US leader in more than half a century, according to a CNN poll.
Donald Trump has appeared to post the same tweet twice, two minutes apart. In them, he praises Michael Anton, a former national security adviser in the Trump administration, who has just appeared on the president's favourite TV show, Fox & Friends.
Even for the US president, he has sent out a fair number of tweets this morning. The latest is regarding "productive" talks with China over a brewing trade war.
There may be some truth to Mr Trump's remarks here, after stock markets around the world this morning spiked amid hopes the US and China were back negotiating
In Europe, Germany's DAX was up 2 percent to 10,831 while France's CAC 40 was up 2 percent at 4,837. Britain's FTSE 100 was up 1.7 percent at 6,834. Wall Street was set to open higher too, with Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures up 0.9 percent.
US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese vice premier Liu He have spoken by phone about "the promotion of the next economic and trade consultations," a statement by China's commerce ministry said today. It did not elaborate. This indicates the detention of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, in Canada may not derail trade talks.
Donald Trump's latest tweet is regarding reports he is struggling to fill the vacant White House chief-of-staff job, following the announcement of John Kelly's departure.
Mike Pence's staff chief Nick Ayers, apparently Mr Trump's number one pick, has already ruled himself out.
Jamal Khashoggi is one of four "guardians" to have one Time magazine's 2018 person of the year.
The "guardians and the war on truth" is made up of four journalists and a newspaper that Time says "are representatives of a broader fight by countless others around the world".
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Robert Mueller were also on the 10-person shortlist.
The magazine recognises the person or group of people who most influenced the news and the world "for better or for worse" during the past year.
The guardians are slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi; the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, where five people were shot and killed at the newspaper's offices in June; Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, who has been arrested; and two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar for nearly a year, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.
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