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Trump trolls Chris Christie over mystery drones with AI photo as he’s set to attend Army-Navy game: Live updates
Donald Trump and JD Vance to watch 125th Army-Navy college football game with reported guests Pete Hegseth, Ron DeSantis, and Daniel Penny in Maryland at 3 p.m. Eastern time
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US President-elect Donald Trump will attend the Army-Navy football game today alongside a collection of allies, cabinet picks, and controversial figures.
JD Vance, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Elon Musk, Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, and Daniel Penny will reportedly join Trump.
Penny was recently acquitted of a homicide charge over a 2023 incident in which he put a homeless man who was yelling at passengers into a chokehold for nearly six minutes, killing him. Penny has become a cause célèbre on the right since.
Penny is not the only controversial guest. Hegseth has faced accusations of rape and alcohol abuse, which he denies.
The 3 p.m. ET matchup at Northwest Field in Landover, Maryland, is the 125th iteration of the famous college football rivalry between the military service academies.
Trump to meet with Pete Hegseth at Army-Navy game on Saturday
The president-elect is due to attend the traditional college football throwdown in Landover, Maryland, tomorrow and will sit down at the game with his embattled nominee for defense secretary Pete Hegseth, according to one of the latter’s advisers quoted by The Washington Post.
Hegseth has spent the week courting dubious Republican senators, unnerved about the string of unsavoury allegations that have been raised against him, all of which the former Fox News weekend man and military man has denied and downplayed.
Pete Hegseth and entourage on Capitol Hill (AP)
Joe Sommerlad13 December 2024 11:55
FAA boss who clashed with Elon Musk over SpaceX will resign before Trump takes office
Mike Whitaker, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), who has led a tougher enforcement policy against Boeing since a panel blew off a company jet in January, said on Thursday that he will step down next month, clearing the way for Trump name his choice to lead the agency.
Whitaker announced his pending resignation in a message to employees of the FAA, which regulates airlines and aircraft manufacturers and manages the nation’s airspace.
He has dealt with challenges including a surge in close calls between planes, a shortage of air traffic controllers and antiquated equipment at a time when air travel and a need for tougher oversight of Boeing.
Whitaker also clashed with Trump ally Elon Musk by proposing that his company SpaceX be fined over safey issues.
Mike Whitaker, who has led a tougher enforcement policy against Boeing since a panel blew off a company jet in January, will step down next month to let the president-elect name his choice to lead the agency
Joe Sommerlad13 December 2024 11:35
First Zuckerberg, now Bezos: Amazon to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund
Amazon’s executive chairman Jeff Bezos is reportedly set to donate $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund, following in the footsteps of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who did the same earlier this week,
Bezos’s gesture was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and dwarfs the $57,746 the company donated to Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
The online retail giant’s founder is meanwhile set to meet the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, next week, according to Trump himself, who revealed the sitdown in an interview with CNBC, given after he rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is also reportedly set to follow Bezos to the Sunshine State while Zuckerberg himself already visited Trump at home last month, reportedly giving him a personal demonstration of Meta’s new Ray-Ban smart glasses, gifting him a pair and also meeting with the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, plus advisers Stephen Miller, Vince Haley and James Blair.
Online retail giant’s founder Jeff Bezos joins Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg in making a generous donation to president-elect
Joe Sommerlad13 December 2024 11:15
Even liberals like popular Barron Trump at New York University
Barron Trump has been described as a “ladies’ man” around the New York University (NYU) campus, where he is so popular that even his liberal classmates like him.
An insider at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where Barron enrolled this fall, told People magazine that Donald Trump’s only son with third wife Melania Trump has proven to be “popular with the ladies.”
“He’s tall and handsome,” the source said of the 18-year-old, who stands an astonishing six feet nine inches tall.
“A lot of people seem to think he’s pretty attractive – yes, even liberal people like him.”
People’s article about Barron is so complimentary it has prompted some speculation about the source of the quotes, given that his father was known to enjoy calling in gossip to the tabloids during his Big Apple real estate days under the false name “John Barron.”
Donald Trump’s youngest son is reportedly a ‘ladies’ man’ on NYU campus
Joe Sommerlad13 December 2024 10:55
Trump calls North Korean troops in Russia a ‘complicating factor’ and boasts of relationship with Kim Jong-un
Here’s more from the president-elect’s Time interview, in which he also addressed the presence of North Korean troops on Russia’s frontline with Ukraine but stopped short of denouncing Pyongyang, preferring instead to tout his friendship with the country’s “Rocket Man” dictator.
Incoming US president says Pyongyang’s involvement in Ukraine war is ‘very complicating factor’
Joe Sommerlad13 December 2024 10:35
Trump backs dockworkers’ union over strike threat to protect jobs from automation
The president-elect was on Truth Social last night speaking up for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) after meeting with its bosses Harold and Dennis Daggett.
“There has been a lot of discussion having to do with ‘automation’ on United States docks,” Trump wrote.
“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it. The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen.”
The ILA, which represents more than 40,000 dockworkers, went on strike for three days in October over the prospect of robots replacing its members’ jobs.
The Biden administration helped reach a deal to avert that action, which reportedly cost the US economy $1bn a day, put further unrest could rear its head in the New Year.
Joe Sommerlad13 December 2024 10:15
Watch: Emmanuel Macron and Donald Tusk mock Trump’s macho handshake
Here’s the French President and the Prime Minister of Poland teasing the US president-elect yesterday before he has even taken office.
Ariana Baio has this on Macron and Trump’s original grapple during his Notre Dame Cathedral visit over the weekend.
Trump and Macron have famously exchanged long, white-knuckled handshakes in front of the press
Joe Sommerlad13 December 2024 09:55
Donald Trump tells Time he will do ‘whatever it takes’ to address illegal immigration and says he will abolish Department of Education
Good morning!
Donald Trump has said he is prepared to do “whatever it takes” to drive illegal immigrants from the United States, including building more detention centres, and also vowed to shut down the Department of Education and leave teaching administration up to individual states.
Trump further moved to downplay fears over Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr’s likely influence over his administration and to manage expectations on inflation, warning he may not be able to bring down grocery prices after all by saying: “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up, very hard.”
The president-elect made the comments in an interview withTime magazine after being named its “Person of the Year” following his November election win.
The annual cover – which highlights an individual who has greatly influenced the year, for good or ill – was unveiled on Thursday, bearing an imperious portrait of the Republican against a stark background.
Trump was also awarded the honor in 2016 after beating Hillary Clinton to win the White House for the first time.
He celebrated this latest gong yesterday by delivering a brief speech and ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
“Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” he told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in October. “What you actually have are violent, drug zombies with dead eyes and needles and human feces on the street.”
The more money spent combating homelessness, “the worse it gets,” according to Musk.
None of the thousands of people who joined protests in Washington, D.C., and stormed the halls of Congress on January 6, 2021 were undercover FBI agents, according to the results of a lengthy probe from a Department of Justice watchdog.
The findings deal a blow to persistent right-wing conspiracy theories that federal law enforcement agents provoked a riot or a “false flag” attack to entrap Donald Trump’s supporters to break into the Capitol.
But the report’s discovery that roughly two dozen confidential sources were on the ground at the time is likely to continue fueling a false narrative that federal agents had something to do with instigating the assault.
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