Trump news: President holds press conference with Brazil's far-right leader Bolsonaro, after Twitter row over 'deteriorating' mental health
Meanwhile, the FBI are set to investigate Florida massage parlour owner Li Yang, who has ties to the president
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Donald Trump and Brazil‘s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro held a joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden, in a show of unity between the two nations.
President Trump said he told Mr Bolsonaro he would make Brazil a major non-Nato ally, with the possibility of supporting a campaign to make it “maybe a Nato ally”.
In turn, the Brazilian leader went on to praise Mr Trump for changing the United States, echoing Mr Trump’s “fake news” slogan.
“Brazil and the United States are tied by the guarantee of liberty, respect for the traditional family, the fear of God our creator, against gender identity, political correctness and fake news,” Mr Bolsonaro.
The far-right leader has been an avid supporter of President Trump, with their mirroring speeches sharing conservative views.
Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet
Show all 20The press conference came after Donald Trump was drawn into a Twitter spat with George Conway, husband of adviser Kellyanne, over questions around the president’s mental health.
The argument comes as the FBI investigates the president's ties to the owner of a chain of massage parlours in Florida at the urging of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
The Democrats have asked the bureau to look into “public reports about alleged the activities by Ms Li ‘Cindy’ Yang and her apparent relationship with the president”, who has been the subject of allegations relating to human trafficking, prostitution and promising Chinese businessmen access to Mar-a-Lago to meet Mr Trump, who denies knowing her despite their being photographed together.
Reports have meanwhile emerged suggesting the president obtained $2bn (£1.5bn) in loans from Deutsche Bank over two decades, allegedly exaggerating his personal wealth and promising bankers weekends at his Florida retreat in exchange for their help in securing the funding.
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President Trump angrily tweeted yesterday accusing the media of "blaming" him for the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last Friday.
The president's refusal to accept the terror attack, in which 50 Muslims were gunned down on their way to prayers, was indicative of a rise in white nationalist violence (likened to his failure to condemn neo-Nazis at Charlottesville in 2017) has certainly attracted criticism but it has also prompted the House Judiciary Committee to launch an investigation of its own.
Among those especially critical of President Trump's weak response to the atrocity was satirist Stephen Colbert.
“Trump has trouble showing love for things that are not him, and he has a particularly bad record with Muslims,” Mr Colbert told viewers of The Late Show. “So he’s in a bind. On the one hand, after a terror attack to condemn the extremist ideology of the terrorist should be a slam-dunk. On the other hand, he can’t jump.”
Here's Jacob Stalworthy.
Here's a little more on Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro - meeting President Trump today - from Tom Embury-Dennis.
Like his American idol, the Sao Paolo native has faced accusations of racism, got into trouble on social media for tweets of questionable taste and had his financial affairs called into question.
He's also been in America for one day and already found time to appear on Fox News to explain himself on the subject of golden showers.
The two men are expected to get along swimmingly.
"Borders are not arbitrary, and they need to be respected along with the fine men and women of the immigration services and the border patrol."
So says 43rd president George W Bush, who is hosting a naturalisation ceremony at his eponymous presidential centre in Dallas, Texas, welcoming 51 new US citizens today, taking a generous, genuinely statesmanlike pro-immigration stance utterly at odds with the fear-mongering of President Trump.
“Generations of new arrivals [have] left their mark on our national character, in traits that friends abroad still recognise as distinctly American: our optimism, our independence and openness to the new, our willingness to strive and to risk, our sense of life as an adventure, dignified by personal freedom and personal responsibility,” Mr Bush will tell his audience.
“Such qualities don't come out of nowhere. A spirit of self-reliance runs deep in our immigrant heritage, along with the humility and kindness to look at someone less fortunate and see yourself.”
Another man emerging as an unlikely but increasingly prominent critic of President Trump is comic actor Jim Carrey, star of Dumb and Dumber, The Mask and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
Regularly posting his own artwork on Twitter, the below is typical of Carrey's scathing diatribes against the president.
Here's Clemence Michellon on the comedian's response to the killings in New Zealand and the inadequacy of the White House.
Here's Chris Baynes on those loans to Mr Trump from Deutsche Bank, granted in spite of his being "deemned untouchable".
Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar has become the focal point of much criticism since her remarks about the influence of Israeli lobbyists in Washington exposed divisions within the Democrats.
Donald Trump and Fox News have pounced on her comments as a pretext to accuse the opposition of fostering antisemitism and called on her to resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all very rich indeed from a president who has done more than most to create divisions through discriminatory rhetoric.
Trump aide Elizabeth Pipko's Jexodus site (twice promoted by Mr Trump on Twitter) was set up to suggest Jewish people were leaving the Democrats en masse in protest at Ms Omar's remarks (they aren't) while alt-right activists Jacob Wohl, Laura Loomer and Ali Alexander last week produced an utterly laughable "documentary" called Importing Ilhan, seeking to discredit her by promoting an urban myth she married her brother to allow him to enter the US.
Representative Omar, a refugee from Somalia, has stood fast through all of this and yesterday told Mr Trump: "You can’t Muslim ban us from Congress."
With Donald Trump under scrutiny over his failure to take a hard line against white nationalism in the wake of the New Zealand mass shooting, an old speech has resurfaced in which he tells a fake story about a US general who executed 49 Muslim “terrorists” using bullets dipped in pig’s blood.
The footage appears to come from a rally in South Carolina during the 2016 campaign.
His disingenuous criticism of the Democrats and Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar suddenly looks even more ill-advised and hypocritical.
Here's Tom Embury-Dennis.
This old classic again...
Here's CNN's Oliver Darcy speaking for an entire industry.
Obviously having woken up on the wrong side of the bed, he's just branded Kellyanne Conway's husband George "a total loser!"
The lawyer has shown himself to be something of a free spirit, unafraid to contradict his wife - a White House counsellor and dogged Trump apologist - by questioning her boss's sanity.
Here's the tweet that started it all.
She will of course now be asked about this by reporters, having already had to distance herself from George once in the last 24 hours.
Brad Parscale, incidentally, is President Trump's 2020 re-election campaign manager.
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