Trump news: US nuclear arsenal now 'in tippy-top shape' says president when asked about responding to Iran: 'We should all pray we don't have to use them'
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Donald Trump has defended himself on Twitter as his administration faces an extraordinary showdown with Congress after acting national intelligence director Joseph Maguire withheld a whistleblower’s complaint understood to concern a private conversation between the president and a foreign leader, despite its being classified a matter of “urgent concern”.
He also told reporters that they should "look into Joe Biden" when asked about the whistleblower's complaint, in an angry press conference in the Oval Office, during which he called the whistleblower "bipartisan," though he said he did not know who the person was.
Later, The Wall Street Journal reported that the president asked Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukranian president, to investigate Joe Biden's son "about eight times" during one phone call in July.
The White House said the president will meet with Mr Zelensky next week.
The House Intelligence Committee has not ruled out going to court to force Mr Maguire’s hand, according to the panel’s chairman Adam Schiff, as The Washington Post and New York Times report at least part of the mystery complaint involves Ukraine.
The president’s former secretary of state Rex Tillerson has meanwhile told Harvard University that the administration “got played” by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he described as “a bit Machiavellian”.
The president did not mention Friday's wildly successful climate strike at all today.
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Republican Trump challenger Bill Weld has been going after the White House for its latest round of stonewalling this week.
Fox News is rightly being called out for its coverage of the whistleblower intrigue surrounding Trump after guest Geraldo Rivera laid into the intelligence official who made the central complaint as a "snitch" because he followed the proper legal protocol, a subject the network once felt rather differently about...
Trump has reiterated to reporters in DC just now that the whistleblower complaint relates to a "totally appropriate conversation" he had, while apparently contradicting himself by saying that he does not know which foreign leader the matter relates to.
He insisted that all of his conversations are above board and also dropped in the claim that he is making diplomatic progress with China on trade and the news that the Iranian National Bank will be on the receiving end of the sanctions he trailed earlier this week.
He also wisely refused to go near the Justin Trudeau blackface scandal.
California representative and former presidential candidate Eric Swalwell says the patriotic thing for the whistleblower to do at this point would be to bypass the director of national intelligence and approach Congress directly.
The Miami Herald reports a US Marine unit wants to hold its annual ball at Mar-a-Lago, the latest instance in a growing scandal about Trump profiteering from his presidency.
Textbook Trump as he sits down with Scott Morrison here: "It was actually a beautiful conversation."
Here he is on Iran. More rhetorical reheats.
Some even hotter takes from Trump. The Moon is his launchpad.
Here's our breaking story on Trump's reaction to Trudeau, which he earlier attempted to avoid being drawn into.
Trump's claim yesterday that he would never say "inappropriate things" naturally provoked howls of deranged laughter across the known universe.
Here's Darren Richman with a round-up of the very finest memes.
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