Trump news: President demands media outlets 'all apologise' as G7 fallout prompts Congress to step up impeachment inquiry
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has lashed out at the press after MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell was forced to apologise for claiming Deutsche Bank's financial records on the Trump family included loan documents co-signed by Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin.
The president has defended his China trade war and pledged to reduce troop numbers in Afghanistan in an interview with Fox News Radio and been busy on Twitter proclaiming “the Age of Trump”, deriding New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand after she dropped out of the 2020 race and touting construction progress on his US-Mexico border wall, only for his own officials to contradict him.
During that Fox News Radio interview, Mr Trump said that he wanted to cut the troop levels in Afghanistan to 8,500, and said he would then consider next steps as more information becomes available.
Mr Trump also lashed out at the media during that call, saying that he thinks it would be "disloyal" to his supporters if he did an interview with CNN, and suggested that he has dirt on the network's president, Jeff Zucker.
With Hurricane Dorian raging towards the Florida coast after grazing Puerto Rico, Mr Trump also finds himself facing renewed scrutiny from the House Judiciary Committee - already examining the case for potential impeachment proceedings - over his offer to host the next G7 summit at his own Trump National Doral Miami resort, which they believe amounts to an abuse of his powers of office.
The hurricane is expected to hit Florida as a Category 4 storm, somewhere in the middle of the state's eastern side.
In response, Floridians are clearing off shelves in stores, and lining up to fill their tanks with petrol.
The storm might hit the Floridian coast as early as Sunday.
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In case you missed this slam, as the row between Ilhan Omar and, apparently, every Republican continues:
Mr Trump's latest interview on Fox News Radio touched on all sorts of issues, including how he once allegedly made a grown man in media cry. We cannot confirm the tears:
Following the news that GOP senator Johnny Isakson would retire from his seat representing Georgia in Washington, Democrats have claimed they see a golden opportunity to help them in their quest to retake control of the legislative body.
Nikema Williams, the chair of the Democratic Party in Georgia, was among those to signal optimism for Democrats in the deep south state, where Republicans generally have reined supreme in elections.
Ms Williams called the state a must-watch "battleground" in 2020, according to The Hill, and said that the announcement that it "has never been clearer that the path for Democratic victory runs through Georgia."
The battle over soul of America continues... at the University of Kansas, where faculty have urged the school to remove fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A from its campus, calling the restaurant a "bastion of bigotry".
“Moving Chick-fil-A to the Union and granting it a role at the start of all home football games violates the feelings of safety and inclusion that so many of us have striven to create, foster, and protect on campus, and sends a message that the Union, KU Athletics, and the administration at large are more concerned about money and corporate sponsorship than the physical, emotional, and mental well being of marginalized and LGBTQ people,” a letter from the university's Sexuality & Gender Diversity Faculty and Staff Council reads.
On the Democratic campaign trail, big crowds that are showing up for Elizabeth Warren are leading to some talk of momentum for the Massachusetts senator.
Ms Warren, who has surged in polls over recent months after a campaign start described widely in the media as rocky, drew 15,000 people to her presidential campaign event in Seattle just days ago, and then another 12,000 to an event in St Paul, Minnesota. It was her first campaign stop in Minnesota.
A former Barack Obama aide has told The Hill that they see some major significance in that turnout, and that Mr Obama — well known for his massive rallies — did not receive that kind of support until much later in the campaign season.
"What Warren is doing this early on is pretty unprecedented," they said, recalling Mr Obama's 2008 presidential run, when he faced Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. "If we would have attracted crowd sizes that large early on, Hillary would have run for the hills."
Mr Trump, during his earlier call with Fox News Radio, said that he does not plan on taking US troops completely out of Afghanistan, even with a Taliban deal.
Mr Trump said that his current thinking is to bring troop levels down to 8,600 — a force he describes as mostly there for "policing" — and then to make further determinations at a later point.
"We're going down to 8,600, and then we'll make a determination from there as to what happens," Mr Trump said.
Last night, during an appearance on CNN, Trump 2020 campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany made the remarkable assertion that she does not believe the presiden tlies.
Ms McEnany engaged in a heated back and forth with host Chris Cuomo on Wednesday night, after Mr Cuomo claimed that Mr Trump consistently lies and demonizes people for being different.
"He doesn't lie. He doesn't lie," Ms McEnany said. "The press lies."
Representative Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says that the Department of Homeland Security is barring his panel's staff from future visits to immigrant detention facilities, which have become sources of controversy after reports of squalid conditions were released.
Mr Cummings wrote in a letter to the department that his panel had been informed that staffers who visited several of the facilities have now been denied access to around 11 different centres, which are run by Customs and Border Protection.
Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic presidential candidate who has been kept off of the next debate stage, has promised not to mount an independent challenge for the presidency if she does not secure her party's nomination.
Ms Gabbard said she had decided against doing so during an appearance on CNN.
"I've ruled that out," Ms Gabbard said. "I'm going to continue to focus on moving our campaign forward, continuing this grass-roots campaign, continuing to deliver our message to the American people."
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