Trump news: President called Fox reporter into Oval Office to argue over Alabama gaffe as new tax fraud allegation emerges
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump was so incensed by reporting over his erroneous suggestion Hurricane Dorian could have hit Alabama that he summoned Fox News correspondent John Roberts to the Oval Office on Thursday to argue about the gaffe, according to CNN, part of a day spent obsessing over the matter on Twitter.
Mr Trump’s presentation of a weather map of the storm’s path he appeared to have doctored himself with a black Sharpie prompted 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to comment: “I feel sorry for the president, and that is not the way we should feel about the most powerful figure in this country.”
Meanwhile, a new investigation into an unexplained $50m (£41m) construction loan the president took out to build his Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago a decade ago appears to leave him open to allegations of tax fraud, concerns that have festered since he broke with White House custom by refusing to release his returns.
To add to the president's mounting controversies,
House Democrats are demanding information about the spending of taxpayer money at the president's hotels and properties. They're seeing violations of the US Constitution that some think could bolster the case for his impeachment.
There have been "multiple efforts" by Mr Trump and administration officials to spend federal money at his properties, including Vice President Mike Pence's stay this week at a Trump resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees said in letters Friday to the White House, federal agencies and the Trump Organisation.
The Democrats describe Mr Pence's visit, and the possibility that next year's Group of Seven summit will be held at Mr Trump's Miami-area Doral golf resort , as corrupting the presidency. Payments from foreign officials are particularly troubling, they say, considering the emoluments clause in the Constitution that bans the president from taking gifts from other governments.
"We have been focused on the Mueller report, and that is a very small part of the overall picture," said Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, a member of the Judiciary panel. "We must get America focused on the ongoing violations against basic constitutional principles."
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said taxpayer spending in Mr Trump's business empire is "of grave concern" to his panel, which is weighing whether to recommend articles of impeachment. Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings said his committee "does not believe that U.S. taxpayer funds should be used to personally enrich President Trump, his family and his companies."
The Democrats insist they are not pivoting their investigations away from former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report, which did not exonerate the president of obstruction of justice. But with many of their subpoenas bogged down in court, and Mr Mueller's findings fading in the public's attention, a soft reboot is clearly underway, with a new focus on other allegations of possible wrongdoing by the president.
David Cicilline, another Democrat on the Judiciary panel, says he believes the misuse of public funds or other examples of financial corruption make Americans especially angry. And while people have heard a lot about the Mueller report, they may know less about the emoluments clause, he said.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Trump's former deputy assistant, radio host and Rose Garden brawler Sebastian Gorka has joined fellow alt-right provocateurs Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson and Ben Shapiro in shamelessly hawking questionable vitamin supplements, the 21st century's answer to sideshow snake oil.
For Indy Voices, Washington reporter Andrew Feinberg reminds us Trump's Alabama claim was not his only bizarre lie this week.
Also for Voices, former Bill Clinton strategist Bernard Whitman thinks he knows precisely why Trump's brand is so potent with voters.
Greetings from New York City. It's 10:40 am local time, and Donald Trump seemingly has nothing scheduled for the day, according to the president's daily schedule.
Regardless, we'll be keeping you up to date on the latest developments as they roll in.
The House Judiciary Committee has requested more information about Donald Trump’s plans to host the G7 summit at his Florida resort and Mike Pence recent trip to a property the president owns hours away from his meetings in Ireland.
A series of letters the House Oversight Committee sent to the White House, the Trump Organisation, the vice president’s office and the US Secret Service says the committee “does not believe that US taxpayer funds should be used to personally enrich President Trump, his family, and his companies.”
The House Judiciary Committee also sent several letters this week to the administration as part of its overarching investigations into Mr Trump.
“Potential violations of the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution are of grave concern to the Committee as it considers whether to recommend articles of impeachment," Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the committee, wrote in a statement along with Steve Cohen, a Democratic congressman and chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
The requests for records arrived after the vice president stayed at Mr Trump’s Doonbeg, Ireland resort located 181 miles from meetings he was scheduled to attend in Dublin with Irish officials.
Story to come...
Here's my latest on House Democrats requesting records about Mike Pence's trip to Ireland -
On the other side of the pond, The Independent's Chris Stevenson has written a worthy read on how British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is taking a page out of Donald Trump's book -
Conservatives are attacking 2020 candidate Bernie Sanders over his answer to a question at CNN's marathon seven-hour climate change town hall in New York on Wednesday night about the need to curtail population growth to reduce humanity's environmental impact.
Teacher Martha Readyoff told the Vermont senator that tying global warming to population was a stance "poisonous for politicians, but it's crucial to face."
"Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact," she continued.
"Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?"
"Well, Martha, the answer is yes," Sanders said. "The answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies, and make reproductive decisions."
"The Mexico City agreement which denies American aide to those organisations around the world that allow women to have abortions or even get involved in birth control to me is totally absurd," Sanders continued. "So I think, especially in poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies and where they can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, is something I very, very strongly support."
That didn't go down at all well on the right.
In case you missed it, Donald Trump began his morning by tweeting out a quote that suggests his predecessor Barack Obama didn't have the legal authority to instate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, otherwise known as DACA.
He then threatened the programme "will be going before the Supreme Court" -
This kind of quick, efficient pushback by California Democrat John Garamendi is precisely why Trump hates the state so much.
Keep at it sir.
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