Trump news: Jimmy Carter questions president's legitimacy as POTUS jokes with Putin about election interference
President laughs with Vladimir Putin about ousting journalists at G20 summit in Japan
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Donald Trump has met with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the G20 in Osaka, Japan, wagging a finger at his Kremlin counterpart and saying, at the prompting of reporters and in a jovial manner: “Don’t meddle in the election.”
The pair bonded over their shared contempt for journalists on a long day of talks with fellow world leaders covering Iran, trade and defence spending before sitting down to an elegant banquet - where Mr Trump was seen slugging a huge glass of non-alcoholic wine - as the first day of the summit drew to a close.
That was one day after the Russian leader praised the president of the United States for his nationalist world views and vigorously declared the days of the West’s liberals are dying if not already dead.
For some time, Mr Trump has defied the once-entrenched Republican distrust if not outright hatred of the powerful nation at the heart of the former Soviet Union. But Friday’s joint appearance seemed to go even further.
As the two leaders sat down for their first meeting in nearly a year, a reporter asked Mr Trump if he would warn Putin not to meddle in America’s upcoming 2020 election.
The Democrat challengers to Trump in 2020
Show all 25The exchange at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka echoed one of the defining moments of Mr Trump’s presidency from a year ago in Helsinki, Finland. There, he pointedly did not admonish Mr Putin about election interference and did not side with US intelligence agencies over his Russian counterpart.
Mr Putin disputes special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election to help Mr Trump win. Mr Putin told the Financial Times this week that it was “mythical interference.”
“What happened in reality? Mr Trump looked into his opponents’ attitude to him and saw changes in American society and he took advantage of this,” Mr Putin told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, in the second Democratic Party presidential debate in Miami, Florida, the standout moment of the night came when California senator Kamala Harris laid into former vice president Joe Biden over his “hurtful” recent remarks about being able to work with segregationists he disagreed with earlier in his career, reminding the veteran of the harmful legacy of their stance.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
If you're fascinated by Williamson, this thread is so worth your time.
Trump is still tweeting abuse all the way from Japan.
"Crazy Bernie" may not have had the best of nights but did insist a "socialist" can defeat President Trump at the ballot box in 2020.
"The last polls I saw had us 10 points ahead of Donald Trump. Because the American people understand Trump is a phoney and a pathological liar,” he said.
Speaking to Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday, Trump agreed with the anchor's contention that next year's vote was a contest of "capitalism versus socialism".
Twitter has some bad news for Trump: it is planning to introduce restrictions on exactly the kind of trolling he just demonstrated in that last tweet, potentially blocking one of his key strategies for bypassing the "fake news media".
Here's Tom Embruy-Dennis to explain.
Here's Clark Mindock reporting from Miami on Democratic voters' reactions to last night's fiery debate.
Look at poor Bernie in the middle here. Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme.
Back in Washington, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson has described an awkward encounter with President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in a restaurant as an example of diplomacy being conducted behind his back when he was in the administration, according to a transcript of a congressional hearing released on Thursday.
Tillerson, who was fired by Trump in March 2018, mentioned the story during a day of closed-door testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about his rocky, 13-month tenure as secretary of state. He described his surprise to find that he happened to be dining in the same Washington restaurant while Kushner and Mexican secretary of foreign affairs Luis Videgaray had a private meal.
The former top US diplomat and CEO of ExxonMobil said he "could see the color go out" of the Mexican official's face when Tillerson greeted them at their table with a smile.
"And I said: 'I don't want to interrupt what y'all are doing,"' Tillerson recalled for the committee. "I said 'Give me a call next time you're coming to town. And I left it at that."
The account suggest that Trump's top diplomat was in the dark as the new administration was grappling with major foreign policy issues.
"This story is false and a cheap attempt to rewrite history. The alleged 'dinner' to supposedly discuss the blockade never happened, and neither Jared, nor anyone in the White House, was involved in the blockade," presidential spokesman Hogan Gidley said.
"The White House operated under the belief the secretary of state at the time, Mr Tillerson, would and should know what his own team was working on."
Gidley added that Kushner "consistently follows proper protocols" with the National Security Council and the State Department, "and this instance is no different."
Trump had harsh words for his former top diplomat in December after Tillerson said in rare public remarks that the president was "undisciplined" and did not like to read briefing reports. Trump called him "dumb as a rock" in a tweet.
Tillerson described the restaurant incident as an example of one of the challenges he faced as secretary of state until Trump abruptly fired him over social media.
He said it was a "unique situation" to have the president's son-in-law as a White House adviser, saying "there was not a real clear understanding" of Kushner's role and responsibilities.
"No one really described what he was going to be doing," he said. "I just knew what his title was."
Tillerson said there other examples. He noted that Kushner "met often" with Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and that the president's son-in-law requested that the secretary speak with an official from the kingdom to discuss a document they had been developing that was "kind of a roadmap" for the future of the relationship between the two countries.
The foreign trips raised concerns, the former secretary said, because Kushner would not coordinate with the State Department or the local embassy in the countries he visited. Tillerson said he raised the issue with him but "not much changed."
A committee member asked about a private dinner in May 2017 attended by Kushner, Steve Bannon, bin Salman and Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE in which they discussed the plans by Saudi Arabia and UAE to blockade the neighboring Gulf nation of Qatar, which hosts the headquarters of US Central Command, in the coming weeks.
Tillerson said he didn't know about any such dinner but that it would have made him "angry" if it had occurred, since he and others in the administration were caught off guard by the blockade a few weeks later. The committee did not cite a source for their information about the dinner and the White House declined to comment on the record.
The testimony, with Tillerson accompanied by a personal lawyer and a State Department attorney, took place in private last month. A transcript was released Thursday. There were large sections redacted, including some where he discusses issues related to an Oval Office meeting that involved the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
He was prohibited from discussing private conversations with Trump and avoided certain highly publicised incidents, including reports he once referred to the president as a "moron."
He told the committee he had never met Trump before being urged by him to take the job and he was stunned by the offer after his long career as an oil industry executive with extensive overseas experience, especially in Russia and the Middle East.
Tillerson, who had been acquainted with Russian president Vladimir Putin since the late 1990s, said he told the leader during his first visit as secretary of state that relations with the United States were bad but could be improved if they worked to build trust.
"I said the relationship is the worst it's been since the Cold War but I looked him in the eye and I said but it can get worse and we can't let that happen," he said.
The latest on the fallout from the E Jean Carroll rape accusation.
"She doesn't make things up," her friends have told The New York Times.
Trump's imprisoned former campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty of state fraud charges at New York's Supreme Court on Thursday - setting the stage for a double jeopardy legal battle.
Manafort faces 16 counts including mortgage fraud and of falsifying business records and cut a decidedly dishevelled figure as he arrived at court to at least one cry of "Traitor!"
The 70-year-old is already serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for misleading the US government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work, hiding millions of dollars from tax authorities and encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf.
Aged heavy metal star Ozzy Osbourne has hit out at President Trump after he reposted a meme on Twitter set to Osbourne's song "Crazy Train" to send up a technical hitch suffered by MSNBC during the middle of Wednesday night's broadcast of the first Democratic debate.
"Perhaps he should reach out to some of his musician friends. Maybe Kanye West (‘Gold Digger’), Kid Rock (‘I Am the Bullgod’) or Ted Nugent (‘Stranglehold’) will allow use of their music," Ozzy and his wife Sharon said in a statement.
Adam White reports.
Here's Holly Baxter for Indy Voices on Kamala Harris's inspirational performance behind the podium in Miami.
Here's more insight from Clark Mindock on his experiences inside the Miami "spin room".
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