Trump news: President 'demanding tanks on DC streets for July Fourth', amid growing questions over Ivanka role
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Donald Trump is returning to Washington to plan for the Fourth of July after his four-day trip to Asia for the G20, which culminated in his historic crossing of the Demilitarised Zone between North Korea and South Korea at the invitation of dictator Kim Jong-un.
In doing so, Mr Trump became the first US president to step over the dividing line between the enemy states but his detractors have been quick to denounce the gesture as amounting to little more than a “photo opportunity” serving to legitimise a rogue nuclear power notorious for oppressing its people.
His daughter Ivanka has also been the victim of ridicule, cruelly mocked online for her unnecessary presence in Japan and Korea with the hashtag #unwantedivanka trending on Twitter. “Being someone’s daughter actually isn't a career qualification,” commented Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Speaking of Ms Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat took a trip to migrant detention centres on Monday, where she described horrid conditions for women.
During the first stop on her voyage, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said that US Customs and Border Protection officials were physically and sexually intimidating towards her, and that migrants in the facility had been told to drink water from the toilets.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez was expected to head over to the facility in Clint, Texas, where children have been held and reportedly denied soap and toothpaste.
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More on the always newsworthy AOC.
She has invited US Women's World Cup star Megan Rapinoe for a tour of the House of Representatives given that the striker has said she won't go to "the f***ing White House" so long as Donald Trump occupies it.
AOC has also hit back at odious Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan after he, inevitably, attacked her over her criticism of Ivanka Trump's unwarranted schmoozing on the world stage.
The New York Times says this morning the Trump administration is considering agreeing a "nuclear freeze" with Pyongyang, allowing Kim Jong-un to retain his nuclear weapons so long as he doesn't produce any more as part of "working level denuclearisation talks".
Here's an angry rebuttal from national security adviser John Bolton.
A Canadian freelance political cartoonist has been fired from a number of broadsheet newspapers over his sketch of Donald Trump ignoring the bodies of dead migrants Oscar and Valeria Martinez - who drowned in the Rio Grande last week - to play golf.
Michael DeAdder has received support for his bold, confrontational work from fellow cartoonists across the world, with Martin Rowson of The Guardian tweeting the episode proves "once again that the greatest threat to Free Expression is & always has been newspaper editors & proprietors".
Here's Alessio Perrone with the full story.
Trump's acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kevin McAleenan is "not on solid ground", according to The Hill, just 10 weeks after taking on the role from Kirstjen Nielsen, as the president's inner circle demands the implementation of stricter immigration laws.
McAleenan was thought to be to a "tougher" appointment than Nielsen but was accused by incoming "border czar" Tom Homan on Fox last month of leaking news of mass deportations set to be carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to The Washington Post.
The Trump administration has been criticised for conducting a game of musical chairs at the border, after John Sanders abruptly left his position as head of Customs and Border Protection last week to be replaced by acting ICE boss Mark Morgan, who will now in turn be replaced by Matthew Albence.
Ken Cucinelli, an immigration hardliner and former Virginia attorney general, also recently came in as acting director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services office.
"I've made changes - very good changes," Trump insisted this past week. "We're moving some people around into different locations."
Joe Biden continues to find himself up against it and appears incapable of saying the right thing at the moment.
At a campaign fundraiser in Washington state on Saturday night, the candidate suggested that LGBT+ rights had come so far in America that, even five years ago, someone "making fun of a gay waiter" might have done so unchallenged.
"Not in Seattle!" the crowd cried back, according to CNN, accusing the former vice president of underestimating their city's liberal credentials.
Biden was speaking on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and just two days after his public image took a knock from Kamala Harris in Florida, forcing him to defend his record on civil rights.
Doing rather better is Trump challenger Pete Buttigieg, who raised a cool $24.8m (£19.6m) in campaign donations in the second quarter, up from $7.1m (£5.6m) in the first.
This was the scene outside the Elizabeth Detention Centre in New Jersey on Sunday as Jewish protesters gathered to demand the Trump administration “close the camps” after reports emerged of the appalling conditions prevailing within.
AOC was attacked by Republicans for calling these holding sites "concentration camps" but these demonstrators made their views on the matter abundantly clear.
Trump claimed in South Korea that Barack Obama practically begged for the sort of meeting with Kim Jong-un he himself had just secured.
That's not how former director of national intelligence James Clapper remembers it.
Here's Greg Evans of Indy100 with the latest evidence to suggest the president of the United States actually thinks stealth bombers are invisible.
Hilariously, Fox and Friends this morning celebrated Trump's step into North Korea by playing DJ Khaled in the studio.
Brian Kilmeade: "Was this the music blasting at the DMZ?"
Ainsley Earhardt: "Yes it was."
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