ABC agrees to settle Trump ‘rape’ defamation case for $15m as president-elect attends Army-Navy game: Live

Speaking to Kaitlan Collins on CNN’s The Source last night, the former Republican congressman said the president-elect has started threatening the likes of Liz Cheney and himself because he is “embarrassed” by their House panel’s findings about the events surrounding the Capitol riot.

“We were investigating, as per the request from Congress to do that, we obviously came up with answers that embarrassed Trump. He was embarrassed by it,” Kinzinger said.

“You know, sorry to embarrass you, Donald, but that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re tasked with, was the truth, and history books will record this as the truth. You want to threaten to throw us in jail for that?”

He also insisted he was not remotely frightened by Trump’s threats.

The same man, clearly enjoying his MAGA notoriety, has meanwhile been taunting Elon Musk’s DOGE accomplice Vivek Ramaswamy on Musk’s own platform.

The president-elect is due to attend the traditional college football throwdown in Landover, Maryland, tomorrow and will sit down at the game with his embattled nominee for defense secretary Pete Hegseth, according to one of the latter’s advisers quoted by The Washington Post.

Hegseth has spent the week courting dubious Republican senators, unnerved about the string of unsavoury allegations that have been raised against him, all of which the former Fox News weekend man and military man has denied and downplayed.

Mike Whitaker, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), who has led a tougher enforcement policy against Boeing since a panel blew off a company jet in January, said on Thursday that he will step down next month, clearing the way for Trump name his choice to lead the agency.

Whitaker announced his pending resignation in a message to employees of the FAA, which regulates airlines and aircraft manufacturers and manages the nation’s airspace.

He has dealt with challenges including a surge in close calls between planes, a shortage of air traffic controllers and antiquated equipment at a time when air travel and a need for tougher oversight of Boeing.

Whitaker also clashed with Trump ally Elon Musk by proposing that his company SpaceX be fined over safey issues.

Amazon’s executive chairman Jeff Bezos is reportedly set to donate $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund, following in the footsteps of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who did the same earlier this week,

Bezos’s gesture was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and dwarfs the $57,746 the company donated to Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.

The online retail giant’s founder is meanwhile set to meet the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, next week, according to Trump himself, who revealed the sitdown in an interview with CNBC, given after he rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is also reportedly set to follow Bezos to the Sunshine State while Zuckerberg himself already visited Trump at home last month, reportedly giving him a personal demonstration of Meta’s new Ray-Ban smart glasses, gifting him a pair and also meeting with the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, plus advisers Stephen Miller, Vince Haley and James Blair.

Barron Trump has been described as a “ladies’ man” around the New York University (NYU) campus, where he is so popular that even his liberal classmates like him.

An insider at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where Barron enrolled this fall, told People magazine that Donald Trump’s only son with third wife Melania Trump has proven to be “popular with the ladies.”

“He’s tall and handsome,” the source said of the 18-year-old, who stands an astonishing six feet nine inches tall.

“A lot of people seem to think he’s pretty attractive – yes, even liberal people like him.”

People’s article about Barron is so complimentary it has prompted some speculation about the source of the quotes, given that his father was known to enjoy calling in gossip to the tabloids during his Big Apple real estate days under the false name “John Barron.”

Here’s more from the president-elect’s Time interview, in which he also addressed the presence of North Korean troops on Russia’s frontline with Ukraine but stopped short of denouncing Pyongyang, preferring instead to tout his friendship with the country’s “Rocket Man” dictator.

Shweta Sharma has this report.

The president-elect was on Truth Social last night speaking up for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) after meeting with its bosses Harold and Dennis Daggett.

“There has been a lot of discussion having to do with ‘automation’ on United States docks,” Trump wrote.

“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it. The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen.”

The ILA, which represents more than 40,000 dockworkers, went on strike for three days in October over the prospect of robots replacing its members’ jobs.

The Biden administration helped reach a deal to avert that action, which reportedly cost the US economy $1bn a day, put further unrest could rear its head in the New Year.

Here’s the French President and the Prime Minister of Poland teasing the US president-elect yesterday before he has even taken office.

Ariana Baio has this on Macron and Trump’s original grapple during his Notre Dame Cathedral visit over the weekend.

Good morning!

Donald Trump has said he is prepared to do “whatever it takes” to drive illegal immigrants from the United States, including building more detention centres, and also vowed to shut down the Department of Education and leave teaching administration up to individual states.

Trump further moved to downplay fears over Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr’s likely influence over his administration and to manage expectations on inflation, warning he may not be able to bring down grocery prices after all by saying: “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up, very hard.”

The president-elect made the comments in an interview withTime magazine after being named its “Person of the Year” following his November election win.

The annual cover – which highlights an individual who has greatly influenced the year, for good or ill – was unveiled on Thursday, bearing an imperious portrait of the Republican against a stark background.

Trump was also awarded the honor in 2016 after beating Hillary Clinton to win the White House for the first time.

He celebrated this latest gong yesterday by delivering a brief speech and ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Here’s Kelly Rissman with more.

To Elon Musk, the word “homeless” is a “lie” and “a propaganda word.”

“Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” he told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in October. “What you actually have are violent, drug zombies with dead eyes and needles and human feces on the street.”

The more money spent combating homelessness, “the worse it gets,” according to Musk.

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