Trump news: 'Shaken' president insults Pelosi at Syria meeting, as he repeats discredited conspiracy theories about Ukraine
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has raged about the “totally illegal & absurd” impeachment inquiry on Twitter and justified his decision to pull US troops out of Syria, leaving America’s allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces under siege from Turkey, by telling reporters at the White House the Kurdish people are “no angels”.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeated on Tuesday that the House of Representatives would not cave in to Republican demands for a vote to approve the Democratic-led inquiry, which vice president Mike Pence and Mr Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani are now refusing to co-operate with, declaring: ”This is not a game for us. This is deadly serious. We’re on a path that is taking us, a path to the truth.”
As the president’s Democratic challengers for the presidency in 2020 squared off on the debate stage in Ohio, White House lawyers opened their own internal review of the handling of the president’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky of 25 July, examining the response of aides and raising concerns they are seeking out a potential scapegoat.
A bizarre letter sent from Mr Trump to the Turkish president was laced with an equal mix of weird threats and friendly language. The White House confirmed that the nearly unbelievable dispatch was real.
The president also apparently had a "meltdown" during a meeting about the Syrian crisis with Democratic leaders, during which he told Nancy Pelosi that he "hates ISIS more than you do."
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Trump has told the parents of Harry Dunn, the British teen killed in a road accident after his motorcycle collided with a car driven by the wife of an American diplomat in Northamptonshire, that the woman in question - Anne Sacoolas - will not return to the UK.
The deceased's parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, said there had been "a little bit of progress" after their meeting with the president in DC but that: "We didn't get the answers that we wanted."
Incredibly, Trump offered the bereaved the opportunity to meet with Sacoolas, who was waiting in the next room. Unsurprisingly, they turned it down because they felt it was “not appropriate” without a therapist and mediators present.
Here's Chris Baynes's report.
Trump's first tweet of the day is to hit at the Democratic 2020 contenders after their criticism of him in Ohio last night.
His second sees him going after Pelosi and Schiff yet again, saying they should be "impeached for fraud" based on nothing.
Things look like they're about to get worse for Rudy Giuliani as The Washington Post reports he repeatedly pushed Trump to extradite a Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, living in exile in Pennsylvania back in 2017, a top priority of President Erdogan who believes Gulen plotted the attempted coup against him in 2016.
Trump was reportedly keen to go ahead with this shadow foreign policy initiative but senior aides were appalled and blocked the move.
"We’re not going to arrest him to do a solid for Erdogan,” said one former official.
Giuliani is, of course, not registered as a foreign lobbyist as he would be required to be to push such a cause on behalf of Turkey. The Post also reported last week he had done the same to then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson, pressing him to stop the prosecution of Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab in the US on corruption charges.
Former Texas congressman Pete Sessions has meanwhile been subpoenaed by the congressional inquiry over his dealings with Giuliani, following the arrest of businessmen Igor Furman and Lev Parnas last week.
As Trump raves about his GOP approval rating and warns of a Second Great Depression should he lose in 2020...
...Erdogan is now saying he will deal only with the president himself, therein snubbing Pence who is jetting in to talk ceasefires.
Trump again vetoed legislation attempting to overturn the national emergency declaration he made in February over immigration at the US southern border, a move insigated as a means of raiding military construction projects for funds to pay for his long-promised US-Mexico wall without needing to seek approval from Congress.
Trump killed a similar measure in March soon after he exercised his emergency powers. He said in his veto message on Tuesday that the situation remains a crisis and "our Armed Forces are still needed to help confront it."
Congress is unlikely to have the votes to override the veto. In all, 127 military construction projects totaling $3.6bn (£2.8bn) will lose funding as a result of the move. Democrats contended that Trump trampled over Congress's power of the purse and chose the wall - a signature campaign promise - over the needs of the military.
Trump says the legislation would have impaired the government's capacity to curb human trafficking and smuggling.
This really is loopy stuff from Mr T.
He ought to take a step back and think about how deranged this sort of messaging makes him sound.
Up next at the impeachment inquiry today, since we're on the subject, is Michael McKinley, a former top aide to secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who resigned last week and brought an end to his 37-year career in the diplomatic corps.
Bernie Sanders - back to health and in good form on the debate stage last night - has received a major campaign boost by winning the endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who join fellow "Squad" member Ilhan Omar in backing the veteran socialist in 2020.
The trio bring with them the prospect of even greater support from young progressives inspired by their example.
Vincent Wood has more.
One of Trump's tweets yesterday baffled the world.
I know, what else is new - right?
This one especially so because it saw him appearing to call for his own impeachment. After raving about his economic achievenments in block caps, he concluded with the words: "Impeach the Pres."
More of that winning sarcasm we saw in the Rose Garden?
Jon Sharman gets to the bottom of it.
For Indy Voices, Eric Lewis relishes the prospect of John Bolton taking his revenge on Trump after being forced out as national security adviser.
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