Trump news: President says moon is 'part of' Mars as he's criticised for 'making a fool of himself' in D-Day speech

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

Donald Trump is flying home to Washington on Friday after a broadly successful five-day state visit to Britain, Ireland and France to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day but can expect to find himself immediately confronted with a number of major issues left stewing in his absence.

After the enjoying the pageantry of his royal reception in London, the president will arrive home this afternoon to face escalating trade tensions with Mexico and China and further calls for his impeachment, with House speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly telling her fellow Democrats on Tuesday: "I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison."

The US president got what he wanted from his European tour – namely, statesman like shots of himself posing with royals and world leaders at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Portsmouth and Normandy for use in his 2020 re-election videos.

Determined to ignore the massive protests against him in the British capital and the cruel memes about his appearance in white tie at a state banquet, the president largely kept his behaviour in check, outside of insulting "stone cold loser" London mayor Sadiq Khan on Twitter before Air Force One had even touched down at Stansted and suggesting the NHS would be on the table in any future trade talks between the US and UK after Brexit to the visible alarm of outgoing prime minister Theresa May.

He even took home gifts from the Queen and a replica of Winston Churchill's hat courtesy of toadying Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan. Not a bad haul, all in all.

Here's Jon Sharman and Adam Forrest on his meeting yesterday with French president Emmanuel Macron, who called on Trump to embrace "universal values".

That said, Trump failed to rein in his Twitter habit, taking time out from his ceremonial duties to complain about having to watch CNN at the US ambassador's residence in London, attack 2020 contender Joe Biden and berate "washed up psycho" Bette Midler.

He also kept the fire under Mexico, whom he is subjecting to escalating trade tariffs until America's southern neighbour does more to halt north-bound illegal immigration. Trump regards the threat posed by starving asylum seekers as worthy of a national emergency and has repeatedly deployed alarmist rhetoric to make the case for his long-promised border wall.

He is expected to sign an executive order on Friday to ensure the initial five percent tariffs go into effect in time for Monday's deadline.

As the aforementioned CNN explains: "While he was in France on Thursday, his team back in Washington was frantically trying to find an off-ramp for the latest tariff confrontation with Mexico, though time to seal a deal is running short."

Trump told reporters in Ireland: "Something pretty dramatic could happen... We've told Mexico the tariffs go on. And we mean it, too."

In his absence, talks on the showdown with Mexico intensified in Washington, stretching long into the night, as officials from the White House, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security met to discuss next steps.

"What Mexico is offering is not enough," says Mercedes Schlapp, White House director of strategic communications.

Trump also stuck it to China, an even more significant foe with whom he is at war over trade terms.

"Our talks with China, a lot of interesting things are happening. We'll see what happens... I could go up another at least $300bn (£236bn) and I'll do that at the right time," he told reporters before  boarding Air Force One on his way to France for the D-Day commemorations on Thursday.

"But I think China wants to make a deal and I think Mexico wants to make a deal badly.

"When you have the money, when you have the product, when you have the thing that everybody wants, you're in a position to do very well with tariffs, and that's where we are," he continued.

"We're the piggy bank. The United States is the piggy bank. It has all the money that others want to take from us, but they're not taking it so easy anymore. It's a lot different."

Despite numerous rounds of talks between the superpowers this spring, no agreement has been reached to end their feud and the US ultimately raise tariffs on $200bn (£157bn) of Chinese goods to 25 percent. Last month, China said it would increase tariffs on $60bn (£46bn) of US exports in retaliation, a move that caused stock markets to tumble.

As discussed, Trump was in Normandy yesterday to honour the heroism of the American, British, Canadian and Free French soldiers who crossed the English Channel to storm the beaches of northern France during the Second World War, gaining the Allies a crucial foothold on the continent in the fightback against Nazi Germany, an operation beginning on 6 June 1944.

The president evidently enjoyed the military ceremony and the chance to paint himself as a great statesman, the custodian of the memory of the Greatest Generation despite fighting so hard himself to avoid the draft in the 1960s ("You think I'm stupid? I wasn't going to Vietnam", he allegedly told ex-lawyer Michael Cohen) and relentlessly mocking the late hero of that conflict, Senator John McCain, since taking occupation of the Oval Office.

Of course, none of the day's stirring spectacle stopped him from taking time out from what was a solemn and deeply moving occasion to promote his publicity commitments to Fox.

The most outrageous example of this was the interview he gave to Fox's Laura Ingraham, staged in plain view of line after line of US war graves at the Normandy American Cemetery, an insensitivity for which both the president and the network have been heavily criticised.

Trump seized the moment to say FBI special counsel Robert Mueller had "made a fool out of himself" over the handling his investigation into 2016 Russian election hacking, possible collusion with the Trump campaign and potential obstruction of justice by the president.

He was also evidently angered by news of House speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments on Tuesday. She reportedly told fellow Democrats: "I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison."

"I think she's a disgrace," the president said. "I actually don’t think she’s a talented person, I’ve tried to be nice to her because I would have liked to have gotten some deals done.

"She’s incapable of doing deals, she’s a nasty, vindictive, horrible person, the Mueller report came out, it was a disaster for them."

Responding to the interview on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper, conservative pundit Amanda Carpenter, a former communications director to Texas's Republican senator Ted Cruz, spoke for many when she took the president to task.

"You look at the shot and what I see, just as an American, is a draft-dodging president who is sitting down with a woman who regularly defends antisemites - like Paul Nehlen - espouses white supremacist talking points while using the graves of World War soldiers who saved the world from Nazis as a prop. That’s what it is," she said.

Nehlen is a white supremacist and antisemite who Ingraham has claimed is merely a "prominent voice". 

Carpenter continued: "There’s a whole network behind it. There’s lots of people who said, 'Yeah, that looks good.' This isn’t just one person’s bad judgment. It’s a lot of people’s bad judgement."

Here's Samuel Osborne's report.

Pelosi happened to be in Normandy herself as part of a congressional delegation to honour the dead and was offered a chance to address the president. Her response?

"With all due respect to your question, I'm not here to talk about impeachment", she told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell.

Here's Andrew Buncombe on the House speaker's remarks to senior Democrats earlier this week, made in response to House Judiciary chairman Jerrold Nadler's urging her to allow the party to launch impeachment proceedings against the president following his stonewalling of congressional investigations.

"Make no mistake. We know exactly what path we’re on… while that may take more time than some people want it to take, I respect their impatience," she told reporters on Wednesday.

Here's Mark Steel's unique take on the president's visit to dear old Blighty.

Ben Kelly has this on the Irish leg of the president's mission, where he met taoiseach Leo Varadkar at Shannon Airport and his sons Don Jr and Eric went on a pub crawl at US taxpayers expense, promoting their brand and making an awful hash of pouring a Guinness.

Having already received a ticking off from Prince Charles over his climate change denial - it's just "a change in weather", he told Piers Morgan - Trump was met by climate change protesters en route to his golf coast at Doonbeg in County Clare on the Emerald Isle's Atlantic coast. 

The resort has attempted to build its own wall - this time at sea - to fend off coastal erosion, with Trump Organization lawyers have the sheer gall to cite global warming as one of the possible reasons for the offending cliff's deterioration in making their planning application. An appeal against its construction is under consideration.