Trump news: President reacts as impeachment speculation intensifies and his own lawyer admits he cannot rule out that aid to Ukraine was used as bribe

Mr Trump has said he should receive a Nobel prize in recognition of his many accomplishments. After offering to arbitrate between Pakistan and India over the disputed Kashmir region, a reporter told him that he would deserve the peace prize if he managed to find a resolution.

The president, who has spoken before of his wish to receive the prestigious award, said: "I think I'm going to get a Nobel prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don't. They gave one to Obama immediately upon his ascent to the presidency, and he had no idea why he got it. And you know what? That was the only thing I agreed with him on."

Appearing with the Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, Mr Trump boasted about his skills as an arbitrator, saying he had been asked to arbitrate some "pretty big ones" by "friends". He also said he had many Pakistani friends in New York, adding: "They're smart."

Correction: We said earlier that Mr Trump was meeting the Pakistan president, Arif Alvi, rather than the prime minister, Imran Khan.

Police used a chainsaw to remove multiple climate activists from a sailboat demonstrators pushed into a Washington intersection just north of the White House as part of a citywide protest called Shut Down DC. 

Seeking to pressure US politicians into fighting climate change, the activists blocked major traffic hubs across the nation’s capital on Monday as they sought to draw attention to a United Nations Climate Summit that kicked off this week with leaders from about 60 countries. 

The demonstrators targeted four locations, including Farragut Square in downtown Washington, Columbus Circle, near the Union Station train terminal and Folger Park on Capitol Hill. The climate summit was meanwhile hosted at the UN headquarters in New York City.

Donald Trump, who left the UN’s climate summit after about ten minutes to lead a religious freedom conference, has rolled back Obama-era rules on emission cuts and wants to maximise US energy output. 

Story to come...

Visa waivers for Poland are next on the agenda for the US president as he appears with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda.

Mr Trump says: "We're also doing waivers, the visa waivers for Poland. And that's in the works and we’re working on the structure right now. You can report back to the people of Poland people and the Polish people in the United States that President Trump got it done and nobody else could, for a long time, as you know."

Donald Trump has insisted he is not taking the threat of impeachment "at all seriously", after effectively admitting he asked a foreign leader to investigate potential 2020 presidential election rival Joe Biden.

Asked by a reporter how seriously he was taking the prospect, as he arrived at the United Nations in New York, the president said: "Not at all seriously."

The claim comes as Democrats in Congress have once again called for impeachment proceedings against the president, and as the White House has pushed back on releasing whistle blower documents related to a call between Mr Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the American leader reportedly pushed his Ukrainian counterpart to reopen an investigation into a gas tycoon with connections to Mr Biden's son, Hunter.

The president renews his attack on his Democratic rival Joe Biden, saying "he was very dishonest, what he did", once again accusing him of threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine unless a prosecutor supposedly investigating his son was fired. Mr Trump again accuses the media of suppressing the story, although it has been widely reported on and largely debunked. The president also once again denies claims that he himself threatened to withhold aid unless Ukraine started an investigation into Biden's son.

He says he hopes that the press will be able to "see that call", referring to the phone call to the Ukrainian president that left a US intelligence officer so alarmed that they made a formal complaint. Despite Mr Trump saying he hopes the call will be made public, it is believed that pressure from the White House is preventing it being passed on to Congress.

Donald Trump thanked British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for publicly supporting a new Iran nuclear deal, telling reporters at the UN summit on Monday: “The other deal was ready to expire. It was a very short number of years left. All that money paid and wasted. We didn’t have the right to inspect the appropriate sites ... One of the big mistakes was that the agreement was going to expire in a short number of years. What kind of a deal is that?”

Mr Trump added: “I respect Boris a lot and I’m not at all surprised that he was the first one to come out and say that.” He also described the prime minister as "a friend of mine" while calling him "very smart" and "very tough".

The president's comments came after the British prime minister said in an interview, "Whatever your objections to the old nuclear deal with Iran, it’s time now to move forward and do a new deal." 

“How do we respond to what the Iranians plainly did?” Mr Johnson said in an interview with Sky News. “What the UK is doing is trying to bring people together and de-escalate tensions.”

Well that's one (rather wild) way of putting it...

Donald Trump brought up the electric chair while attacking Joe Biden during a press availability with international media outlets, then proceeds to describe the journalists as "crooked as hell" -

In other news, a US soldier was arrested after discussing plans online to bomb a major news network, join a violent far-right group in Ukraine and attack 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, officials said on Monday. 

Jarrett William Smith, a 24-year-old US Army soldier who joined the military in June 2017, shared strategies about making explosive devices while unknowingly speaking with an undercover FBI agent, according to an affidavit. 

He reportedly spoke with the undercover agent about wanting to kill members of the anti-facisct movement known as antifa, and said he shared bomb-making instructions with others online in an effort to cause “chaos”.

"Smith talked with the confidential source about killing members of the far left group, Antifa, as well as destroying nearby cell towers or local news station,” the affidavit said.

Story to come...

The president laid out a rather incomprehensible explanation for refusing to believe the facts about climate change during today's major summit at the United Nations. This, of course, happened just before he participated in a religious freedom summit and left the climate change programme after about ten minutes:

Everyone is having a lot of fun putting out confusing statements today.

Here's former Ohio Governor John Kasich, who ran against Donald Trump in 2016, saying "we have to decide where to go from here" after the president was alleged to have withheld foreign military aid in lieu of political favours towards his 2020 campaign from Ukraine. 

Mr Kasich also asks in his statement: "Where are the Republicans?"