President's tweets 'repeatedly driving down stock market', as Pence under fire over staying at leader's Irish golf resort
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Your support makes all the difference.Today, the president doctored a map of Hurricane Dorian's impact to pretend his earlier comments about the storm affecting Alabama were correct. Almost immediately after, he denied doing any such thing.
He also told reporters that vice president Mike Pence did not stay at his Ireland property at his request, which is a lie, according to earlier statements from Mr Pence.
Days on which Donald Trump tweets more than 35 times are regularly associated with negative stock market returns while days on which the president tweets five times or fewer yield positive results, according to a new study by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Vice president Mike Pence is meanwhile under fire for staying at a Trump-owned golf resort in Doonbeg on the Atlantic coast during his trip to Ireland, forcing him to fly 181 miles across the country to attend meetings with the country's leaders in Dublin.
Back in the US, the Pentagon has given the go-ahead for $3.6bn (£2.9bn) to be diverted towards the president's US-Mexico border wall from 127 different military construction project while Hurricane Dorian approaches the Florida coast after decimating the Bahamas.
Later in the evening, Democrats discussed climate change in a CNN town hall with Wolf Blitzer. The president will likely use the event to continue to deny climate change.
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On a lighter note, Ivanka Trump is being mocked for this frankly ludicrous photo of the wind catching the sleeves of her dress in Bogota, Colombia, yesterday, which inadvertently made it look as though she was being devoured by mutant plantlife or had just clampered out of a pond covered in lily pads.
Here's more from Greg Evans.
In DC, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has set a timetable for the resolution of the House Judicary Committee's fight to get ex-White House counsel Don McGahn to testify about the incidents recounted in the Mueller report relating to the president's possible attempts to obstruct justice from the West Wing.
The Democrat-led panel is considering whether to recommend impeachment proceedings against the president and hopes to do so by 12 December when Congress breaks up for Christmas and is desperate to speak to McGahn, doggedly fighting White House stonewalling as the administration insists its aides have "absolute immunity" and do not need to appear.
Judge Jackson has now set a schedule for action on the House's lawsuit beginning 1 October, according to Politico, when the Justice Department is due to respond to chairman Jerrold Nadler's filing.
The House would then have two weeks to reply to their arguments, after which the Justice Department will have until 25 October to respond again. A hearing before Jackson will then take place on 31 October - already Halloween and Brexit Day.
Don McGahn (Brendan Smialowski/AFP)
Speaking of the Justice Department, attorney general William Barr is facing calls from South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, Republican chief of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to declassify documents relating to the inspector general's investigation into the handling of the Russia probe.
IG Michael Horowitz has been examing the conduct of the FBI and Justice Department relating to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant process, publishing a report last week that controversially decided against pressing for the prosecution of ex-FBI director James Comey for leaking personal memos on his meetings with Trump .
"In order for the Inspector General to be able to present the most complete results of his investigation to Congress and the American people, certain documents will need to be declassified and released to the public," Graham wrote to Barr in a letter last week.
The senator specifically asked for the declassification of nine documents, including the FISA warrants for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and other members of the Trump campaign. He also requested documents relating to ex-British spy Christopher Steele and his notorious dossier on the president.
Here's what Graham had to say on the matter last week:
Trump allies and conservative operatives are apparently building a war chest to be used to target specific journalists and newspapers reporting critical information about the president ahead of the 2020 election.
A three-page fundraising pitch seen by Axios reportedly names “CNN, MSNBC, all broadcast networks, The New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, and all others that routinely incorporate bias and misinformation in to their coverage” as “primary targets” and mentions dissemininating compromising materials on rivals to "friendly media outlets" like Breitbart.
Here's Chris Riotta's report.
In better news for the press, a judge has ordered the White House to restore the hard press pass of Playboy reporter Brian Karem after he got into a fight with Sebastian Gorka in the Rose Garden in July.
Here's the full ruling.
Iran's president Hassan Rouhani has again shot down the idea of entering bilateral talks with Trump.
"There has been a lot of offers for talks but our answer will always be negative. If America lifts all the sanctions then like before it can join multilateral talks between Tehran and parties to the 2015 deal," he said.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, directly addressed on that Post frontpage, has angrily denounced critics who refer to him as “Moscow Mitch” over his refusal to pass bipartisan laws protecting the US from Russian election interference.
“It’s modern day McCarthyism,” McConnell told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday. “Unbelievable for a Cold Warrior like me who spent a career standing up to the Russians to be given a moniker like that.
“It’s an effort to smear me. You know, I can laugh about things like the Grim Reaper, but calling me Moscow Mitch is over the top.”
Here's more from Tom Embury-Dennis.
Chicago's Democratic mayor Lori Lightfoot has won new fans after slamming Texas senator Ted Cruz over the gun debate.
Cruz tweeted a Breitbart article to claim that "gun control doesn't work", citing violence in the Illinois city.
Mayor Lightfoot then issued this nuclear response, telling the senator: "Keep our name out of your mouth."
A reminder that Cruz loves firearms so much, he once used the heat from the barrel of an AR-15 to cook bacon.
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