Melania Trump unveils the White House Christmas decorations
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Donald Trump began his week avidly tweeting along to Fox News before jetting out for a Nato summit in London, as the House impeachment report into his dealings with Ukraine are set to be unveiled to members of Congress in advance of the Judiciary Committee staging its first hearing of the inquiry on Wednesday.
The White House yesterday declined to be part of the midweek session, with lawyer Pat Cipollone branding the process a “baseless and highly partisan” attack on the president in a letter to Judiciary chairman Jerrold Nadler.
Republicans continued to defend Mr Trump on the Sunday talk shows, with the ranking GOP representative on the committee Doug Collins calling on inquiry figurehead Adam Schiff to testify and accusing him of “hiding behind the report”.
As he departed the White House for London, Mr Trump called the trip “one of the most important journeys that we make as president” and said Democrats had long known about it.
His trip to the UK comes amid ongoing quarrels over defence spending by NATO allies and widespread anxiety over the president’s commitment to the alliance.
Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal
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The president said his trip would be focused on “fighting for the American people". But in the more than two months that the impeachment inquiry has been underway, he has constantly drifted back to what he frames as the Democrats’ unfair effort to overturn the results of his 2016 election.
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday on the constitutional grounds for impeachment before Mr Trump wraps up at the NATO summit.
Mr Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Mr Cipollone and presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway all complained about the timing, with Mr Pompeo saying the hearings would “distract America's president from his important mission overseas.”
Mr Trump insists he’s solely focused on scoring domestic and foreign policy wins, including revamping NATO so that allies spend more on defense. But he’s often appeared consumed by the day-to-day battle against impeachment.
In recent days he’s repeatedly lashed out about the “impeachment hoax” and the “scam” inquiry, even delving into impeachment at a ceremony to celebrate NCAA athletes and at last week’s annual Turkey pardon.
White House aides say the summit offers Mr Trump an opportunity to counter the impeachment narrative in Washington and demonstrate to voters that he’s keeping a business-as-usual approach while Democrats concentrate on the probe.
Donald Trump uses pardoning of Thanksgiving turkey to make digs at impeachment hearings
But soon after Air Force One departed, Mr Trump took to Twitter to slam “Do Nothing Democrats” for scheduling the hearing during the NATO meeting as “Not nice!””
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in Madrid for a UN conference on climate change, declined to comment about the impeachment inquiry, saying, “When we travel abroad, we don't talk about the president in a negative way. We save that for home.”
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
Melania Trump unveils White House Christmas decorations
The first lady's Christmas decorations have been unveiled and they're much less scary than usual.
No blood-red horror trees this time, although the accompanying video casts her as something of a lonely figure, stalking around indoors with her coat on and no children or carol singers in sight.
It's also by no means the worst Christmas content the family has put out so far this year...
Trump dennounced for hypocritical World AIDS Day tweet
The president yesterday tweeted this message in recognition of World AIDS Day...
...a presidential enough gesture, but one entirely undeserved given his administration's heinous record on the subject.
In a joint statement issued by the Democratic National Committee's chairman Tom Perez, its Disability Council chairman Tony Coelho and LGBTQ Caucus chairman Earl Fowlke, the tweet was denounced on the basis that Trump is "no ally of people living with HIV, who are disproportionately LGBTQ and people of colour".
"His administration has proposed cutting global HIV-prevention programs and attacked health care services that people living with HIV rely on, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and Planned Parenthood," the trio stated.
Trump’s proposed 2020 budget would cut funding to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, established under George W Bush, by $1.35bn (£1.04bn) - down 30 per cent on the previous budget’s funding for the programme. The administration has also proposed massive cuts to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, the latter a programme that helps low-income sufferers access housing.
“Cuts of this magnitude would result in countless new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths for a relatively small cost savings in the context of the federal budget,” The Foundation for AIDS Research said in a statement in March after the 2020 budget request was first released.
Donald Trump Jr: 'Political correctness will destroy western civilisation'
Among the least helpful hot takes on the London Bridge terror attack on Friday - in which two members of the public were killed and three more injured by Islamist extremist Usman Khan, shot dead by police officers at the scene - comes courtesy of the president's idiot son, who says political correctness is to blame for society's ills.
Which, conveniently, is the theme of Triggered, his new book - out now!
New Pelosi meme shows House speaker delivering knock-out blow to Trump
"The memes matter", pundit David Zurawik told Brian Stelter on CNN yesterday, after it emerged Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters had brandished posters of Trump photoshopped onto the body of Rocky Balboa in tribute to his signing legislation endorsing their cause last week to the fury of China.
Here's Greg Evans for Indy100 with a great answer to the president's delusional vanity tweet courtesy of Christine Pelosi, daughter of the House speaker.
Newsweek fires journalist who misreported Trump Thanksgiving scheduling
Reporter Jessica Kwong has been sacked by Newsweek for writing an article saying Trump's Thanksgiving plans amounted to "tweeting, golfing and more", not knowing at the time that he was actually heading to Afghanistan to meet the troops.
The White House went to elaborate lengths to conceal the visit, to be fair to Kwong, who quickly amended her article, but the president and his son delighted in calling out the news outlet on Twitter as yet more evidence of "fake news" at work:
Kwong's was by no means the worst journalistic blunder of the weekend, however, as MSNBC was forced to apologise for using a picture of white nationalist Richard Spencer to illustrate a story about ex-Navy secretary Richard V Spencer, forced out by the administration after objecting to Trump pardoning war criminal Eddie Gallagher.
Public support for Trump will collapse with impeachment vote, warns presidential historian
Historian Doug Brinkley has told CNN he believes Trump's fabled base will desert him if Congress votes to impeach him.
Responding to a recent impeachment poll, Brinkley told New Day: “It just tells you what deep trouble Donald Trump is in. I mean, when you have 50 per cent of the country wanting you not just impeached but removed from office, and the game hasn’t even gotten fast yet.
"I think once the vote is taken by Congress to impeach him and he’s wearing the ‘I’ on his chest, you’re going to see that movement grow even more."
He continued: "It tells you he doesn’t have a lot of friends. He’s a base politician. He doesn’t know how to turn this around."
Trump declares his own 'breaking news' event on Twitter
In the last hour, Trump has served up a few more choice quotes in his favour and declared a "breaking news" event, also very much in his favour. He says President Zelensky of Ukraine has declared he did nothing wrong and that: "If the Radical Left Democrats were sane, which they are not, it would be case over!"
He's also back to moaning about the impeachment hearing, the morning after the White House declined to take part and have its say.
Ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page breaks silence on Trump's 'reprehensible' attacks
Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer who exchanged anti-Trump texts with colleague and lover Peter Strzok, has spoken out for the first time about the president’s "sickening" attacks on her.
Page has joined Twitter and said she is “done being quiet” about the furore which thrust her into a political storm two years ago and has made her a repeated target of the president's ire - and morbid fascination (see the clip below from his rabid October rally in Minneapolis).
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she told The Daily Beast. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
Here's Chris Baynes's report on her sudden re-emergence.
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