Trump vows to continue China trade war even if recession hits US, as he says Russia should be readmitted to G7
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Donald Trump has said he will continue with his trade war with China even if it means the United States falling into recession.
The president stressed that he thought the US was “very far” from a recession but acknowledged that his administration was looking at a payroll tax cut to boost the economy, something that had previously been denied. And he said he was pressing on with his trade policies "whether it's good or bad for" the prospects of a recession.
Speaking at the White House after a meeting with the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, Mr Trump urged the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, saying: “If the Fed would do its job we would have a tremendous spirit of growth .. you would see a burst of growth like you’ve never seen before.”
Fears of a possible economic downturn have been stoked by concerns over the president’s tariffs war with China, and by an inverted yield curve, an indicator that has preceded the last seven recessions.
However, the president insists that low unemployment and continued growth show that the economy is in good shape, and said that he was “not looking to do anything at this moment” on payroll tax.
Mr Trump also said he thought Russia should be readmitted to the G7. Russia was expelled from the then-G8 in 2014 after invading and annexing Crimea from Ukraine. In a typical swipe at his predecessor, Mr Trump made up his own reason for Russia’s expulsion, saying that Barack Obama had pushed for it because Vladimir Putin had “outsmarted” him.
The president - who has consistently spoken in glowing terms of Mr Putin, including taking his side over US intelligence agencies - has previously called for Russia’s readmission to meetings of the world’s richest nations.
He once again accused Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib - whom Israel barred from a planned visit at his request - of being antisemitic, and questioned why so many American Jews vote Democrat.
He said that “any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty”, although he did not explain to what or whom they would be showing disloyalty. The Jewish Virtual Library, a project run by the lobby group AICE, says that 71% of Jewish voters backed Hillary Clinton in 2016, with 24% choosing Trump.
Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib gave a press conference yesterday caling on their colleagues to visit Israel without them after the country banned them from entering before backing down and allowing Tlaib in to meet her 90-year-old grandmother, only for the Michigan representative to snub the offer.
President Trump is widely thought to have urged his friend and counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to block the trip planned by two women he has repeatedly accused of antisemitism and Bibi duly declared that "their intent is to hurt Israel", drawing criticism from all sides of the divide.
"The decision to ban me and my colleagues - the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress is nothing less than an attempt by an ally of the United States to suppress our ability to do our jobs as elected officials," Omar said on Monday.
"We know Donald Trump would love nothing more than to use this issue to pit Muslims and Jewish Americans against each other. The Muslim community and the Jewish community are being othered and made into the boogeyman by this administration," she added.
Tlaib said of her grandmother, who subsequently cursed Trump: "She said I'm her dream manifested, I'm her free bird, so why would I come back and be caged and bow down?"
"We have a responsibility to conduct oversight over our government's foreign policy and what happens with the millions of dollars we send in aid," Omar concluded.
"We cannot let Trump and Netanyahu succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us. So I call on all of you to go. The occupation is real."
2020 challenger Elizabeth Warren has apologised to the Native American community for any “harm I have caused” after overstating her claim to shared ancestry, a point on which Trump has repeatedly ridiculed her with the racist nickname "Pochahontas".
A DNA test found that she was in fact only between 1/64 and 1/1028 Native American.
Lily Puckett has more.
Trump was putting in the calls to fellow world leaders yesterday, talking post-Brexit trade with Boris Johnson and attempting to mediate between India's Narendra Modi and Imran Khan of Pakistan.
Some analysis on Trump's scathing insults towards his former employees like Scaramucci courtesy of Phil Thomas, from "dumb as a rock" to "crazed crying lowlife".
New York Republican congressman Pete King has won praise for being the first to cross the aisle to call for the banning of assault weapons in the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
"They are weapons of mass slaughter," he said. "I don't see any need for them in every day society."
Here's Andy Gregory with more.
Eric Trump has announced the birth of his new daughter with a typically odd turn of phrase. "We love you already!"
What, you were reserving judgement? Hedging your bets in case she turned out to be a brat?
Speaking of Eric, he was busy on Instagram last night while his poor wife was giving birth.
No picture of their infant daughter yet or any update on the mother and child's progress but there is this, which appears to be the origin of his father's Greenland joke, only in the son's case, he appears to be offering the prospect of a new Trump Tower looming over the territory as a semi-serious proposition.
It's worth repeating here how flagrant a flaunting of conflict of interest concerns this is.
(Eric Trump/Instagram)
2020 outsider Marianne Williamson has greatly annoyed Fox News by suggesting she would remove a portrait of seventh president Andrew Jackson from the Oval Office over his treatment of Native Americans if she were to be president.
On CNN, historian Timothy Naftali comments: "I don't think Trump knows a darn thing about Andrew Jackson."
Joe Biden is back out in front of the Democratic 2020 field, according to a new CNN poll.
This profile of The Epoch Times, the biggest pro-Trump advertising spender on Facebook, is extraordinary and well worth your time.
The company is run by an anti-medicine religious sect who push the QAnon conspiracy theory and “believe that Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the Communist Party”.
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