Biden says Trump’s claim of rigged trial is ‘dangerous’ and ‘reckless’ in White House speech – live | Donald Trump trials

Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, has died at age 86

Former first lady Michelle Obama has shared a tribute to her mother, which includes details of the time she spent living in the White House, as an informal first grandmother to the Obama children.

Among the details in the Obama family’s tribute to her:

The trappings and glamour of the White House were never a great fit for Marian Robinson. “Just show me how to work the washing machine and I’m good,” she’d say. Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bedroom with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument. The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope. Over those eight years, she made great friends with the ushers and butlers, the folks who make the White House a home. She’d often sneak outside the gates to buy greeting cards at CVS, and sometimes another customer might recognize her. “You look like Michelle’s mother,” they’d say. She’d smile and reply, “Oh, I get that a lot.”

Broadcasters group rescinds award after De Niro’s stark criticism of Trump

Film actor Robert De Niro was scheduled to accept a leadership award from the National Association of Broadcasters, but the group has rescinded the award after the celebrity spoke out against Donald Trump outside his criminal trial in New York this week, the Hill and the Huffington Post report.

The National Association of Broadcasters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the group told The Hill on Thursday that their event was “proudly bipartisan” and said: “While we strongly support the right of every American to exercise free speech and participate in civic engagement, it is clear that Mr. De Niro’s recent high-profile activities will create a distraction from the philanthropic work that we were hoping to recognize. To maintain the focus on service of the award winners, Mr. De Niro will no longer be attending the event.”

In a statement to the Hill, De Niro did not protest the decision, and said he continued to appreciate the group.

“I support the work of the NAB Leadership Foundation and would like to express my appreciation and gratitude for what the Foundation has done and will continue to do for the good of us all, and I wish them well for their continued good work,” the Hill reported him as saying in the statement.

Will Trump’s criminal conviction renew efforts to remove his public tributes?

On Thursday, a Los Angeles-based photographer posted an image of the star honoring Trump on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Efforts to permanently remove Trump’s star have gathered force in recent years, even as Los Angeles officials have waffled and disputed who has the power to remove any of the stars, many of which pay tribute to celebrities who were not very nice men.

The New York Times reports that the push to rename New York’s Donald J Trump state park may also gain new force after the former president’s conviction.

On pro-Trump websites, calls for violence, riots and revolution

Enraged by Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, his supporters flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution, Reuters reports, based on its review of three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.

Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.

“Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win. “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,” the post said in reference to undocumented immigrants.

On Gateway Pundit, one poster suggested shooting liberals after the verdict. “Time to start capping some leftys,” said the post. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”

As Reuters notes, these kinds of threats are not new, or limited to this single case:

As he campaigns for a second White House term, Trump has baselessly cast the judges and prosecutors in his trials as corrupt tools of the Biden administration, intent on sabotaging his White House bid. His loyalists have responded with a campaign of threats and intimidation targeting judges and court officials.

My colleague Gloria Oladipo had more earlier today on threats against Judge Merchan in particular:

Callum Jones

It’s a historic criminal conviction. And you’re getting fundraising emails about it.

In an election year, it seems there is no event, no matter how small or how monumental, that cannot be stuffed into the maw of campaign email strategy and emerge as a plea for cash.

The New York Times reports that the California governor Gavin Newsom sent out fundraising appeals to Biden supporters today in response to the Trump campaign’s announcement that it had raised $34.8m in small-dollar donations following the former president’s conviction on felony business fraud charges.

“We cannot risk falling behind,” Newsom wrote.

Fact-checking Trump’s defiant post-conviction rant

Catching up on today’s Trump news? I’ll be sharing key takeaways from the day.

Donald Trump delivered a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the atrium of Trump Tower, a day after he was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial, my colleague Léonie Chao-Fong reports.

Here are some key fact-checks of his claims:

Video: ‘It’s time for this war to end’ Biden says as he presents new Gaza plan

Joe Biden has urged Hamas to accept a new peace deal he said Israel has put on the table, offering a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in return for the release of all hostages and the long-term reconstruction of the shattered coastal strip.

“It’s time for this war to end … for the day after to begin,” Biden said, outlining the framework of a three-phase agreement, which he said had been put on the table for the Israeli government.

Read the full story:

Trump supporters post photos of upside down American flags in protest of conviction

The Associated Press and Reuters have reports on the upside-down flags popping up outside homes and businesses, and on social media, as Trump supporters protest his conviction. The Associated Press reports:

After Donald Trump’s historic guilty verdict, a steady flow of images showing upside-down American flags has appeared on social media as his supporters and right-wing commentators protest his felony conviction.

At least one such flag was spotted Friday outside Trump Tower in New York City as the Republican former president spoke about the trial. Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, and Donald Trump Jr., his eldest son, have been sharing images of inverted flags online.

The upside-down American flag gained wide attention recently after revelations that it was flown outside the Alexandria, Virginia, home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. A flag like that was carried by the rioters while they echoed Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative, and country music singer Jason Aldean were among the prominent Americans to display the inverted flag, Reuters reported, as did the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, a far-right militant group.

DC disciplinary board recommends Rudy Giuliani lose his law license for challenging election results

This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live politics coverage from Los Angeles.

While Trump continues to rail against his criminal conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, his longtime ally Rudy Giuliani is facing professional consequences: the potential loss of his law license, Reuters reports:

Rudy Giuliani should be stripped of his law license for his work on a failed lawsuit challenging former President Donald Trump’s 2020 U.S. election loss in Pennsylvania, a Washington, D.C. disciplinary board recommended on Friday.

Giuliani, formerly Trump’s personal lawyer and before that a top Manhattan federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City, tried “to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters without the slightest factual basis for doing so,” the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility said in its 63-page report.

In an interview earlier in the day, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, called on the supreme court to intervene in Donald Trump’s business fraud conviction.

“I do believe the supreme court should step in,” Johnson, an ally of Trump, said in an interview with Fox News. “Obviously, this is totally unprecedented, and it’s dangerous to our system.”

The comment comes at a sensitive time for the court, which is currently weighing whether Trump is immune from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In oral arguments last month, some conservative justices appeared open to at least partially accepting his argument, which could have the effect of delaying his trial until after the election.

Meanwhile, Democrats are calling on conservative justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from the case, after rightwing flags were discovered to have flown at two of his houses. Alito has declined their demands. Here’s more about that: