Donald trump news today: Former president nearly fired Ivanka and Jared via tweet, claims new book

When then-President Donald Trump visited Japan in 2019 on a state visit, rumours began swirling that he’d requested that the USS John S McCain be “out of sight” so as not to upset Mr Trump, who had a pugilistic relationship with the Arizona Senator until his death in 2018.

“I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t involved. I would not have done that,” the 45th president told reporters outside the White House at the time the reports began to emerge.

Late Wednesday night, investigative reporter Jason Leopold revealed a Freedom of Information Act request that he’d received, made three years earlier, which provided the receipts to show that the USS John S McCain had in fact been requested to be moved out of sight during the one-term president’s visit to the Asian nation.

“Remember when Trump took a trip to Japan back in 2019 and reports surfaced that the WH requested the move the USS John McCain out of view so it wouldn’t upset Trump? Well, I #FOIA‘d the military for docs about this & 3 yrs later they just arrived,” he tweeted.

In the largely redacted emails, which exclude the names of the senders and receivers of most of the correspondence, a timeline is laid out that explains what needs to be done before Mr Trump’s arrival in Japan. Three requests in the initial email included are listed, with the third being the cause for some later consternation: “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.”

“I could see that becoming a tweet…,” writes one of the redacted senders in the email chain. “This makes me sad,” wrote another redacted person in the thread.

A Tucker Carlson segment focused on the purported “sabotage” of the Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia and Europe, which the Fox News anchor appeared to blame on the US.

Speaking following reports of leaks in the Nord Stream pipeline on Tuesday, Mr Carlson suggested that the Biden administration was behind the “sabotage” and act of “environmental terrorism” and warned of a Russian counter-response.

“Blow up the Nord Stream pipelines? OK, we’ve entered a new phase, one in which the United States is directly at war with the largest nuclear power in the world,” said the Fox News anchor.

Gino Spocchia has more here:

Former president Donald Trump reportedly tapped Rudy Giuliani to lead his legal team because nobody else wanted to go as far to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s new book about the former president.

One of Donald Trump’s first White House dinners attended by leaders of Congress turned into an awkward affair with the president insulting a group of congressional staffers and clashing publicly with Nancy Pelosi, according to a new book.

John Bowden reports on a bizarre evening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Former President Donald Trump, known for having a flare for the dramatics when it came to dismissing employees in his administration, reportedly came close to firing his own kin via Twitter.

According to an early copy of New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s new book obtained by CNN, the then-president was seconds away from firing off a tweet that would’ve alerted his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, that they were no longer employed in the White House.

Johanna Chisholm reports.

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has taken a five-point dip from his high water mark for the year of 2022, according to a new poll.

The survey, from Politico and Morning Consult, found that 41 per cent of registered voters either strongly approved or somewhat approved of Mr Biden’s job performance.

Former president Donald Trump may have called a Democratic politician while posing as a reporter, a new book claims.

In her book Confidence Man, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman details how Michigan Democratic representative Debbie Dingell received a call from someone claiming to be a reporter, but who she believes was actually Mr Trump.

“When she answered, the man on the other end identified himself as a Washington Post reporter, and said he knew her husband from his investigations in Congress. The name he gave was not one she recognised,” Haberman wrote.

Donald Trump offered up his services to “head up a group” to help international leaders resolve the geopolitical quagmire that has opened after the discovery of gas leaks in major Russian gas pipelines to Europe.

Johanna Chisholm has the details.

Donald Trump was seconds away from firing off a tweet that would’ve alerted his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, that they were no longer employed in the White House, according to an early copy of New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s new book obtained by CNN.

Both Ivanka and Kushner were working as senior White House aides and the former president – who reportedly grew tired of his son-in-law’s presence and described him as sounding “like a child” – only decided not to fire them from the fury of his thumbs because his then-chief of staff John Kelly and then-White House counsel Don McGahn warned against it.

Johanna Chisholm has more.

The House January 6 select committee postponed the hearing scheduled for Wednesday on account of Hurricane Ian, The Independent learned on Tuesday.

A source with knowledge of the panel’s internal deliberations said the postponement of what would be the committee’s ninth public session will allow one of the nine select committee members, Representative Stephanie Murphy, to tend to any matters that arise in her Florida district due to the approaching storm.