Showing posts with label Donald Trump‬. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump‬. Show all posts

PIERS VS TRUMP When is Piers Morgan’s interview with Donald Trump on ITV and does the President apologise for those Britain First retweets?

01:41 Add Comment
When is Piers Morgan’s interview with Donald Trump on TV?
Piers Morgan recorded an interview with President Donald Trump on Thursday January 25, 2018.

Snippets of the interview were previewed on GMB on Friday 26, 2018.

But those wanting to see the chat in full will need to tune in to ITV on Sunday January 28 at 10pm.

Piers announced the interview on his Twitter, saying “*BREAKING NEWS* I will sit down today in Davos with @realDonaldTrump for his 1st International TV interview since becoming President.”
View image on Twitter
*BREAKING NEWS*
I will sit down today in Davos with @realDonaldTrump for his 1st International TV interview since becoming President.
It will air exclusively on ITV, this Sunday night at 10pm.
Where did the interview take place?
The interview was held in Davos, Switzerland, which is a small town in the Swiss Alps.

It’s both a popular ski resort and the location for the World Economic Forum, which Trump is attending.

He will be giving a speech at the event today (January 26).

Trump leaves door open to a reworked Pacific Rim deal

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President Donald Trump signaled on Friday that he would be interested in negotiating a regional trade deal with the members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — if the terms of the agreement were changed to benefit the United States.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump acknowledged the U.S. already has bilateral trade relationships with some of the 11 TPP members, adding: “We would consider negotiating with the rest individually or perhaps as a group if it is in the interests of all.”

Trump on Thursday brought up the idea of rejoining a renegotiated TPP for the first time, telling CNBC in Davos that he would sign onto the deal "if we were able to make a substantially better deal." Together, the two comments marked Trump's first public efforts to entertain the idea of the U.S. entering into some form of regional agreement with the Pacific Rim countries since he withdrew from the original TPP just over a year ago.

But even as he appeared to warm to the idea of multilateral trade in some capacity, Trump also emphasized the need to enforce existing trading rules, and he pledged to reform the global system, saying that "unfair trade undermines us all."

“The United States will no longer turn a blind eye to unfair economic practices, including massive intellectual property theft, industrial subsidies and pervasive state-led economic planning,” he said. That line targeted China in particular, though he refrained from naming any specific countries throughout the speech.

The Trump administration is already in the process of reviewing China’s intellectual property practices. It has launched a series of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases targeting Chinese products, and just last week the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said the U.S. had “erred” in allowing Beijing to enter the World Trade Organization because of its heavy and continued use of state-led policies and practices.

“These and other predatory behaviors are distorting the global markets and harming businesses and workers, not just in the United States but around the globe,” he said.

Trump ignores shouted questions about 'shithole' comments during meeting with African leader

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President Trump, meeting with the chairman of the African Union on Friday, ignored questions from reporters about the president’s reference to nations on the continent as “shithole countries” in a closed-door meeting this month.

Trump’s meeting with Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda and chairman of the African Union, was his first meeting with an African leader since the comments, made in a bipartisan meeting at the Oval Office, were reported Jan. 11.

The African Union had called on Trump to apologize for the remarks. It is unknown whether they were discussed at all during the private portion of Friday’s meeting with Kagame, which took place at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"It's a great honor to be with President Kagame,” Trump told reporters as he sat beside Kagame and several aides, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “We have had tremendous discussions."

Kagame said he had "good discussions" with Trump on the economy and trade. 

Trump called the discussions “absolutely terrific” and congratulated Kagame on his new leadership role with the African Union, which began this month.

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
It was an honor to meet with Republic of Rwanda President Paul Kagame this morning in Davos, Switzerland. Many great discussions!

Trump to push for rural prosperity in Nashville speech

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President Trump is expected to find a loyal audience Monday to hear his speech to the American Farm Bureau Federation's Annual Convention in Nashville, where he will push for rural prosperity and tout solutions proposed by a task force that include increasing internet connectivity for rural America.

A new report from the task force, however, also argues for robust access to global markets, and could put Mr. Trump further at odds with the rural community which has by and large been favorable to trade agreements he has not backed, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

"(The report) is proposing the robust need to be sure that rural American agriculture is very fairly treated and has access to global markets," a senior administration official  from outside the White House told reporters Friday, without saying how exactly that might impact the United States' trade negotiations with Canada and Mexico on NAFTA.

Rural America includes 72 percent of the nation's land and 46 million people, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The task force, chaired by Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, is the product of President Trump's April 2017 executive order to establish such a body to examine the challenges faced by this group of Americans.

Trade is a top concern.

"Based on fair trade principles, international market access must be aggressively pursued and supported," the report argues. "American agriculture needs and deserves policies that support and build on this success -- by opening markets abroad; by ensuring fair and science-based regulatory treatment for American products of all kinds; and by implementing strong enforcement policies that hold trading partners to their commitments."

President Trump has disparaged various trade agreements in the past that he does not feel put "America first," and therefore leave the American worker behind. Just days into his presidency, Mr. Trump formally withdrew the United States from the Transpacific Partnership -- a trade deal with 11 other countries that he often described as a job killer.  As recently as August 23, 2017, the president said NAFTA was "one of the worst deals anybody in history has ever entered into."

It remains unclear whether the United States will pull out of the agreement altogether, but that is something President Trump has publicly threatened in the past.

"Trade will be on the mind of folks in the room on Monday, and I think you'll hear the President touch upon that," a senior administration official said. "I think the takeaway is that what we have said all along, throughout the administration with regard to trade, is that this president wants to end the day with agreements and with a standard that is more efficient for markets, that is less distorted, and that gives not only our farmers but our manufacturers and others that participate in the trade economy a fair platform." 

"If we're able to do that, regardless of what strategies the president employs to get there -- at the end of the day, if those three things happen, then the first person to benefit from that, in my view, is going to be the American farmer," the official added.

The task force report also looks at other ways to boost prosperity in rural America and focuses on five areas: e-connectivity for rural America, improving quality of life, supporting a rural workforce, harnessing technological innovation, and economic development. 

Perdue is also slated to address the convention. He is expected to praise President Trump for his "relentless commitment" to helping rural Americans, and discuss how the report was developed, according to an administration official familiar with his remarks.

Trump Bannon row: White House lawyers threaten former aide

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US President Donald Trump's lawyers have written to his former strategist Steve Bannon, saying he has violated a non-disclosure agreement.


The cease-and-desist notice accuses Mr Bannon of defaming the president in speaking to author Michael Wolff.

Wolff's forthcoming tell-all book describes the president as being unprepared for the job.

Mr Trump responded by saying Mr Bannon had "lost his mind" after losing his White House position.

His lawyers said Mr Bannon had broken his employment agreement by speaking to Wolff about Mr Trump and his family, "disclosing confidential information" and "making disparaging statements and in some cases outright defamatory statements to Mr Wolff about Mr Trump, his family members, and the Company".

On his radio show on Wednesday, Mr Bannon responded to the president's criticism by saying he was a "great man".

"You know, I support him day in and day out," he said on the station run by right-wing Breitbart News, which he heads.

The book is reportedly based on more than 200 interviews.

Trump-Bannon: A knife fight with consequences
Who is author of explosive Trump book?
On Thursday, the Hollywood Reporter published Wolff's behind-the-scenes account. He concluded that everyone he spoke to was in agreement in their view on Mr Trump: "They all - 100 percent - came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job".

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House makes many explosive claims, including that:

Mr Bannon thought a meeting between Donald Trump Jr and a group of Russians was "treasonous"
The Trump team was shocked and horrified by his election win
His wife, Melania, was in tears on election night
Mr Trump was angry that A-list stars had snubbed his inauguration
The new president "found the White House to be vexing and even a little scary"
His daughter, Ivanka, had a plan with her husband, Jared Kushner, that she would be "the first woman president"
Ivanka Trump mocked her dad's "comb-over" hairstyle and "often described the mechanics behind it to friends"
10 explosive claims from new Trump book

It also alleges that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told Mr Trump during a meeting last February that the British intelligence services may have been spying on him and his campaign, according to a report in The Times newspaper.

The Times says Mr Blair was hoping to get a job advising Mr Trump on the Middle East.

Mr Blair told the BBC Today programme the story was "complete fabrication, from beginning to end". He said he had met Mr Kushner and discussed the Middle East peace process with him but denied angling for work.

In March 2017, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer told journalists UK intelligence services could have been involved in an alleged spying operation on Trump Tower in New York. GCHQ said the allegation was "nonsense".

Who is Michael Wolff?
The 64-year-old writer is a former columnist for New York magazine and Vanity Fair. He also wrote a biography of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

According to New York magazine, which first published the extracts, Wolff was able to exploit the Trump administration's political inexperience to gain an unusual amount of insight.

"There were no ground rules placed on his access, and he was required to make no promises about how he would report on what he witnessed," it says.

Wolff said he was able to take up "something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing" following the president's inauguration.

However, some of the US media are questioning the veracity of some of the stories. The Washington Post said he was a "provocateur and media polemicist", and his reporting had been questioned before.

How has the Trump administration defended itself?
"Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency," Mr Trump said in a statement on Wednesday.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders dismissed the book as a "trashy tabloid fiction" that she said was "filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House".


A spokesperson for Melania Trump said the First Lady had encouraged her husband's presidential bid. "She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did," she said on Wednesday.

What's being said in Bannon's defence?
Aside from the radio comment, Mr Bannon has not spoken publicly about the book, the president's comments or the legal action.

How Trump cooled on Bannon
However, in an interview with BBC Newsnight, Raheem Kassam - UK editor of Breitbart News - said the Wolff interviews could have been taken out of context.

He also said Mr Bannon was well-placed to comment on the Russia controversy, having served in the US Navy.

"He understands what the geopolitical threat is..." said Mr Kassam. "So when he remarks that these people shouldn't probably have been in Trump Tower taking meetings with senior campaign staff without lawyers in the room, I would say that is a fair thing to say."