Tag Archives: Trump

MNA International Desk: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan are “world-class chess players” and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden won’t be able to deal with them if he wins the election, US President Donald Trump told his supporters on Monday. “Listen, one thing I’ve learned: Putin, President Xi of China, Kim Jong Un and Erdogan of Turkey are world-class chess players… They are all dreaming of Joe Biden [as a president],” Trump said, noting that Biden would not be able to work with them as an equal partner because he wasn’t very ...

MNA International Desk: President Donald Trump on Wednesday tempered days of angry rhetoric and suggested Iran was “standing down” after it fired missiles at US forces in Iraq, as both sides looked to defuse a crisis over the US killing of an Iranian general. Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to hit back after Iran’s attack on military bases housing US troops in Iraq, itself an act of retaliation for the January 03 US strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. Trump said no Americans were hurt in the overnight attacks. The Pentagon said Iran had launched ...

MNA International Desk: The Taliban met with a US envoy in the Pakistani capital, a Taliban official said Saturday, the first such encounter since President Donald Trump announced a month ago that a seemingly imminent peace deal to end Afghanistan’s 18-year war was dead. The official offered few details of Friday’s meeting between peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban delegation led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the movement that was ousted in 2001 by the US-led coalition. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the news media. US ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump on Monday offered an olive branch to China after days of intense feuding over trade and opened the door to diplomacy on Iran, easing tension on the last day of a strained G7 summit. The leaders of the world’s major industrialized nations, meeting in the French coastal resort of Biarritz, look set to reach an agreement on how to help fight the Amazon forest fires and try to repair the devastation. While they are not expected to leave with a more comprehensive set of agreements or even a joint communique, Trump and his ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump and top White House officials dismissed concerns that economic growth may be faltering, saying on Sunday (local time) they saw little risk of recession despite a volatile week on global bond markets, and insisting their trade war with China was doing no damage to the United States. “We’re doing tremendously well, our consumers are rich, I gave a tremendous tax cut, and they’re loaded up with money,” Trump said on Sunday. But he was less optimistic than his aides on striking a trade deal with China, saying that while he believed China was ...

MNA International Desk: The US Supreme Court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a victory by letting his administration redirect $2.5 billion in money approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the US-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding. The conservative-majority court on a 5-4 vote with the court’s liberals in dissent blocked in full a ruling by a federal judge in California barring the Republican president from spending the money on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorise the funds to be spent on the wall project fiercely opposed by ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump stepped up his vilification of four liberal lawmakers as un-American at a raucous rally on Wednesday, underscoring that the attacks will form a key part of his strategy for winning re-election in 2020. Despite criticism from Democrats that his comments about the four minority congresswomen are racist, Trump went on an extended diatribe about the lawmakers, saying they were welcome to leave the country if they did not like his policies on issues such as immigration and defending Israel. “So these Congresswomen, their comments are helping to fuel the rise of a dangerous, ...

MNA International Desk: Starkly injecting race into his criticism of liberal Democrats, President Donald Trump said four congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the U.S. His attack drew a searing condemnation from Democrats who labelled the remarks racist and breathtakingly divisive, according to AP. Following a familiar script, Republicans remained largely silent after Trump’s Sunday morning broadsides against the four women. But the president’s nativist tweets caused Democrats to set aside their internal rifts ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to obliterate parts of Iran if it attacked “anything American,” in a new war of words with Iran which condemned fresh US sanctions on Tehran as “mentally retarded.” But Trump later left the door open for talks, saying that Iran should speak to the United States “peaceably” to ease tensions and potentially lift US economic sanctions. The US president on Monday signed an executive order imposing additional, largely symbolic, sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior figures, with punitive measures against Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump renewed his verbal attacks on London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Monday, calling him a “stone-cold loser” after the mayor criticized the British government’s decision to offer a state visit to Trump, reports Reuters. “@SadiqKhan, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom,” Trump said on Twitter shortly before Air Force One landed at Stansted Airport near London. “He is a stone cold loser who should focus ...

MNA International Desk: President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to protect US computer networks from “foreign adversaries”. He signed an executive order which effectively bars US companies from using foreign telecoms believed to pose national security risks. The order does not name any company, but is believed to target Huawei, reports BBC. The Chinese tech giant said restricting its business in the US would only hurt American consumers and companies. Several countries, led by the US, have raised concerns in recent months that Huawei products could be used by China for surveillance, allegations the company has vehemently denied. ...

MNA International Desk: The US President Donald Trump celebrated the month of Ramadan Monday evening as a time when people join forces in “pursuit of hope, tolerance and peace.” Trump held an iftar dinner for ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps representing Muslim-majority nations. The dinner breaks the daylong fast that Muslims follow during Ramadan. They have been held regularly at the White House since the Clinton administration as a form of outreach to the Muslim world. Trump said it’s been a rough period recently for people of all faiths. He cited attacks on Muslims in New Zealand, Christians ...

MNA International Desk: David Malpass, US President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the World Bank, won unanimous approval from the institution’s executive board on Friday, continuing the 73-year tradition of an American running the world’s largest development lender. The bank said that Malpass, the US Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs, will start his new role on Tuesday as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings get underway. Malpass, a former Bear Stearns and Co chief economist who advised Trump’s 2016 election campaign, was the sole candidate. Previous World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, who left in January to ...

MNA International Desk: Retired General John Abizaid, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, defended the US-Saudi relationship on Wednesday as lawmakers accused the kingdom of a litany of misdeeds and criticised its crown prince as going “full gangster.” Senators at Abizaid’s confirmation hearing including Trump’s fellow Republicans as well as Democrats condemned the kingdom’s conduct in the civil war in Yemen, heavy-handed diplomacy and rights abuses. Among those were the torturing of women’s activists and a US citizen and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Abizaid called for accountability for the murder of Khashoggi, a ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump said on Monday he intends to end India’s preferential trade treatment under a programme that allows $5.6 billion worth of Indian exports to enter the United States duty free, reports Reuters. Trump, who has vowed to reduce US trade deficits, has repeatedly called out India for its high tariffs. “I am taking this step because, after intensive engagement between the United States and the Government of India, I have determined that India has not assured the United States that it will provide equitable and reasonable access to the markets of India,” Trump said ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Hanoi on Wednesday for their second summit, with the US president rejecting any suggestion he was walking back on US demands for North Korea’s denuclearisation. Kim and Trump shook hands and smiled briefly in front of a row of their countries’ flags at the Metropole hotel in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, reports Reuters. Trump told reporters he thought the talks would be very successful, and asked if he was “walking back” on denuclearisation, said “no”. At their historic first summit in Singapore last June, ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un both reached Vietnam on Tuesday, the eve of their second summit at which they will tackle how to implement a North Korean pledge to give up its nuclear weapons. Trump flew into the capital Hanoi on Air Force One, touching down just before 9 p.m. (1400 GMT), reports Reuters. Kim arrived by train early in the day after a three-day, 3,000 km (1,850 mile) journey from his capital, Pyongyang, through China. He completed the last stretch from a border station to Hanoi by car. The two ...

MNA International Desk: President Donald Trump has said he would delay an increase in US tariffs on Chinese goods thanks to “productive” trade talks and that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping would meet to seal a deal if progress continued. Sunday’s announcement was the clearest sign yet that China and the United States are closing in on a deal to end a months-long trade war that has slowed global growth and disrupted markets. Trump had planned to raise tariffs to 25 per cent from 10 per cent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports into the United States if ...

MNA International Desk: Sixteen US states sued President Donald Trump’s administration Monday over his decision to declare a national emergency to fund a wall on the southern border with Mexico, saying the move violated the constitution. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California, said the president’s order was contrary to the Presentment Clause that outlines legislative procedures and the Appropriations Clause, which defines Congress as the final arbiter of public funds. The move had been previously announced by Xavier Becerra the attorney general of California who said his state and others had legal standing because they risked losing ...

MNA International Desk: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has warned Donald Trump he will leave the White House “stained with blood” if he insists on pursuing what he called a “dirty” imperialist conspiracy to overthrow him. “Stop. Stop, Trump! Hold it right there! You are making mistakes that will leave your hands covered in blood and you will leave the presidency stained with blood,” Maduro warned during a combative interview with the Spanish journalist Jordi Évole. “Why would you want a repeat of Vietnam?” He also rejected European calls for elections, saying: “We don’t accept ultimatums from anyone. I refuse to ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump has set out new plans on his Mexican wall project to try to end a partial government shutdown lasting more than four weeks. One of his “compromises” was on so-called Dreamers – who entered the US illegally when young. He still wants $5.7bn (£4.5bn) to fund the wall. Democrats have refused to fund it and ahead of the speech had already rejected the expected concessions. The shutdown, the longest in history, has affected 800,000 federal workers. The president started by saying the US had a proud history of welcoming migrants, but that the ...

MNA International Desk: A Belarusian model who claimed last year that she had evidence of Russian interference in the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president was arrested immediately upon her arrival in Moscow on Thursday following deportation from Thailand. Moscow police said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that Anastasia Vashukevich was detained in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on charges of inducement to prostitution along with three people deported alongside her. Vashukevich, who has been in a Thai prison since February last year, was given a suspended sentenced on Tuesday and ordered to be deported after she pleaded ...

MNA International Desk: President Donald Trump threatened Turkey with economic devastation if it attacks a US-allied Kurdish militia in Syria, weakening the Turkish lira and prompting sharp criticism from Ankara on Monday. Relations between the two NATO allies have been strained over US backing for the Kurdish YPG, which Turkey views as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that is waging a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil. A diplomatic crisis last year, when Trump imposed sanctions on two of President Tayyip Erdogan’s ministers and raised tariffs on Turkish metal exports, helped push the Turkish lira to a ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump stormed out of talks with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday over funding for a border wall with Mexico and reopening the government, complaining the meeting at the White House was “a total waste of time.” On the 19th day of a partial government shutdown caused by the dispute over the wall, a short meeting that included Trump, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer ended in acrimony with no sign of a resolution. “Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time,” Trump wrote ...

MNA International Desk: Pakistan reacted angrily Monday to criticism by President Donald Trump that the country had not done enough in return for years of US military aid and that the government had harboured Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida. In an interview with “Fox News Sunday” this weekend, Trump defended his decision early this year to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid to Pakistan. “I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us,” he said. Trump also alleged that the Pakistani government had known bin Laden ...

MNA International Desk: Donald Trump has defended Saudi Arabia against mounting international condemnation of the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, warning against a rush to judgment as his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, headed to Turkey to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The US president in an interview with the Associated Press, compared the case of Khashoggi – whom Turkish officials say was murdered in the Saudis’ Istanbul consulate – to allegations of sexual assault levelled against the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing. “I think we have to find out what happened first,” Trump said. “Here ...

MNA International Desk: The United States said it was ready to recommence discussion with North Korea after Pyongyang pledged on Wednesday to take to pieces its key missile facilities and suggested it would close its main Yongbyon nuclear complex if Washington took indeterminate actions. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he had invited North Korea’s foreign minister to meet in New York next week, with the plan of completing its denuclearization by January 2021, after a Pyongyang summit between the leaders of the two Koreas. The United States appeared keen to seize on commitments by North Korean leader Kim ...