WASHINGTON — He hectored Mexico’s leader over border wall funding. Lobbed statistics at the Canadian leader without checking his facts. Cajoled the British prime minister to crack down on protesters. Had a tête-à-tête with Russia’s head of state on a whim. Bonded with France’s prime minister over military parades.
President Donald Trump rarely conducts business-as-usual diplomacy when he interacts with world leaders.
Heading into his expected summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump has a record on the international stage that suggests he’ll seek to charm the dictator and look for an agreement that he can pitch as a win — even if it’s more a triumph of appearance than policy. But never bet against the possibility that he’ll just walk away.
Trump’s unpredictable negotiating style has been on full display in the run-up to the historic June 12 summit in Singapore.
After months spent deriding Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and boasting about the size of his nuclear button, Trump has shifted tone in recent months, suggesting that a friendship was possible and agreeing to an unprecedented meeting.
WASHINGTON — In a break with President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday that he agrees there is no evidence that the FBI planted a “spy” in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in an effort to hurt his chances at the polls.
He also issued a careful warning about Trump’s recent assertion that he has the authority to pardon himself.
“I don’t know the technical answer to that question, but I think obviously the answer is he shouldn’t and no one is above the law,” Ryan told reporters on Wednesday.
The comments come after Trump insisted in a series of angry tweets last month that the agency planted a spy “to help Crooked Hillary win,” referring to his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
There is a growing sense that Republicans are uncomfortable with those statements. Ryan, R-Wisc., is one of three congressional Republicans who have now contradicted Trump on the spying matter, including House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C.
LAS VEGAS — Screams and pleas for help, descriptions of people falling amid rapid gunfire, and breathless questions about what to do next emerged Wednesday in 911 audio made public by Las Vegas police eight months after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
“Shots fired! Shots fired! Hurry!” a woman screams, crying as a dispatcher asks where she is and the call disconnects. The dispatcher calls back and another woman answers.
“Machine guns are being fired into the Route 91 festival,” she says. “It’s coming from above, I would assume from the Mandalay Bay side over by the Luxor.”
In addition to the 518 audio calls, police released video from a camera atop the Mandalay Bay resort that provided a bird’s-eye view of the country music festival where 58 people died and hundreds were injured on Oct. 1.
The gunfire came from 32nd-floor windows into a crowd of 22,000 people at the Route 91 Harvest Festival across Las Vegas Boulevard.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A just-released video interview with a campus security monitor at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School provides new details that may prompt another round of what-if questions about the Valentine’s Day shooting that killed 17 people.
The video released by Broward County prosecutors Tuesday was recorded shortly after the shooting. In it, Andrew Medina told detectives he saw Nikolas Cruz get out of an Uber with a large bag and make “a beeline” toward the freshman building, moments before it became a killing scene.
Medina told detectives that he recognized Cruz, wearing a backpack and carrying a duffel bag, as a troubled former student and immediately radioed another unarmed security monitor to “keep your eyes open.” That monitor entered the other side of the building, and then hid in a janitor’s closet when shots rang out, Medina said.
Neither monitor was armed with anything but a radio. The Broward School District announced Wednesday that Medina and the other monitor have been reassigned from Stoneman Douglas while their actions are reviewed.
Following the shooting at the school in Parkland, many politicians including President Donald Trump have said more trained armed personnel should be stationed at schools to protect students.
WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt laughed off questions Wednesday about whether he used his office to try to help his wife get a “business opportunity” with Chick-fil-A, while a close aide abruptly resigned amid new ethics allegations against her boss.
Pruitt said in a statement that his scheduling director, Millan Hupp, 26, had resigned. It came two days after Democratic lawmakers made public her testimony to a House oversight panel that Pruitt had her do personal errands for him, including inquiring about buying a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel.
Last year, Pruitt also directed Hupp’s younger sister to reach out to a senior executive at Chick-fil-A to inquire about a “business opportunity.” At the time, Sydney Hupp, 25, was also working in Pruitt’s office as an EPA scheduler.
That business opportunity turned out to be Pruitt’s desire to acquire a fast-food franchise for his wife.
Federal ethics codes prohibit having staffers conduct personal errands and bar officials from using their position for private gain.
From Associated Press