WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is sticking with a blue-and-white color scheme for the exterior of the replacement Air Force One aircraft, the first of which is expected to be delivered in four years.
The Air Force said late Friday that the light blue on the new model of the modified 747s that transport the president will be a little bit deeper and more modern in tone than the robin’s egg blue on the versions of the aircraft currently in use.
Boeing is modifying two of its 747-800 aircraft that will use the Air Force One call sign when the president is aboard. They will replace the existing fleet of two aging Boeing 747-200 aircraft the president currently uses.
The choice of the plane’s exterior colors follows an earlier decision by the administration to scrap a red-white-and-blue design favored by Donald Trump, Biden’s immediate predecessor. An Air Force review had suggested the darker colors would increase costs and delay delivery of the new jumbo jets.
In 2018, Trump directed that the new jets shed the iconic Kennedy-era blue-and-white design for a white-and-navy color scheme. The top half of the plane would have been white and the bottom, including the belly, would have been dark blue. A streak of dark red would have run from the cockpit to the tail. The coloring was almost identical to the exterior of Trump’s personal plane.
Formally known as the VC-25B, the new aircraft will replace the current fleet, known as VC-25A, which the Air Force said face capability gaps, rising maintenance costs and “parts obsolescence.” Modifications to the successor aircraft will include electrical power upgrades, a medical facility and a self-defense system, the Air Force said.
Delivery of the first of the new airplanes is projected for 2027, followed by the second aircraft in 2028, the Air Force said.
The current generation of planes first carried President George H.W. Bush, who served from 1989-1993.
WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — House lawmakers are expected to vote Tuesday on a bill that would reinstate the “net neutrality” rules recently deleted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) but that could be the end of the line for the legislation.
Net neutrality requires that all content gets equal treatment and prevents internet service providers from slowing down some services and speeding up others.
Democratic lawmakers say the bill will “save the internet” while the FCC says the internet is doing just fine without regulation.
Congressman Mike Doyle, D-Pennsylvania, says for consumers, the internet is like the “wild west right now” after the Trump administration repealed net neutrality rules and didn’t replace them with anything.
“There’s nothing to stop an ISP from behaving badly,” Doyle said.
Doyle is the lead sponsor of the Save the Internet Act, which would restore protections for consumers online.
“No blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization, but more importantly, we put a cop on the beat for future behavior that we don’t even know about yet,” he said. “No unjust, unreasonable or discriminatory behavior.”
Doyle says that’s what consumers want.
“They were horrified when the rules were thrown out,” Doyle added. “They didn’t want to go back to the days where ISP’s could do anything they wanted and consumers really had little recourse, so they wanted some rules restored.”
Congressman Joe Morelle, D-New York, says 86 percent of Americans oppose the FCC’s rollback of net neutrality protections. He said it harms “the ability of every American to experience the internet in the same way.”
House Republicans say the internet doesn’t need government regulation and Congress should just stay out of the way.
“If it is in need of saving, it’s certainly not in need of saving from this institution,” Congressman Rob Woodall, R-Georgia, said. “I oppose the legislation. I hope my other colleagues will as well.”
President Trump has already threatened to veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (NEXSTAR) — Federal lawmakers are making a push to prevent major cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay restoration program.
President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget proposal threatens to cut the program’s funding by 90 percent, which legislators and environmental advocates say would threaten recent progress to improve the bay’s health.
“We’re seeing improvements,” Dr. Alison Prost said of the bay. “The dead zone’s getting smaller, the bay grasses are coming back.”
Prost, the executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, says years of work could be put at risk if the proposed cuts take effect.
“Devastating to the communities working hard,” she added. “You have regulatory rollbacks to programs – fundamental clean water act programs – that help with the bay’s recovery, that help with the clean air.”
This is not the first time Trump has sought to cut the program’s funding. Congress has stepped in and restored it for the past couple of years.
Funding for the bay program was $73 million this fiscal year but the administration’s proposed cuts would water that down to just $7.3 million.
“It could be catastrophic not having the federal government as part of this,” Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, said.
Cardin and Congressman Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, said that while the bay’s health is improving, the work is far from finished.
“We’re talking about the largest estuary in North America,” Raskin said. “It’s the lifeblood of our state.”
Some lawmakers are encouraged that Congress won’t allow the budget cuts. They say the bay has always received support from both parties.
“It’s iconic in Maryland, and it’s a national treasure,” Cardin added.
However, the Trump administration says the federal government needs to spend its money elsewhere.
“There’s many different regional environmental programs that we’re encouraging states and localities to pick up the costs for,” acting White House Budget Director Russ Vought explained.
Vought said that Maryland and Virginia benefit most from the bay, so the states should foot the bill to keep it clean.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey says he thinks it’s possible the Russians have compromising information on President Donald Trump and that there is “some evidence of obstruction of justice” in the president’s actions. That included Trump’s request to end an FBI investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In an ABC News interview that aired Sunday, Comey acknowledged that it was “stunning” to think that Russia could have damaging information on a president but said he could not discount the possibility.
“It is stunning and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s just — it’s the truth. I cannot say that,” Comey said. “It always struck me and still strikes me as unlikely, and I woulda been able to say with high confidence about any other president I dealt with, but I can’t. It’s possible.”
He also answered “possibly” when asked if the president was attempting to obstruct justice when he cleared the Oval Office of other officials last February and encouraged him to close the investigation into Flynn, who pleaded guilty last December to lying to the FBI and is now cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The interview aired hours after a vitriolic Twitter outburst from the president, who called Comey “slippery,” suggested he should be in jail and labeled him the “the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!”
Trump fired off a series of tweets ahead of Comey’s first interview on the book, which offers his version of the events surrounding his firing as FBI director by Trump and the investigations into Russian election meddling and Hillary Clinton’s email practices.
In an excerpt shown Saturday, Comey said his belief that Clinton would beat Trump in the 2016 presidential election was a factor in his decision to disclose the investigation into her emails. Trump seized on that, saying Comey “was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!”
Comey’s disclosure shortly before the election that the FBI had reopened its investigation into her email use enraged Democrats. After Clinton’s loss, many Democrats blamed Comey, and Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects.
Trump on Sunday pushed back again against Comey’s claims that Trump sought his loyalty, saying, “I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies.” He questioned Comey’s intelligence and place in history, writing, “Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!”
He also suggested Comey should be imprisoned, saying, “how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail).” There is no indication Comey is under investigation for doing either.
Asked if the president wanted the Justice Department to investigate Comey, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that she was not aware of a specific request. But, she said, “if they feel there was any wrongdoing, they should certainly look into that just as they do on a number of other topics.”
Comey is embarking on a public rollout of his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” which comes out Tuesday. In the book, Comey compares Trump to a mafia don and calls his leadership of the country “ego driven and about personal loyalty.”
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch pushed back against Comey’s criticism in the book that, early in the Clinton email inquiry, she had instructed him to refer to it as a “matter” rather than an “investigation.” In a statement to The Associated Press on Sunday, Lynch said she was simply following longstanding Justice Department protocol against confirming or denying the existence of an investigation. She also said that Comey never raised any concerns with her regarding the email investigation.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, setting off a scramble at the Justice Department that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. Mueller’s probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey.
Trump has said he fired Comey because of his handling of the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email practices. Trump used the investigation as a cudgel in the campaign and repeatedly said Clinton should be jailed for using a personal email system while serving as secretary of state. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation.
In the interview excerpt released Saturday, Comey said he did not remember “consciously thinking” about the election results as he decided to disclose that the FBI had reopened its investigation into candidate Clinton’s email use. But, he acknowledged, “I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so I’m sure that it was a factor.”
He added: “I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been that she’s going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out.”
The Republican National Committee has helped with the pushback effort against Comey for his book by launching a website and supplying surrogates with talking points that question his credibility.
On Sunday, before the ABC interview aired, Comey tweeted that his book draws on stories from his life and from lessons he has learned from others.
“3 presidents are in my book: 2 help illustrate the values at the heart of ethical leadership; 1 serves as a counterpoint,” he wrote. “I hope folks read the whole thing and find it useful.”
Indiana soybean farmers have expressed concern after China proposed a 25 percent tariff on many United States exports, adding soybeans to the list last week.
The proposal came after the Trump Administration announced plans for billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese imports.
The tariff could cost Indiana soybean farmers — and shoppers.
Jim Douglas owns Douglas farms in Flat Rock, Indiana. For generations, his family has farmed on that land. These days raises pigs and grows corn and soybeans.
“It’s just kind of a thing you love to do,” Douglas said.
But many farmers across the state don’t love the idea of new tariffs or taxes on exported soybeans.
“This is probably one of the most serious issues we’ve seen in the farm economy in my lifetime,” said Jane Ade Stevens, CEO of the Indiana Soybean Alliance.
She said Indiana’s the fourth-largest soybean producer in the United States. Indiana grows about 5.94 million acres of soybeans, which is roughly 321 million bushels of the crop.
Ade Stevens said she worries about the consequences of a potential trade war with China. Sixty percent of United States soybeans are exported worldwide. The 25 percent tariff threatened by China would make U.S. soybeans more expensive for Chinese businesses, leading them to buy soybeans from other countries, including Brazil. American soybean growers would have to market their beans to other countries to make up for the loss of some of the Chinese market.
“We will probably see some farmers go out of business because this is one of the worst economic times for farmers,” Ade Stevens explained.
A surplus of soybeans could cause the price of the crop to drop, leading farmers to grow fewer soybean plants, which could raise prices for consumers, according to the Indiana Soybean Alliance.
“It will affect everybody out there. It will affect consumers; their food prices will go up,” said Ade Stevens.
“We trust the administration can get through this, and we (won’t) have a tariff or trade war,” she said.
That trust is a sentiment Douglas echoes.
“I think we’re all in the camp that it’ll probably get resolved and go away,” Douglas said.
The Alliance said soybeans are used for livestock feed, food products (soybean oil, soy milk and tofu) and industrial applications (plastics, coatings, resins, paints and even biodiesel fuel).
Higher prices. Slower growth. Farmers losing access to their biggest foreign market.
Even President Donald Trump is warning that Americans might have to accept “a little pain” before they enjoy the fruits of his escalating trade fight with China.
On the pain part, if not necessarily on the “little” part, most economists agree with the president: The tariffs the United States and China are preparing to slap on each other’s goods would take an economic toll.
For now, optimists are clinging to tentative signals from the Trump administration that it may be prepared to negotiate with Beijing and avert a trade war.
But Wall Street is getting increasingly nervous. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 572 points Friday after being down as much as 767.
“There are no winners in trade wars,” said Nathan Sheets, chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income. “There are only losers.”
On Thursday, Trump ordered the U.S. trade representative to consider imposing tariffs on up to $100 billion worth of Chinese products. Those duties would come on top of the $50 billion in products the U.S. has already targeted in a dispute over Beijing’s sharp-elbowed drive to supplant America’s technological supremacy.
China has proposed tariffs of $50 billion on U.S. products that will squeeze apple growers in Washington, soybean farmers in Indiana and winemakers in California. And Beijing warned Friday that it will “counterattack with great strength” if the United States ups the ante.
Of course, it may not come to that.
“We’re absolutely willing to negotiate,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday on CNBC, adding, “I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll be able to work this out.”
At the same time, Mnuchin warned, “There is the potential of a trade war.”
Economists are already calculating the potential damage if talks collapse and give way to the biggest trade dispute since World War II.
The dueling tariffs could shave 0.3 percentage points off both U.S. and Chinese annual economic growth, according to estimates by Gregory Daco, head of U.S. economics for the research firm Oxford Economics.
In the United States, Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said the dispute could wipe out half the economic benefits of the tax cut Trump signed into law with great fanfare in December.
“There’s lots of different channels through which this hurts the economy,” Zandi said. “The most obvious is, it raises import prices. If American consumers have to spend more on Chinese imports, they have less to spend on everything else.”
In the first $50 billion in planned tariffs, the Trump administration was careful to limit the impact on American consumers, sticking mostly to industrial products such as robots and engine parts.
But if the administration tries to triple the tariffs, they will be more likely to hit the low-price Chinese products that American households have come to rely on, namely electronics, toys and clothing.
The administration appears to be betting that China will back down because it has more to lose. It sent $375 billion in goods to the U.S. last year, while the United States sent only $130 billion worth of products to China.
But China has other ways to retaliate. It could cancel aircraft orders from Boeing. It could meddle with U.S. supply chains by disrupting shipments from Chinese factories to American companies. Or it could raise U.S. interest rates by selling Treasury bonds or buying fewer of them.
The Chinese appear confident they can withstand more pain than Americans can. In a democracy like the U.S., “if people start to hurt, they’re going to complain,” said Sheets, who was undersecretary for international affairs in the Obama administration Treasury Department.
They’re complaining already.
Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation lobbying group, warned that the dispute has “placed farmers and ranchers in a precarious position.”
“We have bills to pay and debts we must settle, and cannot afford to lose any market, much less one as important as China,” Duvall said.
Last year, the United States sold $12.4 billion in soybeans to China — nearly 60 percent of all U.S. soybean exports.
Trump, who received overwhelming support in rural America in the 2016 presidential election, has directed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue “to implement a plan to protect our farmers and agricultural interests.” But a move to support American farmers could widen the trade dispute.
“Farmers in countries like Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Europe would now find it difficult to compete with newly subsidized U.S. agriculture,” said Chad Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “As a result, they might demand retaliation against U.S. exports or subsidies of their own.”
The United States punished dozens of Russian oligarchs and government officials on Friday with sanctions that took direct aim at President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, as President Donald Trump’s administration tried to show he’s not afraid to take tough action against Moscow.
Seven Russian tycoons, including aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, were targeted, along with 17 officials and a dozen Russian companies, the Treasury Department said. Senior Trump administration officials cast it as part of a concerted, ongoing effort to push back on Putin, emphasizing that since Trump took office last year, the U.S. has punished 189 Russia-related people and entities with sanctions.
Rather than punishing Russia for one specific action, the new sanctions hit back at the Kremlin for its “ongoing and increasingly brazen pattern” of bad behavior, said the officials, who weren’t authorized to comment by name and briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. The officials ticked through a list of complaints about Russia’s actions beyond its borders, including its annexation of Crimea, backing of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, and cyber-hacking.
Above all else, Russia’s attempts to subvert Western democracy prompted the U.S. sanctions, officials said, in a direct nod to concerns that the U.S. president has failed to challenge Putin for alleged interference in the 2016 election that brought Trump to power.
Deripaska, whose business conglomerate controls assets from agriculture to machinery, has been a prominent figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation over his ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The Treasury Department said Deripaska was accused of illegal wiretaps, extortion, racketeering, money laundering and even death threats against business rivals.
On the London Stock Exchange, global depositary receipts of En+, an energy company majority-owned by Deripaska, dropped by 19 percent on news of the sanctions. Deripaska’s conglomerate, Basic Element, said it regretted the sanctions and was analyzing them with its lawyers.
Putin’s government dismissed the sanctions as “absurdity,” arguing that the U.S. was punishing companies that have longstanding business ties to the U.S. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the U.S. was “striking at ordinary Americans” by jeopardizing “thousands of jobs.”
“American democracy is clearly degrading,” the ministry said. “Of course, we will not leave the current and any new anti-Russian attack without a tough response.”
To the dismay of Trump’s critics and of Russia hawks, the president has continued to avoid directly criticizing Putin himself and recently invited the Russian leader to meet with him, possibly at the White House. Yet in recent weeks Trump’s administration has rolled out a series of actions — including several economic and diplomatic steps — to increase pressure on Putin and those presumed to benefit from his power.
“Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have,” Trump said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Yet even as it rolled out the new penalties, Trump’s administration left open the possibility of “a good relationship with Russia” in the future. And at the White House, spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said discussions with Moscow about a Trump-Putin summit would not be called off.
“Not at all,” Sanders said. “We’ll continue.”
Those being punished aren’t necessarily involved in the Russian actions in Syria, Ukraine or elsewhere that have drawn consternation from the West. But officials said the goal was to put pressure on Putin by showing that those who have benefited financially from his position of power are fair game.
The target list includes some who are closely tied to Putin himself, including top-tier officials involved in Kremlin decision-making and heads of the top state-controlled business entities. Yet others on the list are far from the Kremlin’s orbit, including some who long have fallen out of favor or hold technical positions.
Targets include:
—Kirill Shamalov, who is reportedly Putin’s son-in-law, married to his daughter Katerina Tikhonova, although neither Putin nor the Kremlin have acknowledged that she is his daughter.
—Igor Rotenberg, the son of Arkady Rotenberg, a friend of Putin’s since they were teenagers.
—Andrey Kostin, named among government officials, heads the nation’s second-largest bank, VTB, which is controlled by the state.
—Alexei Miller, the longtime head of Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas giant. Both Miller and Kostin are longtime key members of Putin’s team.
A state-owned arms-dealing company, accused by the U.S. of selling to Assad, was also targeted, along with a subsidiary bank. Many other targets were associated with Russia’s energy sector, including parts of Gazprom.
The sanctions freeze any assets that those targeted have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from doing business with them. But the administration said it would give guidance to Americans who may currently have business with them about how to wind down that business and avoid running afoul of the sanctions. Some, but not all, of the individuals sanctioned will also be prohibited from entering the United States.
It was not clear whether any of those hit have significant holdings in the U.S. that could be seized, and if they did previously, they may have already moved their money elsewhere in anticipation of the sanctions. In January, lists of Russian officials and oligarchs were published by the State Department and Treasury. The lists, required under a law passed last year, were informally seen as lists of potential future sanctions targets, even though the public version of the oligarchs list was merely a reprint of Forbes’ list of billionaires in Russia.
The U.S. also has punished Russia for other troubling activity, including its alleged involvement in the poisoning an ex-spy with a military-grade nerve agent in Britain. In tandem with European allies, the Trump administration expelled dozens of Russian diplomats and shut down the Russian consulate in Seattle. And last month, the U.S. targeted 19 Russians and five Russian entities with sanctions in the first use of the new sanctions powers Congress passed last year in response to the election meddling.
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Catherine Lucey in Washington and Vladimir Isachenkov, Nataliya Vasilyeva and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed.
Still angry about the budget deal he signed last week, President Donald Trump has floated the idea of using the Pentagon budget to pay for his long-promised border wall with Mexico, despite the fact that such spending would likely require approval from Congress.
Trump raised the funding plan with House Speaker Paul Ryan at a meeting at the White House last Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the discussion who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
And he has tweeted that building “a great Border Wall” is “all about National Defense” and has called to “Build WALL through M!” — the military.
Departments, however, have limited authority to reprogram funds without congressional approval. Pentagon spokesman Chris Sherwood referred all questions on the wall to the White House, where spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders deflected them, saying she was “not going to get into the specifics of that.”
Trump threw Washington into a tizzy on Friday when he threatened to veto the omnibus spending bill, in part because it didn’t include the $25 billion he’d tried to secure for the wall in a last-minute bargaining spree.
The $1.3 trillion funding package did include $1.6 billion in border wall spending. But much of that money can only be used to repair existing segments, not build new sections. Congress also put restrictions on the types of barriers that can be built.
Trump has tried to justify signing the deal by pointing to the boost in funding it provides for the military. But he nonetheless remains frustrated, according to people familiar with his thinking who weren’t authorized to discuss private conversations and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Trump first publicly floated the idea of having the Pentagon pay for the rest of construction in an obscure tweet that left many confused.
“Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense,” he wrote Sunday. “Build WALL through M!”
He retweeted his message again Monday night.
Some people close to the president have also suggested creating a GoFundMe campaign that Trump could use to raise money from the public to fund construction. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the idea, and it’s unclear whether it has gained any serious traction.
Congress, under the Constitution, has the power to determine federal appropriations, and the administration has little authority to shift funding without congressional approval. The Senate Appropriations Committee was not aware of any authority that would allow the Defense Department to fund the wall without congressional approval, said a GOP aide.
Sanders said Tuesday that Trump would work with the White House counsel to make sure any action taken was within his executive authority. And she insisted the “continuation of building the wall is ongoing and we’re going to continue moving forward in that process.”
Building the wall was one of Trump’s top campaign promises, and the idea that drew the loudest cheers from supporters at his rallies. Trump also insisted he’d make Mexico pay for the construction. But Mexico has made clear it has no intention of doing so.
Trump has also proposed making Mexico pay for the wall indirectly through measures such as increasing visa fees, imposing new tariffs and targeting remittances.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Adult film star Stormy Daniels says she was threatened to keep silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006, telling her story in a highly anticipated interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” broadcast Sunday.
Daniels said she was threatened by an unidentified man in Las Vegas to keep quiet about her alleged relationship with Trump, an incident that she said happened while she was with her young daughter. She said in the interview that she had one encounter of consensual sex with the future president.
“He knows I’m telling the truth,” said Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford. She does not allege that she was coerced in her encounter with Trump, saying, “This is not a ‘Me too.’ I was not a victim.”
The adult film actress provided little new evidence of her alleged 2006 affair with Trump but said she faced intimidation tactics aimed at ensuring her silence in 2011.
Daniels said that in the incident, in a parking lot, the man told her: “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” She said he then looked at her daughter and said, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
Daniels received a $130,000 payment days before the 2016 presidential election for her silence and has sought to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement.
The White House did not immediately comment Sunday on the interview. Trump, through his representatives, has denied the allegations. His attorney, Michael Cohen, has said Trump never had an affair with Daniels. Cohen has said he paid the $130,000 out of his pocket.
Cohen has said neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Daniels and he was not reimbursed for the payment. However, Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti told “60 Minutes” he has documents showing Cohen using his Trump Organization email address in setting up the payment and that the nondisclosure agreement was sent by FedEx to Cohen at his Trump Organization office in Trump Tower.
In the interview, Daniels described a sexual encounter with Trump that began with him talking about himself and showing her an issue of a magazine with his picture on the cover. She said she asked, “Does this … does this normally work for you?” He was taken aback, she says. “And I was like, ‘Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it.'” She says she then ordered him to drop his pants and, in a playful manner, “I just gave him a couple swats.”
She said they talked some more, although he quit talking about himself, and that she became more comfortable.
“He was like, ‘Wow, you – you are special. You remind me of my daughter.’ You know – he was like, ‘You’re smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you.'”
She said after dinner in Trump’s room, they had sex. He didn’t use a condom, she said, and she didn’t ask him to. Afterward, he asked to see her again, she said.
Daniels said that before they had sex Trump had broached the idea of her being a contestant on “The Apprentice,” and she likened it to a “business opportunity.” She said he called her several times and would ask if they could get together again and that he had an update for her. She said she felt that he was dangling the opportunity to keep her coming back.
“Of course. I mean, I’m not blind. But at the same time, maybe it’ll work out, you know?” Daniels said.
In July 2007, a year after they had met, Daniels said Trump asked to meet with her privately at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. She said they did not have sex, but he wanted to.
Daniels reported that Trump called her the following month to say he had not been able to get her a spot on his TV show. She said they never met again.
Daniels was asked why she’s talking now: “Because it was very important to me to be able to defend myself,” she said.
Daniels said she was fine saying nothing at all. “But I’m not OK with being made out to be a liar, or people thinking that I did this for money and people are like, ‘Oh, you’re an opportunist. You’re taking advantage of this.’ Yes, I’m getting more job offers now, but tell me one person who would turn down a job offer making more than they’ve been making, doing the same thing that they’ve always done?”
“60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper noted during the interview that Melania Trump had recently given birth just a few months before. “Did he mention his wife or child at all in this?” Cooper said. “
“I asked. And he brushed it aside, said, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, you know, don’t worry about that. We don’t even, we have separate rooms and stuff'” Daniels said.
The CBS interview came as Trump deals with allegations about his sexual exploits long before he ran for president.
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal told Cooper in a CNN interview broadcast Thursday that her affair with Trump began at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2006. McDougal said she ended the relationship in 2007 out of guilt.
McDougal has filed suit in Los Angeles seeking to invalidate a confidentiality agreement with American Media Inc., the company that owns the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer. It paid her $150,000 during the 2016 presidential election.
The lawsuit alleges that McDougal was paid for the rights to her story of an affair, but the story never ran. It also alleges that Cohen was secretly involved in her discussions with American Media.
Trump is also facing a New York defamation lawsuit filed by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice.” Zervos has accused Trump of unwanted sexual contact in 2007 after she had appeared on the show with him, and sued after he dismissed the claims as made up.
A judge ruled the lawsuit can move forward while the president is in office.
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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is replacing national security adviser H.R. McMaster with the former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, injecting a hawkish foreign policy voice into his administration ahead of key decisions on Iran and North Korea.
Trump tweeted Thursday that McMaster has done “an outstanding job & will always remain my friend.” He said Bolton will take over April 9.
Bolton will be Trump’s third national security adviser. Trump has clashed with McMaster, a respected three-star general, and talk that McMaster would soon leave the administration had picked up in recent weeks.
His departure follows Trump’s dramatic ouster of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week. It also comes after someone at the White House leaked that Trump was urged in briefing documents not to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin about his recent re-election win. Trump did it anyway.
In a statement released by the White House, McMaster said he would be requesting retirement from the U.S. Army effective this summer, adding that afterward he “will leave public service.”
The White House said McMaster’s exit had been under discussion for some time and stressed it was not due to any one incident.
Bolton, probably the most divisive foreign policy expert ever to serve as U.N. ambassador, has served as a hawkish voice in Republican foreign policy circles for decades. He met with Trump and White House chief of staff John Kelly in early March to discuss North Korea and Iran. He was spotted entering the West Wing earlier Thursday.
Bolton has served in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and served as a Bush lawyer during the 2000 Florida recount.
A strong supporter of the Iraq war and an advocate for aggressive use of American power in foreign policy, Bolton was unable to win Senate confirmation after his nomination to the U.N. post alienated many Democrats and even some Republicans. He resigned after serving 17 months as a Bush “recess appointment,” which allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate confirmation.
Tension between Trump and McMaster has grown increasingly public. Last month, Trump took issue with McMaster’s characterization of Russian meddling in the 2016 election after the national security adviser told the Munich Security Summit that interference was beyond dispute.
“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” Trump tweeted Feb. 17, alluding to frequent GOP allegations of impropriety by Democrats and Hillary Clinton.
Tillerson’s exit also forecast trouble for McMaster, who had aligned himself with the embattled secretary of state in seeking to soften some of Trump’s most dramatic foreign policy impulses.
McMaster told The New York Times last year that Trump’s unorthodox approach “has moved a lot of us out of our comfort zone, me included.”
The military strategist, who joined the administration in February 2017, has struggled to navigate a tumultuous White House. Last summer, he was the target of a far-right attack campaign, as conservative groups and a website tied to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon targeted him as insufficiently supportive of Israel and not tough enough on Iran.
McMaster was brought in after Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was dismissed after less than a month in office. White House officials said he was ousted because he did not tell top advisers, including Vice President Mike Pence, about the full extent of his contacts with Russian officials.