Trump: ‘Yes, I did' tell Israel's Netanyahu to stand down on Iran strike amid nuke deal push
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he'd personally asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to conduct airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities because such attacks could negatively ongoing talks with Tehran towards a new deal to restrict the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program.
Asked to confirm reports that he'd intervened during a phone call with the Israeli leader last week, Trump replied: 'Well, I'd like to be honest. Yes, I did.'
Pressed further on what he told Netanyahu, he said he did not think it was 'appropriate' for Israel to strike Iran while the talks are ongoing.
'We're having very good discussions with them. And I said, I don't think it's appropriate right now, because if we can settle it with a very strong document,' he said, adding that any agreement would be 'very strong with inspections.'
Trump also said he doesn't trust the Iranians but stressed that the agreement wouldn't require trust because it would rely on verification by inspectors.
' I want it very strong, where we can go in with inspectors. We can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab, but nobody's going to be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up,' he continued.
The president added that he'd waved Netanyahu off an attack 'because we're very close to a solution now.'
' I think they want to make a deal, and if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives,' he said.
The president's remarks, which came during a media availability following a swearing-in ceremony for interim District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, followed a round of talks between American and Iranian representatives under mediation by the government of Oman.
After the most recent set of negotiations over the weekend, Trump told reporters traveling with him in New Jersey that U.S. officials had had 'some very, very good talks' with their Iranian counterparts.
He repeated his assessment in the Oval Office on Wednesday, telling members of the White House press corps there that the U.S. was 'doing very well with Iran.'
'I think we're going to see some, some, something very sensible, because there [are] only two outcomes ... a smart outcome and there's a violent outcome,' he said.
'I don't think anybody wants to see the second but I think we've made a lot of progress, and we'll see. You know, they still have to agree to the final stages of a document, but I think you could be very well surprised what happens there, and it would be a great thing for them.'
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Metro
33 minutes ago
- Metro
45 arrested after police pepper spray protesters outside immigration raid
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Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
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EXCLUSIVE Inside story of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein's friendship after Elon Musk suggested the President appeared in FBI files. So what's the truth about claims of topless girls?
Like two fractious little boys trading playground insults they know are escalating out of control, the pair had been sparring all day – until one of them finally blurted out the slur he knew might end their friendship for ever. 'Time to drop the really big bomb,' wrote Elon Musk on his social media platform X on Thursday afternoon. ' Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!' Musk didn't offer any clarifying evidence but soon added: 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.' The extraordinary implosion of the friendship and alliance between the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man has proved mesmerising. But with this thin-skinned pair of blowhards there was always a sense that their friendship could end in recrimination sooner or later. And any possibility of a truce, Washington and Silicon Valley insiders predicted yesterday, has disappeared after Musk effectively pressed the nuclear button. Although he didn't precisely spell out the accusation, Musk was clearly implying that the US government was concealing the truth about Trump's dealings with the notorious late financier and paedophile. It is no secret that Trump associated with Epstein, even if he has been reluctant to admit it. They moved in the same moneyed social circles in Palm Beach, Florida, from the late 1980s until 2004, when they fell out spectacularly over a property deal. Along with the likes of Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, Trump is one among many powerful people known to have associated with Epstein and who have been mentioned in court documents related to the financier's decades of sexual abuse. Before he was re-elected President last November, Trump said he would have 'no problem' releasing the so-called Epstein Files, the remaining documents from the major FBI investigation into the multi-millionaire, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 ahead of his trial on sex-trafficking charges. While critics have challenged Trump's initial insistence that he barely knew Epstein – pointing out that they were most certainly friends (a fact Trump has since acknowledged) – there has been no evidence that the future President was complicit in Epstein's crimes. However, that hasn't prevented Trump's name being mentioned in some of the conspiracy theories swirling for months over why the US government has still not released the files. Predictably, within hours of Musk dropping his 'really big bomb', some of his 220 million followers on X were dutifully stirring the pot by circulating old evidence of the pre-scandal Trump-Epstein friendship. Musk retweeted several examples, adding a raised-eyebrow emoji. They included a 1992 TV news report on a party at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach resort and home, in which Epstein and the future President can be seen talking animatedly with each other as they stand watching a crowd of dancing cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins, two American football teams. They point to some of the women and Trump, gesturing to one, appears to say: 'Look at her back there, she's hot'. He then whispers in the financier's ear, leading Epstein to double over in laughter. Musk also retweeted a passage from a 2002 magazine article about Epstein in which Trump said: 'I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. 'It is even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.' Trump biographer Michael Wolff threw fresh fuel on the fire yesterday, when he claimed to have seen damning evidence from those years – evidence that Trump would never want made public. This supposedly included lewd images of Trump and the sex offender. 'I have seen these pictures. I know that these pictures exist and I can describe them,' Wolff told the Daily Beast. 'There are about a dozen of them. The one I specifically remember is the two of them with topless girls... sitting on Trump's lap. And then Trump standing there with a stain on the front of his pants [trousers] and three or four girls kind of bent over in laughter – they're topless, too – pointing at Trump's pants.' Wolff believes the alleged incriminating photos could have been in Epstein's safe when the FBI raided his New York home after his arrest in 2019. The Trump campaign dismissed Wolff's claims about the photos when he first made them last November just before the presidential election, saying: 'Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics.' But according to Wolff, Trump and Epstein 'shared girlfriends, they shared airplanes, they shared business strategy, they shared tax advice… they were inseparable'. The well-connected writer added, the lives of the two men intersected 'in a very meaningful and profound way… these guys kind of made each other'. Trump bought the Mar-a-Lago mansion and estate for a bargain $10 million in 1985 – and then Epstein purchased his own Palm Beach mansion two miles away five years later. Although Epstein never became a member of Mar-a-Lago, which includes a private members' club, he would visit for parties. The two men also dined together at Epstein's Manhattan mansion and travelled together between New York and Palm Beach, the most famous of Florida's billionaires' playgrounds. Trump and Epstein were photographed together repeatedly at Mar-a-Lago during the 1990s and early 2000s – Trump always wearing a tie, Epstein never wearing one. They were pictured with model Ingrid Seynhaeve at a 1997 Victoria's Secret party in New York. And they were photographed partying with Prince Andrew and enjoying a 'double date' at a celebrity tennis tournament with their respective girlfriends, Melania Knauss and Ghislaine Maxwell. In fact, Epstein boasted to friends that he had introduced Melania – now First Lady – to the future president. (Neither of the Trumps has corroborated this). Trump was between marriages at the time and enjoying his image as a playboy billionaire. His parties in New York and Florida were packed with models, cheerleaders and beauty-pageant contestants thanks to his business links. He owned a modelling agency and an American football team, and ran the Miss Universe pageant. The Mar-a-Lago parties, said eye witnesses, were memorable for the fact that women far outnumbered men, often by ten to one. Trump admitted as much in a 2015 interview, saying he'd been single at the time and adding: 'The point was to have fun. It was wild.' In 1992, Trump arranged for a 'calendar girl' competition for VIP guests at Mar-a-Lago. The 28 attractive contestants found they were competing in front of just two men – Trump and Epstein. The organiser of this vulgar contest, George Houraney, told the New York Times in 2019 that he tried unsuccessfully to raise his concerns about Epstein's involvement. 'I said, "Look, Donald, I know Jeff really well, I can't have him going after younger girls",' Houraney recalled. 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Steven Hoffenberg, a former Epstein business partner who was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme, said Trump 'liked' Epstein but he was 'crazy about Maxwell, a very charming lady'. A court filing would later reveal how Epstein's famous little black book of phone numbers contained 14 numbers for Trump, Melania and key Trump insiders. 'They were good friends,' Epstein's brother Mark told the Washington Post of Trump and Epstein in 2019. 'I know [Trump] is trying to distance himself, but they were.' Mark said Trump even used to give Epstein's mother and aunt free perks at one of his casino hotels in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Another insider who knew Trump and Epstein back then told the New York Post: 'They were tight. They were each other's wingmen.' Alan Dershowitz, a US lawyer who represented Epstein, recalled: 'In those days, if you didn't know Trump and you didn't know Epstein, you were a nobody.' Eventually, they fell out in 2004 when they both tried to snap up the same Palm Beach property, a mansion called Maison de l'Amitie (ironically, the House of Friendship) which was being sold cheap in a bankruptcy sale. Both of them attempted to lobby the trustee handling the sale before the auction. 'It was something like, Donald saying, "You don't want to do a deal with him, he doesn't have the money," while Epstein was saying: "Donald is all talk. He doesn't have the money",' recalled the trustee, Joseph Luzinski. The break-up was well-timed for Trump, as just a few months later, Palm Beach police started investigating claims that Epstein was sexually abusing local schoolgirls. In 2008, Epstein served 13 months behind bars in Florida after admitting 'solicitation of a minor for prostitution', so by the time Trump was running for president in 2016, he would have been keen to downplay this connection. In 2016, his lawyer insisted Trump had 'no relationship' with Epstein, adding: 'They were not friends and they did not socialise together.' A day after Epstein was arrested in New York three years later, Trump – by now President – announced that he hadn't spoken to him for 15 years and that: 'I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.' Trump staff stressed that he had once kicked Epstein out of his Palm Beach golf club. But others countered that, at one time, he most certainly had been a fan. Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, claimed his boss 'would hang out with Epstein because he was rich'. He said he warned Trump about his Epstein links before his first White House run against Hillary Clinton. However, the aide alleged, Trump was confident that thanks to a close friend who owned the tabloid National Enquirer and who claimed to have compromising pictures of Bill Clinton on Epstein's Caribbean island, Epstein would cause more problems for the Clintons than he would for him. Trump has insisted he never visited Epstein's so-called 'orgy island' – the alleged location of some of his worst offences – in the US Virgin Islands, saying: 'I was never on Epstein's Plane, or at his 'stupid' island.' However, in February this year, US attorney general, Pam Bondi, released Epstein's flight logs which showed the president's name appearing seven times. The first flight on the financier's private jet was in October 1993 and on at least two journeys, Trump was joined not only by Epstein but by his then-wife Marla Maples, along with their daughter Tiffany and a nanny. Epstein owned several planes and it's possible Trump was specifically denying flying on the one dubbed the 'Lolita Express' for the sordid sex that reportedly occurred on board. When Musk notoriously called a British expat cave diver a 'paedo guy' after they clashed online over the 2018 cave rescue in Thailand, he ended up having to defend himself in a US libel trial (which he eventually won). Time will tell how Trump will take revenge on his former 'First Buddy' and his 'big bomb' claim that the President of the United States of America has something unsettling to hide over Jeffrey Epstein.
Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE I love my husband, but I hate sharing a bed with him, and it's NOT because he snores: SOPHIE PALUCH reveals why separate rooms saved her marriage
I see the look of surprise that crosses someone's face when I mention that my husband and I sleep in separate beds. Most people I know have stereotypical sleeping arrangements, a societal norm of a married couple in one bed, saying good night to one another, and cuddling to sleep, but how many of those couples can say they actually sleep well? I'm betting not that many. My husband and I have been together for 14 years, married for nine, and, except for going on holiday (when in most cases necessity forces us to share), we have spent most of our years as a couple sleeping in separate beds. It's not a sleeping set-up I expected, nor was it planned, but I can probably go as far as saying that it's made us a better couple because of it. We met when I was twenty-three and fresh out of the early twenties world of sleeping wherever my head fell. I had spent university in house shares, summers back home with my parents, out late, up early, catching up on sleep where I could - all the good stuff that comes with the care-free life of pre-kids. Sleep had always been easy for me, in fact, I famously once slept through a fire alarm in my halls of residence, and I hadn't even been drinking. I've always had good sleep habits, I read a lot before bed, and it calms my mind. I find it easy to switch off, settle down and sleep uninterrupted for a good eight hours. My husband certainly finds sleep more challenging, he's a light sleeper, prone to repeated wake-ups, and he can fixate on a noise (which, in most cases, I can't even hear) that can keep him awake for hours. We've often had to change hotel rooms due to him being able to hear some distant humming - despite wearing earplugs, I may add. He needs complete darkness, and the right pillow combination, and he snores, loudly. A year after meeting we decided to buy a house together, it was clear to us both that our relationship was different to what we had had before with others. We had the same ideas on life, could laugh together for hours and he made me feel good about myself. It was refreshing. My husband had been sharing a house with his friend for several years and while I stayed over some nights, it tended to be once a week because he found it difficult to sleep when I was there, and I needed to be up early to go and muck out my horse. I suppose his quest for the perfect sleep conditions wasn't as obvious then, although sometimes I did wonder if both earplugs and a pillow on his head were necessary. It was when we bought our first home that the cracks in our sleeping arrangements began to show. There were many of my normal sleep habits (like breathing) that he found difficult and the fact he often sounded like a freight train next to me meant that neither of us got much sleep. 'Perhaps you could stop snoring.' I snapped at him one night when he had repeatedly asked me to stop 'wafting' the duvet - I was just rolling over. 'It's not a normal roll, it's a Crocodile death roll,' he scowled at me before we both turned our backs on one another. For the next couple of months, we told each other we would get used to sharing a bed together. I felt pressure from others to fix the whole sleeping arrangement thing - weren't you supposed to share a bed with the person you love? We tried lots of different options, separate duvets at first, then even resorting to taking the bed frame away and putting two mattresses on the floor so we could sleep side by side but not actually in the same bed. I began to get anxious about waking him up, so my sleep became restless, and his tolerance level for the shared space seemed to get worse. We would both wake up in the morning exhausted from lack of sleep, bickering over silly things because we were so tired. I felt upset that things were so good between us, so why couldn't we conquer this one issue? I suppose at that time, it would have helped to know of other happily married couples that slept apart, but even now it seems to be a taboo topic associated with marital arguments or infidelity - two issues that couldn't be further away from the relationship my husband and I have. We have a very healthy marriage, we are close and connected, it's just the physical act of falling - and staying - asleep next to each other that doesn't work. I began to think about our sleep, how important it was for all areas of our health and wellbeing, and that the quality and quantity of your sleep makes such a huge difference to your day. It can be so easy to get sucked into what we think we should be doing, how we think we should be living our lives, and so we both looked at changing our perspectives on this 'issue' and accepting that even though we loved each other and spending time together, we didn't match when it came to sleep. And so, we decided to sleep in separate beds, in separate rooms. Fourteen years and two children later, I think we are a stronger couple for prioritising our own sleep needs. We still spend time together in the evening before sleeping, and we still have a cup of tea together in bed in the morning, but we both wake up refreshed and ready to be the best version of ourselves for one another. Of course, there are times when we are forced together at night, last summer we bought a campervan and spent a few weeks in Italy - and campervan beds are small! It was a lesson in patience for us both, separate sleeping bags all the way, but holiday time is different to the demands of everyday life - the tiredness of work and parenting seems to be less prevalent. When people ask me whether sleeping in separate beds has made a difference to our relationship, I say yes, but in a good way. I'm still not sure why this type of nighttime set-up is seen as a bad thing. I think the worst thing you can do is to keep going with a situation that clearly isn't working, and the bedroom is perhaps the worst place for a battleground. Marriage is forever a work in progress, you need to grow and develop together as a couple, but I also think a healthy marriage means valuing your own space and needs as well, for us we need good sleep to be a better couple.
