Trump says he turned down a trip to notorious Epstein island where abuse happened: ‘One of my very good moments'
Trump was quizzed again Monday about the Epstein files while holding a press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland.
'I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island,' Trump said.
'In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn't want to go to his island,' he added.
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The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
Democrats find it hard to move on when Biden and Harris keep hogging the spotlight
Donald Trump is President of the United States. Republicans control all three branches of government. And even as Democrats are planning to regroup and contest next year's midterm elections, the two people who many of them blame for last year's dismal election outcome simply will not go away. More than half a year after they left office after a single four-year term, former president Joe Biden and former vice president Kamala Harris are continuing to remain in the spotlight and allow Republicans to highlight their failures instead of letting their party move on and find a way to regain the support that was lost during their time in office. Harris, who lost all seven of the contested swing states in last year's election, recently announced an upcoming book that will focus on the 107-day campaign she waged against Trump after Biden withdrew from the 2024 race following his dismal debate performance last June. She also revealed that she won't enter the upcoming race to succeed California Governor Gavin Newsom, who must leave office in 2027 when his second four-year term ends, leaving open the possibility that she'll enter what is expected to be a crowded primary race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Biden, whose 11th hour pardons of his family members and other political allies emboldened Trump to grant reprieves for the violent rioters who tried to prevent his 2020 loss from being certified, is still giving speeches in which he is attacking his predecessor-turned-successor, a stark contrast from how most former presidents have behaved after leaving office. At one such appearance, an address to the National Bar Association in Chicago on Thursday, he accused the Trump administration of 'doing its best to dismantle the Constitution,' giving right-wing media outlets plenty of fodder to use at a time when his party is trying to focus on the future and the current government's policy problems. And the president's son, Hunter Biden, is doing his best to stay in the headlines with a series of podcast appearances in which he casts blame for his father's exit from the race on a broad range of people — but not his father. The former Democratic ticket's refusal to fade away after a devastating electoral performance is ruffling feathers among party figures who are tasked with moving forward and figuring out how to escape from the wilderness in next year's midterms. A number of popular governors, including Illinois' JB Prizker and Kentucky's Andy Beshear, have been making the trek to early primary states with an eye towards 2028, and voters are increasingly eager to elect new faces rather than older establishment figures. Donna Bojarsky, a Democratic consultant, told The Washington Post that 'nobody' in the party is looking to go 'back to 2024' as they look for a way forward against the Republicans. 'The shadow of 2024 is long, and I think all perspectives in the mix believe we need something fresh,' she said. Another strategist Cooper Teboe, said the party's current predicament stems from a sclerosis that has taken hold on account of incumbents refusing to relinquish power to the next generation. 'The core reason the Democratic Party is in the position it is in today is because no new figures, no new ideas, have been allowed to rise up and take hold,' he said. But there is a group eager for Biden and Harris to remain part of the national conversation — Republicans. One GOP consultant who spoke to The Independent said Hunter Biden's recent profanity-laced podcast appearances and the former president's speeches are just what they need to keep his failures in the public eye as his party tries to regain the trust of voters. 'Hunter Biden is just what Democrats need more of going into the midterms,' he said, more than a bit sarcastically.
Reuters
14 minutes ago
- Reuters
VIEW Investors react to Kugler's resignation, firing of BLS commissioner
Aug 1 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve said on Friday that Governor Adriana Kugler was resigning from the central bank effective Aug. 8. Separately, U.S President Donald Trump ordered that the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika L. McEntarfer, be fired after data showed employment growth was than expected last month. COMMENTS: "Obviously, (Adriana's resignation) is a negative, and that'll probably continue to pressure the dollar. That's not a good sign, when someone resigns, unless there is a personal reason, there is always a question mark as to why. So the unknown factor of that usually adds to uncertainties. "Of course, you had a major revision in the employment numbers so it's a fact that Trump fired the Commissioner of Labour Statistics, basically questioning the accuracy of these numbers because of that huge revision that we had. So, anytime something like this happens, it always raises uncertainties." CHRISTOPHER HODGE, CHIEF US ECONOMIST, NATIXIS ,NEW YORK: 'The interim BLS Chief looks to be an accomplished technocrat, which is a great sign. Going forward, should the fidelity of the data be compromised, this would place the markets and Fed in a very precarious position. I would expect the Fed to rely more and more on the anecdotes it collects from the Beige Book. Her (Adriana Kugler's ) term was set to expire in January, so no great change in policy. I have not seen an indication that she is resigning in protest, but the timing is very curious' JODY CALEMINE, DIRECTOR OF ADVOCACY, AFL-CIO, WASHINGTON, D.C. 'Today was probably the last reliable jobs report we will ever see. This isn't good for anybody looking to see what's going on with the economy, not just for workers but for the business community in general.' 'This morning's jobs report was showing what was the first indicators of probably a coming recession…it's clear he fired her (McEntarfer) for issuing a jobs report he just didn't like.' On Kugler: 'The Fed board should be independent of the president, that's for sure. He (Trump) is wielding increasingly authoritarian control over different agencies, and clearly he wants to wield that control over the Fed. The markets have kept that impulse in check so far. He's increasingly out of control.' JUAN PEREZ, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF TRADING, MONEX USA, WASHINGTON: "The way (the market) is going to interpret (the departures) is in a very dollar-negative way." "No matter what the economic picture in the United States, the one thing that holds the U.S. dollar strong in the eyes of the world is the authority and the independence of the Federal Reserve. Whenever anything comes to potentially put that into compromise then that's when the U.S. dollar spirals down." "There will be an opening for the Trump administration to fill. It's likely he will choose somebody whose views on interest rates match his own. Then Treasury Secretary Bessent wants to have a list of possible replacements for the Fed Chair by the end of the year so, Trump is getting a bigger chance to appoint people whose views match his own." Regarding Trump's order to fire Erika L. McEntarfe, he said: "I don't like to see a bureaucrat fired just because the data that gets presented doesn't support the administration's policies. We have a president who believes the economy is strong and that interest rates should be cut . I have read nothing that suggests she was not doing a good job or conscientious. It's upsetting. We're killing the messenger here instead of trying to see what the data really says and go from there. I see no evidence that the numbers were ever manipulated. It wouldn't be big news today if it happened a lot. Certainly, it's unusual."
The Sun
14 minutes ago
- The Sun
Labour's taken state spying of social media to whole new level – leaked emails read like their from dictatorship not UK
THE Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok has often aroused fears that personal data collected on its users could end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. What fewer people imagined was that our own Government would try to use TikTok in order to police speech in Britain. Yet that is exactly what has happened. 7 7 7 Leaked emails show that a shady branch of government known as the National Security Online Information Team has been leaning on TikTok to suppress content that is critical of official migration and criminal justice policy. On several occasions during the riots which followed the Southport murders a year ago, the unit approached TikTok requesting that it 'assess' some posts made by its users — effectively a crude instruction to suppress what they were saying. Legitimate debate Britain, like every other country, operates security services that spy on terrorists who are plotting atrocities as well as organisations involved in propagating serious public disorder. Were a government organisation to prevent a bomb attack which could have killed dozens of people, no one would be too bothered about how it had obtained the vital information. But the emails show activity which goes far beyond the demands of national security. In one case, officials drew TikTok's attention to a post that suggested a large number of migrants were 'undocumented fighting age males'. Another suggested that TikTok take a look at users who spread 'concerning narratives about the police and a two-tier system [of justice] '. I am sure the police and courts will defend themselves robustly against a charge of operating two-tier justice, but whether or not you think they are doing this, it is a perfectly legitimate area for public debate, just as is the question of whether ethnic minorities suffer disadvantage in the workplace, schools, hospitals and so on. Those who made online accusations of a disproportionate response by the police towards protesters, and who dubbed our Prime Minister 'two-tier Keir', had good reason for raising their concerns. Ten days before the Southport murders, the Harehills area of Leeds erupted into rioting after children from a Roma family were taken into care. Protesters descend on Canary Wharf migrant hotel as police surround building amid fears over 'summer of riots' Days later there was a machete fight on Southend seafront. Keir Starmer had little to say about those grim developments, yet went into overdrive when protesters took to the streets following the Southport riots. True, there were plenty of thugs among them, but to insinuate that all protesters were driven by nothing more than 'far-right hatred' was outrageous. I am not going to defend Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months for remarks she made in the wake of the Southport killings — her words read like a pretty clear incitement to violence even if she did not intend them to. But it is perfectly reasonable to question whether her punishment was consistent with the treatment handed out to extreme Islamist preachers and Irish Republican sympathisers. Take the Prevent programme, which was set up by the Blair government specifically to deal with the threat of Islamist terrorism in the wake of the 2005 Tube bombings. 7 7 7 Over time it seems to have become more concerned with the far right. Nineteen per cent of those reported to the programme in the year ending March 2024 were recorded as supporting a far right ideology, against only 13 per cent with Islamist ideology — in spite of the latter being responsible for far more terror attacks and killings than the former over the past two decades. For Government officials to try to stop us discussing these matters is something you might associate more with a dictatorship than with British democracy. We have a human rights lawyer as PM, but where is he when it comes to defending our long-held right to free expression? Labour, however, has taken state surveillance of social media to a new level To be fair to Starmer, it is not just his government that has been trying to silence its critics. The National Security Online Information Team was derived from a body set up during Covid to try to gag critics of vaccines and lockdown. The Online Safety Act, which places obligations on social media companies to police content — and which the Government has used to put pressure on TikTok and other companies — was the brainchild of the last Conservative government. Deep concerns Labour, however, has taken state surveillance of social media to a new level. Particularly disgraceful was Technology Secretary Peter Kyle's attempt this week to claim that Nigel Farage was on the side of Jimmy Savile for daring to criticise the Online Safety Act. To listen to Kyle you would think the act was about nothing other than age verification for users of online pornography (not that Savile used the internet to abuse his victims). There are many people, myself included, who support the age verification measures but who have deep concerns about the act's other provisions, in particular its demand that technologies companies act against anything that could fall under the vague definition of being 'harmful to children'. Even the day's news could be deemed harmful to children if it upsets their immature sensibilities. The trouble is that the Online Safety Act was pushed through on the back of emotional propaganda, with few people realising the dark and disturbing ways in which it could be used to silence any of us. We are belatedly realising that now. 7
