Trump asked Xi Jinping if China would like to buy US weapons, American ambassador says
Donald Trump offered to sell weapons to China while hosting its leader, Xi Jinping, last week, the US ambassador to China said on Sunday.
David Perdue told Fox News on Sunday: “President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point.”
On Monday, Chinese state media praised the “extraordinary level of courtesy” that Trump had shown Xi on the Chinese leader’s visit to Washington.
The extraordinary claim came during an interview about US policy on Taiwan, which has been waiting for months for Trump to approve a new arms sales package worth $14bn (£10.5bn), after a record multibillion-dollar deal was announced in December last year.
Trump’s level of commitment to protecting Taiwan has previously been questioned. At a meeting with Xi in Beijing in May, Trump said he was keeping the $14bn Taiwan arms sales package in abeyance, describing it as a “very good negotiating chip” in dealings with China.
Washington has long maintained a strategically ambiguous stance on whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion. But under the decades-old Taiwan Relations Act, it is required to provide Taipei with sufficient military equipment to defend itself.
Donald Trump’s attorney general Todd Blanche argued on Sunday that the administration was permitted to ban three news outlets from the White House because “it is a privilege and not a right to be there”.
Appearing on the ABC News program This Week during the second week of the White House’s dispute over press credentialing and access, Blanche also said that the administration took the decision to ban CNN, MS Now and Politico beginning on 19 September because the president was “sick and tired” of what he considered to be those media outlets’ inaccurate reporting.
Blanche offered no evidence for his claim that the outlets’ reporting was inaccurate, rather than simply unflattering to the president. Pressed by the interviewer, Martha Raddatz, to point to a report the administration objected to, Blanche seemed to suggest that any negative reporting about Trump must be inaccurate.
“Wait, give you an example of when CNN doesn’t report accurately? You cannot be asking me that,” Blanche replied. “There’s not even a real dispute that the information coming out of CNN and some of these other networks is wholly and completely, almost 100 percent negative toward the president.”
On Thursday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring the White House to temporarily restore the credentials of affected journalists, and they were allowed entry to the executive complex.
But on Saturday, CNN said its journalists were barred from joining the press pool traveling with the president on Air Force One.
With speculation about whether he may defect from the Democratic party swirling around him, US senator John Fetterman described himself seemingly unintentionally as a “lifelong Republican” during a fireside chat in Texas over the weekend.
Fetterman made the comment when someone listening to him speak with CBS News political correspondent Major Garrett at the Texas Tribune Festival on Saturday asked the Pennsylvania senator why he had not become an independent.
“Because I’m a lifelong Republican,” Fetterman replied. Garrett promptly corrected him by saying, “Democrat,” as Fetterman raised a hand and shook his head in disbelief.
“That’s a moment right there that’s clippable, ladies and gentlemen,” Garrett said amid laughter from the audience. “Go, go, go – internet, spin wildly! Wildly spin, internet!”
Fetterman then remarked, “Yeah – I guarantee you that’s going to break through. That’ll get … clipped – yeah. I’m a lifelong Democrat, though, and that’s … the point.”
Social and news media commenters quickly seized on video of Fetterman’s gaffe, with more than one characterizing it as a Freudian slip.
Fetterman has drawn questions over his loyalty to the Democratic party after joining Republicans in opposing his party’s efforts to end the US war with Iran as well as to cut off military aid to Israel, which has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza.
Iran has 'no plans to negotiate with US' despite Trump claims in media
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
State media in Iran has reported that Iran’s delegation to the UN General Assembly had no talks planned with the United States, after US president Donald Trump said he expected more negotiations.
“Iran’s delegation in New York has no plans for negotiations with the United States,” said the official IRNA news agency, citing an unnamed source close to the group.
Trump told media outlet Axios on Sunday that he expected talks to resume soon, a day after he rejected a proposal by Tehran to reopen the strait of Hormuz within seven days.
“Iran’s views and positions were conveyed clearly and explicitly to the US side... via a Qatari mediator,” IRNA said, adding that the Iranian delegation would return to Tehran on Tuesday.
Iran says it presented seven conditions for ending the war and reopening the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas flowed before the war.
The strait lies at the heart of the conflict that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February. Following that attack, Tehran placed a chokehold on the waterway, and Washington responded with a blockade of Iranian ports.
Axios said indirect talks mediated by Qatar could take place as early as today, less than a week after similar discussions between US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.
Iran demands a seven-day ceasefire across the Middle East, including in Lebanon, where its ally Hezbollah is regularly bombarded by Israel.
It also demands the unfreezing of its foreign assets, lifting sanctions on its oil sector, and an end to the US naval blockade. Trump rejected their demands on Saturday.
In other developments:
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The Trump administration on Monday plans to release new fuel economy standards that would relax regulatory requirements for automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and light trucks. President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social media account on Saturday that the less stringent mileage requirements would “take the waste out of building cars in America” and save families “thousands on a new, beautiful and safe car,” while boosting auto production in the US.
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Donald Trump’s attorney general Todd Blanche argued on Sunday that the administration was permitted to ban three news outlets from the White House because “it is a privilege and not a right to be there”. Appearing on the ABC News program This Week during the second week of the White House’s dispute over press credentialing and access, Blanche also said that the administration took the decision to ban CNN, MS Now and Politico beginning on 19 September because the president was “sick and tired” of what he considered to be those media outlets’ inaccurate reporting.
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US senator Thom Tillis on Sunday criticized Donald Trump, his fellow Republican, for the president’s support of Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn in the Texas Senate Republican primary. “He made a colossal mistake,” Tillis, a frequent Trump critic from North Carolina, said during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union in reference to the president’s support of Paxton who defeated Cornyn in the May primary.
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The United States and China released Monday reciprocal lists of products worth about $30bn each that will see tariff cuts, in a deal expected to boost bilateral trade. The details came days after Chinese President Xi Jinping met with president Donald Trump in Washington in his first state visit to the US since 2015.
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Trump justified the pending US arms sale to Taiwan to Chinese president Xi Jinping by downplaying it as just one of many sales Washington makes around the world - even asking Xi if he’d be in the market for US arms, Trump’s ambassador to China said on Sunday.
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House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda, with investigations of Trump, his family and his administration if the party sweeps control of the chamber from Republicans in the November elections. The undertaking is as robust as it is daunting, spanning several House committees.
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