Closing summary
We are shutting down our live coverage of the second Trump administration, but just for the day. We will be open for business again on Friday morning. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump told the pro-Trump network One American News that he had watched video that does not exist of mass arson in Portland, Oregon. “The governor says, ‘Oh, Portland is just fine,’ and then you turn on the television, you see the place is burning down to the ground,” Trump claimed, wildly exaggerating the hurling of a firework or two over the course of the past four months.
The White House is in talks with CBS News program 60 Minutes about conducting an interview with Trump, Semafor reports.
As the government shutdown drags on, the White House continues to use its official, taxpayer-funded social media accounts to insult and mock Democrats, treating the standoff more like a political campaign than a negotiation over policy.
The government shutdown will likely go into next week, with Senate majority leader John Thune telling Politico that it is “unlikely” senators will be in the Capitol voting this weekend.
The Trump administration is considering giving at least $10bn in aid to US farmers, as the agriculture industry begins to grapple with an economic fallout due to Trump’s tariffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Updated
Trump claims to have seen TV images which do not exist of Portland 'burning down to the ground'
In an interview broadcast on Thursday by the pro-Trump network One American News, and posted in full by the White House, Donald Trump claimed to have seen something that does not exist: recent video of mass arson in the city of Portland, Oregon.
“Where do these people come from?” Trump told OAN’s White House correspondent Daniel Baldwin. “The governor says, ‘Oh, Portland is just fine,’ and then you turn on the television, you see the place is burning down to the ground, and it has been for a long time,” Trump claimed.
Baldwin, who is known for asking questions so flattering to Trump that the president frequently exclaims “I like this guy” during news conferences, nodded along, but the fact is that there is no such video, for the the good reason that Portland is not, in fact, burning.
While fireworks have been hurled on occasion during small protests outside one Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Portland’s south waterfront neighborhood over the past three months, there has been no arson anywhere in the city, which has largely returned to normal five years after the pandemic and mass protests for racial justice.
During the 2020 protests, there were instances of dumpsters set on fire by protesters, and some flag burning, but the idea that Portland was ever close to ‘burning to the ground’ that year, or at any time since, is a fever dream promoted by the conservative media channels the president consumes religiously.
Rather than explain this reality to the president, Baldwin followed up by asking Trump if Democratic governors, like Tina Kotek of Oregon, were “afraid” to let the president deploy troops because he had proven “that their policies have directly led to decline”.
“They’re either bad people,” Trump replied, “or they’re stupid.”
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