Closing summary
With the news that Air Force One has returned Donald Trump from his bruising trip to Davos, this concludes our live coverage of his second administration for the day. We will return on Friday. Here are the latest developments:
Having spent 11 months trying to conceal the bruising on his right hand from public view, Donald Trump developed a large bruise on his left hand on Thursday. His chief spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, deflected questions about hte prsident’s health by claiming that the damage to his hand was caused by a collision with a table during an event at Davos earlier in the day. But then again, the previous day, she accused a reporter of lying for accurately reporting that the president, who turns 80 in a few months, repeatedly referred to Greenland as “Iceland” while staking a territorial claim to one of those places.
The United States formally withdrew from the World Health Organization with a statement in which the health secretary, RFK Jr, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, accused the body of botching the response to Covid-19 – the pandemic Trump downplayed as president – and of trying to steal an American flag.
Trump informed Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, that he is no longer invited to join the “board of peace” the US president unveiled to the world with much fanfare at Davos on Thursday.
By a vote of 220-207, the US House narrowly passed legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the two agencies carrying out Trump’s mass deportation raids, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Seven Democrats voted for the funding.
Asked when he might be willing to allow Venezuela to elect a new leader, Trump said his first priority was keeping control of the nation’s oil sales. “First of all, we have to take in a lot of money, we have to get that back”, he said.
Trump again warned Iran not to kill protesters, or else. “Nobody knows a number. I mean it’s a lot no matter what. Hey, if it was one person,” the president said. “In this country if it’s one person, it’s front-page news”, he added, in apparent reference to the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis this month by an ICE officer, which he immediately lied about and dismissed.
RFK Jr and Rubio issue joint statement on US withdrawing from World Health Organization
The United States formally withdrew from the main global public health body, the World Health Organization, on Thursday, according to a joint statement from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“Today, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO), freeing itself from its constraints,” the statement began. “This action responds to the WHO’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to rectify the harm from those failures inflicted on the American people.”
While making such a grand, evidence-free, pronouncement, the two men seemed to channel their boss, Donald Trump, by devoting a portion of the statement to complaining about the international body not promptly returning the US flag that has flown outside its headquarters in Geneva, alongside those of the other 193 member nations, for decades.
“We will get our flag back for the Americans who died alone in nursing homes, the small businesses devastated by WHO-driven restrictions, and the American lives shattered by this organization’s inactivity,” the statement says. “Our withdrawal is for them.”
