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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Anna Betts

Trump touts strong relationships with Putin and Zelenskyy as Ukrainian leader meets to shore up support – live

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet in New York
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet in New York Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

In a statement posted on social media, Representative Jerry Nadler, who serves New York’s 12th congressional district which covers parts of New York City, responded to the indictment of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, on foreign bribery and corruption charges, and called on him to resign.

“While the charges outlined in the indictment by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York are very serious, Mayor Adams deserves the right to due process and to be treated as presumed innocent until proven guilty” Nadler said.

Nadler added that he believes that Adams has “lost the ability to effectively lead the City of New York and therefore, he must resign”.

On Thursday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also of New York, also called on Adams to resign, saying that she cannot see how Adams “can continue governing New York City”.

Adams arrived in court this morning for his arraignment.

Updated

Ahead of Kamala Harris’s visit to US-Mexico border in Arizona today, her presidential campaign released a new ad on Thursday focused on immigration.

The ad highlights Harris’s past experience prosecuting drug traffickers and cartel members.

“She will secure our border,” the narrator says in the video, adding that if elected, Harris plans to “hire thousands more border agents, enforce the law, and step up technology and stop fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking”.

Harris’s visit to the border today comes as several polls show that when it comes to immigration, voters appear to think that former president Donald Trump would do a better job at securing the southern border than Harris.

Updated

Trump touts strong relationships with Zelenskyy – and Putin

Appearing with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York on Friday, former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump said that he and Zelenskyy have a “very good relationship” before going on to say: “I also have a very good relationship with President Putin.”

“I think if we win, we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump said, referring to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Standing next to Trump, Zelenskyy immediately responded to Trump’s comments about his positive relationship with Putin, and said that he hopes that he and Trump have a better relationship than the one between Putin and Trump.

Updated

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that he and former president Donald Trump have a “common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped” and that it was important to meet with both US presidential candidates.

Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in New York comes a day after the Ukrainian leader met with the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, in Washington DC.

Updated

Trump and Zelenskyy appear together at Trump Tower in New York

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have just appeared together at Trump Tower in New York.

“It’s an honor to have the president with us, and he’s been through a lot” Trump said, referring to Zelenskyy, who was standing next to him.

“He’s going through a tremendous amount,” Trump said, adding: “We’re going to have a discussion and see what we can come up with.”

Updated

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is about to speak at the UN general assembly.

You can follow along at the Guardian’s global Middle East live blog.

Updated

In a pretaped interview with Melania Trump that aired on Thursday on Fox News, the former first lady said she saw her husband’s survival in the two attempts on his life as “miracles”.

In her first interview in more than two years, the Melania Trump blamed the media for “fueling a toxic atmosphere” and empowering those who “want to do harm to him”.

In the interview Melania, who is currently promoting her new memoir, said:

Is it really shocking that all this egregious violence goes against my husband? Especially that we hear the leaders from the opposition party and mainstream media branding him as a threat to democracy, calling him vile names?

“This needs to stop” she added.

Updated

New York City mayor Eric Adams has arrived in court

Adams arrived in federal court this morning in New York, ahead of an unprecedented court appearance on federal charges that he accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign source.

This comes as Adams, a Democrat, was indicted this week. The criminal counts against him include conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals, wire fraud, and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national.

Adams, who is first sitting New York City mayor to be charged with a federal crime, has maintained that he is innocent.

Updated

Kamala Harris is headed to the border today to try to flip the script on Donald Trump’s signature issue.

In the Arizona border town of Douglas, the vice-president will cast Trump as unserious about addressing the challenges at the US-Mexico border despite his escalating rhetoric.

Trump and Republicans have hammered Harris relentlessly over the Biden administration’s record on migration, which reached record highs last year. They’ve laid much of the blame on Harris, who they incorrectly claim was appointed “border tzar”.

On Friday, Harris will go on the offensive, accusing Trump of playing politics with an issue that is a top concern for American voters.

“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris is expected to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks released by her campaign.

At Trump’s urging, congressional Republicans earlier this year blocked a sweeping bipartisan border security package that included an asylum clampdown they sought. After it failed, Biden enacted rules that temporarily bars migrants from seeking asylum at the southern border. Since its implementation, arrests at the border have plummeted.

Trump said at a rally in North Carolina earlier this week that Harris’s credibility on the border is “less than zero”.

Polling has found that immigration is a top concern for voters nationally and in Arizona, the only swing state that shares a border with Mexico. While immigration remains Trump’s strongest issue, Harris has made some gains, narrowing his lead with less than six weeks before election day.

Updated

A new Fox News poll shows former president Donald Trump slightly ahead of vice-president Kamala Harris in Arizona, but shows Harris with a slight lead in Georgia.

According to the poll, which was conducted between 20 and 24 September, Harris is ahead of Trump in Georgia by 3 percentage points, among likely and registered voters, and Trump leads Harris in Arizona by the same margin – 3 percentage points.

Updated

Donald Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York this morning around 9.45am, the Associated Press is reporting.

The meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday comes one day after the Ukrainian leader met with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden at the White House, and as tensions between Trump and Zelenskyy escalated this week.

On Wednesday at a campaign event, Trump accused Zelenskyy of “refusing” to negotiate a peace deal with Vladimir Putin.

Trump said: “The president of Ukraine is in our country. He is making little nasty aspersions toward your favourite president, me,” adding: “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskyy.”

The comments came after a controversial interview Zelenskyy gave to the New Yorker, where he questioned Trump’s plan to end Ukraine’s war with Russia and criticized Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, calling him “too radical”.

According to the Washington Post, this will be Trump and Zelenskyy’s first meeting in person since 2019.

Updated

Trump expected to meet with Ukraine's Zelenskyy in New York

Good Morning, US politics blog readers. Don’t relax this Friday as it’s going to be a news-packed day and we’ll bring you all the developments as they happen.

Here’s what’s on the horizon:

  • Donald Trump is expected to meet with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at Trump Tower in New York this morning. Zelenskyy is fresh from presenting his “victory plan” for defeating the Russian invasion of his country to Joe Biden and also meeting Kamala Harris, who indirectly slammed Trump’s notion of peace for that region as a plan for Ukraine to surrender territory already ceded to Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces.

  • Zelenskyy extended his stay in New York in order to meet Trump, the former US president and current Republican nominee for president in this November’s elections. The Ukrainian leader was in town for the United Nations general assembly.

  • New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, a Democrat, is due to make an unprecedented court appearance today as a sitting mayor under federal indictment involving bribery and foreign influence.

  • Kamala Harris will visit the US-Mexico border in Arizona later today as part of a visit to this vital swing state, which narrowly went for Biden in 2020. She will continue her tougher talk on immigration as she closes the gap with Trump in polls on this hot-button election issue, with crackdown talk dismaying progressives.

  • Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will address the United Nations this morning in New York, as he shuns international urging for ceasefires in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon. We’ll have a report and also cover this in the Guardian’s global Middle East live blog.

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