Trump sits down with Sean Hannity in first interview since becoming president: Live updates – UK Times

Donald Trump discussed his flip-flop on TikTok, telling Sean Hannity that there were several buyers interested in purchasing the firm that owns the app. Trump said he was developing a “warm spot” for it because it helped him reach younger audiences during his 2024 electoral campaign.

When Hannity asked Trump about the allegations made by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers that TikTok was being used as a tool for Beijing to spy on people, he shrugged off the implication.

“Is it that important for China to be spying on young people, on young kids watching crazy videos?” Trump asked.

Hannity replied that he doesn’t want “China spying on anybody.”

Donald Trump’s first sit-down interview is airing now.

Trump gave the interview to long-time ally and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Early in the interview, Trump accused FEMA of not helping the victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina — a statement which is verifiably false — and suggested that the federal emergency response agency be disbanded and the states left to fend for themselves.

Donald Trump has selected Brent Bozell to run the United States Agency for Global Media.

The agency is a US-supported global media agency. Voice of America falls under the USAGM’s umbrealla.

Trump has tapped former news anchor and failed senatorial and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to head Voice of America.

A former Tesla executive says he agreed to take a job working remotely for the electric carmaker, which then almost immediately went back on its word and threatened to fire him if he didn’t relocate from his home in Southern California — allegedly prompting the recurrence of an agonizing medical condition and threatening his marriage.

In a lawsuit filed last month in state court and moved to federal court on Wednesday, compliance and operational risk specialist Mike Tully accuses Tesla of a heartless bait-and-switch after “being promised and assured” he wouldn’t be required to move. The Irvine resident only accepted the position because of this guarantee, which came via his new boss, Associate General Counsel Charles Lee, according to the previously unreported complaint.

Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against former aide John Bolton on Wednesday as he increasingly signals that he will back away from Washington’s center-right foreign policy establishment.

The president was asked about his day-one decision to strip a federal protective detail from Bolton, who served as his national security adviser early on in his first term in the White House.

Bolton, long one of the most outspoken supporters of direct military action to combat Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, was allegedly targeted for assassination by the Iranian regime in 2022 in retaliation for the Trump administration’s killing of Qassem Soleimani, a top commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).

Donald Trump has named his special agent-in-charge to lead the US Secret Service.

Sean Curran — who helped protect Trump during his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania last sumer — will now head the agency, according to a statement he made on TruthSocial.

ICE officials are directing employees to use the term “alien” instead of “immigrant,” a new memo distributed across the enforcement agency details.

Immigrant rights groups consider the term derogatory and dehumanizing because of the way they’ve been used by conservative pundits and politicians.

The term will be used in all “internal and external communications,” Axios reported. The Independent has asked ICE for comment.

The Trump administration has put a freeze on many federal health agency communications with the public through at least the end of the month.

In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Dorothy Fink told agency staff leaders Tuesday that an “immediate pause” had been ordered on — among other things — regulations, guidance, announcements, press releases, social media posts and website posts until such communications had been approved by a political appointee.

The pause also applies to anything intended to be published in the Federal Register, where the executive branch communicates rules and regulations, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientific publication.

Stewart Rhodes never entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, after he conspired with members of his far-right anti-government Oath Keepers militia group to break into halls of Congress in what prosecutors described as an act of terrorism.

But two days after Donald Trump released him from prison, Rhodes freely walked through congressional office buildings in the Capitol complex.

Rhodes — whose 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy was commuted by the president as one of his first official actions in the Oval Office — met with at least one member of Congress on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity it’s “sad” that former president Joe Biden didn’t pardon himself at the end of his administration.

Trump made the remark to Hannity as he was asked about his predecessor’s decision to pardon members of his own family and others he said he would be targeted by Republicans, in Trump’s first interview from the White House Wednesday. The interview was being aired in full Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

Biden issued several pardons in the final hours of his presidency Monday after Trump declared he would seek “retribution” against his perceived enemies by using his powers as president while on the campaign trail.