Trump news live: President heads to NYC for FIFA dinner ahead of World Cup Final in New Jersey – UK Times

President Donald Trump touched down in New York City on Friday afternoon to attend a FIFA reception at Trump Tower ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Thursday that the 80-year-old president will also attend the championship match at MetLife Stadium between Argentina and Spain.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has said Trump will personally present the World Cup trophy to the winning team.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he urged South Carolina Senator Darline Graham Nordone to enter the state’s special Republican Senate primary this summer.

A GOP primary is scheduled for August 11 to determine the party’s nominee for the November general election.

“I asked Darline, for the Good of our Nation, to run for the U.S. Senate in the Special Republican Primary,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday afternoon. “I hope Darline does this, in that there would be nobody better to honor the legacy of her beloved brother, Lindsey.”

There is a massive partisan divide when it comes to opinions about the fairness of the 2020 election.

A majority of Republicans, 63 percent, believe the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump via election fraud, according to an April Reuters survey. Just 9 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of independents said the same.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to New York City on Friday afternoon for a FIFA reception shortly after 5 p.m.

The event is set to take place in Trump Tower, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

The White House also confirmed that the president will attend the World Cup final on Sunday, where Argentina will face off against Spain at MetLife Stadium.

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler was one of many Democrats to denounce President Trump’s election address, during which he alleged the 2020 election was subject to foreign interference.

“The Trump administration’s own review of the 2020 election determined it was safe—a finding reaffirmed by countless audits and court cases,” Nadler wrote on X on Friday afternoon. “The only person refusing to accept reality is Donald Trump. His lies and countless attempts to undermine free and fair American elections are dangerous and antidemocratic.”

Democrats criticized DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin after he announced certain “mandatory” election changes.

“We are going to make our security enhancements mandatory,” Mullin told reporters Friday, adding that states are going to “have to implement security issues.”

“We’re saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed,” he said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, considered a potential 2028 contender, shot back on X, writing: “California has free, fair, and secure elections and we will fight for them.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote: “They are losing, and they know it. Election officials will not be intimidated. Senate Democrats will make sure resources are in place to fight back against any illegal activity by the Trump administration.”

Multiple government reviews have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare and that foreign adversaries did not alter votes in the 2020 election.

Following President Trump’s speech on election security Thursday night, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin escalated the administration’s rhetoric, asserting that foreign adversaries could hack voting machines and warning that state officials who refuse to comply with federal security directives could face unspecified consequences.

In his primetime address, Trump described voting machines as “easily compromised.” Speaking to reporters Friday, Mullin went further, suggesting that hackers could infiltrate systems and manually alter vote totals—an allegation that runs counter to intelligence community findings that no such activity occurred.

“We’re saying that the machines had to be secured and that your voter restoration list needs to be scrubbed,” he told reporters while discussing his plan to aggressively pursue voter fraud, which reviews have found to be exceedingly rare.

“I will tell you if the states choose not to participate — we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold the election officials accountable,” he added.

Donald Trump has spent more than a decade spreading false and inflated claims about election outcomes and how the nation’s elections are run. His primetime address on Thursday was no exception.

The president alleged “shocking vulnerabilities in election infrastructure” and claimed our “election system” is “dangerously” exposed to “hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.”

But it appears much of the newly declassified material he announced Thursday evening echoes or reinterprets previously disclosed information that was already known to intelligence officials, including during his first administration.

Importantly, nothing in the materials supports any allegations that any votes were manipulated by fraud or foreign actors to have changed election outcomes.

Election officials and voting rights advocates fear the president’s remarks, which he says are meant to protect elections, will instead continue to sow deep distrust in their legitimacy to serve his own interests.

Alex Woodward takes a closer look.

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin had this to say on MS NOW’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell last night.

The White House released a series of documents Thursday evening promoting the president’s assertion that U.S. elections are vulnerable to manipulation, although at least one contains information the president has previously denied.

Among the trove of election integrity documents, released in tandem with the president’s speech, one National Intelligence Council assessment on “Foreign Threats to the 2020 Election” determined that Russian government-linked actors were trying to boost Trump’s campaign.

The document insinuates that Russia seemingly preferred Trump and wanted to boost his campaign on social media while disparaging former president Joe Biden’s then-presidential campaign.

However, when that information was initially released in 2020, Trump brushed it off as a “hoax” and accused Democrats of spreading misinformation that Russia preferred him as a candidate.

Here’s more from Ariana Baio.