US politics live: Donald Trump labels Charlamagne tha God a ‘racist sleazebag' over Epstien comments
President Donald Trump has lashed out at broadcaster Charlamagne tha God over his comments on the Jeffrey Epstein case.
'I think this Epstein thing is going to be a way for traditional conservatives to take their party back. I really do,' Charlamagne told Mr Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who is married to his son Eric, during an interview with Fox News.
'I think they know this is the issue that has gotten the base riled up. The MAGA base isn't letting this issue go. And for the first time, they know they can probably take their party back and not piss off the MAGA base. I think they're going to do that.'
Mr Trump disagrees.
'The very wonderful and talented Lara Trump, whose show is a big ratings success, put racist sleazebag Charlamagne 'The God' (why is he allowed to use the word 'GOD' when describing himself? Can anyone imagine the uproar there would be if I used that nickname?),' said Mr Trump, without quite finishing his sentence.
'He's a Low IQ individual, has no idea what words are coming out of his mouth, and knows nothing about me or what I have done,' he added.
'This dope, Charlamagne, would vote for Sleepy Joe or Kamala? Remember, one year ago our Country was DEAD, now it's the 'HOTTEST' Country anywhere in the World. MAGA!!!'
Elsewhere Chris Christie, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, has accused Mr Trump of behaving like a 'petulant child' by firing the head of America's labour statistics body after a worryingly abysmal jobs report.
'I've been talking about (this) since 2018,' Mr Christie told America's ABC News.
'When he gets news he doesn't like, he needs someone to blame, because he won't take the responsibility himself.
'And this is the action of a petulant child. You give me bad news, I fire the messenger.'
Mr Christie has been on something of a journey, when it comes to Mr Trump. He was among the first high profile elected Republicans to endorse Mr Trump in the party's 2016 primaries.
However he has since soured on the President.
He went on to rubbish any suggestion that the labour statistics could be 'rigged'.
'From everything I learned over my eight years as governor, it would be almost impossible for anyone to try to rig these numbers, because so many people are involved in putting them together,' said Mr Christie.
'When it comes to the director, the woman who was fired, all she's doing is being a conduit of the information ... it's irresponsible, but it also shows you the way he manages.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Australian
an hour ago
- The Australian
US Democrats decry electoral map ‘cheating' by Republican opponents
Democrats in the Texas state House fled the state on Sunday afternoon in an attempt to thwart plans by President Donald Trump and Governor Greg Abbott to redraw the state's congressional districts to add five new Republican seats. Mr Abbott, a Republican, called a 30-day special session of the state legislature after requests by the White House to change the state's congressional maps. That special session started on July 21, and the new maps were presented last week. Democrats have argued that the highly unusual mid-decade redistricting amounts to cheating, while Republicans have called it fair game and necessary to hold their national majority. Mr Trump said in July he wanted Republicans to pick up five more House seats in Texas after redistricting. State Democrats posted photos of themselves boarding a chartered plane to Chicago on Sunday afternoon. They didn't say how many members left but indicated in news releases that it was enough to prevent a quorum in the House, which would be at least 51. Texan Democrat representative Ramón Romero posted a video on X on Sunday afternoon saying he wouldn't 'help pass a racist map drawn by Donald Trump and Washington, DC, to silence the voices of Texans'. The video showed him in front of a jet with the logo 'CommuteAir'. Texas Republicans vowed to take action if the House is unable to meet as scheduled Monday afternoon. 'If a quorum is not present then … all options will be on the table,' state House Speaker Dustin Burrows posted. Redistricting usually happens after the once-a-decade population count by the US Census Bureau or in response to a court ruling. Now, Texas Republicans want to break that tradition – and other states could follow suit. Texas has 38 seats in the House. Republicans hold 25, the Democrats 12, with one seat vacant after the death of a Democrat. 'There's been a lot more efforts by the parties and political actors to push the boundaries – literally and figuratively – to reconfigure what the game is,' said Doug Spencer, the Ira Rothgerber Jr chair in Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado. Other states are waiting to see what Texas does and whether to follow suit. The rules of redistricting can be vague and variable; each state has its own set of rules and procedures. Politicians are gauging what voters will tolerate when it comes to politically motivated map-making. If they are in Texas, House members can be arrested by state police and forced to participate in the legislative session. They also could face the possibility of fines. 'The future of our nation is at stake,' Texas Republican Jared Patterson posted on X. 'We must send more Republicans to congress to ensure that President Trump's America First Agenda is fully enacted.' Texas Democrats have resorted to quorum-breaks before in an effort to kill bills, most recently in 2021, when they staged a 38-day standoff against a bill to tighten election procedures across the state. House Democrats then walked out ahead of a voting deadline at the end of the state's regular legislative session and fled the state as a 30-day special session began, waiting it out in Washington DC But Mr Abbott, who has the sole power to call special sessions, immediately began a second one, and Democrats eventually returned. The Texas politicians this time expect to remain out of state, mostly in Chicago, for 2½ weeks – the end of the special session, said a spokesman for the Texas House Democrats. Some are going to New York, where Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul scheduled a Monday morning event at the State Capitol in Albany in support of the Texas Democrats. One, Vikki Goodwin, said she is joining her colleagues in Chicago after the event. Ms Goodwin, who represents the Austin area and is running for Texas lieutenant governor, labelled the Republican plan to create new GOP districts a threat to democracy. She said she didn't know how long she would be away from home, or where she would be sleeping. 'There are a lot of people all over the United States who have offered to help us finance this quorum-break. I am not worried about how we'll pay for it.' Texas Republicans were initially reluctant to begin a mid-cycle redistricting that is set to dramatically alter district lines in Texas and potentially make some seats more competitive for incumbents. But Mr Trump pushed hard for the move to try to add five seats before midterm elections that will affect the last two years of his term. National Democrats cheered the efforts of their Texas members on Sunday afternoon. 'For too long, Donald Trump and Republicans have tried to get away with rigging the system, breaking the rules and scheming to hold on to power,' Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said. 'It's time to fight back.' There is no national bar to a state trying to redraw districts in the middle of the decade, and to do it for political reasons. 'The laws about redistricting just say you have to redistrict after every census,' Professor Spencer said. 'And then some state legislatures got a little clever and said, well, it doesn't say we can't do it more.' Some states do have laws that would prevent mid-cycle redistricting or make it difficult to do so in a way that benefits one party. Washington representative Suzan DelBene, who leads House Democrats' campaign arm, indicated at a Christian Science Monitor event that if Texas followed through on passing new maps, Democratic-led states would look at their own political lines. With Agencies Read related topics: Donald Trump The Wall Street Journal The former associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was interviewed last week by a top US Justice Department official. Nation Australia has escaped further US tariff hikes after Donald Trump left the nation on his baseline rate of 10 per cent, in a move lauded by the Albanese government as a win for Australian exporters.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Leading Australian economist calculates Trump trade fallout
Pity the treasurers poring over the fine print to calculate the impact on their national economies of the latest round of Trump tariff declarations. The global trading system is coming to terms with the latest arrangements delivered by the US President, overlaid with a web of exemptions and special deals. Australia's leading economist calls it a kind of chaos, marked by vague agreements, big pledges, and the promise of bad data on the way. Professor Warwick McKibben, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Economics at Australian National University, and a non-resident senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He's a Emeritus Distinguished Professor McKibbin of economics at ANU and a non-resident senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington DC.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Trump's efforts to control information echo an authoritarian playbook
Washington: An old rule in Washington holds that you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. President Donald Trump seems determined to prove that wrong. Don't like an intelligence report that contradicts your view? Go after the analysts. Don't like cost estimates for your tax plan? Invent your own. Don't like a predecessor's climate policies? Scrub government websites of underlying data. Don't like a museum exhibit that cites your impeachments? Delete any mention of them. Trump's war on facts reached new heights on Friday when he angrily fired Erika McEntarfer, the Labour Department official in charge of compiling statistics on employment in America, because he did not like the latest jobs report showing that the economy wasn't doing as well as he claims it was. Trump declared that her numbers were 'phony'. His proof? It was 'my opinion'. And the story he told supposedly proving she was politically biased? It had no basis in fact. The message, however, was unmistakable: government officials who deal in data now fear they have to toe the line or risk losing their jobs. Career scientists, long-time intelligence analysts and nonpartisan statisticians who serve every president regardless of political party with neutral information on countless matters, such as weather patterns and vaccine efficacy, now face pressure as never before to conform to the alternative reality enforced by the president and his team. Trump has never been especially wedded to facts, routinely making up his own numbers, repeating falsehoods and conspiracy theories even after they are debunked and denigrating the very concept of independent fact-checking. But his efforts since reclaiming the White House to make the rest of the government adopt his versions of the truth have gone further than in his first term and increasingly remind scholars of the way authoritarian leaders in other countries have sought to control information. 'Democracy can't realistically exist without reliable epistemic infrastructure,' said Michael Patrick Lynch, author of the recently published On Truth in Politics and a professor at the University of Connecticut. 'Antidemocratic, authoritarian leaders know this. That is why they will seize every opportunity to control sources of information. As Bacon taught us, knowledge is power. But preventing or controlling access to knowledge is also power.' British philosopher Sir Francis Bacon published his meditations on truth and nature more than four centuries before Trump arrived in Washington, but history is filled with examples of leaders seeking to stifle unwelcome information. The Soviets falsified data to make their economy look stronger than it was. The Chinese have long been suspected of doing the same. Just three years ago, Turkey's autocratic leader fired his government's statistics chief after a report documented rocketing inflation.
