Russia offers Elon Musk political asylum after his falling out with Donald Trump
Dmitry Novikov, the first deputy chai of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Dmitry Novikov (CPRF), compared Musk to Edward Snowden, the whistleblower responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history.
Novikov said: 'I think that Musk is playing a completely different game, that he will not need any political asylum, although if he did need it, Russia, of course, could provide it.'
Got a story? Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. Or you can submit your videos and pictures here.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Follow Metro.co.uk on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news updates. You can now also get Metro.co.uk articles sent straight to your device. Sign up for our daily push alerts here.
MORE: Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein's messy history amid fallout with Elon Musk
MORE: Donald Trump and Elon Musk get bizarre reality TV offer after public spat
MORE: Russia blames Britain for Ukraine's attack on airfields destroying 40 war planes
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
Immigrants file class-action lawsuit against Trump over ‘unlawful' ICE arrests inside courthouses
A group of immigrants who were arrested inside courthouses are suing Donald Trump's administration and the Department of Justice over sweeping enforcement actions taking place inside immigration courts across the country. The 12 plaintiffs — most of whom are LGBT+ or victims of female genital mutilation who fear persecution and violence in their home countries — sought protection in the United States only to have their cases abruptly dismissed, with masked federal officers waiting to arrest them on the other side of the courtroom doors. All of the plaintiffs appeared at their immigration court hearings intending to seek asylum or other relief to remain legally in the United States, but government attorneys requested the cases be dismissed, making them vulnerable to immediate arrest and detention. The lawsuit filed by a group of immigrant advocacy and legal groups on Wednesday accuses the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice of unleashing a 'new campaign of courthouse arrests through coordinated policies designed to strip noncitizens of their rights' and due process, 'exposing them to immediate arrest and expedited removal.' Many of the plaintiffs have lived in the United States without issue for years before their arrest, separated from their families, including U.S. citizens, without notice, according to the lawsuit. One plaintiff, a gay man from Ecuador, was deported to his home country within weeks after his arrest moments after a hearing where he intended to file an asylum claim describing the persecution he faced for his advocacy for LGBT+ rights. He is living in hiding, according to the complaint. All but two other plaintiffs are detained and anticipate their removal to Cuba, Venezuela, the Republic of Guinea, and the Chechen Republic, where they fear persecution for their political activism and LGBT+ identities. 'We are witnessing an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. immigration court system by the Trump administration,' said Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center. 'People who attend their hearings to seek permission to remain in this country and comply with U.S. immigration law are being rounded up and abruptly ripped from their families, homes, and livelihoods,' Zwick said. 'Meanwhile, the administration is issuing directives telling immigration judges to violate those same immigration laws and strip people of fundamental due process rights. We must continue fighting to overcome the administration's escalating attacks on the U.S. Constitution and rule of law.'
The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘Surprised' Trump appears to forget he appointed Powell as Fed chair before blaming Biden for keeping him on
Donald Trump appeared not to recall having been the president who first appointed Federal Reserve Board of Governors Chair Jerome Powell to the position he has held since 2018 — the second year of Trump's first term. Trump, who has been flirting with the notion of firing the central bank boss over his failure to cut interest rates, was speaking during an Oval Office press opportunity alongside the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain when he was asked whether he was seriously considering the move, as has been reported. He replied with a derisive set of remarks in which he assailed Powell for not pushing the central bank's board to cut interest rates, citing the European Central Bank's multiple rate cuts in recent months, and accusing Powell of only having assented to cuts during last year's election to benefit the Democratic candidate, former vice president Kamala Harris and calling him 'a terrible Fed chair' before expressing surprise that he had been named to the position in the first place. 'I was surprised he was appointed,' Trump said. In his next breath, the 79-year-old president possibly remembered that he was the one who nominated Powell to the job as a successor to Janet Yellen during his first term, and added that he had been surprised by Powell's re-appointment to a second term by his successor and predecessor, President Joe Biden. 'I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him,' he said. The president's apparent gaffe came just one day after he delivered a rambling speech in Pittsburgh in which he claimed that his uncle, a noted physicist who helped develop radar systems during World War II, taught notorious terrorist Theodore Kaczynski at MIT, despite none of it having actually happened. During his meandering remarks at Carnegie Mellon University, Trump invoked his late paternal uncle, Dr. John Trump, who he often describes as the 'longest-serving professor' to ever teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even though the noted physicist did not achieve that distinction despite teaching there for 37 years as a professor and another 12 as a senior lecturer after mandatory retirement. John Trump died in 1985. President Trump called the late Dr. Trump, a pioneer in cancer research who was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, a 'smart man,' citing his multiple scientific degrees, and claimed that one of his students was Kaczynski, a mathematics professor who became widely known as the Unabomber when he was arrested in 1996 for a decades-long string of letter bomb attacks on figures in higher education and other industries. 'Kaczynski was one of his students. Do you know who Kaczynski was? There's very little difference between a madman and a genius,' he said. Trump then claimed to have asked his uncle about the murderous ex-academic. 'What kind of a student was he Uncle John? He said: 'What kind of a student — seriously, good ... he'd go around correcting everybody. But it didn't work out too well for him. Didn't work out too well, but it's interesting in life,' Trump said. The crowd did not show much of a reaction to the story, and it was unclear if the president was confusing Kaczynski, who died in a federal prison in 2023, with someone else. But it's highly unlikely if not impossible that any of what he said about his uncle and the notorious murderer was true. Not only did Kaczynski — whose undergraduate degree was from Harvard and earned his Masters and Doctoral degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan — never attend MIT, but even if the president's uncle had crossed paths with the future terrorist, he could not have known that Kaczynski had been responsible for 16 bomb attacks between 1971 and 1995. The University of California at Berkeley professor turned murderous recluse was one of the country's most wanted fugitives until 1996, when his brother David Kaczynski, turned him in to the FBI after reading the now-infamous manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future, after The Washington Post published it at the recommendation of then-Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh.
Reuters
3 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump's approval on immigration falls to lowest level of his term, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's public approval rating on immigration fell in recent weeks to 41%, the lowest since his return to the White House, as Americans took a dour view of heavy-handed tactics, a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Wednesday found. The same share of respondents in the two-day poll - 41% - said they approved of Trump's overall performance as president, matching a June 21-23 reading that marked the lowest of Trump's second term so far. Trump's approval rating on immigration was 43% in the June poll. The Republican president has ordered a nationwide campaign to arrest migrants in the country illegally and has vowed to deport millions of people, executing raids at work sites including farms that were largely exempted from enforcement during his first term. The raids often feature masked officials and have provoked dozens of lawsuits. Only 28% of poll respondents said they agreed with a statement that "immigration arrests at places of work are good for the country," compared with 54% who disagreed. Republicans were notably divided, with 56% in favor of workplace raids, 24% opposed and about 20% saying they were unsure. Democrats overwhelmingly disagreed. In one recent immigration raid of a farm in California, one worker died and hundreds were arrested. Republicans were also divided when asked if they agreed with a statement that arrests of immigrants should be carried out like military operations. Sixty percent agreed and 25% disagreed. Overall, just one in three Americans supported the notion, and one in 10 Democrats. Americans were more clearly divided along partisan lines on whether immigration enforcement officials should wear masks during raids. Some 70% of Republicans said they should while the same share of Democrats said they shouldn't. Immigration policy until recently was a strong point for Trump. In Reuters/Ipsos polling on his approval on a range of issues, from foreign policy to taxation, immigration has been the only policy area where his approval reached 50% - hitting that mark in February and March. It has since trended lower, and in the latest poll 51% of respondents said they disapproved of his performance on the issue, 10 points more than the share who liked his approach. Congress passed a spending law this month that provides funding to detain at least 100,000 people, a steep increase over the record 58,000 in custody by late June. The Reuters/Ipsos survey was conducted online and nationwide, gathering responses from 1,027 U.S. adults. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
