Trump to deliver prime-time address after ramping up Venezuela tensions with oil tanker blockade: Latest

Donald Trump has claimed that Steve Witkoff was chosen to lead peace negotiations with Russia and Ukraine because he has the “best personality.”

Trump also claimed Witkoff “knew nothing about Russia” before taking on the role.

Witkoff was slammed by European officials for refusing to consult with experts on the war, as well as his 28-point peace plan which heavily favored Russia.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, has confirmed that Trump is in the Epstein files.

She claimed that the late sex offender and Trump were “young, single playboys together,” while speaking to Vanity Fair as part of a series of eleven interviews.

“Whether he was an American CIA asset, a Mossad asset, whether all these rich, important men went to that nasty island and did unforgivable things to young girls,” she said, referring to Epstein, “I mean, I kind of knew it, but it’s never anything I paid a bit of attention to.”

Billionaire Miriam Adelson said that Donald Trump should run for an unprecedented third term during a White House Hanukkah celebration.

As the GOP megadonor spoke, the crowd shouted “four more years,” before Trump quipped that she had offered to donate “another $250 million.”

Oil prices rose by more than 1.5% on Wednesday, after Donald Trump ordered a blockade on tankers from Venezuela.

“The move marks a significant escalation in U.S. pressure on Venezuela and follows the recent seizure of a tanker, raising the risk that prolonged disruptions could affect exports of roughly 590,000 barrels per day, most of which are destined for China,” Soojin Kim, an analyst at Japan’s MUFG, told the Wall Street Journal.

As oil prices climb so do other costs, as energy becomes more expensive. Supply chains also become threatened as exports become more expensive too.

Meanwhile, Trump has threatened that the U.S.’s military presence in the region will “only get bigger.”

In one episode of the news program, the BBC stitched together two parts of a speech delivered by Trump, which appeared to show him calling on supporters to riot on January 6, 2021.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” Trump says in the show, when both halves of that statement were actually separate.

The president has been forced to sue the BBC in Florida, since the statute of limitations has already run out in Britain.

It is much harder to prove defamation in the U.S. than it is in the U.K., as claimants must prove the defamatory comments were said with malice.

Also, Trump will have to prove that the broadcast defamed him in the U.S. However, it is unlikely that the Panorama documentary aired in the United States making that claim difficult to prove.

The survey found that support for the GOP leader has continued to leak away since April, with his approval figures continuing to worsen throughout his presidency.

The poll, conducted by the NBC News Decision Desk, found that both mainstream Republicans and those who identify as MAGA reported dissatisfaction with Trump.

Read the full report here…

Chris Whipple, the Vanity Fair writer who conducted a fiery interview with Susie Wiles, has hit back at the White House’s accusation that he wrote a “hit piece” on the Trump administration.

In the piece, he wrote that Wiles claimed that Trump had an “alcoholic’s personality.”

He also reported that Wiles believes JD Vance is a conspiracy theorist and that Elon Musk was an “avowed” ketamine user.

Although Wiles has since claimed that the context of her claims had been “disregarded,” Whipple says that “Everything is on tape.”

Read the full report here…

Karoline Leavitt has claimed that the Vanity Fair article detailing an interview with Susie Wiles was “disingenuous reporting.”

She also suggested that the reporter behind the article, Chris Whipple, was trying to push a narrative of “chaos and confusion” at the White House.

“In keeping with longstanding policy, of course we’re not going to release a top-secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth said.

He has been accused of issuing an order to “kill everybody” on board the vessel on September 2, prompting the military to strike the vessel.

When it was revealed that there were survivors clinging to the wreckage, a second strike was launched.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Minority Leader, has said that every senator has a right to see the footage of the attack.

“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can they be transparent on all the other issues swirling about the Caribbean?” he said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has found a new way to troll the Trump administration by launching a website that tracks President Donald Trump’s “criminal cronies.”

Newsom’s team launched the site Tuesday, along with crime statistics that show falling rates of violent crime across major cities in California.

“With crime dropping — again — California is proving what real public safety leadership looks like,” Newsom said. “Meanwhile in D.C., Trump is a felon who surrounds himself with scammers and drug traffickers.”

Rhian Lubin has the full report…