America

    President Trump called Stormy Daniels horseface in a tweet on Tuesday morning as he reacted to a judge’s dismissal of a defamation lawsuit the adult film star brought against him earlier this year. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued Trump in April after he said a composite sketch of a man she said threatened her in 2011 to keep quiet about an alleged affair with the real estate mogul was a con job. Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, responded in his own tweet, calling Trump a disgusting misogynist. Daniels also tweeted in response to the president, and amid her own attacks on his physical appearance said he he has demonstrated his incompetence, hatred of women and lack of self control on Twitter. Trump’s highly personal insult comes as he and h...

    Donald Trump is backing off his claim that climate change is a hoax but says he doesn't know if it's manmade and suggests that the climate will change back again. In an interview with CBS 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday night, the US President said he did not want to put the US at a disadvantage in responding to climate change. I think something's happening. Something's changing and it'll change back again, he said. I don't think it's a hoax. I think there's probably a difference. But I don't know that it's manmade. I will say this: I don't want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don't want to lose millions and millions of jobs. Mr Trump called climate change a hoax in November 2012 when he sent a tweet stating, The concept of global warming was created ...

    US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been sworn in at a White House ceremony, but not before President Donald Trump criticised Mr Kavanaugh’s opponents for a campaign of personal destruction. In a ceremony that could have been a unifying moment for the nation, Mr Trump instead delivered remarks that even he acknowledged began differently than perhaps any other event of such magnitude. On behalf of our nation, I want to apologise to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure, Mr Trump said, addressing the bitter partisan fight over Mr Kavanaugh’s nomination that became a firestorm after the emergence of sexual misconduct allegations, which Kavanaugh emphatically denied. With all the sitting justic...

    Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, whose Supreme Court hearings ripped apart the Senate and roiled the nation, headed for final confirmation to the court after two key undecided senators announced on Friday that they would back him, despite allegations of sexual assault and deep-seated Democratic opposition. The last-minute announcements by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, capped an emotional and deeply divisive confirmation process that, in the end, turned as much on questions about Judge Kavanaugh’s honesty, temperament and treatment of women as it did on his jurisprudence. A final vote is expected late Saturday afternoon. Judge Kavanaugh’s ascent to the nation’s highest court is a huge victory for President Trump,...

    Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal published Thursday evening in which he defended his emotional testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said, he wrote. Kavanaugh became visibly emotional when refuting allegations of sexual misconduct three women publicly leveled against him. After all those meetings and after my initial hearing concluded, I was subjected to wrongful and sometimes vicious allegations. My time in high school and college, more than 30 years ago, has been ridiculously distorted. My wife and daughte...

    In a raucous campaign-style rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Donald Trump mocked Dr Christine Blasey Ford, who in wrenching testimony before the Senate judiciary committee last week said that the supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager. Kavanaugh has denied the incident. As hundreds of supporters cheered, Trump delivered a crude imitation of Ford from her testimony, in which she vividly described a violent sexual assault by Kavanaugh in the early 1980s but admitted that details of the time and place were lost to memory. Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 20 women, whose allegations he has denied and dismissed. But last week he called Ford a very credible witness and said: I thought her testi...

    The FBI has begun contacting people as part of an additional background investigation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, including a second woman who alleges that the Supreme Court nominee sexually assaulted her, according to people familiar with the unfolding investigation. The FBI also is following up on allegations by Christine Blasey Ford, a California psychologist, who testified to the Senate this week that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s when they were in high school in suburban Washington, D.C. Ford recounted in detail how Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge allegedly attacked her in a bedroom during a small gathering at a house when the teen boys were both drunk. Ford said the alleged attack had caused her lasting trauma, and she was visibly an...

    The announcement plunged Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination into new turmoil after a tumultuous week on Capitol Hill, and will delay, by as much as a week, a final confirmation vote. It came only 24 hours after the judge and one of his accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, each gave emotional testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that led many Republicans to think Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation was inevitable. Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders had little choice but to ask Mr. Trump to order the F.B.I. inquiry after Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, first announced he was supporting Judge Kavanaugh, and then, in a stunning reversal, said he would not vote to confirm him without an F.B.I. investigation first. With a handful of allies in a closely divided Se...

    For the rest of the world, President Donald Trump’s America is a laughingstock, not a leader. That was the takeaway from Trump’s speech to the 2018 United Nations General Assembly. Trump opened his speech the same way he opens his campaign rallies, TV interviews, and probably conversations with every visitor he meets: In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. The response from the leaders assembled in the room? Laughter. The entire world literally laughed at the US president and they weren’t laughing with him. Even Trump himself was taken aback: I did not expect that reaction. And while reporters and foreign policy experts could not recall another leader ever before drawing derisive...

    A second woman has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, throwing his ascension to the highest court in the land into further doubt. Deborah Ramirez has said that she attended a dorm-room party with Kavanaugh in the early 1980s when the pair were both studying at Yale University. There, she said in an interview with The New Yorker published Sunday, Kavanaugh exposed himself to her and thrust his penis into her face, causing her to touch it. I wasn’t going to touch a penis until I was married, Ramirez told the magazine. I was embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated. She added: Brett was laughing. I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants. Kavanaugh has denied the allegation but Senate Democ...