Trump says he helps polio vaccine regardless of indicators of RFK Jr’s opposition – stay | US politics

At his just-concluded press convention in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump was requested if he would take into account pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams, who’s going through corruption costs.

“Yeah, I believe that he was handled fairly unfairly,” Trump replied.

Adams has been indicted on 5 federal costs associated to accepting presents in trade for favors corresponding to serving to Turkey open a brand new diplomatic tower in Manhattan regardless of considerations about its fireplace security system.

Last week, the New York Times reported {that a} lawyer who had filed petitions searching for to revoke the approval of vaccines for polio and different preventable illnesses has been by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s facet in interviews to rent prime officers for the well being and human providers division.

A reporter requested Donald Trump immediately if he supported taking the polio vaccine out of circulation.

“You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not going to occur,” Trump mentioned. “I noticed what occurred with the polio, I’ve pals that have been very a lot affected by that. I’ve pals from a few years in the past, and … they’re nonetheless in not such fine condition due to it.”

The polio vaccine has been credited with suppressing, almost entirely, a illness that may trigger lifelong paralysis in individuals who get it. Mitch McConnell, the highest Senate Republican who survived the illness, condemned the news that Trump’s incoming administration could possibly be hostile to the much-used vaccine.

However, Trump did sign some skepticism to the vaccine mandates enacted by some states and faculty districts. “I don’t like mandates. I’m not an enormous mandate particular person,” Trump mentioned.

He additionally mentioned that there is likely to be a hyperlink between vaccines and pesticides and autism. “You check out autism immediately versus 20, 25 years in the past, it’s like, not even plausible. So we’re going to have studies,” Trump mentioned.

But he downplayed fears that Kennedy, if confirmed to steer the nation’s well being division, would make radical adjustments. “Nothing’s going to occur in a short time. I believe you’re going to seek out that Bobby is way is a really rational man,” Trump mentioned.

At his ongoing press convention, Donald Trump was requested what he would say to individuals involved in regards to the anti-vaccine views of Robert F Kennedy Jr, who he nominated to steer the division of well being and human providers.

“I believe he’s going to be a lot much less radical than you’ll suppose. I believe he’s received a really open thoughts, or I wouldn’t have put him there. He’s going to be very a lot much less radical,” Trump mentioned, including “there are issues we don’t do in addition to plenty of different nations … and we’re going to seek out out what these issues are.”

He didn’t specify what these issues have been, however did promise to decrease prescription drug prices by eliminating “middlemen”.

“We’re paying rather more than different nations, and we have now legal guidelines that make it unimaginable to cut back and we have now a factor known as the intermediary. You know the intermediary, proper? The horrible intermediary that makes extra money, frankly, than the drug firms, and so they don’t do something besides they’re a intermediary. We’re going to knock out the intermediary. I’m going to be very unpopular after that assertion,” Trump mentioned.

Donald Trump introduced that Japanese funding agency SoftBank would put $100bn into initiatives within the United States and create tens of hundreds of jobs.

“We’ve simply concluded a really productive assembly, and immediately I’m thrilled to announce that SoftBank will probably be investing $100bn in America, creating 100,000 American jobs at a minimal. And he’s doing this as a result of he feels very optimistic about our nation because the election and lots of different persons are additionally coming in with large quantities of cash,” Trump mentioned in a press convention at Mar-a-Lago.

The agency’s founder, Masayoshi Son, appeared alongside Trump, saying: “I would love to have fun the good victory of President Trump and my confidence stage to the economic system of United States has tremendously elevated together with his victory.

“Of course, enterprise is vital, expertise is vital, however another factor I’m I’m actually hoping, is that this President Trump would … carry the world into peace once more. That’s my extra hope, and I believe he’ll truly make it occur,” Son added.

The announcement is the most recent occasion of Trump taking credit score for personal sector funding bulletins, whether or not or not they really come into fruition. Shortly after first profitable the presidency, he made a much-publicized go to to a plant owned by air-con producer Carrier, and mentioned he had satisfied them to not transfer jobs abroad. The firm later carried out layoffs anyway.

Here’s a glance again:

In an interview with CNN, Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal mentioned he believes the variety of Republicans who will assist Pete Hegseth to steer the protection division has elevated.

“His probabilities improved final week as a result of Donald Trump heightened the warmth on plenty of Republicans, in impact threatening them with primaries and different retribution in the event that they fail to assist Hegseth. And so plenty of the Republican senators who informed me, 5 to 10 of them, that they thought Hegseth was doomed as a nominee have now modified their story,” mentioned Blumenthal, who serves on the armed providers committee that will probably be tasked with confirming him.

With the top of his presidency in sight, Joe Biden has revealed an essay in the American Prospect trying again at his financial accomplishments.

“Over the final 4 years, we’ve confronted a few of the most difficult financial circumstances in our historical past. Not solely have we recovered, we’ve come out stronger, and have laid foundations for a promising new chapter in our American comeback story,” Biden writes.

“It will take years to see the total results by way of new jobs and new investments throughout the nation, however we have now planted the seeds which are making this occur. If these investments and actions are constructed upon, U.S. financial management will probably be stronger and the center class safer within the years and many years forward.”

The “difficult financial circumstances” Biden writes about are the inflation that brought on his reputation to hunch early in his time period and by no means recuperate, and is broadly seen as paving the way in which for Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

The American Prospect is related to the United States’s progressive motion. Barack Obama revealed a similar essay in late 2016, however selected to put it within the Economist, which is British and seen as starting from liberal to centrist in its political leanings.

Another distinction between the 2 items: Obama’s was revealed earlier than Trump received the presidential election, and Biden’s afterwards.

Donald Trump is predicted to at 11am communicate to reporters from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The president-elect has spoken publicly solely sometimes within the weeks since he received re-election to the White House, as an alternative making his views recognized via posts on Truth Social, or statements from his transition workforce.

Trump didn’t say what he will probably be speaking about, however we are going to let you already know after we discover out.

By all accounts, Donald Trump is sticking by Pete Hegseth, regardless of the sexual assault accusation and different studies of unhealthy habits circling round him.

Hegseth was seen with Trump, JD Vance and different prime Republicans and their allies this weekend, on the army-navy soccer sport in Maryland:

Republican senator Lindsey Graham says Pete Hegseth, the previous Fox News host who Donald Trump nominated to steer the protection division, informed him that he has allowed a lady who accused him of sexual assault to talk publicly.

While police introduced no costs over the alleged assault, Hegseth reportedly paid the accuser a settlement, in trade for her signing a nondisclosure settlement in regards to the allegation. In a Sunday interview with NBC News, Graham mentioned that Hegseth “informed me he would launch her from that settlement”.

Graham, who had expressed some considerations about Hegseth because the sexual assault allegations and studies of different unhealthy habits got here to mild, in any other case spoke positively in regards to the protection secretary nominee:

I’m in a superb place with Pete until one thing I don’t find out about comes out. These allegations are disturbing, however they’re nameless. I requested him level clean, have been you drunk in a bar and received up and mentioned, let’s kill all of the Muslims. He mentioned, no. There’s one allegation on a police report about sexual assault, that particular person has the appropriate to return ahead to the committee. But about mismanagement of cash, about, you already know, having a consuming downside and saying inappropriate issues, all of those are nameless allegations.

He’s given me his facet of the story. It is smart to me, I consider him. Unless any person’s prepared to return ahead, I believe he’s going to get via.

In addition to the greater than 120 Democratic lawmakers who despatched Joe Biden a letter this weekend urging him to have the Equal Rights Amendment added to the structure, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand is on a private quest to get the president on board.

The New York Times reports that the Democrat has made the case to whoever will take heed to her that the ERA has met the edge for ratification, and the president ought to order it revealed. From Gillibrand’s interview with the Times:

Ms. Gillibrand has pleaded her E.R.A. case at each accessible alternative. The third-term New Yorker has met with Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of employees, and Anita Dunn, a former prime adviser to Mr. Biden. Her request is for a five-minute assembly with Mr. Biden himself. She has used passing 30-second interactions in photograph strains to personally pitch the president, to date to no avail.

Ms. Gillibrand has offered White House officers with fats binders stuffed with authorized analysis and polling, which have on the quilt a printout of Mr. Biden posing as if he’s on a Taylor Swift Eras Tour poster. (E.R.A. — get it?)

Ms. Gillibrand sat down with Minyon Moore, one among Vice President Kamala Harris’s prime advisers and confidantes, to steer Ms. Harris to champion the E.R.A. and requested her to talk to different White House officers about it. Still, nothing occurred.

Undeterred, Ms. Gillibrand has continued to textual content and harangue and flatter, all in service of procuring a short assembly with Mr. Biden to make a extra complete pitch.

“I’ve by no means accomplished extra authorized evaluation and work since I used to be a lawyer,” Ms. Gillibrand mentioned. So far, she has been strung alongside.

“It’s ‘I’ll get again to you; I’ll get again to you.’ Everyone all the time says, ‘We love your arguments.’ I by no means know what the ‘however’ is.”

Kelly Scully, a White House spokeswoman, mentioned senior administration officers had been discussing the proposal with lawmakers and different stakeholders.

“President Biden has been clear that he needs to see the Equal Rights Amendment definitively enshrined within the Constitution,” Ms. Scully mentioned in a press release. “It is long gone time that we acknowledge the clear will of the American individuals.”

Good morning, US politics weblog readers. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers have proposed a novel concept for Joe Biden to safe his presidential legacy in his ultimate weeks in workplace: resolve that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which protects in opposition to intercourse discrimination, has met the usual for ratification, and have the Archivist of the United States publish the modification into the structure. The proposal was authorized by the US House and Senate within the early Seventies however a conservative backlash prevented it from being ratified by the mandatory two-thirds of states by a 1982 deadline congress had set.

In the years since, a number of states have voted to approve the modification, and in a letter to Biden despatched over the weekend, greater than 120 House Democrats argued that the ERA has met the necessities, and needs to be added to the structure because the twenty eighth modification, and the primary since 1992. The subtext right here is Donald Trump’s impending arrival within the White House, and the probability that Biden publishing the ERA would set off a court docket combat that casts a shadow over the newly arrived president, notably since he’s seen as politically susceptible amongst girls. We’ll let you know extra in regards to the ERA push immediately.

Here’s what else is happening:

• Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine activist Trump has named to steer the well being and human providers division, is heading to Capitol Hill to fulfill with Republican senators all through the day.

• Biden will at 12.15pm maintain an occasion on the labor division to advertise his administration’s efforts to assist American employees, then convene a Hanukkah reception at 7.45pm.

• Syrian diplomats and group leaders plan to immediately hoist the flag of “Free Syria” at its Washington DC embassy, which has been closed since 2014.