defends

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump on Sunday brushed aside concerns about conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views, which has caused a schism within the GOP.

Trump defended Carlson, citing “good interviews” he’d had over the years with the former Fox News host. He said if Carlson wants to interview Nick Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve a white, Christian American identity, then “people have to decide.” Trump did not criticize Carlson or Fuentes.

Fuentes appeared to appreciate Trump’s sentiment, posting Sunday, “Thank you Mr. President!” along with video of his interaction with reporters.

Carlson had an amiable sit-down on his podcast last month with Fuentes that touched off a controversy among some conservatives. It roiled the Heritage Foundation, where the president of the right-wing think tank defended Carlson for his interview, drawing outrage from staffers. Heritage President Kevin Roberts later denounced Fuentes’ views.

Trump told reporters as he prepared to fly back to Washington from a weekend at his Florida estate that when it comes to Carlson, “you can’t tell him who to interview.”

“If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out,” Trump said. “People have to decide.”

A few minutes later, Trump added, “Meeting people, talking to people for somebody like Tucker — that’s what they do. You know, people are controversial.”

The president then said: “I’m not controversial, so I like it that way.”

It’s not the first time Trump has been asked about Fuentes. Three years ago, he hosted Fuentes at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort, along with the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. Ye, like Fuentes, has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks in recent years.

Trump at the time said he had not previously met Fuentes and “knew nothing about” him.

Fuentes’ visit to Trump’s estate was condemned by numerous Republicans at the time, including former Vice President Mike Pence, who said it was wrong for Trump “to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier, a seat at the table.”

Trump said Sunday that he didn’t know Fuentes at the time and that he didn’t know he was coming with Ye.

Trump’s defense of Carlson’s interview comes as he has used his second term to crack down on colleges and universities over what his administration claims is a tolerance of antisemitic views during protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

Carlson has been critical of U.S. support for Israel in the war in Gaza and has come under fire for his own far-right views, including the white supremacist theory that says white Americans are being “replaced” by people of color.

Price and Megerian write for the Associated Press and reported from Washington and West Palm Beach, respectively.

LONDON — Britain’s government rallied to the defense of the BBC on Tuesday after allegations of bias from its critics and the threat of a lawsuit from President Trump over the way the broadcaster edited a speech he made after losing the 2020 presidential election

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the national broadcaster faces “challenges, some of its own making,” but is “by far the most widely used and trusted source of news in the United Kingdom.”

With critics in media and politics demanding an overhaul of the BBC’s funding and governance, Nandy said that “the BBC as an institution is absolutely essential to this country.

“At a time when the lines are being dangerously blurred between facts and opinions, news and polemic, the BBC stands apart,” she said in the House of Commons.

Trump threatens to sue

A lawyer for Trump is demanding a retraction, apology and compensation from the broadcaster over the allegedly defamatory sequence in a documentary broadcast last year.

Fallout from the documentary has already claimed the BBC’s top executive, Tim Davie, and head of news Deborah Turness, who both resigned over what the broadcaster called an “error of judgment.”

The BBC has apologized for misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Broadcast days before the November 2024 U.S. election, the documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” spliced together three quotes from two sections of the speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

BBC chair Samir Shah said the broadcaster accepted “that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

The BBC has not yet formally responded to the demand from Florida-based Trump attorney Alejandro Brito that it “retract the false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements,” apologize and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused” by Friday, or face legal action for $1 billion in damages.

Nigel Huddleston, media spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, said the BBC should “provide a fulsome apology to the U.S. president” to avoid legal action.

Legal experts say Trump is likely too late to sue the BBC in Britain, because a one-year deadline to file a defamation suit has expired. He could still bring a defamation claim in several U.S. states, and his lawyer cited Florida law in a letter to the BBC, but faces considerable legal hurdles.

An embattled national institution

The publicly funded BBC is a century-old national institution under growing pressure in an era of polarized politics and changing media viewing habits.

Funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by all households who watch live TV or any BBC content, the broadcaster is frequently a political football, with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.

Governments of both left and right have long been accused of meddling with the broadcaster, which is overseen by a board that includes both BBC nominees and government appointees.

Some defenders of the BBC allege that board members appointed under previous Conservative governments have been undermining the corporation from within.

Pressure on the broadcaster has been growing since the right-leaning Daily Telegraph published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines. As well as the Trump edit, Prescott criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.

Near the BBC’s London headquarters, some passersby said the scandal would further erode trust in a broadcaster already under pressure.

Amanda Carey, a semi-retired lawyer, said the editing of the Trump speech is “something that should never have happened.”

“The last few scandals that they’ve had, trust in the BBC is very much waning and a number of people are saying they’re going to refuse to pay the license (fee),” she said.

A growing number of people argue that the license fee is unsustainable in a world where many households watch little or no traditional TV.

Nandy said the government will soon start the once-a-decade process of reviewing the BBC’s governing charter, which expires at the end of 2027. She said the government would ensure the BBC is “sustainably funded (and) commands the public’s trust,” but did not say whether the license fee might be scaled back or scrapped.

Davie, who announced his resignation as BBC director-general on Sunday, acknowledged that “we have made some mistakes that have cost us.”

But, he added: “We’ve got to to fight for our journalism.”

Lawless writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this story.

Reporting from Washington — President Trump, as he often does, had a few things to say.

After admitting that he had been lonely over the holidays, Trump took advantage of his first public appearance of the new year Wednesday to air lingering grievances, make multiple false claims and reinforce recent decisions that have rattled financial markets and his party’s leaders.

As he held forth for more than 90 minutes before a small pool of reporters and photographers, members of his Cabinet, ostensibly called to the White House for a meeting, sat quietly around a long conference table.

Trump defended his decision last month to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and sharply cut the deployment to Afghanistan, moves that disturbed Republican allies in Congress and prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis. In doing so, he contradicted his own recent claim that the U.S. had achieved its objectives of total victory over Islamic State militants in Syria.

“Syria was lost long ago,” he said.

“Look, we don’t want Syria,” he continued. “We’re talking about sand and death. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about vast wealth. We’re talking about sand and death,” he said, seemingly contrasting the war-wracked country with Iraq and its vast oil reserves.

Iran “can do what they want there, frankly,” he added, a comment likely to unnerve officials in Israel, who have worried that a U.S. withdrawal from its positions in eastern Syria would allow Iran to expand its influence there.

“It’s not my fault,” he said. “I didn’t put us there.”

Trump offered little further clarity on the U.S. withdrawal from Syria, which he initially said would take place in 30 days, saying now that the pullout will “take place over a period of time.”

Later, in a long riff about Afghanistan, Trump seemed to endorse Moscow’s 1979 invasion of the country — an act that the U.S. viewed as an attempt to spread communism and waged a long, covert operation to combat during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia,” Trump said, making a case to leave the policing of hot spots in the Mideast and Central Asia to countries in the region. “They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight.”

The Soviet Union eventually was bankrupted by its Afghan war, Trump added. “Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan.”

Historians generally agree that the Russian invasion and subsequent occupation of much of Afghanistan was one of several factors that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, although the country never went bankrupt.

For years, Republicans have credited President Reagan with bringing an end to the Soviet Union by his aggressive increase in U.S. military spending.

Trump’s comments stood in stark contrast to the view Mattis espoused in the resignation letter he presented last month after failing to convince the president to hold off on withdrawing from Syria.

“We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances,” Mattis wrote.

Mattis’ comments clearly stung Trump, who responded last month with criticism of his former Pentagon chief. On Wednesday, he stepped that up, claiming that he fired Mattis.

“What’s he done for me? How had he done in Afghanistan? Not too good,” Trump said. “As you know, President Obama fired him, and essentially so did I.”

Obama did not fire Mattis, although the general did retire several months early in 2013 from his position as the head of the military’s Central Command after dissenting from Obama administration policy decisions.

Tuesday was Mattis’ final day at the Pentagon. Trump, in a fit of pique after the resignation letter became public, had moved up Mattis’ termination date

In addition to his foreign policy comments, Trump also downplayed December’s stock market losses, which erased all positive gains for the year, as “a little glitch” and asserted — wrongly — that there are “probably 30-35 million” immigrants in the U.S. illegally. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates that as of 2016, there were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country, a number that has declined in recent years.

Trump repeated his call for Democrats to agree to $5.6 billion in funding for a border wall, and expressed surprise not to have received overtures from them over the holidays to negotiate an end to the government shutdown.

“I was in the White House all by myself for six or seven days,” he said. “It was very lonely. My family was down in Florida. I said, ‘Stay there and enjoy yourself.’ I felt I should be here just in case people wanted to come and negotiate the border security.”

Trump, who met later in the day with congressional leaders away from TV cameras, has already dismissed a funding proposal from House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi that includes $1.3 billion in border security funding.

While leaving the door open to a compromise, Trump continued to argue for the importance of a wall, pointing to other examples of barriers. He incorrectly asserted that Obama’s Washington residence is surrounded by a 10-foot wall and cited the Vatican, which he said “has the biggest wall of them all.”

“When they say the wall is immoral, then you better do something about the Vatican,” he said. “Walls work.”

As Trump spoke, a “Game of Thrones”-style movie poster teasing Iran sanctions — “SANCTIONS ARE COMING,” it read — lay unfurled across the table directly in front of him. But he made no remarks on the subject.

He did, however, comment on Sen.-elect Mitt Romney of Utah, who wrote in the Washington Post on Tuesday that he was troubled by Trump’s “deep descent in December” and that his deficit in “presidential leadership in qualities of character … has been most glaring.”

“I wish Mitt could be more of a team player,” Trump said. “And if he’s not, that’s OK too.”

Seeming to warn Romney about the fate that lies ahead for Republican lawmakers who vocally criticize him and his presidency, Trump boasted that he “got rid of” former Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, both of whom opted not to seek new terms last year.

Accusing both men of seeking publicity in taking stands against him, Trump suggested that Flake would be seeking a job as a paid cable news contributor — or perhaps in another profession that Trump himself once plied.

“Jeff Flake is now selling real estate or whatever he’s doing,” he said dismissively.

The latest from Washington »

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Kim Kardashian has hit back at critics of her new legal drama All’s Fair, sharing a series of social media posts that both acknowledged and mocked the show’s harshest reviews

Kim Kardashian has fired back at critics slamming her new Hulu legal drama All’s Fair. The 45-year-old reality star and businesswoman shared a string of social media posts that both acknowledged and ridiculed the programme’s most brutal reviews, uploading them to Instagram after All’s Fair premiered earlier this week.

The series, crafted by Ryan Murphy, also features Glenn Close, Niecy Nash-Betts, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts and Teyana Taylor. It centres on a group of women who abandon a male-dominated law firm to establish their own practice.

Kim kicked off her post with a snap of herself donning a purple fur-trimmed crop top before sharing a picture of her alongside Ryan. She then posted a screenshot of a tweet displaying the programme’s Rotten Tomatoes rating at 0%, paired with a supporter’s reaction stating: “Immediately pressed play.”

READ MORE: Why Davina McCall had twice the risk of breast cancer as some other womenREAD MORE: Kim Kardashian shocks fans with naked dress after TV show backlash

Kim subsequently shared an image of herself chuckling with Ryan and her fellow cast members, before uploading another tweet declaring: “Some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen in my life alongside the most predictable storylines and the most ridiculous styling. I’m obsessed, I need 14 seasons. #AllsFair.”

Kim also featured screenshots of critiques from The Hollywood Reporter and the BBC. There was also a photograph of comedian Amy Schumer recreating their viral 2015 Time 100 Gala moment at a screening of the programme.

One tweet she shared read: “All’s Fair on Hulu dares to ask the question ‘Does a show need to be good?’ And the answer is no, it doesn’t.

“We have legendary actresses here giving the worst performances of their careers, it takes a special kind of talent to pull that kind of inability out of them. Amazeballs.”

The post concluded with Kim spotlighting more favourable reviews and captioning the snaps: “Have you tuned in to the most critically acclaimed show of the year! ? ! ? ! ? All’s Fair streaming now on @hulu and @disneyplus.”

Her co-star Glenn Close also got involved, sharing a sketch of the cast alongside a pot labelled “Critic-Bunny Stew” – a cheeky reference to her notorious role in Fatal Attraction, where her character boiled a pet rabbit alive in revenge for being rejected after a one-night stand.

Director and executive producer Anthony Hemingway has stood by the programme in a chat with The Hollywood Reporter.

He remarked: “You’re not going to please everybody. You may have certain criticisms, while there are a million others who love it. I think the show holds a mirror up to each person who watches it. It’s just about: Can you connect to it or relate to it, and see yourself?”.

Chatting to People magazine ahead of the show’s launch, Sarah Paulson revealed: “I had the best time, I really did.” Glenn added: “Sarah and Kim sometimes could not look at each other without laughing.”

Fresh episodes of All’s Fair drop every Tuesday on Hulu until 23 December.

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