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Trump says he is watching Iran 'very closely' and 'a lot' of protesters have been killed
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he flies back to the US, Donald Trump was just asked about the possibility of US military intervention in the country amid widespread reports of protesters being killed.
“We’re watching Iran,” the US president said. “You know we have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case. We have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens.”
“We have a big force going toward Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen. But we’re watching them very closely,” he added.
Minutes later he also said that “a lot” of protesters had been killed, but did not know the exact number.
“Nobody knows a number. I mean it’s a lot no matter what. Hey, if it was one person,” the president said. “In this country if it’s one person, it’s front-page news”, he added, in apparent reference to the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis this month by an ICE officer.
“It’s a lot of people, but you know there’s a difference between ‘a lot’ and 20,000 people, so we’ll find out,” Trump added.
“But we have an armada, we have a massive fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it. We’ll see.”
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Trump says he is imposing 25% tariff on nations that do business with Iran 'very soon'
Reminded by a reporter on Air Force One that he had said last week that he would be imposing tariffs of 25% on countries that trade with Iran, Donald Trump said: “I am doing that, yeah. We’re doing that. If you do business with Iran, you’re going to have a tariff of 25%.”
Pressed to say when that would go into effect, Trump said “It goes into effect very soon.”
Trump says he is watching Iran 'very closely' and 'a lot' of protesters have been killed
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he flies back to the US, Donald Trump was just asked about the possibility of US military intervention in the country amid widespread reports of protesters being killed.
“We’re watching Iran,” the US president said. “You know we have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case. We have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens.”
“We have a big force going toward Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen. But we’re watching them very closely,” he added.
Minutes later he also said that “a lot” of protesters had been killed, but did not know the exact number.
“Nobody knows a number. I mean it’s a lot no matter what. Hey, if it was one person,” the president said. “In this country if it’s one person, it’s front-page news”, he added, in apparent reference to the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis this month by an ICE officer.
“It’s a lot of people, but you know there’s a difference between ‘a lot’ and 20,000 people, so we’ll find out,” Trump added.
“But we have an armada, we have a massive fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it. We’ll see.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar files paperwork suggesting run for Minnesota governor, as Walz bows out
Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, has filed paperwork to establish a campaign committee that would allow her to run for governor later this year, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports.
The newspaper quotes a source close to the senator saying that the filing is a preliminary step but “The senator will make an announcement of her plans in the coming days”.
Klobuchar, who ran for the presidency in the 2020 Democratic primaries, is expected to enter the race to replace Tim Walz, who dropped his bid for a third term after Donald Trump made the state the focus of his immigration crackdown, which is doubling as an effort to attack Democratic run states and cities.
Accusations of fraud by dozens of Somali-Americans in the state have also been used by Trump to attack Walz, who was the Democratic nominee for vice-president in 2024.
Leaders of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party have reportedly urged Klobuchar to run, viewing her as the strongest Democratic candidate.
In recent days, Klobuchar has come under withering criticism from Minneapolis residents for making a series of light-hearted posts about her public appearances around the state as the Twin Cities have been under siege by federal immigration officers.
On social media on Thursday, Klobuchar repeatedly criticized the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis, where Renee Good was killed by an officer this month, and posted a letter to the acting director of the agency in which she and her fellow senator Tina Smith argued that ICE was violating the constitution by not allowing people they detain access to legal counsel. “ICE must comply with the law and allow access to attorneys,” Klobuchar wrote. “This is not optional.”
Smith has already announced that she will not be seeking re-election in the 2026 midterms, meaning that both of the state’s seats in the US Senate could be at stake in the midterms.
Trump says Smith ‘should be prosecuted’ after judiciary committee hearing
The president kept an eye on Jack Smith’s testimony in front of House members on the judiciary committee today, as he journeyed back from Switzerland. In a recent post on Truth Social he, once again, called the former special counsel “deranged”.
Earlier in today’s hearing, congresswoman Becca Balint said that the president has used the epithet to describe Smith more than 180 times on social media.
Trump added that Smith “should be prosecuted for his actions”, adding that “he destroyed the lives of many innocent people, which has been his history as a prosecutor.”
The president said that “at minimum” Smith was guilty of “large scale perjury”.
Vance appears to reverse course on Renee Good investigation, says it is a ‘tragedy’ and that law enforcement is investigating
Rachel Leingang
Reporting from Minneapolis
After a federal agent shot and killed Renee Good, Vance previously said that federal law enforcement is “protected by absolute immunity.” On Thursday, in Minneapolis, he called Good’s death a “tragedy” and said that “of course, we’re investigating the Renee Good shooting”.
He said the intent is for agents to have due process and “real investigation” because “sometimes they’re accused of wrongdoing, and it turns out, when you learn the context, they didn’t actually do anything wrong”.
It is also a “tragedy” that agents in the city are worried that if they call 911, no one will come to help them, he said. He said he would take accusations of racial profiling back to Washington to investigate further, but said that much of the viral claims of ICE excess and brutality to be overblown or out of context.
“We have so much federal law enforcement resources here right now. We have so many people here that we do not want to have here,” he said. “I do not want so many ICE officers in Minneapolis right now. I mean, it’s really, really freaking cold outside, but they’re here not even to enforce immigration laws, but to protect the people from the rioters. That’s an absurd state of affairs.”
Rachel Leingang
Reporting from Minneapolis
JD Vance put the onus on local and state officials to turn down the temperature and chaos of the ICE operation in Minnesota, where agents have been caught on camera pepper spraying people within inches of their faces, accused of racially profiling people, and entered people’s homes without judicial warrants to arrest them. He said people who are working to stall ICE actions by following them, alerting people to their presence and protesting their actions are contributing to the chaos of the enforcement operation here.
He has not spoken to Minnesota governor Tim Walz on this trip, he said, but claimed there were people at the roundtable in Minneapolis who had opposing views to the administration. He said local officials could be helping ICE identify and arrest violent criminals so that the operation could be more targeted.
He claimed the federal government is doing what it can to lower the temperature but that local officials were not meeting them halfway. He called the situation in Minneapolis “the inevitable consequence of a state and local government that have decided that they’re not going to cooperate with immigration enforcement at all”. He claimed the administration isn’t trying to send a political message with its presence in the state.
“Why are we not seeing it anywhere else? We’re seeing this level of chaos only in Minneapolis,” he said. “LA and Chicago, we had some problems there. Pretty much every jurisdiction where these guys are operating, you don’t see the same level of chaos, you don’t see the same level of violence. You don’t see the problems that we’re seeing in Minneapolis. Maybe the problem is unique to Minneapolis, and we believe that it is, and it’s a lack of cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal law enforcement.”
One note that in the hearing room today are four of the Capitol police officers who defended Congress on 6 January, 2021.
Aquilino Gonell, Harry Dunn, Michael Fanone, and Daniel Hodges have since become outspoken critics of the president, and his decision to issue clemency to those who attacked the US Capitol.
Today, Republican Troy Nehls insisted that the officers were ultimately let down by poor leadership from Capitol police, who, he says, should have known the day could have turned violent.
“The fault does not lie with Donald Trump,” Nehls said, before blaming the acting police chief at the time of the insurrection, Yogananda Pittman. “We know, we know they had the intelligence and there was going to be a high propensity for violence that day.”
While Nehls was speaking, Fanone coughed and said “fuck yourself” under his breath in response to the congressman’s comments.
Vance repeats claims that 'far-left agitators' are disrupting ICE agents, defends detention of five-year-old in Minneapolis
Rachel Leingang
Reporting from Minneapolis
Vance called those who are seeking to disrupt ICE “far-left agitators” and said state and local public officials should be cooperating on immigration enforcement. He said he has “reasons to believe” that local officials will soon be more cooperative and ask local law enforcement to help facilitate arrests of people like criminal sex offenders. The “number one thing” that would lower the temperature would be for local officials to help facilitate “reasonable enforcement of the law”.
“Come out and protest. Protest me. Protest our immigration policy, but do it peacefully,” Vance said. “If you assault a law enforcement officer, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice is going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
He also defended ICE agents over the 5-year-old child who was detained alongside his father, saying media missed the context of the situation, claiming the father fled officers.
“What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?” he said.
“Do we want these things to happen? Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic? No, we don’t. These guys want it, least of all,” Vance added. “But if we had a little cooperation from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community.”
Rachel Leingang
Reporting from Minneapolis
JD Vance is in Minneapolis this afternoon, flanked by federal agents, to defend immigration enforcement operations in the state.
He spoke with agents and local business leaders ahead of talking to the press, he said.
The purpose of his visit is an attempt to “tone down the temperature a little bit, reduce the chaos, but still allow us as a federal government to enforce the American immigration laws,” he said. He claimed that immigration agents are doing a great job and that “frankly, a lot of the media is lying about the job that they do every single day” though there are “occasionally” instances where all agents may not be doing everything correctly.
Smith says he doesn't understand why Trump pardoned Capitol rioters
Notably, Jack Smith said that he didn’t understand why Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,500 Capitol rioters when he returned to office last year. “I don’t get it, I never will,” he added.
“The people who assaulted police officers, were convicted after trial, my view, and I think in the view of the judges who sentenced them to prison, are dangerous to their communities,” Smith said. “Some of these people have already committed crimes against their communities again, and I think all of us reasonable know that there’s going to be more crimes committed by these people in the future.”
'I will not be intimidated' Smith says in response to questions about Trump's social media insults
Congresswoman Becca Balint, a Democrat, pushed Smith to explain whether it’s uncommon for a special counsel’s report to remain unreleased.
A reminder that judge Aileen Cannon ordered Volume II of Smith’s report, on his investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, to remain sealed. Smith said he was limited about what he could mention about the report given the court’s order.
The former special counsel also responded to Blint’s question about how Trump’s incessant insults against him.
“The statements are meant to intimidate me. I will not be intimidated,” Smith said. “I think these statements are also made as a warning to others what will happen if they stand up and I am, as I say, not going to be intimidated.”
Smith is now explaining how Trump “told his supporters to come to Washington DC” on 6 January 2021.
“He was on notice that they were angry, and he told that crowd, ‘we can’t let this happen’,” Smith said.
“There is a videotape of when he’s making these sort of statements, and he’s saying that they ‘need to fight’ if they want to save their country,” Smith recalled. “There are, in fact, people in the crowd chanting ‘fight for Trump,’ that all happened during the Ellipse speech before people headed towards the Capitol and the Capitol was attacked.”
Republican representative Brad Knott, of North Carolina, asked Smith why Trump was the only person charged in the investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Smith said he was in the process of considering charging others involved, but this was negated when Trump was elected president again and the case was closed. He said:
At the time of the conclusion of our work, my lawyers had determined, had believed, that we did have proof to charge other people. I was in the process of making that determination when our work was concluded.
But you are correct that the only person charged in this case was Donald Trump, who, in my estimation, was the person most culpable for the crimes charged.
