Trump issues blunt message to Senate majority leader to pass voter ID legislation
As John Thune battles conservative blowback for refusing to alter Senate rules and mandate a traditional “talking” filibuster that would force Democrats to hold the floor to block the Save America Act, Donald Trump had a blunt message for the Senate majority leader. “He’s got to be a leader,” the president told reporters outside the White House today.
The upper chamber’s top Republican has said he’ll likely hold a vote on the legislation, which requires proof of citizenship while registering to vote and significantly curbs mail-in voting, next week. However, staunch Democratic opposition means it will fall short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance.
Thune has said the votes “aren’t there” for a talking filibuster, or doing away with the legislative filibuster altogether – the so-called “nuclear” option. Today, Trump said it was up to the South Dakota lawmaker to “get them” regardless.
Key events
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump insisted to reporters that the war on Iran he launched from his Florida beach club is going so well that “most people” on the cable news channels he turns to for information, “say it’s already been won”.
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At a political rally in Kentucky, the president urged voters to get rid of Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who co-wrote the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which compelled the justice department to release investigative files of Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
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The United States bombed an Iranian girls’ elementary school, killing at least 175 people, many of them girls between the ages of 7 and 12, according to the New York Times.
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Trump pressed the Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune, to pass the Save America Act, which would restrict voting and help the party avoid sweeping losses in the upcoming midterm elections.
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Joe Rogan, the podcaster who hosted and endorsed Donald Trump in 2024, said that the US military attacks on Venezuela and Iran ordered by Trump were a betrayal of voters won over by his claim to be against regime change wars.
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As video circulating online showed oil tankers filled with Iraqi oil in flames in the Persian Gulf after reported attacks by Iran, Trump assured his supporters in Hebron, Kentucky, that the war on Iran is already over and “we won”.
War on Iran is costing US taxpayers about $2bn per day, Pentagon says
Pentagon officials estimate that the first six days of the war on Iran cost the United States at least $11.3bn, both Reuters and the Associated Press report.
Trump says any revenge attacks on Americans in US will be Biden’s fault
Returning to a central theme of his first 14 months back in office, Donald Trump told a Fox News correspondent on Wednesday that any attacks on Americans by Iranians inside the United States seeking revenge for the war he launched would be Joe Biden’s fault.
Peter Doocy, the Fox correspondent, asked Trump to comment on “this bulletin that some law enforcement put out about a possible Iran revenge plot in California, where there would be some kind of a boat offshore launching drones”.
“It’s being investigated,” Trump said. “But you have a lot of things happen, and all we can do is take them as they come.”
The president then claimed that “big countries, powerful countries” have told him that they are very impressed by how the war on Iran is being prosecuted.
The reporter followed up by asking: “And if they try to hit us back, have you been briefed about how many Iran sleeper cells there could be inside the US right now?”
“I have been,” Trump replied, “and a lot of people came in through Biden, with his stupid open border.” The president has claimed for years that the US border was “open” during the Biden administration, a false claim one expert who looked at the facts said was “not simply inaccurate: it is unhinged from reality”.
Trump then claimed, improbably, that his administration is watching the supposed sleeper cells inside the US. “We know where most of them are. We got our eye on all of them, I think,” Trump said.
“They came in through the open border policies of sleepy Joe Biden, one of the worst, the worst president in the history of our country. And we’ve got our eyes on all of them.”
The Fox News reporter, whose gentle questioning of the president was shared on social media by the White House, did not ask Trump the obvious, follow-up question of why, if his government really does know where covert Iranian attackers are, have they not already been arrested and charged.
Trump claims ‘the straits are in great shape’, as Iranian attacks close strait of Hormuz
Donald Trump reprised his new favorite role as cheerleader for the US-Israeli war on Iran, telling reporters in Washington on Wednesday night that “we have very good news on the war front”, despite increasing chaos in the Persian Gulf, where Iraq’s oil ports halted operations after ships were reportedly set on fire by Iranian attacks.
The good news Trump shared with reporters after disembarking from Air Force One was, he said, “they are absolutely being destroyed. Iran is absolutely decimated.”
The president, speaking briefly on the tarmac, was not challenged on his claim by the select group of political reporters allowed to ask him questions, none of whom mentioned developments in the Persian Gulf, where Iran declared the vital strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, under its control.
Asked whether he would consider having the US treasury department buy oil futures to bring the oil prices down, Trump dodged the question and claimed that Iran’s armed forces “are pretty much at the end of the line. Doesn’t mean we’re going to end it immediately, but they are. They’ve got no navy, they’ve got no air force, they’ve got no anti-air traffic, anything. They have no systems of control. We’re just riding free range over that country.”
Either unaware of or discounting the Iranian attacks that effectively closed the strait of Hormuz to oil tankers on Wednesday, Trump then said: “And now we’re going to look very strongly at the straits. The straits are in great shape.”
“We’ve knocked out all of their boats,” the president continued, despite reports that Iraqi oil tankers were set alight by Iranian boats packed with explosives hours before he spoke.
“They have some missiles, but not very many,” Trump said. “We’re in very good shape.”
He then seemed to retract his earlier claim that the United States had already won the war with Iran. “The main thing is we have to win this thing,” the president said. “Win it quickly, but win it.”
He then sourced his claim that the war had already been won to “many people” he’d seen on the partisan, rightwing news channels he watches. “Just watching some of the news, most people say it’s already been won,” the president said, revealing where he turns for up-to-date information on the war he started in another region of the planet.
Trump loses Joe Rogan, who says ‘a lot of people feel betrayed’ by attacks on Iran and Venezuela
Joe Rogan, the podcaster who hosted and then endorsed Donald Trump before the 2024 election, said this week that the US military attacks on Venezuela and Iran this year were a betrayal of voters who were won over by his claim to be against regime change wars.
In a new episode of his show, which remains at the top of the podcast charts in the US and Australia, and is second in the UK, Rogan said that even though he gets occasional texts from the president, he was surprised by “this whole fucking Iran thing”.
Speaking to a guest, Rogan said: “Neither thing made any sense to me.”
“The Venezuela thing, I mean, look, they wanted him out forever, and he definitely stole the election to get in there in the first place, and he was a dictator, but at least that one was at least clean. They go in, kidnap him, get him out,” Rogan said. “This one’s nuts,” he added, in reference to the war on Iran Trump launched 12 days ago from his Florida beach club.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to me, unless we’re acting on someone else’s interest, like particularly Israel’s interests. It just didn’t make any sense to me,” Rogan added. “Like if they had supposedly dismantled their chances of making a nuclear bomb, whether or not that’s true or- I mean, it’s so hard to know.”
“It just seems so insane based on what he ran on,” the podcaster said of the president he endorsed. “I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘no more wars’ end these stupid, senseless wars. And then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Rogan also revealed that he is relying on Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to let him know “what’s real and what’s not, because there’s a lot of fake video going around” of the conflict in the Middle East. “And you have to listen to Grok,” Rogan said, “Grok’s dismantling a lot of the fake videos.”
However, as the British Iranian verification expert Shayan Sardarizadeh reported this week, Grok has been mistakenly telling users video clips of real attacks on Iran are fake, and fake videos are real.
US announces release of 172m barrels of oil from strategic reserve
Faced with spiking oil prices, as navigation through the Persian Gulf has ground to a halt since the US-Israeli attack on Iran, and oil tankers now in flames following reported Iranian attacks, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it is releasing 172m barrels from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve, beginning next week.
The release “will take approximately 120 days to deliver based on planned discharge rates”, the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said in a statement.
“Earlier today,” Wright also said, “32 member nations of the International Energy Agency unanimously agreed to President Trump’s request to lower energy prices with a coordinated release of 400 million barrels of oil and refined products from their respective reserves.”
The US release from its reserve is part of that effort, Wright added.
Playlist for Trump event in Kentucky featured song attacking politicians who covered for Epstein
Since Donald Trump was late for his speech in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the crowd, and waiting reporters, got to hear a few extra songs from the playlist put together to entertain his supporters before the president’s remarks.
The lyrics from one of those songs stood out, since one of the main reasons Trump held this rally in Kentucky was to endorse a challenger hoping to defeat Thomas Massie.
Massie is a Republican representative from Kentucky who defied Trump by forcing a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the justice department to release files from the federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump notoriously told a New York magazine reporter in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Given that, it seemed odd to hear the crowd waiting for Trump to appear in Kentucky treated to the viral country song, Rich Men North of Richmond by Oliver Anthony, a young singer from Kentucky’s neighbor Virginia. (Anthony’s confused class politics were criticized by Billy Bragg in a 2023 Guardian opinion piece, and in an answer song.)
At one point in the song, in lines that were played for the Trump supporters awaiting the president’s arrival,Anthony sings: “I wish politicians would look out for miners/ And not just minors on an island somewhere”, which is a clear reference to Epstein’s private island, where some of his young victims were abused.
‘We won,’ Trump says of Iran war as oil tankers burn in the Persian Gulf
As video circulating online appears to show oil tankers filled with Iraqi oil in flames in the Persian Gulf after reported attacks by Iran, Donald Trump assured his supporters at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky, that the war on Iran he started from his Florida beach club 12 days ago is already over and “we won”.
After Trump first shouted “Operation Epic Fury!”, the Pentagon’s name for the US offensive, and received cheers from his supporters, he added: “Is that a great name? Well, it’s only good if you win … and we’ve won. Let me tell you, we’ve won.”
“You know, you never like to say too early you won,” Trump continued, perhaps thinking of his predecessor, George W Bush, standing in front of a huge “Mission Accomplished” banner in 2003 and prematurely declaring a US victory in Iraq.
But then he plowed ahead with his own declaration. “We won. We won. In the first hour it was over,” Trump said, as Iraqi security officials told Reuters two foreign tankers carrying Iraqi fuel oil were in flames after being hit by explosive-laden Iranian boats.
In Kentucky, Trump attacks Thomas Massie, who pressed for the release of the Epstein files, and lies about his own college career
The question of why, exactly, Donald Trump visited Kentucky on Wednesday was answered a few minutes ago when he briefly turned his speech into a campaign rally for Ed Gallrein, a former Navy Seal who is running to unseat Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who crossed Trump by leading the effort to release files from the federal investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
Trump first focused his remarks on how very much he hates Massie.
“I just want to say this: Thomas Massie is a disaster for our party,” Trump said of the man who co-wrote the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill the president was forced to sign into law, after a concerted effort to keep it from coming up for a vote failed.
“Massie’s a complete and total disaster as a congressman, and frankly as a human being,” the president added of the man who made it much more difficult for him to avoid questions about his own close relationship with a convicted sex criminal.
He then offered a less than ringing endorsement of how hard he looked for someone to challenge Massie in the Republican primary. “I wanted just – give me somebody with a warm body to beat Massie,” Trump said. “And I got somebody with a warm body.”
When Trump then called Gallrein on stage, the candidate performed the kind of loyalty to the president that he expects.
“Tom Massie stands with the ladies of The View,” Gallrein told Trump and the crowd. “Mr President, we stand with you!”
“We’ve got to get rid of this loser,” Trump then said, reiterating his attack on Massie. “This guy is bad. He’s disloyal to the Republican party, he’s disloyal to the people of Kentucky and, most importantly, he is disloyal to the United States of America.”
At one point in his lengthy attack on Massie, Trump paused to attempt to explain away the fact that Massie was more academically successful than he was, since the congressman has undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while the president attended Fordham University for two years and was then admitted to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with help from a friend of his father who worked in the admissions office.
“He went to a good college,” Trump said of Massie. “But I know a lot of stupid people that went to a good college. And my uncle was the longest-serving professor in the history of that particular college, university, MIT … My uncle was there 41 years, that means I have much better blood, if you go by that,” Trump added, referring to his often stated eugenicist belief that his uncle’s intelligence means that he is intelligent.
“But I went to the hardest college of all to get into, the Wharton school of finance, that means I’m real smart,” Trump said, pointing at his head.
The president’s claim about the difficulty of getting into the school he eventually graduated from is completely false.
In fact, more than half of the students who applied to the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 were accepted, and transfer students, like Donald Trump, had an even higher acceptance rate at the time, the admissions officer who knew his father told the Washington Post in 2019.
While the university has recently become extremely selective, admitting just 7% of applicants in recent years, as late as 1980, more than 40% of students who applied were admitted.
Stephen Starr
Near the start of his remarks, Donald Trump said the midterms “are going to be very, very important”. He highlighted how his administration has introduced laws ending tax on overtime work, which drew particularly loud appreciation from his hundreds of supporters.
Security at the Trump event in Kentucky says it turned away hundreds of the president’s supporters due to a lack of space, despite the inclement weather that has persisted today.
Trump speech interrupted as supporter behind him reportedly faints
Donald Trump’s speech in Kentucky was paused briefly as a woman in the bleachers behind reportedly fainted.
As the woman was helped away, Trump pointed out to the crowd that one of the people who responded was the former TV star he made administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz.
“It’s Dr Oz!” the president shouted with enthusiasm as he pointed to the medical emergency unfolding behind him.
