Fighter at Donald Trump’s White House UFC event smears Michelle Obama during interview – US politics live

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Donald Trump’s UFC fights held on the White House lawn were marred by a misogynistic smear aimed at former first lady Michelle Obama last night.

Beneath a giant steel canopy known as the Claw. the president celebrated the forthcoming 250th anniversary of US independence – but, much more importantly, his own 80th birthday – by staging the first professional sporting event in White House history.

Several winning fighters greeted Trump after their bouts. while American fighter Bo Nickal followed ‌his knockout victory by climbing over the cage fence to ‌shake Trump’s hand.

Another fighter, heavyweight Josh Hokit, gave a rambling post-fight interview that veered from praise for the president to religion before concluding with the false conspiracy claim that “Michelle Obama is a man.” The remark, one of the oldest. most persistent smears directed at the former first lady, drew cheers from some sections of the crowd and bewilderment from others.

Hokit’s comments were not the evening’s only political barb. When former UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley faced Canada’s Aiemann Zahabi, the bout took on a nationalistic fervor.

Trump donned a white “USA” hat cageside while chants of “U-S-A!” rang out from sections of the crowd. At various points spectators shouted “Canada is the 51st state!” – echoing Trump’s repeated taunts about annexing America’s northern neighbor – while others urged O’Malley to “eat” his opponent.

Meanwhile, dozens of people stood across the entrance gates to the Ellipse, the park south of the White House, holding protest signs. chanting.

“This reeks of corruption – way too much corruption,” said Susan Douglas. an organizer with Third Act Virginia, the progressive pro-democracy grassroots organization that organized the demonstration. “Let’s face it,” she added. “It’s for Trump’s birthday and has nothing to do with the founding of our country.”

The Ultimate Fighting Championship ( UFC ) announced last week. it will pay bonuses to fighters in a form of cryptocurrency issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial.

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In other developments:

Trump arrives in Evian-les-Bains on Monday afternoon for talks with G7 leaders. including some who have been sharply critical of his managing of the roughly 15-week conflict that has led to a surge in global energy prices. World leaders began gathering in a French spa town for the summit with a new impetus following the US president’s announcement of an agreement. he says will bring an end to the war against Iran.

The Iranian deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed in the early hours of Monday an agreement for an “immediate end” to the US-Iranian war,. said Lebanon was included in a peace deal due to be signed on Friday. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, announced the agreement on Sunday afternoon, saying both sides would be declaring “the immediate. permanent termination of military operations on all fronts”.

Trump told Vladimir Putin that ending Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine was critical. that he was prepared to help, reported Russia’s TASS news agency. During a phone call on Sunday. Trump also informed the Russian president that the US was nearing a peace deal with Iran as the US-Israel war against the country continues, according to Yuri Ushakov, a Putin adviser.

JD Vance said he would discuss a 2028 US presidential run with his wife, Usha, after the 2026 midterms. “Usha and I will absolutely sit down and talk about what comes next for our family,” said Vance. The US vice-president gave insight into his ongoing decision on whether to run during an interview with CBS Sunday Morning where he spoke on his new memoir. Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, which details his conversion to Catholicism.

JD Vance also dodged the question when he was asked by CNBC who would be at the signing of the agreement on Friday.

Without addressing who would be present for the US side, he said they “expect the negotiating team from the Iranian side is going to be the Speaker of the House [Mohammad Bagher] Ghalibaf,. also the foreign minister [Abbas] Araghchi, along with a number of security officials and people who represent the different constituencies within their country.”

In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning, JD Vance has admitted that a “lot” of details remain that need to be figured out between the US. Iran, but insisted that the US has “all the cards”.

Vance also said he hopes text of the agreement will be released this week.

He told CNBC that Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is expected to be involved in those upcoming discussions. as well as its hardline parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

The two major prongs of the deal are the reopening of the strait of Hormuz – which the US expects to be “toll-free” in the long term -. a commitment from Iran to “never develop or procure a nuclear weapon”, Vance said.

He also suggested that Iran would be rewarded with loosened economic sanctions or other barriers. allowing Tehran “to be re-invited into the world economy”, if it abides by the commitments of the deal.

The vice-president went on:

double quotation mark I think it’s a great day for the American people … our expectation is. the strait is going to be opened in a toll-free way for the long term.

That’s the sort of thing that we’re going to figure out in these technical negotiations. There are a lot of very important details to figure out that we’re actually going to sit at the table. discuss together and figure out a path forward on these details.

He added that while Iran has “committed to destroy. dispose of their stockpile of highly enriched material”, the process for doing that has not been established.

double quotation mark And what we’ve said is, OK, let’s talk about how exactly we’re going to do that.

They want access to an unsanctioned economy. We’ve talked about, ‘OK, we’re open to that,’ but that would require a long-term commitment to the inspection. verification regime.

So, a lot of these details are going to be figured out during those 60-day talks.

“We feel quite confident that we’re in a strong position,” Vance added.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Iran hawk, welcomed news of the US-Iran deal. remained deeply skeptical amid the lack of details about the content of the agreement.

“ I am pleased to hear the memorandum of understanding with Iran to allow the Strait of Hormuz to open has been agreed to,” Graham wrote in a post on X,. added: “ I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming.

“Under our law, any nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for review. a vote,” he went on. “I look forward to reviewing the final product. I believe it is imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President [JD] Vance and his negotiating partners, be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress.

“Congratulations to all in getting us to this point. Time will tell,” Graham added.

A framework peace deal between the US. Iran has been reached, Donald Trump and senior Iranian officials have said, bringing the 15-week conflict to a tentative end and offering hope of relief for the region and the world economy.

The secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said war. military operations on all fronts, including Israel ’s war in Lebanon, would end permanently from tonight.

The precise terms of the deal remain unclear. in a statement posted to Truth Social yesterday evening, the US president announced the opening of the strait of Hormuz as well as the removal of the US naval blockade. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” he wrote.

Trump later clarified that reopening the strait would depend on the signing of an initial memorandum of understanding on Friday. which Pakistan, acting as mediator, said would take place in Geneva.

Leaked drafts suggest the memorandum will trigger an immediate 60-day period of intensive technical talks. during which the most contentious issues, including Iran’s nuclear programme, will be discussed. Iran’s deputy foreign minister. Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed that negotiators would seek to reach a broader agreement that would include sanctions relief for Iran.

Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, most of them in Iran. Lebanon, since US and Israeli forces first attacked Iran on 28 February. Iran retaliated with attacks on Israel and Gulf states hosting US bases, targeting military and civilian infrastructure.

Here’s Jason’s full report:

Donald Trump has announced plans to hold a rally in Washington on 4 July as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, saying the event will include a speech, performances, flyovers. fireworks.

“On July 4th, at The Lincoln Memorial. Washington Monument, in beautiful and safe Washington D.C., we are going to host the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all, a ’TRIBUTE TO AMERICA.’ Starting at 7 P.M. EST, this HUGE Celebration will honor our Country’s People, Spirit, Strength, Resolve,. Triumphs,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Hitler dreamed of a 1,000-year Reich; Putin is said to have baroque dreams of territorial conquest meant to restore a dubiously historical empire he calls “Greater Russia”.

Sure, there are people around Donald Trump who imagine using his rise to power to establish some sort of grand, civilizational project: there are the white nationalists who dream of a country purged of those they deem racially impure; there are the Christian nationalists who imagine a future theocracy in which women wear long braids. skirts, and don’t vote; there are the techno-reactionaries who imagine a future of interplanetary colonies, techno-assisted eugenics, and polygamous harems.

But Trump himself is conspicuously small in his dreams: his are comparatively little ambitions, not extending far beyond the reach of his ego. his senses.

He wants praise. He wants to see his name and his portrait everywhere. He wants to feel like a big man, to see those he feels have wronged him be penitent and upset. Maybe most of all, he wants to indulge in his own bad taste, repeatedly visiting the lowbrow staples of the 1980s, when he was young. at the height of his tabloid fame.

He loves the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. He loves the music of Bon Jovi and the Village People. And he loves the gaudy, clownish tokens of masculinity that appeal to very small children: big trucks, big muscles,. demonstrations of physical strength.

And so it felt fitting that on Trump’s 80th birthday, at an event nominally meant to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. really functioning as a celebration for a very special boy, the White House hosted a cage fight for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The UFC is a competitive league for mixed martial arts – a vaguely sports-like endeavor that combines elements of kickboxing, wrestling. traditional boxing, and seems designed to saturate a television audience’s appetite for maximum violence.

Donald Trump threatened to slap a 100% tariff on French wine. champagne unless Paris removes a digital services tax on tech firms, the New York Post reported on Monday.

France imposed in 2019 a three percent levy on the revenues earned by technology firms – including American giants such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple. Google parent Alphabet – within the country’s borders.

French president Emmanuel Macron is due to host Trump on Monday before the G7 summit gets underway at the spa resort of Evian on Lake Geneva.

Trump said he asked Macron “not to charge American companies,” according to the New York Post.

“If they do, I have no choice but to charge a 100% tariff on all champagnes. all wines coming out of France,” he was quoted as saying.

“All [Macron] has to do is get rid of the sales tax, and he wouldn’t have that kind of pressure.”

It’s been quite the journey for Hunter Biden. In the space of a few weeks, the former first son has gone from a man seen as a political liability to an unlikely galvanizing force within the Democratic party, through his emergence on social media as a mental health advocate, razzer of Republicans,. working-class whisperer.

In the process Biden has switched from the GOP’s bete noire to. actually, someone that a fair number of Republican voters seem to like.

His self-deprecating posts, including one where he told Playboy magazine he would not pose nude for them,. another where he engaged in some campy wordplay over a phallic misspelling of the word “election”, are mixed in with serious messages about addiction recovery. And his populist posts about politics even have some calling for him to run for US president in 2028.

Frequently, his honest, human responses to trolling have seemed to win over critics.

Take his response to an X user called Ashley, whose username is @TeamTrump47. Ashley. whose bio says she loves Jesus, responded to a post from Biden by writing: “I’d rather live under a rock than smoke it.”

“Me too. It was awful,” responded Biden, prompting a mea culpa from Ashley.

“Well damn, Hunter, that makes me sad,” she wrote. “You live a better life than you were living. Good luck.”

Biden’s rise on X, where he has amassed more than 780,000 followers, has attracted the attention of Trump himself. Last week the president was asked for his thoughts on Biden’s chances in a hypothetical 2028 primary.

JD Vance said that he will discuss a 2028 US presidential run with his wife after the 2026 midterms.

The US vice-president gave insight into his ongoing decision on whether to run during an interview with CBS Sunday Morning where he spoke on his new memoir. Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, which details his conversion to Catholicism.

“Usha and I will absolutely sit down and talk about what comes next for our family,” said Vance. “People sort of assume that I’m sitting around. figuring out, whether I’m gonna run for president … the way that I make decisions is that I try not to make them until I absolutely must.”

The vice-president added that he believes Trump will be “very supportive” on his decision. “I have no doubt. the president of the United States is going to be very supportive of anything that I ultimately decide to do,” said Vance.

Vance added that he never begins discussions with Trump about his future political plans. “I never bring it up. But sure, the president brings it up a lot, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately. You know, the president’s a political animal. He loves this stuff. He’s very fascinated by it.”