Trump says ‘I’m OK with’ Russian president Putin’s demand to keep Ukraine out of Nato – live

The White House doubled down on its attempt to compel the Associated Press to use the name ‘Gulf of America’ for the body of water known to the rest of the world as the Gulf of Mexico, by refusing to let an AP reporter into the Oval office for a second straight day, according to Brian Stelter of CNN.

The AP, a non-profit collective with clients around the world, advised its journalists to use the Gulf’s historic name, but acknowledge Donald Trump’s order for federal agencies to use the new name he bestowed on it in an executive order signed on his first day back in office.

At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended the effort to strong-arm the AP in response.

“It is a privilege to cover this White House”, Leavitt said. “Nobody has the right to go into the Oval office and ask the president of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given”.

Although there are multiple examples around the world of bodies of water or land masses that are known by different names to different nations, like the Persian Gulf known to some as the Arabian Gulf, Leavitt cast the AP’s refusal to abide by Trump’s order as either a factual error or a lie.

“I was very up front in my briefing on day one, that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable,” Leavitt said, without mentioning that on that same day she herself had falsely claimed that the previous administration had planned to spend $50 million to send condoms to the besieged Gaza Strip.

“It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America”, Leavitt insisted. “And I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that”.

The press secretary did not address the fact that the gulf is, as the pilot of Air Force One explained during the president’s trip to the Super Bowl on Sunday, not in the US, but in international waters.

The Trump administration had a rare victory in court on Wednesday, as a federal judge in Boston ruled that the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program, can resume.

US District Judge George O’Toole, who was nominated by the president Bill Clinton in 1995, rejected a request by unions representing more than 800,000 federal employees for an order blocking implementation of the program.

The unions have called the administration’s offer to federal civilian employees unlawful, but the judge ruled that the unions lacked standing to sue and his court didn’t have jurisdiction over the dispute.

It is another busy afternoon in Donald Trump’s Washington. We will continue to cover events as they unfold, but here are some of the developments we’ve reported on so far:

• Donald Trump told reporters that he is willing to accept Russia’s longstanding objection to Ukraine joining the Nato alliance. “They’ve been saying that for a long time, that Ukraine cannot go into NAato, and I’m OK with that,” the president said. He also revealed that he and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, spoke for more than an hour to begin the process of ending the war in Ukraine and the two men expect to meet in person in Saudi Arabia soon. Trump said he later spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump denied that he was “freezing out” Zelenskyy, but he hinted that the Ukrainian president could be defeated in elections after the war ends.

• Tulsi Gabbard was sworn in as Trump’s director of national intelligence.

• The trustees of the Kennedy Center have elected Donald Trump as their chairman, the Washington Post reports.

• The ACLU and a coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.

• The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at legal scholars concerned that Donald Trump’s efforts to freeze federal spending have sparked a constitutional crisis, saying that the administration is acting lawfully. “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block president Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt said.

• Speaking at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, which the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been pushing for. Hegseth also called the return of Russian-occupied Crimea to Ukraine “unrealistic”.

• Three people, including one American, were released from Belarus, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. The US envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, told reporters at the White House that the individual wishes to remain private.

Asked by a reporter if, by discussing an end to the war in Ukraine directly with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, he was “freezing out president Zelenskyy in this process. Isn’t there danger of that?” Donald Trump hinted that Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s days as president of Ukraine might be numbered.

“No, I don’t think so – as long as he’s there. But, yeah, at some point, you’re gonna have to have elections too” in Ukraine.

Removing Zelenskyy from power has long been a primary goal for Putin.

For Trump’s part, he is unlikely to have forgotten that he was impeached in 2019 over his failed effort to coerce Zelenskyy into opening a bogus investigation of his rival Joe Biden, and into the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 presidential election. Since that time, Russian propaganda smearing Zelenskyy with false claims of hidden corruption have been eagerly shared by diehard Trump supporters.

Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Zelenskyy hired the Ukrainian investigative journalist Sergii Leshchenko to debunk Russian propaganda on social media. In August of 2016, it was Leshchenko who publicized a ledger of secret payments to Paul Manafort from the party of Ukraine’s former pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych’s former political adviser. The revelation forced Manafort to resign from Trump’s presidential campaign the next day.

Asked if he is opposed to Nato membership for Ukraine, Trump said that he is willing to accept Russia’s longstanding objection to Ukraine joining the alliance.

“I don’t think it’s practical to have it, personally” Trump said of Ukraine’s bid for Nato membership. “I know that our new secretary of defense, who is excellent, made a statement today saying that he thinks it’s unlikely or impractical. I think probably that’s true. I think long before President Putin, they said there’s no way they’d allow that. This has been going on for many, many years. They’ve been saying that for a long time, that Ukraine cannot go into Nato, and I’m OK with that.”

Speaking to reporters in the Oval office after Tulsi Gabbard’s swearing in as his intelligence director, Donald Trump said that he had “a great call” with President Vladimir Putin of Russia that lasted for “over an hour this morning” on the subject of ending the war in Ukraine. “I also had a call with President Zelensky, a very good call after that, and I think we’re on the way to getting peace”.

After again claiming that as many as 1.5 million soldiers had been killed in the war, a vastly larger number than either nation, or independent experts estimate, Trump said that a meeting between his Vice President, JD Vance and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky this week at the Munich Security Conference would be part of the peace talks.

“I’ll be dealing with President Putin, largely on the phone, and we ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re going to meet also, probably in Saudi Arabia. The first time we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, to see if we get something done”.

Trump suggested that the meeting would be arranged by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Saudi crown prince and the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, were involved in negotiations for the release of American teacher Marc Fogel from a Russian prison, a source close to the negotiations between Russia and the United States told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.

Donald Trump was just asked during the Oval Office ceremony to swear in Tulsi Gabbard how soon he would like the Department of Education to be closed.

Jennifer Jacobs of CBS News reports on X that he replied: ‘right away’.

“It’s a con job” the president said.