Trump slams Zelensky in blistering Oval Office row: ‘You are gambling with World War Three’ Live updates

While Trump touts his conversations with Putin, Zelensky laid down a very clear marker during their Oval Office meeting.

He referred to the Russian leader as a terrorist and insisted there could be no compromise.

But I hope that together we can stop him. But for us, very important to save our country, our values, our values, our freedom, democracy. And, of course, no compromises.

A little later, however, Trump pushed back. He tells his guest that there will have to be compromises if there is to be a peace agreement.

I think you’re going to have to always make compromises. You can’t do any deals without compromises.

They are still taking questions from reporters 45 minutes after their meeting started.

A reporter with Tass, the Russian state news agency, has just been escorted out of the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelensky.

The White House said they were not on the approved list to enter and were removed as soon as officials became aware. The White House said:

TASS was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool. As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary. He is not on the approved list for the press conference.

The reporter’s presence angered members of the White House press corps, after several regular news agencies have been barred from events for failing to cover Trump in an approving way.

Zelensky used the meeting to show Trump images of prisoners of war released by Russia, alongside pictures of what they looked like before capture.

He said it showed that Moscow was not playing by the accepted rules of war and was abusing prisoners.

They don’t eat. They beat them .. Even during the war, there are rules. Everybody knows there are rules. During the war these guys, they don’t have any rules. You see that?

A reminder that the killing isn’t over. The Associated Press has this report:

A funeral service was held in Kyiv on Friday for a U.S. Marine Corps veteran killed while serving alongside Ukrainian forces. Family and friends said 21-year-old Ethan Hertweck had given his life fighting for freedom.

Hertweck, from California, traveled to Ukraine soon after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, initially assisting some of the millions of women and children who were fleeing the country in the earliest days of the war.

After returning to the United States for several months, he returned to Ukraine to receive a combat medical license, and trained Ukrainian troops before himself joining a combat unit as a medic.

In December 2023 he was guarding a military bunker in the eastern industrial region of the Donbas when Russian forces overtook his unit’s position. When one of his unit was wounded, Hertweck attempted to drag him back to the safety of the bunker but was hit by gunfire in the process. He died soon after.

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Friday that makes English the official language of the United States.

The order allows government agencies to keep current policies and provide documents and services in other languages, but it provides flexibility to decide when and how to provide services in languages other than English, according to the White House.

The move rescinds a mandate dating back to President Bill Clinton that requires agencies and other organizations that receive federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.

‘It is long past time English is recognized as the official language of the United States,’ the fact sheet read.

Trump says he wants to get the fighting over quickly. But in his Oval Office meeting he also ladled praise on Ukraine’s fighting forces

‘Your soldiers have been unbelievably brave,’ he tells Zelensky

We give them great equipment, but somebody has to use the equipment. They’ve been unbelievably brave,

And we give them great credit. This was supposed to be over very quickly, and here we are, three years later. So I give tremendous gratitude, generals and your soldiers and yourself, in a sense, that been very hard fighting.

Trump is asked whether his guest will have to compromise to reach peace.

The US president says yes, and that he sees his role as a mediator who has to bring two warring parties together.

I think you’re going to have to always make compromises. You can’t do any deals without compromises. So certainly he’s going to have to make some compromises, but hopefully they won’t be as big as some people think you’re going to have to make. That’s all we can do. I’m here as a as an arbitrator, as a mediator, to a certain extent, between two parties that have been very hostile

Last week Trump called the Ukrainian president a ‘dictator.’ Today it is all warm words.

The American president is famously non-confrontational when it comes to face-to-face meetings. He may not be persuaded by Zelensky’s pleas for a US security guarantee, but Trump is ever the salesman and will unlikely say no to his face.

Instead it is all talk of how well Trump knows his Ukrainian counterpart.

It’s an honor to have President Zelensky of Ukraine, and we’ve been working very hard, very well. So we’ve actually known each other for a long time. We’ve been dealing with each other for a long time.

When immigration agents were first ordered to deport Ivan Oramas and Santos Maradiaga-Villalta, President George W. Bush was in the White House and the iPhone was a distant dream.

That was over two decades ago—yet both men were arrested this week, according to federal data reviewed by DailyMail.com.

They were among over 50,000 illegal immigrants removed so far, a Department of Homeland Security official revealed to DailyMail.com.

News of their arrest was circulated Thursday in an internal immigration memo noting recent enforcement actions made by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Oramas, 61, is a citizen of Cuba with a rap sheet including convictions for sexual battery and aggravated assault.

His sexual battery case caused serious injury, according to his charges in the file.

ICE Houston nabbed Oramas this week, enforcing a deportation order first handed down in October 2003—21 years overdue.

At their meeting in the Oval Office, Trump told Zelensky a ceasefire with Russia is ‘fairly close’.

Trump said he had spoken to Vladimir Putin.

Trump and Zelensky are starting their meeting in the Oval Office right now.

Jounalists inside report that Trump told Zelensky that the minerals deal is a ‘very fair deal’ and that they will sign it today.

Zelensky said he was hopeful the document would be a step forward for Ukraine.

Zelensky wants more than that though, and is seeking a place in negotiations with Russia as well as a U.S. security guarantee.

Zelensky just posted this video of his meeting with American senators, and thanked politicians from both sides of the aisle for their support during three years of war.

Our discussions focused on the continued military assistance for Ukraine, relevant legislative initiatives, my meeting with President Trump, efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace, our vision for ending the war, and the importance of robust security guarantees.

The controversy over White House staffers seizing control of the pool rotation for print reporters continues, but one person who sided with the press voiced her concerns about the new rules.

Conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly explained why she supported the idea of journalists, not the White House controlling which reporters had access to the president

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged Friday he has ‘very little hope’ to make trump change his mind on applying wholesale tariffs of 25 percent on all EU products, after his trip to Washington earlier this week.

‘I believe there are misunderstandings’ and ‘misconceptions in the trade approach’ of the Trump administration, Macron said, speaking in a news conference during a trip to Portugal.

He added that describing as a tariff the value added tax, which is implemented on all local and foreign goods and services in France, is ‘factually false’.

Macron argued tariffs are ‘bad for everyone’ because they’re leading to price increases.

‘The United States has nothing to gain from them,’ he said.

He warned that if the U.S. decision was to be confirmed, Europeans would respond through ‘reciprocal tariffs.’

The White House press pool offers a little more detail on who is with Zelensky:

The Ukrainian first deputy Prime Minister and minister of economy Yulia Svyrydenko is joining Zelenskyy. She will sign the minerals agreement with the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, per Ukrainian Embassy.

Federal workers will receive a second email on Saturday asking them for a description of what they did last week – and this time they may have to answer it.

The emails are scheduled to become a weekly requirement, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The White House has said the emails are necessary to ensure federal workers are on the job but the responses will also be used to gauge workers’ alignment with President Donald Trump’s agenda.

This email – unlike the first, which was sent from the Office of Management and Personnel – will be sent from the various agencies HR departments.

Eventually, the agencies will develop Microsoft forms to capture workers’ five-bullet responses replies to the email will be mandatory and the collected information will go to department heads across the government.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky arrived at the White House at 11:23, where he was greeted by President Trump outside the West Wing.

Trump appeared to crack a joke as Zelensky got out of his SUV, dressed down in his usual war leader garb.

‘He’s dressed up nice today,’ Trump could be heard to say.

The two did not respond to shouted questions before heading inside for the start of their meeting.

Zelensky announced on Twitter that he had just spoken to Franklin Graham, who leads the aid charity Samaritan’s Purse.

But more than that Graham (son of the late Billy Graham) is an ally and friend of Trump.

Like UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer going on Fox News after his meeting with Trump, it shows that world leaders are working out the best way to butter up a famously stubborn president.

He is seen here with Sens (left to right) Chris Coons (D), Lindsey Graham (R), and Amy Klobuchar (D).

Zelensky is expected at the White House at any moment.

A former Biden administration official accused his former colleagues of ‘gaslighting’ journalists and voters by denying the truth about the president’s advancing age and frailty.

President Joe Biden was 81 when he bowed to the inevitable in July last year and ended his run for reelection.

Blame and recrimination have swirled among Democrats ever since, as they wonder what would have happened if he had dropped out sooner and Kamala Harris or another candidate had longer to make their case against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

Five former secretaries of defense are calling on Congress to hold immediate hearings on President Trump’s recent firings of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and several other senior military leaders.

The five men represented Republican and Democratic administrations over the past three decades.

They said the dismissals were alarming and raised ‘troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military;.

Also, they said it ‘removed legal constraints on the president’s power.’

The five included Trump’s own former defense secretary Jim Mattis.

According to the document, the signatories will establish a co-owned, jointly managed investment fund to which Ukraine will contribute 50% of future revenues from natural resources, including minerals, hydrocarbons and other extractable materials.

Without mention of the $500bn (£395bn) initially demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump, the document spells out how the government of Ukraine ‘will contribute to the Fund 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets’.

The document, which only makes one mention of Russia, notes that both the U.S. and Ukraine ‘wish to ensure’ that ‘those States and other persons’ who have ‘acted adversely to Ukraine in the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine following a lasting peace’.

But the document stops short of mentioning any U.S. security guarantees, except that the U.S. government ‘supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace’.

A left-wing grassroots organization is encouraging U.S. residents not to spend any money Friday as an act of ‘economic resistance’.

It is to protest what the group’s founder sees as the malign influence of billionaires, big corporations and both major political parties on the lives of working Americans.

The People’s Union USA calls the 24 hours of spending abstinence, which started at midnight, an ‘economic blackout’.

It is a term that has since been shared and debated on social media.

The activist movement said it also plans to promote weeklong consumer boycotts of particular companies, including Walmart and Amazon.

Other activists, faith-based leaders and consumers already are organizing boycotts to protest companies that have scaled back their DEI initiatives, and to oppose Trump’s moves to abolish all federal DEI programs and policies.

Some faith leaders are encouraging their congregations to refrain from shopping at Target, one of the companies backing off DEI efforts, during the 40 days of Lent that begin Wednesday.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling Friday that the government didn’t make a strong showing that it could succeed on the merits in the case concerning Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for people born to parents not legally in the country.

It is the second appeals court to reject the administration.

The Ninth Circuit similarly rejected the government’s petition for a stay in a Seattle case brought by four states.

At issue is the president’s January executive order that would eliminate automatic citizenship at birth for people whose parents aren’t legally in the country.

The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to those born or naturalized in the United States.

The Trump administration centers its arguments around part of the amendment that says those born and naturalized and ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States, arguing those born to people not legally in the U.S. fail this test.

One question both leaders can perhaps expect today is whether Trump believes Zelensky is a ‘dictator’ after a furious rant on his Truth Social platform.

When asked about that comment, he told reporters in the Oval Office: ‘Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that. Next question.’

Trump called Zelensky a ‘dictator’ last weekend when speaking at a Saudi-backed investment meeting in Florida. Zelensky was democratically elected by the people of the Ukraine.

The president also used the term on social media: ‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.’

Zelensky has not directly responded to the comment but fellow world leaders have rebuked Trump over his language.

By Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor

The White House is putting out the welcome mat for Ukrainian President Zelensky, who President Trump referred to as a ‘dictator’ only last week.

When Zelensky arrives for his official state visit this morning, he will be greeted by a 56 flag military flag cordon, with military members holding flags representing states and territories.

That is the same traditional honor provided to two other foreign leaders this week – UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Thursday and French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday.

Members of the cordon were making preparations for the welcome ceremony on the north lawn of the White House in advance of a greeting set for 11 am.

Zelensky has more on his mind on a photo op. In the final hours his team has been negotiating on an ‘investment fund’ and minerals deal that does not appear to include any hard security guarantees. Instead, a draft released says the U.S. ‘supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.’

President Zelensky will become the third world leader to enter the White House this week when he meets Donald Trump to sign a deal granting Washington access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

At one stage it appeared the meeting could be off when Zelensky said only the ‘framework’ for a deal was in place but he has travelled to the U.S. capital to meet Trump who branded him a ‘dictator’.

Let’s take a look at today’s agenda. All timings EST:

President Trump and President Zelensky are expected to greet one another just outside the West Wing. Observers will be keeping a close eye on the body language of the pair who have spoken warmly of one another in public despite apparent friction.

The leaders will hold a joint news conference in the White House where it is expected details of the deal will be announced. The key task for Zelensky is ensuring there are US security guarantees included after Trump indicated there wouldn’t be.

Trump is expected to leave Washington for Palm Beach to spend the weekend at Mar-a-Lago

Elon Musk defended Attorney General Pam Bondi after the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files failed to meet expectations, arguing she is fighting off a ‘leftist culture’ at the Justice Department and FBI.

‘People don’t understand that you don’t get instant power here,’ Musk wrote on X along with a retweet of a user blaming the situation on the FBI.

The user, WallStreetMav, had written Bondi is ‘fighting a leftist culture within the DoJ and FBI. Give her a chance’ and then blamed the ‘FBI agents who are resisting her’ for the disappointing document release.

Bondi hyped expectations for the release, saying the newly released documents would ‘make you sick.’

However, the approximately 200 pages mostly contained previously released information and implicated no one other than Epstein.

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order today to make English the official language of the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In its nearly 250-year history, the U.S. has never had a national language.

Hundreds of languages are spoken in the country due to the immigrant populations. Trump has vowed to cut down on the number of migrants entering the country.

His order would also rescind a mandate signed by former President Bill Clinton that agencies and other groups that receive federal funding provide language assistance to non-English speakers.

A week ago Donald Trump branded Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator.

But on Friday he will host the Ukrainian president at the White House and sign a deal granting Washington access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

The extraordinary turnaround caps a week of frantic international diplomacy centered on Washington, as Kyiv seeks to shore up support despite Trump’s recent pivot towards Russia.

Trump upended years of US policy on Ukraine two weeks ago when he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and started talks on ending the three-year-old war.

He also alarmed allies as he appeared to turn on Zelensky, berating him as a ‘dictator without elections’ and blaming Ukraine for Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

But Trump’s tone has softened in recent days after visits by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

‘I have a lot of respect for him,’ Trump said of Zelensky on Thursday. ‘We’re going to get along really well.’