Trump talks with Hannity for first interview as president: live

President Donald Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity it’s “sad” that former president Joe Biden didn’t pardon himself at the end of his administration.

Trump made the remark to Hannity as he was asked about his predecessor’s decision to pardon members of his own family and others he said he would be targeted by Republicans, in Trump’s first interview from the White House Wednesday. The interview was being aired in full Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

Biden issued several pardons in the final hours of his presidency Monday after Trump declared he would seek “retribution” against his perceived enemies by using his powers as president while on the campaign trail.

Refugee resettlement groups were blindsided by Donald Trump’s sudden suspension of refugee admissions into the United States, which immediately canceled travel plans for thousands of people who were cleared for entry.

A memo from the State Department to resettlement groups and partner agencies announced that “all previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being canceled, and no new travel bookings will be made” — including travel for refugees who were slated to arrive in the country before Trump’s executive order took effect on January 27.

President Donald Trump got his first major legislative win on Wednesday when the House passed the Laken Riley Act. The legislation requires that immigration authorities detain anyone who is arrested with theft, burglarly, larceny or other related crimes.

Republicans moving immediately on immigration makes sense. Trump won largely because voters believed that immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border was out of control during the Biden administration. Kamala Harris famously laughed off a question early in the Biden presidency about why she had not been to the border. The president was even displaying a chart about the influx of migrants when he was shot and wounded in Butler, Pennsylvania in July.

On top of that, Trumpworld knows it only has a limited amount of time before voters potentially turn on the president for his actions on immigration if they come off too cruel. As a result, he’s signed a slew of executive actions on immigration.

Donald Trump’s mass pardon of 1,500 January 6 participants, including the leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, has reinvigorated a weakened U.S. militia movement and empowered white supremacists, experts have warned.

Dr. Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said Trump “brought back two organizations that have extremely long track records of violence” and likened the current moment to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

“By letting violent white supremacists and militia types who engaged in this activity out of prison he has emboldened those movements, made them more powerful, and given them the sanction of the highest office,” she told The Independent.

Tiger King star Joe Exotic slammed Donald Trump for again failing to pardon him and said he would have been better off if he had stormed the US Capitol on January 6.

The 61-year-old tiger trader, who’s currently serving a 22-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2019 of hiring hitmen to kill his zoo keeper rival, Carole Baskin, previously failed to receive a pardon from Trump during his first term.

While Trump told a reporter in 2020 that he would “take a look” at Exotic’s case, nothing came from it. He instead went on to pardon and commute the sentences of 143 people, including rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black.

During his first days in office, Donald Trump has threatened the U.S.’s top three trading partners China, Mexico, and China with major tariffs, but the CEO of a top Wall Street bank says people shouldn’t be worried.

“If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC on Wednesday from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. “National security trumps a little bit more inflation.”

“I look at tariffs, they’re an economic tool, That’s it,” Dimon, who was paid $36 million in 2023, added. “They’re an economic weapon, depending on how you use it, why you use it, stuff like that. Tariffs are inflationary and not inflationary.”

Daniel Charles Ball, one of the hundreds of January 6 rioters who was charged with a violent crime, had his case dismissed on Tuesday after President Donald Trump issued a sweeping pardon to rioters, but by Wednesday, Ball was arrested again.

Ball, 39, was arrested in Washington D.C. on a firearm charge brought by a grand jury in Florida’s Middle District Court less than a day after his case in connection to January 6, 2021, was dismissed.

The indictment, unveiled on Wednesday, alleges Ball possessed a firearm and ammunition in May 2023 despite being convicted of three felonies between 2017 and 2021.

Billy Ray Cyrus has defended his widely-panned performance at Donald Trump’s Liberty Ball, saying: “You just had to be there.”

On Monday (January 20) evening, the 63-year-old country star took the stage in Washington DC after Trump’s inauguration to perform his hit tune “Achy Breaky Heart” and his Lil Nas X collaboration “Old Town Road.”

The gig was beset by technical difficulties. At one point during his performance, Cyrus was unable to hear his guitar. “Is my guitar still on?” he asked the stage crew. “I think they cut me off. I don’t hear my guitar anymore.”

Mexico is readying emergency facilities in multiple cities to house the thousands of people Donald Trump is expected to return to the country as part of his planned nationwide campaign of mass deportations.

Government officials, including the Mexican navy, have begun erecting the facilities in the cities of Matamoros and Ciudad Juárez, Reuters reports.

“It’s unprecedented,” Enrique Licon, a municipal official in Juárez, told the outlet.

In Tijuana, meanwhile, state officials declared a state of emergency last week ahead of Trump’s deportation plans and have readied their own facilities in preparation for a surge.

Monica and her husband arrived in the United States from Venezuela six years ago. They’ve been “building a life” and “trying to do everything” to make their home here while in the process of seeking asylum.

“Working, paying taxes — we were able to buy a home,” she said. “We had reached a point of stability in this country and wanted to have a child.”

She is now 12 weeks pregnant.

“I should be worried about the health of my child, I should be thinking about that,” she said.

Instead, she is stressed, anxious and “depressed,” facing a “reality that my child might not be able to become a U.S. citizen.”