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Trump claims his presence in White House has halted or prevented six wars around world
Trump claims that, if he were not in office, there would be six wars taking place.
If I weren’t around, you’d have, right now, six major wars going on. India would be fighting with Pakistan.
He refers to the dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, claiming that his intervention – and his threat to cease trade talks – led to a ceasefire. Serbia and Kosovo is another areas where he has made a difference, he says. And he cites the peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It is not clear what the other two are.
(But he does sound as if he is serious about that Nobel peace prize nomination.)
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Starmer thanks Trump for his work towards getting ceasefire in Gaza
Here is the full reply from Donald Trump when he was asked if he agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment that there is no starvation in Gaza. (See 12.52pm.) Trump replied:
I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.
But we’re giving a lot of money and a lot of food, and other nations are now stepping up.
I know that this nation is.
At that point Keir Starmer intervened, saying:
It’s a humanitarian crisis. It’s an absolute catastrophe. Nobody wants to see that. I think people have revolted at what they’re seeing on their screen. So we’ve got to get to that ceasefire. And, thank you, Mr President, for leading on that.
And also to just get more and more aid in. And again, America has done a lot of this … We’re now working with Jordan on getting direct aid drops in. This is a desperate situation.
According to PA Media, Donald Trump made a point of praising Victoria Starmer, the PM’s wife, when the couple arrrived. He said:
We want to make the prime minister happy.
Referring to Victoria Starmer, Trump added:
She’s a respected person all over the United States. I don’t know what he’s doing but she’s very respected, as respected as him. I don’t want to say more, I’ll get myself in trouble. But she’s very, she’s a great woman and is very highly respected.
The White House sends out snap reports from the pool reporters covering President Trump whereever he goes. This is what they have filed from the opening of the exchanges with Keir Starmer (when the bagpipe was playing in the background, and it was hard to hear).
Starmer and Trump appeared to be having a conversation discussing the property.
Q: come down steel and aluminum
Trump says are in “great shape”
Q: whiskey?
“We’ll talk about that”
Q:farmers?
We want to make the prime minister happy, Trump says.
Q: Gaza:
Trump says a lot of food and money stolen by Hamas.
Starmer chimes in saying it will be discussed today
Here are more quotes from what Donald Trump said when he was on the doorstep with Keir Starmer speaking about small boats and immigration. Trump said:
You know Europe is going to be a much different place than it was just five years ago, 10 years ago.
They’ve got to get their act together. If they don’t, you’re not going to have Europe anymore, as you know it, and you can’t do that. This is a magnificent part of the world, and you cannot ruin it.
You cannot let people come in here illegally. And what happens is, there’ll be murderers, there’ll be drug dealers, there’ll be all sorts of things that other countries don’t want, and they send them to you, and they send them to us, and you’ve got to stop them.
And I hear that you’ve taken a very strong stand on immigration.
Trump claims his presence in White House has halted or prevented six wars around world
Trump claims that, if he were not in office, there would be six wars taking place.
If I weren’t around, you’d have, right now, six major wars going on. India would be fighting with Pakistan.
He refers to the dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, claiming that his intervention – and his threat to cease trade talks – led to a ceasefire. Serbia and Kosovo is another areas where he has made a difference, he says. And he cites the peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It is not clear what the other two are.
(But he does sound as if he is serious about that Nobel peace prize nomination.)
Trump does not endorse Netanyahu's claim there is no starvation in Gaza
Q: Benjamin Netanyahu says there is no starvation in Gaza. Do you agree?
Trump says “not particularly”, because he says the TV footage suggests children in Gaza are “very hungry’.
But he says the US is giving a lot of money in aid.
Trump says he is not familiar with small boats problem, but praises Starmer for his 'very strong' stance on migration
Q: What is advice on dealing with small boats?
Starmer explains to Trump what this refers to.
Trump says immigration is a big factor. Are the people coming from prisons, he asks. He claims he has stopped illegal immigration into the UK.
He says he does not know about this situation. But he assumes that countries are not sending their best people.
He says he has heard Starmer is taking a “very strong” stance on immigration.
Starmer backs that.
UPDATE: See 1.11pm for a fuller quote.
Asked about recognising the Palestinian state, Trump says he won’t take a position.
But he knows that PM has a position, he says.
President Trump is talking about how good the relationship with the UK is – but it is very hard to hear what is being said because of the bagpipe noise.
There is a question about whisky tariffs (see 11.15am), but Trump does not sound keen on exempting Scotch whisky. He is not a great whisky drinker, he points out.
Starmer arrives at Turnberry for talks with Trump
Keir Starmer has arrived at Turnberry.
Sky News is showing footage of President Trump speaking to the PM. But there is a bagpipe playing loudly in the background, and so we can’t hear what is being said.
Keir Starmer was expected to arrive at Turnberry at around noon, but he is running about half an hour later. So we should see pictures of his arrival soon. The press event with President Trump is now expected at around 1pm.
Reform UK say it would repeal Online Safety Act, calling it 'greatest assault on freedom of speech in our lifetimes'
The Reform UK press conference is over. Apart from the revelation about Colin Sutton joining the party as a crime adviser, the main announcement was that Reform UK says it will repeal the Online Safety Act if it wins power.
Nigel Farage, the party leader, said that Reform was in favour of protecting children from dangerous content online (which is one of the main aims of the act). But he said that it was technically flawed, and that it imposed too many restrictions on freedom of speech.
However, Farage left it to Zia Yusuf, the former party chair who now runs Reform’s local government Doge operation, to explain in detail what the problems were. Yusuf said:
Britain is descending rapidly into some kind of dystopia.
This Online Safety Act, Orwellianly named, what it does, it does absolutely nothing to protect children. What it does do is suppress freedom of speech in this country and really force social media companies to censor anti-government speech ….
I use the word dystopia advisedly. Inevitably, if you look through history, any student of history will know that the way countries slip into this sort of authoritarian regime is through legislation that cloaks tyranny inside the warm fuzz of safety and security, and [they] hope nobody reads the small print.
Well, we have read the small print. We at Reform think this is the greatest assault on freedom of speech in our lifetimes, and I can announce today that as prime minister Nigel Farage and a Reform government will repeal the Online Safety Act.
Yusuf cited three aspects of the legislation in particular that he claimed were unacceptable.
First, he said the legislation gives the secretary of state the power to tell Ofcom to “rewrite the rules about what speech social media platforms must censor”. He said:
That is a pretty terrifying thing for a single individual to have. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that I think Xi Jinping [the Chinese president] himself would blush at the concept of.
Second, he said the act says it is illegal to something you know to be false which causes “non-trivial psychological harm”. Yusuf said this would force social media companies to “ proactively censor” that sort of speech.
Third, Yusuf said the penalties were excessive. Social media companies can be fined up to 10% of global revenues under the act. And executives can be jailed if they break the law. Yusuf said this would create a “perverse set of incentives”, and that it would lead to social media companies being “over-zealous on their censorship”.
As an example, he claimed that X had suppressed social media posts about a protest about an immigration hotel in Leeds. There was many other examples, he claimed.
(Supporters of the bill would argue that getting social media companies to be “zealous” about suppressing harmful content is exactly what the act is meant to be doing.)
But Yusuf also argued that the bill was flawed, because a surge in sign-ups for VPN providers suggests people are finding ways of getting round the restrictions requiring age verification for some types of content, including porn. He claimed this showed that “13, 14, 15-year-olds know far more about how the internet works than the dinosaurs that crafted this legislation and voted it through”.
Yusuf also said that “sending all of these kids onto VPNs is a far worse situation, and sends them much closer to the dark web where real dangers lie”. So it “actually makes children less safe on the internet”, he claimed.
Swinney ducks question about cost of policing Trump's visit to Scotland, but says VIP visitors must be protected
A reader asks:
Is there any indication of the costs associated with policing an American private individual holidaying on his own property in Scotland?
I have not seen any figures. But this is what John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, said when he was asked how much the policing operation cost on BBC Breakfast this morning.
All of that will be worked out and we’ll address that with Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority, and we’re talking to the United Kingdom government about these questions, but it’s important that we have a secure policing operation.
It’s also important that members of the public who wish to express their point of view, who want to protest about the visit or about other issues, are able to go about their exercise of their democratic right to protest. That’s exactly what they’ve been able to do since Friday, and that’s the way it should be.
Swinney also said the government should be paying to protect Trump.
The security arrangements have gone well since President Trump arrived on Friday, and that’s as it should be, because we’ve got an obligation to make sure that when we have major international visitors, when they come to Scotland, that they are protected and able to go about their activities.
