2.58am BST
Closing summary
Donald Trump has exited, stage right, to the blessed sounds of YMCA, which concludes our live coverage of his second presidency for the day. Here are the latest developments:
Seven months into the war he started with Iran, Donald Trump complained for nearly 10 minutes at a rally about not winning the 2026 Nobel peace prize.
Texas Democrat James Talarico campaigned in person on Friday at the Austin City Limits musical festival, after missing more than a week due to illness.
A number of prominent Republicans joined Democrats on Friday to condemn Trump for lifting sanctions on Russian diesel and the plan to livestream the execution of the former army major who carried out the Fort Hood attack in 2009.
Trump extended his thanks to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, for agreeing to sell diesel fuel to the US in return for the lifting of US sanctions on fuel exports from Russia, even as Russia’s deadly war on Ukraine continues.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denounced Trump’s decision to suspend sanctions on Russia as “weak”.
Updated at 3.02am BST
2.29am BST
Trump rants about not winning 2026 Nobel peace prize despite starting war with Iran
At what, again, is supposed to be a rally for other Republican candidates, Donald Trump just devoted a long portion of his speech in Syracuse, New York to complaining about not winning the Nobel peace prize for 2026, a year in which he started a war with Iran.
After the president recited the list of eight wars he claims to have settled, several of which were not wars, and some of which did not end, he added: “I’m about to settle or win two more: Iran and Russia-Ukraine.”
Trump said that he will be ending both wars “quickly.”
“I will tell you what,” he added, darkly. “Iran will be very quick one way or the other: that they give us everything or they don’t exist any longer.”
The president made no mention of the fact that, earlier in the day, he unilaterally lifted sanctions on Russia which had been imposed to prevent the country from funding its war on Ukraine.
“Additionally, I stopped Iran from having a nuclear weapon and blowing up the entire Middle East and ultimately far beyond the Middle East, including Europe, perhaps the US and I saved more lives than anyone in history,” Trump claimed, despite the fact that US intelligence agencies reported to Congress in 2025 that Iran had actually suspended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.
“Despite all of this and all of these unbelievable accomplishments, the Nobel prize was given out today to a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of,” Trump said of Navi Pillay, the South African former UN human rights chief who chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza .
“ I’ve never heard of the person I know a lot of people,” Trump said.
“The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t. And this is an indelible stain on the country of Norway, and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision,” the president went on.
“The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilization,” Trump said. “We will not forget, Norway, that you didn’t give this prize”.
Updated at 2.37am BST
2.03am BST
Trump urges New Yorkers to vote for Republican candidates by boasting about imaginary praise from Saudi king
Rather than campaigning for Republican candidates in New York, Donald Trump is regaling supporters in Syracuse with a version of his rally speech devoted mainly to his own accomplishments, listing a series of grievances and familiar boasts, many of which are false.
As he has at previous stops on his midterm campaign tour, Trump claimed that his presidency has been a massive success in economic terms, making no mention of the fact that inflation is rising and the price of fuel has spiked due to the war he started with Iran. To make this case, he ran through a series of misleading statistics and then claimed that the world is in awe of his success.
“The king of Saudi Arabia,” Trump told the crowd, was among those deeply impressed by his economic leadership. “Sir, your country was dead, your had a dead country’”, Trump quoted the Saudi king telling him last year. “I knew exactly what he meant. ‘And now, sir, you have the hottest country anywhere in the world,’ we’re the hottest in the world,” the president said.
As the Guardian has reported previously, Trump did not meet the Saudi king, who is elderly and not often seen in public, during his visit last year. Instead, he was hosted by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. There is also no evidence that the Saudi prince made any such statement to Trump, but there is video of Trump making a version of the same statement to bin Salman during an address to a US-Saudi investment event in Riyadh on 13 May 2025.
“The days of economic misery under the last administration are rapidly giving way to the greatest economy in the history of the world,” Trump said before directly addressing the crown prince in the audience. “We are rocking. The United States is the hottest country, with the exception of your country, I have to say, right? … No Mohammed… You’re hotter. At least as long as I’m up here, you’re hotter. But groceries, gasoline, energy and all other prices are down with no inflation. We have no inflation.”
Two weeks after his return to the US, Trump began saying that this observation had been made not by him, but to him. “I went to Saudi Arabia,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on 28 May 2025. “The king told me, he said, ‘you got the hottest com-’ we have the hottest country in the world right now.,” Trump said. “Six months ago this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country.”
As he repeated the story, again and again, Trump began to also attribute his own claim, that the US was “dead” under Joe Biden, to the Saudi king as well. In remarks at the Nato summit in the Hague in June 2025, Trump insisted that the Saudi king had told him: “A year ago, your country was dead. You had a deadhead running it. You had a country that was dead”.
Since then, Trump has told a version of the same false tale about this praise from another world leader on more than 200 different occasions.
Updated at 2.03am BST
1.47am BST
James Talarico returns to campaign trail after illness
Texas Democrat James Talarico campaigned in person on Friday at the Austin City Limits musical festival, after missing more than a week due to illness.
Talarico’s campaign shared video of the candidate shaking hands and posing for photos with supporters at the festival, undercutting Republican conspiracy theories that the former state lawmaker, who is leading in multiple polls, was incapacitated.
1.34am BST
At Republican rally in New York, Trump attacks Letitia James in crude terms, calling her 'a dog'
Ostensibly speaking in support of Republican candidates in New York state on Friday night, Donald Trump instead veered into airing his own grievances, viciously attacking Letitia James, the state’s attorney general who prosecuted him for business fraud.
Trump claimed that James “is being looked at for prosecutorial misconduct with respect to how she handled the case of your favorite president – me”.
He then invented a story about James, who successfully prosecuted him for fraud, falsely claiming that when prosecutors told her they could find no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump, she said: “We don’t care – we’re going to get him anyway.”
Moments later he urged New York voters to reject both the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, and James, in crude terms.
“New Yorkers should tell both Hochul and that disgusting, Letitia dog – she’s a dog – ‘You’re fired. Get the hell out of here. You’re fired.’ They’re corrupt, incompetent. The city and state are dirty, filthy places,” Trump said.
Updated at 2.55am BST
1.17am BST
Donald Trump is now speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York in support of Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for governor who faces the Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul in the November election.
He began by boasting about his gambit of renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America”, and then boasted about “the beautiful White House that I reskinned and made beautiful again.”
Updated at 1.17am BST
1.11am BST
A crowd of Trump supporters waiting for the president to appear at a rally in Syracuse, New York was just treated to the song, Rich Men North of Richmond, blasting out over arena loudspeakers.
The song, by Oliver Anthony, includes a pointed reference to the sway of Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender Donald Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
“I wish politicians would look out for miners/ And not just minors on an island somewhere,” Anthony’s voice sang, to no discernible reaction from the president’s fans.
Updated at 1.29am BST
12.37am BST
Republicans join Democrats to condemn Trump's oil deal with Putin and plan to livestream execution of Fort Hood gunman
A number of prominent Republicans joined Democrats on Friday to condemn Donald Trump for lifting sanctions on Russian diesel and the plan to livestream the execution of the former army major who carried out the Fort Hood attack in 2009.
“Trump started a stupid & illegal war in Iran that has driven up diesel prices. Now he wants to bankroll Putin’s illegal war against Ukraine by buying diesel from him,” senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, wrote in response to the news of Trump’s deal with Putin to lift sanctions and import Russian diesel. “One strategic disaster after the next.”
“70% of Americans support Ukraine,” congressman Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, chimed in . “Propping up Putin’s war economy is morally wrong as he uses that money to bomb cities. The President’s policies towards Russia and Ukraine are failures. We need moral clarity not moral ambiguity.”
“This announcement is a disgrace,” senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, wrote . “You know how Trump could bring down gas and diesel prices? By ending his illegal war with Iran. Instead, he’s going to help fund Putin’s war machine.”
Warren also joined her Democratic colleagues, Jeanne Shaheen, of New Hampshire, and Chuck Schumer, of New York, in a statement denouncing Trump’s deal with Putin.
“President Trump’s announcement that the United States will allow global purchases of Russian diesel for six months, is a total betrayal of Ukraine, our European allies and American national security,” the Democratic senators wrote. “After launching a war with Iran that has spiked gas and diesel prices for every American, the President is resorting to desperate ‘deals’ with a murderous dictator to attempt to clean up his own mess.
“Through the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, we gave the president significant authorities and leverage against China and Russia to bring Putin’s war to an end with a negotiated settlement,” congressman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican posted on social media. “Unfortunately, while I understand the desire to bring down diesel prices, I am concerned the lifting of sanctions on Russian oil will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine—emboldening more violence and destruction, as we have seen in recent days.”
“Putin throws lifeline to try to save Trump in the midterms,” senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, wrote . “In return, American dollars go to Russia and get put toward killing innocent Ukrainians. Trump/Russia right out in the open.”
Congressman Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, agreed , writing: “Infuriating—but this is what we warned anyone who would listen: Trump isn’t the slightest bit trustworthy when it comes to Russia. Giving him expanded tariff powers in hopes he would use them to help Ukraine was a mist