Trump presidency LIVE updates: Trump speaks in first TV interview; Elon Musk questions Trump’s first tech announcement; Pentagon sends troops to US-Mexico border

Thanks for joining our live coverage of Donald Trump’s third day as the 47th president of the United States. It was another busy one in Washington as Trump’s sweeping crackdowns on immigration and civil rights barrelled ahead – and tensions emerged in Trump’s new cabinet of loyalists and billionaires.

Here’s what we covered today:

• Billionaire and top Trump adviser Elon Musk has cast doubt over the president’s first tech announcement, calling the new artificial intelligence infrastructure plan StarGate “fake”, in an unusual break with the White House by an official.
• The Pentagon is sending 1500 active troops to the border (and Mexico is erecting tent cities on the other side) as Trump’s mammoth mass deportation plan mobilises.
• The bishop who asked Trump to have mercy on those affected by his immigration and civil rights crackdowns says she’ll keep praying for the president, even as he branded her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater”.
• The Justice Department has vowed to prosecute officials who refuse to enforce the deportation plan and public servants across government agencies have been warned of “adverse consequences” if they fail to dob in colleagues who defy Trump’s orders to end all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
• Trump had his first conversation with a foreign leader, and who was on the line? Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, crucial to oil prices and peace in the Middle East but also the architect of a journalist’s murder.
• Earlier, Trump had also signalled a tougher stance on Russia over its Ukraine invasion as he demanded President Vladimir Putin come to the table to make a peace deal or risk more US sanctions.
• America’s House of Representatives passed a key bill that will allow the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of theft and other related crimes, and Republicans launched a new committee to investigate January 6, continuing the party’s efforts to sanitise the violent history of the Capitol riot.
• And the day ended with Trump’s first TV interview airing on Fox News, as he railed against everyone from “the radical left”, FEMA, and Biden’s advisers to illegal immigrants with face tattoos he accused of being criminals.

We’ll have more live coverage of Trump’s first week back in office tomorrow! I’m Sherryn Groch and thanks for your company today.

Donald Trump and Mike Johnson both are deeply invested in mass deportation of migrants.Credit: AP

Donald Trump has opened up about the two assassination attempts he survived during the 2024 presidential campaign, saying perhaps it was “something more than luck” that spared him.

His first TV interview with Fox News since returning to office has finished now, though host and friend of Trump Sean Hannity has flagged there are more to come.

There was a rare moment of tension between Trump and Hannity when the Fox presenter tried to interrupt the president’s rant about Joe Biden having “bad advisers”. Hannity wanted to ask about the economy, noting they were running out of time.

“I don’t care,” Trump said. “This is more important because right now the economy’s gonna do great, [because] I’m here.”

Trump with Sean Hannity on Fox news on Wednesday night US time.Credit: Fox News

Donald Trump has threatened to cut off federal funding for states that operate so-called “sanctuary cities” for undocumented migrants.

“I might have to do that. Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do,” Trump told Sean Hannity in his Fox News interview.

“California’s a great example of it. If you actually polled the people, they don’t want sanctuary cities but [Governor] Gavin Newsom does and these radical left politicians do.”

California is a provocative example for Trump to raise, given the state will expect to receive billions in disaster relief following the disastrous Los Angeles bushfires.

There are many cities across the US, generally run by Democrats, that describe themselves as sanctuary cities for migrants based on their limited co-operation with federal immigration authorities.

By contrast, Trump has promised to embark on the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history. He also raised the spectre of denying California bushfire aid unless it caved to his demand to direct more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California, which is environmentally contentious.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow,” Trump said.

We’ve reached that tantalising discussion of presidential pardons teased in Fox promo clips earlier, as Trump speaks of Joe Biden’s decision to give “everybody pardons”, such as members of the Biden family.

Here he adds somewhat ominously: “The funny thing, maybe the sad thing is, he didn’t give himself a pardon and if you look at it, it all had to do with him ... The money went to him.”

“Should Congress investigate that?” Hannity asked.

Trump shrugged. “I was always against that [investigating presidents]“, saying he could have had his former presidential rival Hillary Clinton investigated when he first came to office in 2020, and denouncing previous investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia in 2020.

“Joe Biden had very bad advisers … on almost everything.”

Trump also said he was “given the option” of pre-emptively pardoning himself before he left office during his first term. “I said, ‘I’m not going to pardon anybody. We didn’t do anything wrong.’ ”

Asked why he pardoned January 6 rioters who had committed violence, Trump said, “most of the people were absolutely innocent” and they’d already served enough jail time. He described serious assaults on police during the storming of the Capitol as “minor incidents”.

Donald Trump has continued to push unfounded claims about migration and the Los Angeles wildfires unchallenged in his first TV interview with Fox News, including claims most migrants coming into America are criminals.

“People are coming in with tattoos all over,” he said, people who look like they “could be trouble”, adding if someone is arriving with a tattoo all over their face “he’s not going to be head of the local bank”.

Experts say Trump’s mass deportation plan could cost hundreds of billions of dollars and have untold impact on America’s economy and social fabric as millions of immigrants contributing to society face removal.

Trump has continued to repeat false claims about immigration and the LA fires in his first TV interview with Fox.Credit: Fox News

Trump’s first sit-down interview back in the Oval Office is a lay-down misère for the new president, so far.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who is friends with Trump, began by saying Trump was “back where he belongs”. The soft-ball questions that followed included variations on “Did you think you would win?” and “How do you feel?”

Trump returned the favour by asking Hannity how he liked being inside the Oval Office.

“One day maybe we could do a tour,” Hannity suggested.

Hannity also shared an anecdote that, after the 2020 election, which Trump lost, Trump remarked to the Fox News host that “maybe in the end it would be better if I came back in four years”.

Apparently they then discussed the example of former British prime minister Winston Churchill, who “came back” to the job, and Hannity agreed it would indeed be better that way.

Donald Trump is speaking in his first TV interview since returning to the Oval Office, sitting down with Fox News host and long-time ally Sean Hannity.

He’s begun by bemoaning all the “disasters” he says have happened because he wasn’t immediately returned for a second term of office, instead losing to Joe Biden in 2020.

Trump seemed confused when Hannity asked if Biden had said “welcome home” as Trump arrived for his inauguration this week, as has been reported elsewhere.

Trump with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday night US time.Credit: Fox News

Trump then launched into criticism of America’s federal disaster relief agency, saying FEMA has failed and needs reform. “Let the states sort out their own problems,” he said. The disastrous Los Angeles wildfires still raging in California had “changed everything”, he said, repeating the false claim that water was being withheld from the fire front by Democrats in the state.

Hannity has spoken of his own friendship with Trump and compared Trump’s historic return to the White House to Winston Churchill’s own return to government in the UK during World War II.

We’ll bring you all the highlights here. Break out the popcorn.

Donald Trump has given his first interview since returning to the White House, sitting down with Fox News host and long-time Trump ally Sean Hannity in a segment to air 9pm on Wednesday US time (1pm Thursday AEDT).

In a promo clip of the interview released by Fox, Trump offers some ominous criticism of the pardons Joe Biden gave in his final days in office, including for the Biden family.

“This guy went around giving everybody pardons,” Trump says. “The funny thing, maybe the sad thing is, he didn’t give himself a pardon and if you look at it, it all had to do with him ... ”

In another clip, Trump is asked how he felt walking back into the Oval Office.

“It was a lot of work,” he says. “And as you know I felt that we shouldn’t have necessarily been here.” He claims if he hadn’t lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, a suite of “disasters” wouldn’t have happened, from inflation to “the Ukraine war” and the October 7 atrocities by Hamas, which launched Israel’s war in Gaza.

“It showed us that the radical left, their philosophies and policies are horrible,” Trump says.

In an empty lot tight against the border with El Paso, Texas, cranes lifted metal frames for tent shelters in Ciudad Juarez. Nogales, Mexico – across from Arizona – announced that it would build shelters on soccer fields and in a gymnasium. The border cities of Matamoros and Piedras Negras have launched similar efforts.

Migrants eat at a shelter set up in Mexico near the US border.Credit: AP

One man at the Tijuana border crossing shouted to journalists that he was being deported in a group arrested on Tuesday morning (US time) in farm fields near Denver. Another man said he was in a group that had been brought from Oregon. Everyone carried their belongings in a small orange bag. Neither man’s account could be independently confirmed.

Beyond the tents, the Mexican government is building nine shelters in border cities to receive deportees. It has said that it would also use existing facilities in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros, to take in migrants whose appointments to request asylum in the US were cancelled on inauguration day.

The Pentagon will begin deploying 1500 active duty troops to the border in the coming days. The forces are expected to be used to support border patrol agents with logistics, transportation and construction of barriers.

The preparations in Mexico came as it emerged that Donald Trump would start deporting illegal immigrants without court hearings after granting immigration officers sweeping new powers.

AP

The bishop who asked Donald Trump to have mercy on those “scared” of his looming immigration and civil rights crackdowns says she’ll keep praying for the president.

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Diocese of Washington raised eyebrows on Tuesday (US time) when she spoke directly to Trump during a post-inauguration prayer service for the president, calling on him to show mercy to migrants and members of the LGBTQ community.

Trump at the time called the service “not that exciting”, and later lashed out at Budde as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a post on his Truth Social site. “She is not very good at her job!” he posted after midnight. “She and her church owe the public an apology!”

The Reverend Mariann Budde leads the national prayer service and takes the opportunity to plead with Donald Trump to have mercy.Credit: AP

“I don’t consider him an enemy,” Budde told AP on Wednesday. “I believe we can disagree respectfully and put our ideas out there and continue to stand for the convictions we’ve been given without resorting to violence of speech.”

As Trump and his Vice President J.D. Vance looked on during the Tuesday service, Budde appealed to him about “the gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives”. She preached that the “vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” but “good neighbours” and “faithful members” of religious communities.

Trump has already used his first days in office to issue executive orders rolling back transgender rights and toughening immigration as the administration mobilises an unprecedented mass deportation effort.

President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, look on as the Reverend Mariann Budde arrives at the national prayer service.Credit: nna\allanah.sciberras

With AP