Lip-reader spots 9-word Trump warning to key staff | US | News
President Donald Trump appeared to make a nine-word statement to a staff member just before meeting with Republican senators during the third week of the government shutdown.
Live footage from the Oval Office shows the commander-in-chief signing several documents before leaning towards the camera and making a playful comment to what is believed to be a staff member.
Speaking exclusively to Daily Express US, lip reader Nicola Hickling claims the president said: “I am speaking truthfully to you, you listen to me.”
The president allegedly said before retreating from the shot: “That’s why. It’s not a requirement, it’s a warning.”
This came just days after a lip reader revealed Trump’s three-word outburst to his wife, Melania, who was having a nervous breakdown aboard Marine One. The Rose Garden conflict erupted as the White House abandoned arrangements for the Russian and American presidents to hold another face-to-face meeting in Europe, while Trump continues his efforts to end the Ukraine conflict. Express USA.
The decision followed a meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which led Rubio to determine that the two countries had “different expectations” about how the war in Ukraine would end, White House sources told CNN.
A White House official later told The Independent there were “no plans” for the two world leaders to meet in person in the near future, after a “productive conversation” between the two diplomats that indicated a face-to-face summit was “not necessary”.
Trump had announced plans to hold a meeting in Budapest, Hungary, “in about two weeks” on Friday, after a phone call with Putin before his talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about a possible arms exchange at the White House.
The US leader claimed Putin begged him to block the arms deal after he floated the concept of swapping American Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles for Ukrainian drones to replenish the country’s depleted weapons reserves. Although Washington and Kiev have failed to reach an agreement on missiles, Zelensky remains hopeful that a deal is still possible.
He believes Putin is “afraid” that Kiev will acquire long-range missiles during an attrition operation deep inside Russian territory.
The location of the summit would pose a significant challenge for Putin due to the European Union’s blanket ban on Russia traveling through its airspace. Earlier this week, Polish authorities threatened to arrest Putin and hand him over to the International Criminal Court if he passed through their airspace. The court accused him of committing war crimes.
Hungary is currently trying to withdraw from the ICC, but they are still unlikely to cooperate as Hungarian President Viktor Orban is one of Putin’s closest allies in the EU. The two leaders last met for a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, in August.
The cancellation of the meeting comes as the war in Ukraine approaches its fourth anniversary in February, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Sergey Lavrov made his own statement regarding the potential end of the conflict.
Foreign Minister Lavrov said, “Russia will not accept a ceasefire until the root causes of the conflict in Ukraine are resolved.” However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov rejected these claims on Tuesday, saying, “It is wrong to say that the meeting was postponed” because “initially there was no agreement.
“You cannot postpone something that was never agreed upon,” Ryabkov told reporters in Moscow. “We had no idea about the timing or location of such contact. The idea is there, of course, and it’s an important idea, but it requires preparation. That’s what we’re doing.”
This follows our exclusive disclosure, in which a lip reader deciphered Zelensky’s 8-word message to Trump expressing his distress.
