Trump provides help to candidate seeking to change Lara Trump as co-head of RNC: Live

Donald Trump called on China to help broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine as the incoming US president revealed he had communicated with Xi Jinping.

The conflict had caused enormous losses to both Russia and Ukraine, Mr Trump said, and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky “would like to make a deal” to end the “madness”.

Mr Zelensky was yet to respond to the claim.

Shweta Sharma has more.

The news comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House. His close ties to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and day-to-day ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, drew heavy criticism after the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for the Washington Post who had written critically about the monarchy.

The company will partner with Dar Global, a London-based luxury real estate developer that will lease the Trump brand but fully own and develop the projects in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The two have partnered on other projects in the region, including the development of a golf resort in neighboring Oman.

AP reports.

The retired Illinois congressman wrote on his Substack: “Bring it on.”

Kelly Rissman has more.

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Donald Trump is already throwing his support behind one candidate to co-lead the Republican National Committee.

The president-elect has backed KC Crosbie for the role after Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, stepped down. Lara Trump has been floated as a possible senate replacement for Marco Rubio, who was the president-elect’s pick to be secretary of state.

Crosbie is the current treasurer for the RNC.

“As Treasurer, she helped the RNC smash every fundraising record in History, and fortified our Party’s financial foundation. KC has been with me from the very beginning, helping REAL Republicans get elected across the Country, and would be a tremendous Co-Chair of the RNC! KC will work on continuing to ensure a highly functioning, fiscally responsible, and effective RNC that makes Election Integrity a highest priority,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday night.

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner and Fox Business host Larry Kudlow said that First Lady Dr. Jill Biden was engaged in “heavy flirtation” with Donald Trump this past weekend because “she gravitates towards power.”

Kudlow, a former economic adviser to Trump, also asserted that both the first lady and her husband, President Joe Biden, secretly voted for the incoming president rather than Vice President Kamala Harris.

Justin Baragona reports.

The I, Tonya actor, 42, was put forward for the Best Actor gongs in the Comedy or Musical and Drama categories for Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man and Ali Abbasi’s controversial Trump biopic The Apprentice.

Stan stars as Trump in the divisive film about the president-elect’s early days as a real estate tycoon and his relationship with lawyer Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong.

Lydia Spencer-Elliott reports.

Meta’s former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Sir Richard Branson signed a letter to Biden along with other prominent business leaders asking the president to “fulfill your campaign promise of working to end the death penalty by using your clemency power to commute all federal death sentences to a term of life imprisonment.”

And it added: “We believe this act will cement your legacy of leadership, compassion and advancing racial justice.”

Michelle Del Rey has more.

Biden was already facing calls last from opponents of capital punishment to commute the sentences of death row inmates and halt what could very well be a second Trump-led effort to accelerate the use of the death penalty in federal cases beginning next year. The president is now also seeing those calls taken on Pope Francis, the highest Catholic authority in the world and a man for whom the US president has repeatedly expressed great respect.

John Bowden has more.