Donald Trump to ‘rip off band-aid’ in massive tax overhaul

Donald Trump is planning to “rip the band-aid” and push aggressive tax cuts through Congress when he takes office.
Congressional Republicans are keen to hand the president-elect a major legislative achievement in his first 100 days in office and have been laying the groundwork for a tax-cutting programme, The Washington Post reports.
A conservative lobbyist familiar with the discussions between Mr Trump and party leaders characterised the attitude as: “Just go. Rip the band-aid and run and just plough it through.”
Grover Norquist, an informal economic adviser to the Trump campaign, said: “They’re going to do this one very early.
“The House and Senate guys have been working on this together forever.”
Mike Johnson, the House of Representatives Speaker, and fellow congressional Republican leaders have reportedly been meeting for months to plot their legislative moves in anticipation of Mr Trump returning to the White House.
Mr Trump ran on a platform of cutting a swathe of taxes, pledging to remove taxes from tips, overtime pay and social security. He had also pledged to reduce the corporate tax rate from 21 per cent to 15 per cent.
President Trump 2.0
He could also seek to cut taxes on capital gains without congressional approval, which Mr Norquist said the president-elect had been discussing with aides.
“Advisers to him have been talking about it, people around him have been advocating for it,” he said.
“There’s a whole industry of people saying, ‘This is constitutional and you should do it.’”
Although the Republicans had taken back their majority in the Senate, it was still unclear on Thursday evening whether they would keep control of the House of Representatives, in a potential road-block to Mr Trump’s tax plans.
He could also face opposition from his own party, with some fiscal conservatives having previously voiced concerns about how he would expand the federal deficit.
Leading Republicans have signalled that the incoming president could seek to fund at least some of those tax cuts by reversing Joe Biden’s green energy spending, giving him an estimated $500 billion (£386 billion) to play with.
Mr Trump’s tax-and-spend plans will add some $9.15 trillion over the next decade to the national debt, according to analysis by the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The Republican has also called for eliminating the cap on the state and local tax deduction, which could add an additional $1.2 trillion in US debt.
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That’s it for our live coverage of the US election today.
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David Lammy has declined to say whether he regrets labelling Donald Trump a “Nazi” after the Republican’s election victory on Tuesday.
The Foreign Secretary was repeatedly pressed on whether he believed the president-elect had changed since he called him a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” in 2018.
Mr Lammy, speaking on the BBC’s Newscast podcast, dismissed the comments as “old news”.
Read more: David Lammy fails to say he regrets Trump ‘Nazi’ comments
Gavin Newsom has moved to block Donald Trump’s policies from taking effect in California.
The California governor’s office said it was ready to “Trump-proof” state laws at a special session of the state legislature following the Republican’s election victory on Tuesday night.
“Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action – we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked,” Mr Newsom said.
Read more: Gavin Newsom moves to block Trump’s policies from taking effect in California
Tim Walz is licking his wounds from the Democrats’ crushing defeat at home in Minnesota with his cat.
Kamala Harris’s running mate was photographed by his daughter cuddling up with his cat in an armchair.
Hope Walz captioned the image: “The Earth keeps spinning and we live to fight another day”.
Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Susie Wiles, has been announced as his new chief of staff.
It makes Ms Wiles, who previously worked on Mr Trump’s 2020 and 2016 campaigns and Ronald Reagan’s run at the White House in 1980, the first woman to take on the senior White House role.
The president-elect said in a statement:
Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns.
Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again. 
It is a well deserved honour to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history. I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”
Donald Trump did not call on Nikki Haley throughout the election campaign because he has a genuine dislike of his former primary rival, according to reports.
The president-elect had been under pressure to ask his former UN ambassador for support amid concerns that he was failing to reach out to moderate Republican voters who supported her. Ms Haley had reportedly provided the Trump campaign with a list of dates she was available to help but did not hear back.
Mr Trump did not believe he needed Ms Haley to make inroads with female voters and people close to the Republican say he thoroughly dislikes her, The New York Times reports.
Gavin Newsom has moved to block Donald Trump’s policies from taking effect in California.
The California governor’s office said it was ready to “Trump-proof” state laws by a special session of the state legislature following the Republican’s election victory.
“Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action – we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked,” Mr Newsom said.
The session will take place in Sacramento in December, roughly seven weeks before Mr Trump will be inaugurated.
In Trump’s first term, California filed some 120 lawsuits challenging the Republican administration’s actions on issues including gun control, immigration and pollution.
It comes after Joe Biden said he would “make every day count” in his last months in office, after he ordered protections for oil drilling in Alaska.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, has declined to say how Joe Biden would seek to support Ukraine’s war effort before Donald Trump takes over in January.
The White House will “continue to surge assistance and support they need”, she told reporters at the daily briefing.
She added that Mr Biden would not pardon his son, Hunter, who was previously been convicted on gun charges and pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion earlier this year.
Donald Trump has said there is “no price tag” on his plans to enact mass deportations.
The president-elect told NBC News: “We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful.
“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not – really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here.
“There is no price tag.”
Vladimir Putin has publicly congratulated Donald Trump on winning the presidential election.
Speaking to a conference in Sochi, the Russian leader praised Mr Trump for showing bravery when a gunman tried to assassinate him, and said Moscow was ready to talk to the Republican president-elect.
“I would like to congratulate him on his election as president,” Putin said.
It comes after Russian media reported that the Russian leader had privately congratulated Mr Trump on Tuesday.
Putin last exchanged words with President Biden in early 2022, but the warm words towards his successor may open the door a future diplomatic relations.
Europe must become “omnivores” when faced with Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron has said.
The French president warned that Europe can no longer be the world’s “herbivores” following Mr Trump’s reelection and must become “omnivores” instead.
“For me, it’s simple. The world is made up of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to remain herbivores, then the carnivores will win and we will be a market for them,” he told European leaders during a summit in Budapest.
Mr Macron’s extended metaphor appeared to be a warning to his European counterparts about becoming less dependent on trade with China and the US – particularly in light of sweeping tariffs proposed by Mr Trump.
He added: “I think, at the very least, we should choose to become omnivores. I don’t want to be aggressive, just that we know how to defend ourselves on all these subjects.”
Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to surrender his 1980 Mercedes and other belongings to two election workers he defamed.
Mr Giuliani was found liable of defamation and ordered to pay out $148 million to two Georgia election workers after he accused them of spreading lies to help steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
In October, the President-elect’s former lawyer was order to hand over the car, his luxury Manhattan apartment and luxury watch to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss within seven days.
Now, a judge has threatened the disgraced former New York mayor with contempt, claiming Mr Giuliani is resisting efforts to collect his possessions and questions about where the property is located.
“If he doesn’t comply, then I’m sure that I’m going to get a motion for contempt,” New York Judge Lewis Liman said. “He’s not going to be in contempt if he’s made efforts and it’s impossible to comply with the order, but that’s the standard that he’s going to be held to.”
Mr Giuliani, 80, turned up to vote in West Palm Beach, Florida, in the very 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL500 he has been ordered to surrender.
Barron Trump is a very bright 18 year old who played a big part in his father’s stunning victory. pic.twitter.com/kPFSDEx0Yi
Members of Donald Trump’s team started turning on each other at the election victory party and became embroiled in x-rated arguments, it can be revealed.
One of Mr Trump’s campaign managers reportedly told a senior adviser he was going to “f—ing destroy” him at a victory party on Tuesday night.
Chris LaCivita repeatedly swore at Corey Lewandowki following a damaging leak to the media about him apparently profiting from the campaign, according to Politico.
When Mr Lewandowski approached Mr LaCivita on Tuesday night, extending a hand and offering his congratulations, he is said to have responded: “F— you, f— you and f— you.”
Mr LaCivita continued: “You have f—–d with the wrong person. I’m going to f—ing destroy you.”
The Daily Beast recently reported that Mr LaCivita had made $22 million off the Trump campaign over the course of two years – prompting a furious response from the president-elect.
Mr LaCivita is said to have produced bank statements and Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings when confronted by Mr Trump to disprove this. Campaign officials blame Mr Lewandowski for the briefing.
Donald Trump gained most support from Latino voters than any modern Republican candidate, the exit poll shows.
US media reports that the president-elect was backed by almost half of Latinos – 46 per cent – and more than half of Latino men.
It surpasses the record of 44 per cent won by George W. Bush in 2004, and Ronald Reagan’s 37 per cent and 34 per cent in 1980 and 1984.
Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel struggled to hold back tears as he described Donald Trump’s election victory as a “terrible night” for the United States.
The comedian was visibly upset in his opening monologue to his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, on Wednesday night, saying the choice had been between a criminal and a prosecutor – “and we chose the criminal”.
“It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for health care,” said Kimmel, who paused as he became emotional.
Read the full story from Iona Cleave here.
Donald Trump’s team appeared to be quietly distancing itself from Robert F Kennedy Jr in the immediate aftermath of the election amid speculation that the former presidential candidate could be handed control of US public health agencies.
Advisers to the president-elect questioned whether Mr Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic who has also been the subject of a series of bizarre stories involving animals, would make it through a security check for a cabinet position.
It raises questions about what role, if any, Mr Kennedy would be given in the Trump administration, as the Republican’s transition team sets about filling thousands of federal posts for his return to the White House.
Mr Kennedy had previously said that Mr Trump had “promised” him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and public health agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Read the full story here.
Donald Trump “likes David Lammy” despite the British Foreign Secretary previously labelling him a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath”, a friend of the president-elect has claimed.
Chris Ruddy, who apparently spoke to Mr Trump shortly after his victory speech on Tuesday night, told Times Radio: “We’ve talked about David Lammy. He likes David Lammy.
“He knows that he’s been critical of him in the past so I don’t think that’s a bar.
“They had a very good meeting with Keir Starmer at the meeting in Trump Tower during the UN week. They like each other.”
Mr Ruddy, chief executive of the conservative media organisation Newsmax, added: “I don’t believe that this is anything that will cause any significant harm. President Trump likes Britain.”
While Kamala Harris’ supporters blame Joe Biden for Donald Trump’s election victory, backers of the US president are pointing the finger at Barack Obama.
One Biden loyalist said Ms Harris had tried to use “Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama”. 
It appeared to be a dig at David Plouffe, Mr Obama’s former campaign manager and a senior adviser to Ms Harris, who seemingly blamed Mr Biden for leaving the Democrats in a “deep hole” a few months before polling day.
“There is no singular reason why we lost,” the individual told Politico.
“But a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviours of the campaign only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama.”
The Left-wing media has described Donald Trump’s victory as the “darkest dawn” for America in an outpouring of incredulity.
As the scale of Trump’s electoral triumph became clear, Left-leaning commentators began to vent their dismay on televison and social media.
Rory Stewart, who presents The Rest is Politics podcast, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that it was “heartbreaking” that Trump had been elected president.
On MSNBC, Joy Reid, the Left-wing commentator, claimed that Ms Harris’s campaign had been “flawless”, despite its end result, and cited the number of celebrity endorsements the Democratic candidate had received.
Jake Tapper, the CNN news anchor, was stunned by analysis which showed that Harris had not outperformed Joe Biden in a single county, saying “holy smokes” when presented with a map showing the scale of her defeat.
Read the full story from Craig Simpson here.
Among Democrats blaming Joe Biden for the election loss is Andrew Yang, who ran against the US president for the party’s nomination in 2020.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” he said. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
An aide to Ms Harris told Politico: “We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president.
“Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost.”
Seth Moulton, a congressman from Massachusetts, said that Ms Harris had come up short because she failed to put enough distance between herself and an “unpopular incumbent”.
Democrat insiders have blamed “arrogant” Joe Biden for Kamala Harris’s election defeat, saying he set her up to fail by not dropping out of the race sooner.
“His legacy is in tatters,” said Jim Manley, a senior aide to former Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid. “The country is headed in a very dangerous direction and it’s due in part to his arrogance.”
“This is no time to pull punches or be concerned about anyone’s feelings,” Mr Manley told US news site Politico. “He and his staff have done an enormous amount of damage to this country.”
Mr Manley joined other influential Democrats criticising Mr Biden, who have said the party wasted months of campaigning when he held onto the presidential nomination too long.
Biden finally pulled out of the race in favour of the vice-president in late July.
“The truth of the matter is, Biden should have stepped aside earlier and let the party put together a longer game plan,” Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh said.
Major Democrat donor and Wall Street investor Whitney Tilson told the Telegraph on Wednesday that the “stupidity and selfishness” of the US president had cost the party the election.
Elon Musk’s estranged, transgender daughter has vowed to leave the US following Donald Trump’s election victory.
Vivan Jenna Wilson, 20, cut ties with her Tesla billionaire father in 2022, after filing a petition to change her name and gender. 
Now, she has said she wishes to emigrate because of the President-elect’s stance on transgender rights. These same policy positions have been pushed by Mr Musk, who became a major surrogate of Mr Trump during the presidential campaign.
“I’ve thought this for a while, but yesterday confirmed it for me. I don’t see my future being in the United States,” Ms Wilson wrote on Threads after Mr Trump’s win.
“Even if he’s only in office for 4 years, even if the anti-trans regulations magically don’t happen, the people who willingly voted this in are not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Ms Wilson – who is one of six children Mr Musk shares with his first wife, Justine Wilson – previously accused her father of being an absent parent who was unaccepting of her transition. Mr Musk has previously said his child was “killed” by the “woke mind virus”.
Control of the House of Representatives could come down to a single seat, with the race poised on a knife edge.
Republicans scooped the White House and the Senate in a dominant election performance that leaves the House the only prize left up for grabs.
Control of the lower chamber could have enormous implications for Trump’s agenda, but the race currently hangs in the balance, with just a handful of seats expected to decide which party clinches it.
A few hundred or thousand votes separate the candidates in some of the closest races, including in California, Omaha and Nebraska. 
The final results tallies are expected to be drawn up next week, but House Speaker Mike Johnson has predicted his chamber would fall in line.
“Republicans are poised to have unified government in the White House, Senate and House,” Mr Johnson said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that ties between the US and Europe “cannot be lost” after Donald Trump’s election win.
“We do hope that America will become stronger. This is the kind of America that Europe needs. And a strong Europe is what America needs. This is the connection between allies that must be valued and cannot be lost,” Mr Zelensky said at a meeting of European leaders in Budapest.
It comes after the Ukrainian president said he hoped Kyiv could continue to rely on Mr Trump’s support for his country’s war effort, in a congratulatory message to the President-elect.
Mr Trump previously pledged to resolve the conflict “very quickly” and said he was confident he could work out a deal that is “good for both sides”.
Joe Biden is set to address the United States from the White House at 11am (4pm GMT).
The US president will “discuss the election results and the transition” to Donald Trump’s second term, the White House said on Wednesday.
Mr Biden has released a statement in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory over Kamala Harris, in which he said the vice-president “stepped up and led a historic campaign”.
The address later on Thursday will be the first time however that US citizens will hear from the president in person since election day.
Emmanuel Macron has beaten Sir Keir Starmer in the race to talk to incoming US president Donald Trump.
The French President held a congratulatory phone call with Trump before 6pm UK time on Wednesday, roughly two hours before Sir Keir’s conversation closer to 8pm.
The Prime Minister was also behind Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who has a close relationship with Trump and has regularly heaped praise on the Republican.
There is often a scramble among world leaders to be the first to personally congratulate a new US president over the phone.
When Trump won the presidency for the first time in 2016, it was more than 24 hours before he spoke to Theresa May. She later rushed out to Washington after his inauguration to meet with the incoming leader.
A Downing Street insider played down the significance of the order of the calls to The Telegraph on Thursday, noting that Sir Keir enjoyed a private dinner with Trump in September, unlike several other national leaders.
Read the full story here.
Exports have warned that Donald Trump’s pre-election pledge to implement a tariff of 10-20 per cent on US imports could hit tens of billions of pounds of UK exports.
Harrison Griffiths from the Institute of Economic Affairs told US news site Politico that the potential toll should “ring alarm bells” for UK businesses.
Marco Forgione, head of the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade, said: “Trump has by his own admission been a fan of the UK, but we shouldn’t just rest on our laurels and assume that there won’t be implications for UK producers.”
The US is Britain’s biggest export markets for goods. In the year leading up to August 2024, UK businesses exported £58.3 billion worth of goods to the US.
It comes as Sir Keir Starmer faces pressure over past comments made by senior Labour figures regarding Donald Trump, which include Foreign Secretary David Lammy calling the US president-elect a “sociopath” and “Nazi sympathiser”.
“Election 2024” chocolate bars showing the faces of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are displayed with a 50 per cent discount sign at John F Kennedy International Airport. 
The Kremlin said on Thursday that it was not ruling out the possibility that Vladimir Putin could contact Donald Trump before his inauguration in January, Russian news agency Interfax said.
Putin has not yet commented on Trump’s election victory, although the Russian leader is set to speak and take questions at a conference later on Thursday.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin press secretary, said on Wednesday that he did not know if Putin planned to congratulate Trump on his win.
America is an “unfriendly country that is directly and indirectly involved in the war against our state”, he added.
Referring to Donald Trump’s promise to “stop wars”, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova called on the president-elect to follow this up with “concrete actions”.
In a joint statement, Bill and Hillary Clinton said Kamala Harris had run a “positive, forward-looking campaign to be proud of”. 
They also said that they wished Donald Trump and JD Vance well, adding that they hoped they would “govern for all of us”. 
Our statement on the result of the 2024 election. pic.twitter.com/1YYdGElPMP
US talk show host Stephen Colbert hit out at Donald Trump’s election victory during an opening monologue on his television programme on Wednesday night.
“Well, f***. It happened. Again,” Colbert said. “After a bizarre and vicious campaign fuelled by a desperate need not to go to jail, Donald Trump has won the 2024 election.”
“The deep shock and sense of loss is enormous,” he added.
He said the day after the election he had worn a sticker that read: “I am questioning my fundamental belief in the good of humanity.”
A senior Labour minister has said that previous negative comments made by Cabinet members about Donald Trump will not will not affect Britain’s relationship with the US.
Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said that “shared values and interests” are more important than “some tweet from many years ago”.
“I think a number of things have been said over the years, but the truth is, the alliance between Britain and the United States is long and deep and enduring.”
In 2017, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that he would protest on the streets if Donald Trump came to Britain because the then-US president was a “racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser”.
Other senior Labour figures to have insulted Donald Trump include Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who called him an “odious, sad, little man” in July 2017.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner also said she was “happy to see the back of Donald Trump” after he left office in 2021. She also said that Republicans who stood by Trump after the Capital Hill riots of that year had “blood on their hands”.
Joe Biden has broken his silence on Kamala Harris’s landslide defeat, insisting selecting her as his vice-president was “the best decision I made”.
The president praised the Democratic nominee for her “integrity” and “courage”.
“What America saw today was the Kamala Harris I know and deeply admire. She’s been a tremendous partner and public servant full of integrity, courage and character,” Mr Biden said in a statement after Ms Harris’s concession speech.
You can read the full story here.
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel became visibly emotional during the opening monologue of his US chat show on Wednesday night, describing Donald Trump’s election victory as a “terrible night”. 
Visibly distraught and struggling to hold back tears, Mr Kimmel said: “It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech.
“It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO, for the truth, and democracy and decency,” he added. 
Mr Kimmel went on to say that it was a “really good night” for Vladimir Putin and “all the wriggling brain worms who sold what was left of their souls to bow down to Donald Trump”.
Australia’s ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd and prime minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday became the latest in a list of high-profile figures to distance themselves from disparaging remarks made about Trump, with the ambassador’s office scrubbing posts from his social media and website to “eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued”.
Dr Rudd’s now-deleted posts included one from 2020 in which he described Trump as “the most destructive president in history”.
You can read the full story here.
Chinese president Xi Jinping called Donald Trump to congratulate him on his election victory, Chinese state-run media said. 
Xi is reported to have told Donald Trump that a healthy and sustainable relationship between the US and China was in the interest of both countries. 
Han Zheng, China’s vice president, also called vice president-elect JD Vance to congratulate him, the report said.