President Donald Trump clashed with a reporter Thursday over questions about a newly signed tariff, telling him that he had spent his first term ‘fighting lunatics like you.’ The intense exchange follows a White House signing ceremony for a series of executive actions aimed at expanding reciprocal tariffs and strengthening U.S. trade policy.

While speaking with reporters at the White House after the signing, a reporter confronted Trump on why he is emphasizing tariffs more in his second term. 

‘You’re weighing your decision to do that, your authority to do that based on a 1977 law. It’s never been invoked before,’ said the reporter. ‘Why didn’t you invoke this law in your first term? You could have taken in billions upon billions of dollars in your first term, but you waited until your second term?’

Without missing a beat, the president shot back: ‘Yeah, because in my first term, I was fighting lunatics like you who were trying to do things incorrectly and inappropriately to a president that was duly elected.’ 

‘And we did do certain tariffs in the first term,’ he continued. ‘If you look at China, China, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China.’ 

He also said that the COVID-19 pandemic also played a factor in his decision to not emphasize tariffs as much in his first term.

‘When Covid came the last thing I was going to do is tell France and Italy and Spain and a couple of other countries that we’re going to hit you with tariffs,’ he explained. ‘We had to fight the Covid situation when that came.’ 

‘But if you look at my first term,’ he went on, ‘We took in hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of tariffs, but you people didn’t cover it very well.’ 

A statement by the White House said that Trump’s executive actions taken on Thursday ‘reflects the President’s continued efforts to protect the United States against foreign threats to the national security and economy of the United States by securing fair, balanced, and reciprocal trade relationships to benefit American workers, farmers, and manufacturers and to strengthen the United States’ defense industrial base.’ 

This comes shortly after Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade deal between the U.S. and E.U. on Sunday.

‘We are agreeing that the tariff straight across for automobiles and everything else will be a straight-across tariff of 15%,’ Trump said.

‘So, we have a tariff of 15%. We have the opening up of all of the European countries, which I think I could say were essentially closed. I mean, you weren’t exactly taking our orders. You weren’t exactly taking our agriculture,’ he added, addressing von der Leyen.

Von der Leyen said Europe will also purchase $150 billion worth of U.S. energy as part of the deal, in addition to making $600 billion in other investments into the U.S.

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.

The Secret Service must move to ‘course correct’ after reports a Secret Service agent attempted to smuggle his wife onto a Secret Service cargo plane accompanying President Donald Trump on his trip to Scotland, according to a former agent. 

Tim Miller, who served as a Secret Service agent during the administrations of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said the alleged incident was unusual and that the agency must ‘step up’ to address growing threats against Trump. 

‘The threats to the President are serious and growing,’ Miller said in an email Thursday to Fox News Digital. ‘This agency must step up to address these threats. … Imagine a world where our elected leaders are not safe to lead the critical issues facing our world? 

‘The mission that they have been given requires the absolute best people available who have the highest level of commitment, experience, professionalism and skill.’

While Miller predicted conduct like this would have previously resulted in a suspension or firing of the agent, Miller said that is unlikely given that the Secret Service did not fire those on duty during the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. 

The agency did, however, announce that it suspended six of its agents due to their response to the attempt.

Likewise, Miller said he anticipates an investigation into the Scotland incident will be handled meticulously. 

‘I am confident that they will thoroughly investigate this matter,’ Miller said. ‘To that end, the Secret Service must course correct and hold agents accountable for these types of errors in judgment. The current threats are too high. It’s time for high levels of accountability and a return to mission focus. The lives of our elected leaders depend on it! This truly is a ‘no fail’ mission!’ 

Even so, Miller said the agency did the right thing in identifying the threat and fixing the problem. 

‘The bottom line is there is more to this story and, with the exception of one agent’s extremely poor judgment, the Secret Service did a good job identifying and correcting this issue,’ Miller said. 

RealClearPolitics first reported that a Secret Service agent attempted to smuggle his wife aboard a Secret Service cargo aircraft during Trump’s travels for his Scotland trip.

Trump told reporters Tuesday he had just heard about the alleged incident, describing it as a ‘weird deal.’ He also told reporters the agency is handling the matter. 

‘I don’t know, that’s a strange one. I just heard that two minutes ago. I think Sean’s taking care of it. … Is that a serious story?’ Trump told reporters on Air Force One Tuesday, appearing to reference Sean Curran, Secret Service director.

The White House confirmed to Fox News Digital Wednesday that Trump had been briefed on the matter and that an investigation was ongoing. 

‘The U.S. Secret Service is conducting a personnel investigation after an employee attempted to invite his spouse, a member of the United States Air Force, aboard a mission support flight,’ a Secret Service spokesperson told Fox News Digital Tuesday.

‘The aircraft, operated by the U.S. Air Force, was being used by the Secret Service to transport personnel and equipment,’ the spokesperson added. ‘Prior to the overseas departure, the employee was advised by supervisors that such action was prohibited, and the spouse was subsequently prevented from taking the flight. No Secret Service protectees were aboard, and there was no impact to our overseas protective operations.’

A longtime ally of former President Joe Biden told House Oversight Committee investigators that he could have been paid a total of $8 million if the former president won his 2024 re-election bid, a source familiar with the conversation told Fox News Digital.

Michael Donilon served as senior advisor to the president for the entirety of Biden’s four-year term. Their relationship goes back decades, however; Donilon first worked for Biden in 1981 when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware.

He is the latest ex-Biden administration official to sit down with the committee behind closed doors as it investigates whether the former president’s inner circle covered up evidence of his alleged mental decline, and if executive actions were signed via autopen without Biden’s full awareness.

Donilon said he did not know what the autopen was used for and did not recall having any knowledge of the autopen, the source told Fox News Digital.

But Donilon, who was the top strategist for Biden’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns, would have apparently earned some $8 million total if Biden won.

Donilon told investigators he was paid $4 million to work on Biden’s 2024 campaign, the source said. That information was reported by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN host Jake Tapper in their book ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.’

The $4 million he would have gained in addition would have come if Biden had won in 2024.

Biden infamously dropped out of the 2024 race after his disastrous debate against Donald Trump in June of that year, after weeks of mounting pressure by fellow Democrats, both in public and in private.

Donilon told investigators he ‘believes the punditry and Democrats in Congress overreacted after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate,’ the source said. Donilon also argued Biden’s communications skills ‘got stronger’ during his time as president, the source added.

‘During his interview, Mr. Donilon admitted that Joe Biden’s presence wasn’t as commanding, and he could stumble over more words. Mr. Donilon stated he was frustrated and knew it was difficult to get past the visuals of President Biden that people were seeing,’ the source said.

In his opening statement, obtained by Fox News Digital, Donilon emphasized his 40-year relationship with Biden and touted the Democratic administration’s accomplishments through the COVID-19 pandemic, the rebound in job growth in its wake and the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislative wins.

‘I was with President Joe Biden from his first day in office to the last day. What I saw, day in and day out, was a leader who was deeply engaged and in command on critical issues, both at home and abroad,’ Donilon said in his statement. 

‘Every President ages over the four years of a presidency and President Biden did as well, but he also continued to grow stronger and wiser as a leader as a result of being tested by some of the most difficult challenges any President has ever faced.

‘I thought that experience was enormously valuable for the nation. I believed that President Biden was the best person to lead the country on the day he took the oath of office and I continued to believe that was true every day he served as President.’

Donilon is the eighth ex-Biden White House official to appear for the probe led by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.

A source familiar with the Biden team’s thinking previously called Republicans’ probe ‘dangerous’ and ‘an attempt to smear and embarrass.’

‘And their hope is for just one tiny inconsistency between witnesses to appear so that Trump’s DOJ prosecute his political opponents and continue his campaign of revenge,’ that source said.

Fox News Digital reached out to Donilon’s lawyer and a representative for Biden for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Heavey contributed to this report

Three Senate Republicans are backing up Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s possible effort to reform the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, saying that the group has recently been ideologically motivated.

The ‘independent’ task force is used to determine recommendations of what services health insurance companies in the United States have to cover for free, such as checking for cancer.

‘Americans deserve to know health guidelines are based on real science, not radical wokeness. The Task Force needs to get back to its mission of giving clear, evidence-based recommendations people can trust,’ Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, said in a statement.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Kennedy is considering removing members of the board, and the senators are saying they back any change to veer away from certain DEI tactics employed by the group currently, including the 2023 Report to Congress on High-Priority Evidence Gaps for Clinical Preventive Services and ‘social justice activism’ by people in the group.

‘In particular, the USPSTF departed from its proper activities in its December 2023 Health Equity Framework. The framework criticizes ‘equal access to quality health care for all’ as an inadequate goal of public health and announces that the Task Force will instead use equity as ‘a criterion of the ‘public health importance’ of a topic’ for consideration,’ the letter added.

‘Far from simply recognizing health disparities between certain populations, ‘health equity’ as described by the USPSTF includes ‘information on risk factors that intersect with race and/or ethnicity or other disadvantaged populations (e.g., sexual and gender minorities) and that affect prevalence and burden of disease’ and ‘any inequities in how preventive services are provided, accessed, or received.’ These criteria would allow the Task Force to issue recommendations outside its proper purview and impose leftwing ideology,’ it continues.

Specifically, they said that changes could be needed to fulfill President Donald Trump’s Executive Order to scrap DEI efforts within the federal government, along with an EO on ‘restoring merit-based opportunity’ and ‘ending illegal discrimination.’

‘Allowing the Task Force to pursue the Health Equity Framework means allowing it to exceed its statutory mission and target social groups that comport with a progressive agenda. It means discounting universally beneficial recommendations as inadequate. It means disregarding statutory limits and instead undertaking a social justice crusade through the lens of critical race theory and gender ideology. This would be a mistake. The result is ineffectiveness, discrimination, and division. The USPSTF should be working for all Americans equally,’ the letter added.

‘No final decision has been made on how the USPSTF can better support HHS’ mandate to Make America Healthy Again,’ an HHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement when asked about the WSJ report. 

There has already been some opposition to the possibility of removing the members, including from the American Medical Association.

‘USPSTF plays a critical, non-partisan role in guiding physicians’ efforts to prevent disease and improve the health of patients by helping to ensure access to evidence-based clinical preventive services,’ the AMA wrote in a letter to Kennedy. ‘As such, we urge you to retain the previously appointed members of the USPSTF and commit to the long-standing process of regular meetings to ensure their important work can continue without interruption.’