U.S. President Donald Trump gave a news conference for the ages at the White House on Thursday.

Trump was wild. He was hostile. He aired his grievances in a sprawling hour-and-a-half exchange with reporters that was unlike anything Americans have seen since his rollicking election campaign ended a little over three months ago.

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This, the wild spectacle of a presidential news conference run off the rails — one originally billed as a chance for Trump to introduce his new pick for labour secretary — is what the Star chose as its front page story on Friday.

“Tomorrow, they will say, ‘Donald Trump rants and raves at the press,’” Trump said at one point, accurately.

But make no mistake, Trump also made news on Thursday.

Here are five headlines from Trump’s presser that would have dominated the Star’s front page on any other day:

TRUMP’S TRAVEL BAN IS BACK ON

Trump says he will introduce a new executive order tailored to get around court decision

Donald Trump said his administration will release a new executive order on immigration next week to — in his words — “comprehensively protect our country.”

Trump’s original order restricted immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. It led to massive protests in airports and around the world before it was put on hold by a federal court.

“The new executive order is being tailored to the decision we got down from the court,” Trump said at the White House on Thursday, referring to the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late last week that confirmed a temporary stay on his original executive order.

“We can get just about everything, in some ways more, but we’re tailoring it to the decision.”

The administration asked the appeals court to hold off on making any more decisions related to the lawsuit until the new order is issued and then toss out the decision keeping the ban on hold.

The Trump administration attacked the decision in a court filing on Thursday, saying the panel wrongly suggested some foreigners were entitled to constitutional protections and that courts could consider Trump’s campaign statements about a ban.

Details of the new proposal were not provided in the filing, and Trump offered no details at his news conference. But lawyers for the administration said in the filing that a ban that focuses solely on foreigners who have never entered the U.S. — instead of green card holders already in the U.S. or who have travelled abroad and want to return — would pose no legal difficulties.

“In so doing, the president will clear the way for immediately protecting the country rather than pursuing further, potentially time-consuming litigation,” the filing said.

FLYNN WAS ‘DOING HIS JOB,’ TRUMP SAYS OF MAN HE FIRED

Trump vigorously defends his ex-national security adviser against “fake news,” says “what he did wasn’t wrong”

Donald Trump on Thursday vigorously defended Michael Flynn, whom he fired earlier this week, against charges his ex-national security adviser had erred at all in discussing U.S. sanctions with the ambassador of Russia in December, a time when Flynn had no official role in the U.S. government.

“What he did wasn’t wrong,” Trump said at the White House when asked why he fired Flynn.

Trump went on to attack U.S. intelligence leaks that had revealed Flynn’s conduct, and the reporters who had received them: “What was wrong was the way that other people, including yourselves in this room, were given that information, because that was classified information that was given illegally. That’s the real problem.”

Trump said he was not bothered that Flynn had talked with the ambassador. “When I looked at the information, I said, I don’t think he did anything wrong,” Trump said. “In fact, I think he did something right.”

Flynn was fired instead for misleading Vice-President Mike Pence and others in the White House about the contents of the conversation, Trump said.

The problem, he said, was that Flynn had told Pence that sanctions did not come up during the conversation, an assertion belied by a transcript of the call, which had been monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Later Thursday the Washington Post reported that Flynn denied talking about sanctions in the conversation during a Jan. 24 interview with FBI agents.

The interview potentially puts Flynn in legal jeopardy, as lying to the FBI is a felony, but any decision to prosecute would ultimately lie with the Justice Department. Some officials said bringing a case could prove difficult in part because Flynn may attempt to parse the definition of sanctions.

Senior Justice and intelligence officials who have reviewed the phone call thought Flynn’s statements to Kislyak were inappropriate, if not illegal, because he suggested that the Kremlin could expect a reprieve from the sanctions.

At the same time, officials knew that seeking to build a case against Flynn for violating an obscure 1799 statute known as the Logan Act — which bars private citizens from interfering in diplomatic disputes — would be legally and political daunting.

STARTING WAR WITH RUSSIA WOULD BOOST RATINGS, TRUMP MUSES

“The greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles off shore right out of the water”

Donald Trump on Thursday floated the idea of sinking a Russian spy ship that has been spotted operating in international waters off the U.S. east coast.

Trump made the statement in response to a question on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was testing his new administration with a recent series of apparent provocations.

“The greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles off shore right out of the water,” Trump said, after telling reporters that he had told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that “politically it’s probably not good for me” to improve relations with Russia.

Trump appeared to quickly back off the idea of sinking the ship.

A Coast Guard official on Thursday said the presence of the intelligence ship, called the Viktor Leonov, so close to American shores is not unprecedented, and is not a cause for alarm.

The vessel has been travelling along the Eastern Seaboard and was spotted near the states of Connecticut, Virginia and Delaware. Capt. Andrew Tucci, who oversees Long Island Sound and coastal Connecticut, said the Coast Guard knew the Russian ship had been travelling from the Caribbean “for some time.”

Still, the U.S. military is wary of Russia’s increasingly aggressive recent actions, including an incident last week when a Russian warplane buzzed a U.S. navy destroyer in the Black Sea.

Putin, in a televised address Thursday to the Federal Security Service intelligence agency, said it was mutually beneficial to restore communications between the two nations.

“It’s in everyone’s interest to resume dialogue between the intelligence agencies of the United States and other members of NATO,” Putin said. “It’s absolutely clear that in the area of counterterrorism all relevant governments and international groups should work together.”

Later in the news conference Trump added that he wouldn’t telegraph his plans regarding the vessel:

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“So when you ask me what am I going to do with a ship, the Russian ship as an example, I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “But hopefully, I won’t have to do anything, but I’m not going to tell you.”

‘ARE THEY FRIENDS OF YOURS?’ TRUMP ASKS BLACK REPORTER IN AWKWARD EXCHANGE

“I’m just a reporter,” says April Ryan, after president asks her to “set up a meeting” with Congressional Black Caucus.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus expressed bafflement and dismay after U.S. President Donald Trump asked a black reporter to set up a meeting with them.

Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina said there is “an element of disrespect” in Trump’s comment to journalist April Ryan. Ryan asked Trump during his press conference Thursday whether he planned to include the CBC, which represents the black members of Congress, in developing his agenda.

The president responded by asking Ryan whether the CBC are “friends of yours” and remarking, “I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting?”

When asked whether Trump was implying that all black people know each other, Clyburn said, “I don’t know what his implications were but that’s my interpretation.”

Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio said: “We have a rich history, we have some almost 50 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. We’re not new. What a president should say is, yes, it’s already on my agenda to talk to them.”

Immediately before the exchange, as Ryan began her question, Trump remarked “oh, this is going to be a bad question, but that’s OK.”

Ryan then asked Trump what his plans are to fix the “inner cities.”

“It’s taken more a hundred years and more for some of these places to evolve and they evolved, many of them, very badly,” Trump said, towards the start of a rambling response to Ryan’s question. “You have people — and I’ve seen this, and I’ve sort of witnessed it — in fact, in two cases I have actually witnessed it. They lock themselves into apartments, petrified to even leave, in the middle of the day.”

Trump concluded: “I have great people lined up to help with the inner cities. OK?”

And the CBC noted over Twitter that the group sent Trump a letter in January outlining areas where they could work together, “but you never wrote us back. Sad!”

Ryan herself responded over Twitter: “I am a journalist not a convener! But thank you for answering my questions.”

‘THE LEAKS ARE REAL, THE NEWS IS FAKE’

“I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real.”

Donald Trump said on Thursday that he has instructed the U.S. Justice Department to investigate leaks that have plunged his administration into turmoil for the last month.

“We are looking into that very seriously,” he said. “It’s a criminal act.”

Since being sworn into office Jan. 20, Trump has been besieged by a seemingly endless stream of leaks from the White House and federal agencies.

Asked to clarify whether the information contained in the intelligence leaks is true, Trump said: “Well the leaks are real. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real.”

He added: “The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.”

Trump also Thursday that his administration has asked billionaire Stephen Feinberg, who has no official experience in U.S. intelligence, to lead a review of the intelligence community.

Trump told reporters that Stephen Feinberg, co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, “is a very talented man, very successful man.”

Trump added, “I think that we are gonna be able to straighten it out very easily on its own.”

Many intelligence professionals are viewing this as another slight by the Trump White House, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence officer who spoke only on condition of anonymity out of concern for putting former colleagues at risk. They already are worried about politicization of the intelligence product and fear this could be a way to hinder their ability to provide information that might contradict the White House’s political views, the official said.

Trump said he was shocked when details leaked about his unorthodox phone calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull because of all the high-tech telephone equipment available to the White House. But, he said, he wasn’t too worried because the calls were not crucial.

“I said ‘that’s terrible that it was leaked’ but it wasn’t that important. But then I said to myself ‘what happens when I’m dealing with the problem of North Korea?’” he said. “What happens when I’m dealing with the problems in the Middle East? ... I don’t want classified information getting out to the public.”

Read more:

‘I’m not ranting and raving,’ Trump attacks the press at wild news conference

Everything Trump said in his wild and hostile Thursday news conference

Trump says he will introduce a new travel ban next week

With files from Star Wire Services

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