The Ohio senator, long thought to be a front-runner to be Trump’s next running mate, reportedly liked a series of Twitter posts eight years ago accusing the Republican candidate of “serial sexual assault” and calling him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” according to CNN.

He also liked tweets attacking Trump over his response to deadly violence at the ”Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville and tipping Vance himself for a post in a future Hillary Clinton cabinet.

Old deleted tweets by the Hillbilly Elegy author, which were previously reported, included one in which he wondered whether Trump was “America’s Hitler”.

Vance recently spoke up for Trump outside his hush money trial in New York and helped organise his recent $12m donation event in San Francisco from cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, so has clearly been on quite a journey, something he himself has openly acknowledged in interviews.

He responded to CNN in a statement yesterday by saying: “I’m proud to be one of his strongest supporters in the Senate today and I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure President Trump wins in November – the survival of America depends on it.”

The Republican tried to quell divisions within the House GOP conference on Thursday during his huddle with his representatives and senators.

But he did so in a very Trumpian way — by publicly humiliating one of his own allies, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The ex-president was reported by Politico’s Olivia Beavers to have singled out the outspoken conservative gadfly during his remarks to Republicans in the lower chamber.

Pointing to Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House who recently survived an effort led by Greene to remove him, Trump called out Greene: “Hello Marjorie... are you being nice to him?”

John Bowden has more.

Possibly even weirder than Trump’s Milwaukee remark yesterday was his claim to his fellow Republicans that one of former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughters once told him the two would be “perfect together” – a comment that drew the immediate ire of her family.

“Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is a wacko,” Trump allegedly said on Capitol Hill. “Her daughter told me if things were different Nancy and I would be perfect together. There’s an age difference though.”

The former speaker is just seven years older than Trump, who happens to be 24 years older than his wife Melania.

Incensed by this, Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, immediately jumped on the claim, tweeting: “Speaking for all 4 Pelosi daughters – this is a LIE. His deceitful, deranged obsession with our mother is yet another reason Donald Trump is unwell, unhinged and unfit to step foot anywhere near her – or the White House.”

Nancy Pelosi could not resist appearing on MSNBC last night with Lawrence O’Donnell to shoot down the story herself.

Kelly Rissman reports.

And finally, here’s Tom Murray on Trump’s true passion: celebrity gossip.

Mike Bedigan has this on what Trump had to say about the potential of artificial intelligence to help him phone-in his public addresses even further.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the key exchanges from this Frost/Nixon for the energy drink generation.

First up, here’s Josh Marcus on El Presidente’s views on the existence of aliens.

The former president’s interview with social media celebrity Logan Paul for his Impaulsive podcast also dropped yesterday.

The episode began with questions about Trump’s felony convictions and why he is running again – allowing him to reel off many of his familiar diatribe of falsehoods from his rallies – before moving on to a wide variety of topics, from aliens to Drake and Kendrick Lamar and on to Elon Musk, artificial intelligence, chicken nuggets and cereal.

Here’s an overview from Alex Woodward.

During his meeting with House representatives, Trump sparked fury by reportedly calling the city of Milwaukee “horrible” a month before it hosts the Republican National Convention.

Speaker Mike Johnson was out quickly on Fox to deny that any such thing was said but he appeared not to have got the memo...

Among the angry backlash was this from US vice president Kamala Harris and the following superb line from Wisconsin Democratic congresswoman Gwen Moore.

Here’s more from Alex Lang.

Trump was back in Washington DC on Thursday to meet with the House and Senate GOP, who presented him with a cake featuring 47 candles in tribute to his hopes of becoming America’s 47th president.

It was his first time time back on Capitol Hill since January 6 2021, a fact not acknowledged by either the man himself or his Republican allies, who were heckled as “bootlickers” and advised not to “drink the Kool-Aid” by protesters.

But Bennie Thompson, who served as the chairman of the House select committee that investigated the Capitol riot, put out a statement that said Trump “still presents the same dire threat to our democracy that he did three years ago — and he’d be wise to head back to Mar-a-Lago and await his sentencing.”

Here’s Eric Garcia and Katie Hawkinson on what those present said Trump talked to them about, from abortion and immigration to the war in Ukraine and the US economy.