our top story. britain's prime minister, theresa may, has welcomed donald trump with a lavish dinner on his first visit to the uk as american president. at the event at blenheim palace in oxfordshire, mr may made a case for a new trade deal with the united states after britain leaves the european union. injapan, at least 200 people are now reported to have been killed in the worst flooding to hit the country in nearly a0 years. rescuers are still searching for dozens of people missing in the prefectures of hiroshima and okayama. and this story is trending on bbc.com. workers at an italian fiat chrysler plant will strike over the signing of cristiano ronaldo tojuventus. the football club and the carmaker are both controlled by the agnelli family, who agreed to sign the portuguese starfor over 99 million. now on bbc news — hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk.

i'm stephen sackur. president donald trump seems to value his gut instinct more than expert advice and appears to respect raw power more than traditional alliances. this is not a president ready to make nice with europe simply because of shared values. amid the constant churn of administration staff his informal advisers seem to know him best — like my guest today — long—time trump ally and conservative media mogul christopher ruddy. how far will trump take his love of disruption? welcome to hardtalk.

donald trump is in europe, talking to nato, he will come and meet the uk prime minister, he is also then going to meet vladimir putin. why is it that donald trump finds it so much easier to be nice to the russian president than to his allies and partners in europe? it's a lot more complicated than most people think. i think donald trump is vladimir putin's worst nightmare. don't look at what donald says or what the president of the united states says about putin, look what he does. he has modernised the nuclear arsenal, rapidly improving our weapons, our tactical warheads. russia cannot like that. dramatically increasing the us defence budget. not a nice thing for russia. asking nato countries to double their military spending. sanctions are up. we found out this morning —

i have known for some time — the president very strongly opposes the natural gas pipeline coming out of russia. this will be billions of dollars lost to the russians. he is playing a really tough game with the russians. with respect, you call it a tough game — the tough game right now is being played with the germans. we can talk about other europeans too. we have just seen donald trump say, quite publicly, the germans are captive of russia because they get so much of their energy from russia. now that is the sort of comment which indicates a crisis in relations between washington and berlin. i would call it tough love. i think on a personal level he and merkel have gotten along fairly well, despite some of the public ruffles they might have had. i think president looks at germany as one of the important economies in europe, it should be

spending a lot more. they're spending 1% of their gdp, you folks are spending 2% which is the nato target. the states are paying 4% and he says why are we paying their military bills? if it is a fair question. i don't think it is tough love when he says the german government is in crisis, crime rates are soaring because of merkel‘s immigration policies. one could say the same about the way he is treating theresa may, tweeting about turmoil in the british government, indicating that he would rather spend some time with borisjohnson, who has just quit the theresa may cabinet, then with the prime minister herself. this is a president who likes to speak his mind, sometimes he doesn't research the facts. i was hoping with twitter he would have someone review it. i am not the president's spokesman, i am a friend, i run a media organisation — sometimes we are critical of the president. i don't want to defend every tweet he has done. i think they should be fact based if there is some inaccuracy.

i believe you had dinner with him two or three nights ago, on the eve of his european tour. do you tell him that? because there are very few people closer than you in political friendship terms — you are a confidant — do you tell him, mr president, the way you make these off—the—cuff comments on twitter are actually doing real damage. i saw him for lunch, we were not talking about twitter. i think he sees this as very important because you see it as a vacuum here, in america the media is almost entirely opposed to him and they only have a barrage of negative stories. he could walk on water and they would say he violated epa policies. this constant criticism, this is a way for him to reach his 50 million followers around the country. no president has had that access. i think he likes it, even if there are some mistakes made. i have suggested that he keep doing twitter, but he has a review process.

he doesn't believe in that, he likes speaking from his heart. it is very refreshing to a lot of people, we are used to everything being scripted in america. his approval numbers are very high for a man this controversial, he's in the 45% range. this is extremely high for a guy that has undergone the criticism that he has undergone. we'll get to the internal dynamics of american domestic politics in a moment — let's stay in the international arena for a second because of course, it is very striking that he is coming to the uk at a very difficult time for theresa may. on a whole raft of issues, including his advocacy of protectionism, his decision to walk away from the iran deal, walking away from the climate change treaty. donal trump represents something that no british government can possibly support. there is — it seems — a crisis in relations between the us and the uk. we have had through the years

whether you have had a labour government and a republican in the white house where there was disagreement. there was tension at the start of the obama years, even the reagan and thatcher years were not always totally agreed on everything. this time around donald trump is going to come to london and is he is going to see that there are tens of thousands of protesters on the streets. he will see things like this huge, bizarre balloon blimp of the angry baby — donald trump wearing a diaper ora nappy flying high. first time i have heard it. i doubt he will see it. isn't he going to be on the periphery in belheim and other places? that in itself is significant. the british authorities appear to want to keep him away from the tens of thousands of people marching on the streets saying

it is not acceptable for this man, given his record on all sorts of things both diplomatic and personal, not acceptable to have this man in our country. look, i think he strongly supports britain. he sees it as a very key, i knw his mother was born here, and he is proud of the fact she was born in scotland. through the years he has indicated a great interest in britain. he has businesses here. somehow the idea that he is somehow anti—british or an anti—women, he has tremendous amount of women in the administration, women in top positions, a woman was just considered for the supreme court. so if you look at his record, he is a bit old school and comes from that frank sinatra generation where they just spoke their minds, sometimes it would be considered chauvinistic today, not necessarily politically correct. do you care? as an american citizen and a man of influence in the us, do you care of the way america is seen overseas when the speaker john burkert recently said "i wouldn't wish to issue an invitation for

donald trump to speak in westminster because i feel our opposition to racism and sexism and support for equality and an independent judiciary are hugely important for us in the house of commons". the presidentjust nominated a young man — brett — for the supreme court, recommended by everyone, including me, and i think he will be fantastic. you call him a brilliantjurist, many americans know him as a man who was involved in the special counsel investigation of bill clinton, seen as highly partisan. they also know that according to his own legal opinions, he is a staunch opponent of abortion rights. well, i don't believe he's going to overturn it, there are a lot of people who don't like abortion, so i did think you'll go as far as some of the other court

justices. i haven't spoken to him about it. his record suggests that he is more of a moderate on that issue. i think if you look at his record, considered in the safe zone, an establishment choice, and if you are going through many of the top selections of his administration, highly qualified people. even his ambassador to britain, woody johnson, a billionaire, owns the new yorkjets, this is like the top of american business going tojoin the administration and represent the united states in britain. we have a number of people, general mattis was the former nato commander, mike pompeo, john bolton and larry kudlow in the white house — these are very seasoned veterans of the previous administration. let's stick with the notion that all of these, you would characterise them as reasonable people, work happily with him. number one, we know that doesn't last very long, the churn of senior staff from the cabinet in the white house is extraordinary and also — number two — on one of these signature issues, protectionism

and putting up tariffs and barriers to internationalfree trade, he has lost the support of key members of the republican party, of key members of the leading business communities in the united states and even some of the most important donors to the republican party. these people, all of them, they say "mr president, protectionism is the wrong way to go." i disagree with the general protective tariffs but i do believe where there is an inequity, we should argue against it, fight against it and maybe put on reciprocal tariffs, certainly if a country is putting tariffs on your country's products and they want free trade when it comes to them importing into your country, you'd be open to some sort of balance. i think the administration... so picking a fight with the eu, with canada, with mexico over

the steel and aluminium tariffs — you think that is wise or fair? i think we could be a lot less confrontational initially and i think we should see into negotiations, give it a year or so. the president was elected, he campaigned on this issue on the inequities of trade. the united states, remember, we were the big global power so when china threw up all of these tariffs they were a small economy. 25 years ago they had the size of the economy of italy. and now they are the world's second economy. they still have a lot of tariffs as if they were a small country, the president is saying just because things were always done this way, this was a point you made earlier today. just because other presidents let it go, i am not going to let it go. you mentioned earlier that he has vast staff turnover, this is the first president that is a non—politician. he was inexperienced. he is hardly in washington, so he came in and pick people that did not work out. the clinton administration

in theirfirst term, you remember those days, 50% of his staff overturned in the first two years. you can have very big turnover rates, it is not that unusual. let's get back to vladimir putin. your remarkable contention is he would be very worried donald trump but look at what happened after that disastrous g7 meeting, all of the members were infuriated by donald trump at the guy who was rather pleased was vladimir putin because trump then announced that he thought russia should be invited back tojoin the g8 on a whole raft of other issues, including his stance on nato, which he suggested might be obsolete, donald trump is doing vladimir putin's work for him. well, i think you are overstating the case. i agree with you that the president should be picking a fight with canada or other allies in the immediate type you while we are negotiating tariffs and other issues. the same time saying, "vlad,

we would like you back in the g7." well at interview about vladimir putin, generally in america, is that he is a bad guy. the president admires him, he has said that. he does represent the largest nuclear power in the world, perhaps the second—largest. it is one of the great powers in the world and one of influence and that we should find areas of overlap to work with the russians. have you talked about that specifically with mr trump? i have talked him about putin and russia and he has a lot of respect for putin, but at the same time he also realises the importance... what does he respect about putin? does he respect the annexation of crimea, the repression freee expression of democracy in russia? what is it? is it the basic, ruthless, decisive nature of putin rule? some of these questions are best addressed by the president. i am not a fan of vladimir putin, i think he is a bad guy. i do think the president sees he represents an important nation

on the world's stage. as he pointed out, the germans are opening up a natural gas pipeline that will give putin and billions of dollars and a lot of leverage over europe, they complain about donald trump and what he is doing in europe and dividing the alliance and everything else, but meanwhile they are helping putin. so there is a certain two—facedness with what the germans are doing what they are saying. i am also struck by to a degree to which, from many outsiders, there is a complication to his russian policies and that is because we know he is facing investigation by robert mueller, then special counsel, into allegations of collusion between the trump campaign and russia in the 2016 presidential election. and we know that all

of the intelligence agencies in the us are adamant the russians did meddle, they did interfere. the only issue is about the extent or whether there was collusion. that is an extraordinary complicating factor here, is it not? little bit. little bit? the issue is i think there was russian interference, i think it is undeniable, and the president has reluctantly admitted that. excuse me, he calls it a witch—hunt. every time he refers to it these days, he calls it a partisan witch—hunt. the point is, i don't think that the russians decided the election. this is one of the great myths. hillary won the popular vote by 3 million votes, and if the russians had been effective, she would have gotten far fewer votes nationally. donald trump won because he saw this quirk in the constitution where if you win certain states, you can win the whole election. and he actually went into those states, where hillary didn't. it wasn't that the russians were spending money in the state of michigan or ohio. donald trump sat there in the state of ohio.

he won it by almost ten points. well, we obviously do not know what robert mueller has come up with. well, we know that he has come up with quite a lot on other issues, including indictments against paul manafort, who was obviously running the campaign for a while, michael flynn, who was briefly in the trump white house in a senior position. we know he has that level of detail. what we don't know is to what extent he is finding evidence of collusion. but you talk to the president. how much trouble do you think he thinks he is in? let me ask you a question. we've been in this fbi investigation two years, the press has been all over it. what is the evidence of collusion so far? well, he is still investigating, so we haven't got his report. well, there has been five indictments and plea agreements, there have been all sorts of other things that have taken place. not one of them has raised — even paul manafort, that you just mentioned, it all relates to things he did in ukraine. donald trump barely knew paul manafort before the campaign.

with respect, neither you nor i am aware of where this investigation is going. what we do know, just from leaks and comments, is that it seems mr trump's personal lawyer, michael cohen, may now be cooperating with the special prosecutor. my question is still this — how worried is donald trump? well, i don't — he and i don't talk about... i don't think he's worried about this. i don't believe that he thinks — even michael cohen, you know, what's the evidence? he was not active in the campaign, there's no evidence in any of the press reports that he's knowledgeable about russian collusion. so itjust seems, you know, all of these people being indicted around the president, none of them — they're being indicted because... and the president calls it a political witch—hunt, because they worked for him, and they're being targeted by this investigation. i happen to think highly of robert mueller. he's a former fbi director, he's a good, honourable man. but he's also a prosecutor, and he's been given a wide open budget, and basically a broad jurisdiction, and he's looking for targets. injune 2017 you said, after seeing donald trump, i think mr trump is considering terminating the special counsel. that was a year ago.

just in the last week or so we've had rudy giuliani, who is advising mr trump, saying that he thinks the mueller investigation is the most corrupt i have ever seen. so how close are we to mueller being fired now? that i don't know. but i don't think the president is going to fire mueller, just my guess. at that time, and i had not spoken to the president at that time, but at that time, i had heard from various sources that he was considering firing mueller, but he didn't. you know, sometimes he'll say these things, he'll make comments. i think it would be very catastrophic if he did. i think mueller — ultimately i don't think there's russian collusion. i don't think they're going to find evidence of that. they're obviously looking at other things now, related to the campaign, or business activities of people around the president. which could be very serious for mr trump. well, it turned out... look at what happened with bill clinton. it started as a partnership in arkansas called whitewater, and it ended up with the lewinsky matter. who would have thought, right? and a scandal involving a woman at the white house, an intern. so these things sometimes go very

far afield, and that's why i think the president keeps calling it a political witch—hunt. the thing i think the british people should understand is that the president wants a strong west. he wants a strong economic west, and a strong military between all the countries. he can be brash, he can be bold, he can sometimes be offensive when he pushes for things. but at the end of the day, he will be there for britain if there's a crisis. he will be there for france. he will be there for germany. and if the canadians, the europeans, no longer believe that, then what? well, that could be a problem. but i think that — you know, look at the french president and the president of the united states. they are very close friends, they've developed a friendship. so — and i think, who would have thought. the minister who came out of the hollande government becomes president of france. there has to be more

than just climate change, and what he thinks about women's issues, beyond what we're getting from the media. and it's unfortunate, because in britain and other countries in europe, we're not getting the media picture that you get in the united states, where there is some balance. well, clearly you're taking an optimistic view of how mr trump is being seen in europe, and amongst allies. let's now turn to something you know a lot about, which is the internal political scene in the us. you run a media organisation, newsmax, which is a right—of—centre media operation. correct. you are close to many people in the republican party. the party is in crisis, isn't it? there are people inside the republican party who think that, to quote steve schmidt, who used to work forjohn mccain, a big republican campaigner and activist, he thinks the republican party today is vile. he will no longer share a party label with people who think it is ok to put babies and children in internment camps. look. steve schmidt — good man, but he works for the most liberal cable news network, msnbc, in the united states. well, he's been republican

for many, many years. he's worked on all sorts of campaigns. but he's been a maverick republican, he's not a traditionalist. will what about george will, who said he can no longer vote with a party which is aiding and abetting trump's policies in a way which is completely unacceptable. george will, again, works for this network, msnbc. i'm not saying they're doing it for the network... what would you say about john mccain, who said the administration's separation policy, when it was still clearly happening, is in an affront to the decency of the american people? there are five people in the republican party who oppose donald trump, and you just named three of them. if you look at the polling data, there are two polls which just came out on his approval ratings, and they‘ re amazing, because what they show is that he's breaking records. he's gotten just over 90% of support within the republican party. no recent american president had gotten that amount, so he's extremely popular. his problem... he is playing to his base,

and is it not the case that he's doubling down on that policy? whether it be with signature issues like the separation policy at the mexican border, or criticising nfl players for taking the knee, supporting white supremacists, it seemed, in charlottesville by saying there were some good people on a demonstration which most americans regarded as absolutely vile and unacceptable. on all of these different levels, is donald trump not playing to a white, american, working—class base, which is a policy ultimately that will do the republican party no good? well, i think he's playing to issues that he cares about, and it's obviously got him elected, and keeps in very high standing despite a very negative barrage. the economy is booming. we have not had economic growth — the average economic growth during the obama years was i.5%. the first year of the trump administration, it was 3%. ioo% gdp growth. that has not happened, anybody can remember,

since the reagan administration. i hear, but i'm notjust talking about today's opinion polls. i'm talking about strategy. and you know a lot about political strategy. in 20 years‘ time, america won't be white—majority. is donald trump's version of politics... two things. you want to change the topic, ‘cause i'm talking about the results the president has delivered. that's what we keep having in america. but the public is seeing record employment numbers, record employment numbers for african—americans, latinos — they have not had anything like this. so his popularity has been growing. he's up about 20% in the polls in the past six months. is this where the republican party needs to be, in the long—term? backing donald trump and his vision of america? look, if bob johnson, who was the founder of bet, it's the famous black entertainment network, he said on cnbc, and he's a democrat who supported hillary clinton, was doing tremendous stuff

for blacks in the economic world. at the end of the day, if people's lives are improving, their economic situation, they feel safe at home, that's going to be better for america. and it's going to be better for britain and the west. we have to end there. chris ruddy, thank you very much indeed for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello there. it's hotting up as we head on into the weekend, particularly across central, southern parts of the country. but there will be a few heavy showers and maybe thunderstorms in the forecast for the next couple of days. thursday was a fine day for many of us, lovely sunsets around, but it wasn't dry everywhere. we did see some heavy showers

across western england and parts of wales, even some reports of local flooding injust one or two places. now, these showers are likely to linger on into the first part of friday in western areas. a bit of cloud tending to roll back in across eastern areas, but for most, it's going to be a dry and quite a warm start to friday, with towns and city values not falling any lower than ten to 15 degrees. so friday, we start on a largely dry note. variable amounts of morning cloud, that should burn away, and then we should see quite a good deal of sunshine around. but showers will develop once again and we're thinking they could be a bit heavy and potent on friday afternoon. in a line again across some western parts of scotland, western parts of england, central, eastern wales and also this time the midlands, in towards southern parts of england. so if you catch one, it could be really torrential, with the risk of some localised flooding. but again, hit and miss, some areas staying dry altogether, and it's going to be quite warm, top temperatures, 26 or maybe 27

celsius. this is the picture into saturday, then. we've got more cloud, more of a breeze pushing into northern ireland, northern and western parts of scotland, maybe some outbreaks of rain here too, but the further south and east you are, generally drier with more in the way of sunshine, just an isolated shower but warmer, 28 or 29 degrees potentially in the south—east. the reason for the divide is this area of low pressure anchored to the north—west will bring more of a breeze and outbreaks of rain to the north—west of the country. but further south and east, closer to an area of high pressure over the near continent, we'll be swooping up that warmth, particularly in towards england and wales. could see warmth reaching eastern scotland, as well, but generally it's going to be cloudier for the west of scotland and northern ireland, with the odd spot of rain. england and wales, a hot and a sunny day. you can see those big orange colours pushing away even a little bit further northwards, so a hot afternoon actually. further northwards, so a hot afternoon, actually. mid—to—high 20s celsius for many, with some areas in the south—east seeing 30 or 31 celsius. so for the weekend, it's

looking hot, certainly across england and wales, parts of eastern scotland. a few showers around maybe on saturday, always a bit cooler, and damp and breezy in the north—west, with the odd spot of rain. as we head on in towards next week, though, we start off on a hot note, but then temperatures as the week wears on begin to fall and return to a more seasonal average. welcome to newsday on the bbc. i'm sharanjit leyl in london. the headlines: pomp and circumstance for the us president's visit to britain. protests lie ahead, but mr trump says he's not too bothered. injapan, fears of disease and more than 200 killed in the worst flooding in nearly a0 years. protests, there might be protests. but i believe the people in the uk, scotland, ireland, ithink but i believe the people in the uk, scotland, ireland, i think that those people, they like me a lot. the worst flooding in nearly a0 yea rs the worst flooding in nearly a0 years injapan. i'm rico hizon in singapore. also in the programme: the new research that says bad sleep could be linked to brain disease. and serena williams makes it

through to the wimbledon final. she'll play angelique kerber on saturday for the title.