UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. — Foreign ministers from European nations with close U.S. ties reacted to Vice President Kamala Harris’ claim world leaders are ‘laughing’ at former President Trump, dismissing the claim. 

During September’s presidential debate, Harris said, ‘World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you, and they say you’re a disgrace.’

When asked about this quote, foreign ministers in attendance at the United Nations High-Level Week stressed they have no view one way or the other on the U.S. election and will work with whomever wins. 

‘We are friends of America,’ Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said, noting Italy and the U.S. are ‘two sides of the same coin.’ ‘If Trump will be the new president of America, we will work with him as we worked with him when he was president of America.’

‘We worked well with Biden, with Bush, with Reagan, with Clinton, with Obama,’ Tajani added. ‘For us, the transatlantic relations are the key strategy of our foreign policy, Europe and America.’ 

Foreign ministers of Lithuania and the Czech Republic stressed that they will not interfere in the election by stating a preference, instead saying they ‘leave it to the American citizens to decide.’ 

‘My role is not to comment on such a political statement,’ Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said. 

However, Lipavsky praised Trump’s ‘strong’ message of defense spending, which he hoped Europe would continue to embrace in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine. 

‘The point is that Donald Trump had, at his time, one strong message for Europe, and that message was quite resonating and is resonating more now because he was saying spend more on your defense,’ Lipavsky said. 

‘My government is spending more on our defense,’ he added. ‘We want to reach those 2% of GDP, will be reaching them this year, and we will continue next year. So, (if) Donald Trump would be a president with this message, ‘Please spend 2%,’ we would be OK.’

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis highlighted the ‘very long history’ between the two countries, saying that the relationship is ‘more than politics.’ 

Instead, he reiterated the message that whoever wins the election will need to focus on the same message of defense spending that Trump pushed during his first administration. 

Prior to the Trump administration, only a few members of NATO had upheld their commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defense, but that number rose sharply due to Trump’s insistence and hard-line stance over the issue. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in June reported that 23 of the 32 member states have hit the minimum spending requirement, which helped improve the bloc’s ability to support Ukraine and, potentially, deter Russian aggression beyond its current ambitions. 

No European nation, though, has touted the success of Trump’s first term and expressed hopes for a strong second term as has Hungary. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó revealed his government would have ‘huge expectations’ for a new Trump administration. 

‘We have huge expectations because we do believe that many of the major crises which give us a lot of concern can be resolved by an administration of President Trump,’ Szijjártó said, noting he speaks as the longest-serving foreign minister in NATO with 10 years under his belt. 

‘I didn’t really see anyone laughing at Trump,’ Szijjártó said. ‘What I’ve seen many having fear. I’ve seen many being afraid of a U.S. president being honest, not a hostage by the liberal mainstream, representing a patriotic position, speaking clearly about America first.’  

Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have done little to hide their rosy friendship, with Trump invoking the Hungarian leader as a ‘strong man of Europe’ who speaks well of the former president. 

Orbán proved this is a mutual dynamic when he chose to leave the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., earlier this year to instead meet with Trump in Mar-a-Lago in Florida to discuss foreign relations.

‘Under President Trump, everything was under control,’ Szijjártó said. ‘Since President Trump has left office, the whole global security situation is deteriorating. So, I mean, these are experiences.’ 

‘If we base it on our experience, we say yes, from a perspective of U.S.-Hungary relations, I think President Trump would bring another impetus, freshness, dynamism to this relationship. And I think if President Trump is elected, I think the world has a good chance to become a more peaceful place compared to the current situation.’  

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A House Democrat running for Senate in a key swing state bashed voters who supported then-President-elect Donald Trump in a resurfaced interview.

‘I think Donald Trump ran a xenophobic campaign that drew out the worst people in the world that we are not going to appeal to and never will,’ Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said in a 2016 interview directly after Trump won the presidential election.

Gallego also said in the interview that he will try to ‘protect’ Americans from the policies of Trump, including those who were ‘dumb enough’ to vote for him.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Gallego campaign for comment but did not receive a response. 

‘Ruben Gallego thinks you are a bad person if you support President Trump,’ NRSC spokesperson Tate Mitchell told Fox News Digital. ‘Gallego is running to be a Senator for the far-left, not all of Arizona.’

The presidential race in Arizona is expected to be one of the closest in the country with the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average showing Trump with a tight lead, but the RCP average also shows that Gallego has a lead over his GOP opponent, Kari Lake.

On the campaign trail, Gallego has been a fierce critic of Trump despite the former president’s popularity in the state.

Gallego called Trump a ‘craven politician’ in an interview with MSNBC earlier this year and has routinely gone after the former president on social media, including posts suggesting Trump and Lake are threats to democracy.

Lake has made the case on the campaign trail that Gallego is a rubber stamp for a Biden-Harris administration.

‘President Trump’s consistently strong lead in Arizona proves that Arizonans are tired of and dissatisfied with the policies of Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego that have caused record-high inflation and made our state less safe by opening the border to millions of unchecked illegal immigrants,’ a Lake spokesperson told Fox News Digital earlier this year. 

‘As voters learn the truth about Gallego’s voting record and the fact that he has voted for Biden-Harris policies 100% of the time, they will reject Radical Ruben just as they reject Kamala Harris.’

The Cook Political Report ranks the Arizona Senate race as ‘Lean Democrat.’

Fox News Digital’s Julia Johnson contributed to this report

North Korea is expanding its list of crimes punishable by death, according to reports.

Supreme leader Kim Jong Un’s regime expanded the list of offenses warranting the death penalty from 11 to 16 via revisions of criminal law, according to Yonhap News Agency.

New offenses warranting execution as a punishment include: anti-state propaganda and agitation acts, illegal manufacturing, and the illicit use of weapons are included in the new codes. 

The legal modifications were codified via multiple amendments between May 2022 and December 2023, according to a report from the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU). 

The tightening of the criminal code is intended to strengthen the Kim regime’s grip on the population through its continued monopolization of the marketplace and military. 

Earlier this month, North Korea promised to refine its weapons development and strengthen its nuclear capabilities. 

Kim Jong Un made the comments Monday at a state event celebrating the country’s 76th anniversary.

‘The obvious conclusion is that the nuclear force of the DPRK and the posture capable of properly using it for ensuring the state’s right to security in any time should be more thoroughly perfected,’ the dictator said.

‘DPRK’ is an abbreviation for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kim Jong Un warned that the United States’ increased involvement in the region has forced the regime to pursue more powerful weapons as a deterrence mechanism.

‘The DPRK will steadily strengthen its nuclear force capable of fully coping with any threatening acts imposed by its nuclear-armed rival states and redouble its measures and efforts to make all the armed forces of the state, including the nuclear force, fully ready for combat,’ the supreme leader said.

The 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, the unicameral legislative body of the country, amended the national constitution last year to enshrine nuclear weaponization as a core principle.

Trailing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 cash dash, former President Trump heads next week to Texas, a state that’s long served as an ATM for Republican White House candidates.

Aiming to narrow the fundraising gap with Harris, the former president will headline a luncheon Oct. 2 in Midland, Texas, as he courts donors in oil country. That luncheon will be followed by a cocktail reception in Houston, sources in Trump’s political orbit confirmed to Fox News Digital.

Trump will also headline a fundraiser in Dallas during his Texas swing.

According to the latest figures available from the Federal Election Commission, Harris hauled in nearly $190 million in fundraising for her 2024 campaign in August, more than quadrupling the $44.5 million that Trump’s team reported bringing into his principal campaign account last month.

And the vice president’s campaign entered September with $235 million cash on hand, well ahead of the $135 million in Trump’s coffers, according to the FEC filings.

The latest cash figures are another sign of the vice president’s surge in fundraising since replacing President Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket over two months ago.

This isn’t the first time Trump’s faced a fundraising deficit. He raised less than 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in his White House victory and by President Biden four years ago in his re-election defeat.

‘The Democrats’ small-dollar fundraising machine is just better,’ acknowledged Dan Eberhart, an oil drilling CEO and prominent Republican donor and bundler who raised big bucks for Trump in the 2020 and 2024 cycles.

Eberhart pointed to Trump’s surge in grassroots fundraising earlier this year, after he made history as the first former or current president convicted in a criminal trial, and noted that ‘Trump is the best small-dollar fundraiser the Republicans have ever had. But I still think, just overall, the Democrats’ small-dollar fundraising machine is just better.’

The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee enjoyed a fundraising lead over Trump and the Republican National Committee earlier this year. But Trump and the RNC topped Biden and the DNC by $331 million to $264 million during the second quarter of 2024 fundraising.

Biden enjoyed a brief fundraising surge after his disastrous performance in his late June debate with Trump as donors briefly shelled out big bucks in a sign of support for the 81-year-old president.

But Biden’s halting and shaky debate delivery also instantly fueled questions about his physical and mental ability to serve another four years in the White House and spurred a rising chorus of calls from within his own party for the president to end his bid for a second term. The brief surge in fundraising didn’t last and, by early July, began to significantly slow down. 

Biden bowed out of the 2024 race July 21, and the party quickly consolidated around Harris, who instantly saw her fundraising soar, spurred by small-dollar donations.

And the Harris campaign spotlighted that the vice president hauled in $47 million in the 24 hours after her first and likely only debate with Trump earlier this month.

‘We’ve been playing catch-up ever since Act Blue first started, figuring out an effective way to mine the low-dollar, small-dollar fundraising,’ Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks told Fox News, pointing to the Democrats’ on-line fundraising platform.

Brooks, who has close ties to the GOP’s donor class, said while ‘there’s no question that the Democrats have perfected’ their small-dollar fundraising, ‘I think we’re doing better and better. I like the trajectory we’re on.’

But a source in Trump’s political orbit said ‘the max-out donors have already given. There’s not a lot of juice left from that. Any juice left would be in the small-dollar on-line fundraising, and the moments for that are kind of passed in terms of debates, making the running mate pick, the conventions. All that stuff is past.’

Fundraising, along with polling, is a key metric in campaign politics and a measure of a candidate’s popularity and a campaign’s strength. The money raised can be used — among other things — to hire staff, expand grassroots outreach and get-out-the-vote efforts, pay to produce and run ads on TV, radio, digital and mailers and for candidate travel.

‘We’re going to be outspent, and that’s going to lead to a better ground game for Harris,’ a veteran Republican operative who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, told Fox News.

But Brooks emphasized that ‘the saving grace is that we have strong support among major donors and big dollar donors going into the super PACs, which you have to take into consideration.’

‘I think you have to look at the totality of the pro-Trump money out there, and I think the super PACs help level the playing field significantly,’ he added.

When asked about the fundraising deficit, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley told Fox News Digital earlier this month ‘the Democrats have a ton of money. The Democrats always have a ton of money.’

However, he emphasized that ‘we absolutely have the resources that we need to get our message out to all the voters that we’re talking to and feel very comfortable that we’re going to be able to see this campaign through, and we’re going to win on Nov. 5.’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is downplaying past disagreements with former President Donald Trump following a meeting in New York City.

Zelenskyy visited Trump Tower on Friday to meet with the Republican presidential nominee, then sat down with Fox News’ Griff Jenkins to discuss what seems to have been a good-spirited conversation.

‘We understand that even in any kind of future negotiations, Ukraine has to be strong. That’s what it’s about,’ Zelenskyy told Jenkins when asked why he met with Trump. ‘We spoke with Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and the Congress of the United States.’

Jenkins pressed Zelenskyy about his comments that appeared in a New Yorker article earlier this week — in which he was quoted saying that he believes Trump ‘doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how’ — and whether Trump had said anything to change Zelenskyy’s mind.

‘No, I said that I think that we understand much more better than everybody, really, including Donald Trump, what’s going on in Ukraine and how to stop him. It’s difficult to understand,’ Zelenskyy responded.

The Ukrainian president said his country is now a completely different nation from the one that was first invaded in 2022.

‘Ukraine, during the war in Ukraine before the full-scale invasion — two different countries. So without this experience, you can’t really understand how to stop [Russian President Vladimir Putin],’ Zelenskyy continued. ‘And that’s what I wanted to share to president . . . and the price of this tragedy of bloody invasion of Putin.’

At one point during their meeting, Trump told the press that he had a ‘good relationship’ with both Zelenskyy and Putin. Zelenskyy then interjected to say he hopes the U.S. has a better relationship with Ukraine than Russia.

Jenkins asked the Ukrainian president whether Trump’s comment about maintaining a good relationship with Putin concerned him.

Zelenskyy said he was not necessarily concerned, acknowledging that ‘Trump has relations and had relations when he was the president, during his term’ and maintains ‘relations with a lot of countries and a lot of UN leaders.’

During the exclusive interview, Zelenskyy lamented the lack of response Putin received from the rest of the world when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2014 with the taking of Crimea.

‘Nobody kicked him, and that meant he understood that he can occupy it and go further. He can occupy new territories of Ukraine,’ Zelenskyy said. ‘He began to prepare to do this — his plan — and he did it.’

China attempted to send $1 billion worth of drones disguised as COVID-19 aid to a Libyan warlord through the assistance of corrupt U.N. officials, according to a Canadian government investigator. 

New court documents accuse Chinese state officials of conspiring to hide the $1 billion deal to offer 42 drones to Libyan General Khalifa Haftar through U.N. officials, who would mark the arms shipments as COVID-19 aid. 

Through FBI intercepts, Canada’s Royal Mounted Police found alleged plots to sell Libyan oil to China and to buy drones from 2018 to 2021. 

‘The Chinese government seems to have approved a strategy to aid Libya in the procurement and delivery of military equipment through designated and approved companies to obscure the direct involvement of government agencies,’ the investigator stated.

Two Libyan nationals working in Canada at the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, were charged with conspiracy for the scheme in April. A preliminary hearing is expected in the spring.  

The accusations, first reported by Defense News, are part of documents submitted in court in Montreal to obtain warrants to access the phones of the men involved. 

‘This scheme appears to be a deliberate attempt to circumvent U.N. sanctions that were in effect at the time,’ the report said. 

Haftar, who received the drones, is a Russia-backed strongman who controls eastern Libya. He unsuccessfully tried to seize control of western Libya in 2020. The aim of the drones’ shipment was ‘‘using war to end war quickly’ without attracting the attention of the international community,’ said the investigator, adding ‘the fight against the Coronavirus’ was used as cover. 

One of the Libyan nationals involved in the scheme – Fathi Ben Ahmed Mhaouek – was arrested while the other, Mahmud Mohamed Elsuwaye Sayeh, is still at large. 

The court documents also accuse a U.S. citizen, who has not been charged, of involvement.

‘My client will plead not guilty – he denies all wrongdoing,’ said Mhaouek’s lawyer in Canada, Andrew Barbacki.

Investigators uncovered a May 2020 message from Sayeh to an official at the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs requesting a meeting in Egypt between the Chinese ambassador and a Libyan military official close to Haftar, Major General Aoun Al-Ferjani.

In the messages, the drones are ‘clearly described with weaponry, attack and lethal strike capabilities.’

Investigators are unsure if the deal went through or if talks failed. 

Italian authorities in July said they seized Chinese military drones that were headed for Benghazi, Libya, in violation of a U.N. embargo. 

Three men connected to Iran have been indicted in relation to a hacking plot against former President Donald Trump’s campaign, the Department of Justice announced Friday.

Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi are the three suspects named in the case, according to a federal indictment unsealed Friday afternoon.

The indictment shows the trio are facing a long list of charges, including: Conspiracy to Obtain Information from a Protected Computer; Defraud and Obtain a Thing of Value; Commit Fraud Involving Authentication Features; Commit Aggravated Identity Theft; Commit Access Device Fraud; and Commit Wire Fraud While Falsely Registering Domains.

The three hackers, who are accused of working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were allegedly ‘engaged in a wide-ranging hacking campaign that used spearphishing and social engineering techniques to target and compromise the accounts of current and former U.S. government officials, members of the media, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to the FBI and Department of Justice.

Last week, the U.S. revealed the Iranian hackers had obtained information on the Trump campaign and tried to distribute it to people linked to the Biden campaign and media organizations since June. 

The federal government acknowledges that the Trump campaign has been a specific and repeated target of Iran since he ordered the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the IRGC Qods Force.

Trump was briefed Tuesday about ‘real and specific threats’ from Iran to assassinate the Republican presidential candidate, according to his campaign. 

Iran’s aim to assassinate Trump is part of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to ‘destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,’ Trump Campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a press release. 

‘Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected and the election is free from interference,’ Cheung said. 

This is a developing story and will be updated. 

Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.

Former President Donald Trump met with the president of Ukraine at Trump Tower in New York City on Friday, saying he has a ‘very good relationship’ with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

‘It’s very important to share our plan, all of our steps on how we can strengthen Ukraine,’ Zelenskyy said. He explained to reporters that he decided to meet with both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris because ‘after November, we don’t know who Americans [will decide to] be the president.’

Speaking with Fox News after the meeting, Trump said, ‘We both want to see this end and we both want to see a fair deal made. And it’s got to be fair. And I think that’ll happen at the right time. I think it’s going to happen.’ 

Neither Trump nor Zelenskyy publicly explained details of a potential deal.

‘It’s an honor to have the president with us, and he’s been through a lot’ Trump said of Zelenskyy’s visit, at one point saying ‘[Zelenskyy has] gone through hell, his country has gone through hell.’

The meeting at Trump Tower comes just after Zelenskyy met with Harris in Washington, D.C. 

Harris and Zelenskyy gave a joint address at the White House on Thursday, where she pledged unwavering support for the Ukrainian effort and criticized Trump’s consideration of negotiated peace at the cost of some captured regions of the country.

‘In candor, I share with you, Mr. President, there are some in my country who would, instead, force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory, who would demand that Ukraine accept neutrality and would require Ukraine to forego security relationships with other nations,’ Harris said.

Zelenskyy affirmed on Friday after meeting with Trump that the former president shares the ‘common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped.’

‘He’s going through a tremendous amount,’ Trump said on Friday. ‘We’re going to have a discussion and see what we can come up with.’

A brief exchange between the two leaders highlighted the high stakes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the U.S.’s role in ending the conflict.

‘We have a very good relationship. I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin,’ Trump said. ‘And I think if we win we’re going to get [the war] resolved very quickly.’ 

‘I hope we have more good [sic] relations,’ Zelenskyy interjected, emphasizing his desire to have a stronger relationship with the U.S. than Russia.

‘It takes two to tango, and we will,’ Trump responded.