And you can follow along with our live coverage of tonight’s vice-presidential debate here ...
Summary
Here’s a recap of today so far, from me and Martin Pengelly:
- Donald Trump posted a video from the White House proclaiming, “I feel great” and crediting an experimental drug from Regeneron. The president returned to the Oval Office against CDC guidelines, receiving a briefing about Hurricane Delta, which is heading for the US later this week.
- At least 27 people in Trump’s orbit have tested positive for the coronavirus amid an outbreak at the White House. Trump, however, has attempted to spin the news as a positive, while continuing to dangerously downplay the disease that has killed more than 200,000 Americans.
-
Economists warned on Wednesday that the US economy was facing a “watershed moment” after Trump abruptly pulled out of talks over a coronavirus stimulus bill. After stock markets fell, the president suggested he might support a piecemeal approach, and sign specific bills to bail out the airline industry and send Americans another round of stimulus checks.
- Mitch McConnell defended supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, decrying Democrats and media organizations criticisms as attacks on her faith. His statement also referred directly to a Guardian investigation by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, who yesterday revealed that Barrett lived in the home of one of the founders of the People of Praise while she was a law student.
We’re closing out this blog, but revving up live coverage of the vice presidential debate soon.
Facebook has announced significant changes to its advertising and misinformation policies, saying it will stop running political ads in the United States after polls close on 3 November for an undetermined period of time.
The changes, announced Wednesday, come in an effort to “protect the integrity” of the upcoming election “by fighting foreign interference, misinformation and voter suppression”, the company said in a blog post.
Facebook’s chief executive, officer Mark Zuckerberg, had previously defended the controversial decision not to fact check political advertising on the platform, but in recent weeks Facebook has begun to remove political ads that feature dangerous and misleading claims.
In early September, the company pledged to stop running new political ads one week before 3 November, the day of the United States elections, to prevent last-minute misinformation. Now it will disallow political advertising entirely following election day “to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse”. The company did not say whether the previous ban on new ads remains, or give a timeline for if and when political advertising could return.
Although Donald Trump again promised in his video that a vaccine would come this year, that’s looking increasingly unlikely.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told coronavirus vaccine developers on Tuesday it wants at least two months of safety data before authorizing any emergency use, a requirement likely to push any US vaccine availability past the 3 November presidential election.
A senior administration official confirmed that the White House had approved the plan, which undercuts Donald Trump’s hopes of getting a vaccine before the majority of voters go to polls.
The president had been hinting at a rapid announcement on a successful vaccine in recent weeks despite the fact that a candidate has yet to emerge from clinical trials and there have been growing fears that political pressure on regulators could result in a compromised process and the undermining of public confidence in a vaccine.
The FDA on Tuesday released the guidance laying out more stringent recommendations for drugmakers hoping to apply for an emergency use authorization (EUA) for their experimental vaccines.
“Being open and clear about the circumstances under which the issuance of an emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine would be appropriate and is critical to building public confidence and ensuring the use of COVID-19 vaccines once available,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA division responsible for approving vaccines, said in a statement.
There was a school of thought that Donald Trump might be humbled by becoming infected himself with the coronavirus, see the light and encourage Americans to stay safe. It lasted about as long as the hope that he would “pivot” to a traditional presidency after his inauguration.
Instead Trump has sought to project the strongman image, flying to the White House by helicopter at sunset, standing on the balcony and taking off his face mask while still contagious, bragging that he feels better than he did 20 years ago and urging the public to neither fear the virus nor let it dominate their lives.
His campaign has sent out fundraising emails preaching a similar if-I-can-beat-it-so-can-you-message, hoping to turn personal and political disaster to their electoral advantage against the cautious Joe Biden. It is very on-brand for a president who views illness as a weakness and seeks each day to make himself the hero of his own reality TV show.
“He’s operated in kind of cartoon icons his entire career, with iconic images and symbols of being a magnate, owning a football team, an airline, casinos, Mar-a-Lago,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. “All these symbols of unbelievable riches were really powerful – that was a very successful manoeuvre and he’s kept it up. So now these photo ops that look ridiculous and dangerous have a certain resonance. Of course he’ll keep doing that.
“Now he is going to be an ‘expert’: he’s had it so nobody can tell him anything. If he ever even paused for a second for any medical advice before, that’s over. He knows more about wars than the generals; he will now know more about the coronavirus than any doctors.”
Here’s a quick overview of some of the most confounding bits of the president’s video message:
In his video, Trump said he’s authorized Regeneroon’s and Eli Lilly’s treatments for emergency use – though it’s unclear whether he actually has. He also said the therapeutics would be available for free – though it’s unclear how given that the president unilaterally ended negotiations over a coronavirus relief bill with Congressional democrats.
He also said a vaccine will be available “right after the election” – contradicting his own CDC director, who said last month one wouldn’t be widely available until next Spring. And he suggested that the military would distribute the vaccine, even though officials have indicated that the plan would be to distribute through local public health departments.
Last week, Regeneron said its REGN-COV2 treatment improved symptoms in those with mild or moderate Covid-19, based on results from 275 trial patients. The drug is an experimental shot of antibodies, generated in a lab to mimic the immune system’s response to the virus. Early results have also indicated that the treatment could reduce the levels of virus in the body, and reduce hospital stays.
However, these are early results – and the drug has not yet authorized for general use.
Another drugmaker, Eli Lilly, is developing another antibody treatment, which is also being tested on patients in the US/
Updated
News that the president has been treated with Regeneron’s experimental cocktail caused the company’s stock to rise sharply. Donald Trump has ties to Regeneron’s CEO, Dr. Leonard Schleifer, who is a member of the president’s golf club in Westchester.
Schleifer’s company received $450m in government funding this summer as part of the president’s program to encourage the development of a vaccine and treatment. Trump ownsed shares of Regeneron and Gilead Sciences – maker of the antiviral remdesivir, which the president is also said to be taking – per his 2017 filing with the Office of Government Ethics. Neither holdings were listed on the president’s most recent filing.
Updated
Trump: 'It was a blessing from God that I caught it'
In a video message, Donald Trump said that Regeneron was key to recovering from his infection. He said it was his suggestion to be treated with an experimental cocktail from the drug company, which has rarely been used outside clinical trials.
“I feel great. I feel like, perfect,” the president says in the video. “I think this was a blessing from God, that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise. I caught it, I heard about this drug, I said let me take it, it was my suggestion.”
He promised to bring the drug to the American people for free, hawking it – falsely – as a “cure”. There is no cure for Covid-19.
The president, who has often talked up unproven, unapproved treatments – from hydroxychloroquine (which he has claimed to take as a prophylactic) to bleach – is doing so once again. Even if the drug is effective, it has not yet been granted emergency authorization for use by the general public.
Updated
During tonight’s debate, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris will be positioned 12 feet apart, separated by plexiglass barriers – which scientists say are woefully ineffective.
Pence and his aides had initially protested the plexiglass but eventually acquiesced. Although the barriers would block any spit that the candidates spray as they speak, it wouldn’t stop the virus from being carried in the air. As the CDC acknowledged this week, coronavirus can be carried by aerosols – tiny airborne droplets – that can move over and around a sheet of plexiglass.
Although Pence has cited multiple negative tests – and has been cleared by the White House physician to participate in the debates. But tests for Covid-19 can come up negative up to 14 days after exposure to the virus. Though the CDC has said Pence has not been in close contact with anyone suspected of being infected, Pence himself said he’d met with Donald Trump – who has been infected.
Updated
Who in the White House has Covid-19? Here’s a look at some of those who’ve tested positive.
Updated
The Associated Press reports on More Bad News For Trump and thus, quite possibly, Choppy Waters For The Government:
Donald Trump’s accountant must turn over the president’s tax records to a New York state prosecutor, an appeals court ruled on Wednesday in a decision that almost certainly sets up a second trip to the US supreme court over the issue.
The second US circuit court of appeals in Manhattan said in a written decision that a stay of a lower-court decision will remain in effect so Trump’s lawyers can appeal the ruling to the high court.
In August, a district court judge had rejected their renewed efforts to invalidate a subpoena that the office of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr issued to Trump’s accounting firm last year.
Part of Vance’s probe pertains to an investigation related to payoffs to two women, adult film star and producer Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal, to keep them quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about alleged extramarital affairs with Trump in the past. Trump has denied the affairs.
Full story here:
Maanvi Singh will be here shortly to blog into the east coast evening from the west coast afternoon, if that makes sense. In the meantime, I feel I should point out for the first time in a while that the vice-presidential debate is tonight, in Salt Lake City. In the red corner, Mike “So Money” Pence. (Swingers gag.) In the blue corner, Kamala “The Punctuator” Harris. (Pronunciation gag).
Handily, the Associated Press reports from the scene, about the scene: “The stage in Utah has been set with all the trappings of a modern political debate: red, white and blue carpets, a backdrop of the Declaration of Independence and plexiglass.
The clear partitions that will divide Pence and Harris are a late addition that serve as a clear reminder that the coronavirus pandemic rages on. The two candidates will sit at desks spaced more than 12ft apart, and each desk will have a partition on the side facing the other candidate.
The partitions caused a stir: Harris’ team requested they be used after Donald Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19 shortly after his first presidential debate against Joe Biden. Pence’s team insisted they were not medically necessary, an objection that came as Trump returned to the White House. The Trump campaign is trying to move past the virus despite the president’s own diagnosis.
Other reminders that these are not normal times: 20 chairs for guests are spaced roughly 6ft apart in the debate hall, a performing arts center on the University of Utah campus. Additional guests will be seated in traditional theater seats, though they will have to sit spaced apart. Everyone will be required to wear a mask. Even the network TV cameras have plexiglass wrapping on the sides and back.
The existence of barriers between Harris and Pence but not between the candidates and the moderator, Susan Page of USA Today, serves as a visual cue from Democrats that sharing the stage with Pence is the primary concern.
Both Harris and Pence tested negative for the virus on Tuesday, their respective teams said. A number of members of the Trump administration are continuing to test positive.
We’ll have full coverage of course, tonight from 9pm ET, of what should, though who can ever be sure in these days of constantly unfurling Trumpian outrage, be a more traditional battle than the first presidential
shitshow
contest. Here’s our preview, from Tom McCarthy:
Speaking to reporters earlier, asked about Donald Trump’s decision to return to work in the Oval Office despite having announced a positive test for the coronavirus less than a week ago, deputy White House press secretary cited “CDC guidelines” as being among tools available to the president’s staff, to make sure his presence in the office was safe for him and others around him.
Here’s what the CDC says “People who have Covid-19” should do:
Isolation is used to separate people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, from people who are not infected. People who are in isolation should stay home until it’s safe for them to be around others.
In the home, anyone sick or infected should separate themselves from others by staying in a specific “sick room” or area and using a separate bathroom (if available).
Meaning, they should not go to and from an office in which they interact with others, in this case White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reportedly at least.
The guidelines add that those who test positive for Covid can be with others:
At least 10 days since symptoms first appeared and after at least 24 hours with no fever without fever-reducing medication and if other symptoms of Covid-19 are improving.
White House doctor Sean Conley said earlier Trump had been “fever free for more than four days, symptom free for over 24 hours”.
In short, according to CDC guidelines, it would seem Trump should not be in the Oval Office. But, that said, the guidelines do also say “if testing is available in your community, your healthcare provider may recommend that you undergo repeat testing for COVID-19 to end your isolation earlier than would be done according to the criteria above. If so, you can be around others after you receive two negative test results in a row, from tests done at least 24 hours apart.”
So, all is confusing.
Updated
Trump back in Oval Office despite isolation concerns
Donald Trump has been back in the Oval Office, receiving a briefing about Hurricane Delta, which has been belting Mexico and is heading for the US later this week.
Here’s the pool report on what deputy press secretary Brian Morgenstern said when asked why Trump wanted to work in the Oval, and whether it wouldn’t make more sense to isolate himself, given his coronavirus diagnosis:
“Well, we can do it in a safe way, we can disinfect regularly. There’s certainly ways to do it without compromising anyone … certainly doctors are monitoring that you don’t want anyone to be in danger but the bottom line is, he could interact with us in the same way. And that’s a great thing. I mean, continuing to work hard for the American people.”
Morgenstern also told reporters: “We have PPE that we can use. And we can interact with him standing back, like you’re standing back. And people can wear masks, or goggles or gloves or whatever may be needed. We have the CDC guidelines …
“So there is a way for him to work out of a variety of rooms safely when he’s ready to do that. I think we saw today in the doctor’s announcement that he’s symptom free. That he has antibodies that they’re identifying now it’s a great sign.”
A lot of people have pointed out that earlier today, White House doctor Sean Conley announced that antibodies had been detected in the president after the president had taken a dose of … antibodies.
Morgenstern also said Trump wanted to address the nation, but “as you’ve seen there have been Twitter videos that are [a] pretty easy and effective way for him to get [his message] out. That’s certainly something that we’re always considering, putting out another message to the country that way, but I don’t have a different method or time for you at this time.”
Here’s David Smith, our Washington bureau chief:
Speaking of Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis, Andrew Cuomo is not the only person passing comment or apportioning blame. Charles Bramesco has reviewed the documentary maker Alex Gibney’s latest, Totally Under Control, which he says offers…
…a cohesive timeline pitting the Trump White House against the independent agencies dedicated to keeping the public safe; the mandate to project a positive image versus the expanding inferno of reality. Access proves a most vital asset, the producers’ connections affording us a front-row seat to the cascading policy failures. Trump gives away plum contracts to under-qualified companies run by his pals, and then delegates crisis response to his dead-eyed lackey Jared Kushner.
That’s where things get good, as a member of his taskforce breaks his NDA to recount his time in a Mickey Mouse operation of extraordinary incompetence. Though Max Kennedy showed up as a volunteer eager to assist the experts, he soon found that he was expected to be the expert, made a staffer on the spot despite zero experience or know-how. Their job objectives were unclear, and in effect, unimportant. The scant handful of times he met the Fema employees he assumed would be running the joint, he realized that what he and his colleagues were doing or not doing couldn’t matter less. It was all for show.
The full review follows, after a reminder that Johns Hopkins University currently puts the US caseload at approaching 7.5m and the death toll at nearly 210,000.
'Babe Ruth of public health' begged CDC chief to orchestrate own firing – report
An extraordinary report from USA Today, which obtained a private letter from “the Babe Ruth of public health” to a successor as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in which Robert Redfield is urged “to expose the failed US response to the new coronavirus [and] to orchestrate his own firing to protest White House interference”.
The letter was written by William Foege, 84, an eminent epidemiologist who led the CDC between 1977 and 1983, under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and played a key role in the global eradication of smallpox. The “Babe Ruth” appellation was bestowed by Tom Frieden, Redfield’s predecessor in the CDC role. The letter acquired by USA Today was written last month.
“Dear Bob,” it begins. “I start each day thinking about the terrible burden you bear. I don’t know what I would actually do if in your position but I do know what I wish I would do. The first thing would be to face the truth … Despite the White House spin attempts, this will go down as a colossal failure of the public health system of this country.”
Laying out his recommended way for Redfield to restore CDC control over pandemic response and thereby regain its reputation, Foege says simply resigning would not work, as it would merely be “a one-day story”.
Instead, he says, “You could, up front, acknowledge the tragedy of responding poorly, apologise for what has happened and your role in acquiescing [to the White House]. Don’t shy away from the fact this has been an unacceptable toll on our country. It is a slaughter and not just a political dispute.”
According to Johns Hopkins University, nearly 7.5m cases of Covid-19 have been detected in the US and nearly 210,000 people have died.
Foege continues: “You don’t want to be seen in the future as forsaking your role as servant to the public in order to become a servant to a corrupt president. The White House will of course respond with fury, but you will have right on your side. Like Martin Luther, you can say, ‘Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.’”
Redfield is a devout Catholic, so offering the example of the wellspring of the Protestant reformation may not be ideal.
But Foege also says he was motivated to write to Redfield by the appointment to the White House coronavirus taskforce of Dr Scott Atlas, a controversial figure who is not an infectious disease expert and whom Redfield was recently overheard to criticise in stringent terms.
Redfield and the CDC did not comment. White House spokesman Judd Deere said: “This dishonest narrative that the media and Democrats have created that politics is influencing decisions is not only false but is a danger to the American public.”
In his letter to Redfield, Foege stresses that politics has taken priority over public health decisions and begs the CDC director to make a stand the public will notice.
He concludes: “When they fire you, this will be a multi-week story and you can hold your head high. That will take exceptional courage on your part.
“I can’t tell you what to do except to revisit your religious beliefs and ask yourself what is right. I don’t for one minute relish your position but [the Food and Drug Administration] or [the National Institutes of Health] cannot make a statement that changes the course of this epidemic. You and CDC could.
“I wish you the very best, Bill.”
A moment, for the “fake news real opposition party” media at least, rather like those bits in horror movies when it turns out the call is coming from inside the house…
This can mean only one thing... @realDonaldTrump must be in the Oval Office. Marine just posted outside the West Wing. pic.twitter.com/Gu2pEMyWqk
— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) October 7, 2020
Trump had reportedly been counseled to stay out of the Oval Office while recovering from his coronavirus infection, and it seems many of his oft-CAPPED tweets today may have come from the residence. But it seems he’s now back behind the Resolute desk.
If the tone of this post seems a little silly for such weighty matters of state, by the by, counsel for the defence offers the following exhibit as an excuse:
The Trump campaign is leaving a ticket for Tupac Shakur at tonight’s VP debate because Kamala Harris called him her favorite rapper alive
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) October 7, 2020
Updated
The US Department of Justice weakened a longstanding prohibition against disrupting an election, ProPublica reported on Wednesday, the latest in an alarming number of steps that underscore Attorney General William Barr’s willingness to deploy the department to support Donald Trump’s political interests.
Since at least 1980, DoJ has prohibited federal prosecutors from making public announcements about voting investigations close to an election.
“Any criminal investigation by the Department must be conducted in a way that minimizes the likelihood that the investigation itself may become a factor in the election,” the DoJ handbook outlining how to prosecute election crimes says.
But on Friday, the DoJ sent out an email with an exemption to the policy, applied to instances in which “the integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses” including the United States Postal Service, Department of Defense or other federal departments.
The inclusion of USPS is particularly noteworthy because a record number of Americans are expected to vote by mail.
The change comes weeks after a federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania took an unusual step and announced he was investigating nine military ballots that had been discarded in the mail.
David Freed, the prosecutor, initially said all nine ballots were cast for Trump, then later revised his statement to say only seven were. Trump, reportedly briefed by Barr on the issue, seized on the statement to support his argument that mail-in voting is rigged, which is not true.
County officials said that a contract worker employed for three days was responsible for discarding the ballots and was fired. The state’s top election official later said it was “not intentional fraud.”
Updated
Re the White House doctor’s statement earlier, about Donald Trump, his coronavirus infection and antibodies, I shall just leave this here:
The patient had a whopping (8g) dose of a #SARSCoV2 neutralizing IgG antibody cocktail. Then they detected antibodies. You must be kidding me, Dr. Conley? pic.twitter.com/zRugBTUMe2
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) October 7, 2020
Bad form to quote self, etc, but needs must. This is from my report, linked to here, about Mitch McConnell’s angry statement about scrutiny of supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett by “media outlets” (as opposed to power outlets) including the Washington Post and the mighty Guardian:
McConnell added: “Our coastal elites are so disconnected from their own country that they treat religious Americans like animals in a menagerie.”
Many Democrats contend McConnell is disconnected from public opinion when it comes to the question of whether the Barrett confirmation should be rammed through so close to the election, which polls show is an unpopular move.
McConnell has the votes to succeed, regardless of his and other senior Republicans’ statements in 2016, another election year, when they refused to even hold hearings for Merrick Garland, a moderate nominated by Barack Obama to replace the conservative Antonin Scalia.
Here’s the Guardian piece the Senate majority leader doesn’t like, by Stephanie Kirchgaessner:
More from the world of William Barr, which is a fun place to look for news, if like me you like this sort of thing:
Lawyers for Michael Flynn want the judge in his case to recuse himself because he has allegedly demonstrated “contempt and disdain” for their client, Donald Trump’s first national security adviser who was fired for lying to the Vice-President about conversations with Russian officials, then convicted of lying to the FBI about same.
#FLYNN Breaking @GenFlynn legal team @SidneyPowell1 has moved to disqualify Judge Sullivan from the case, asking him to recuse himself based on demonstrated “contempt and disdain” towards Flynn + “The appearance of bias here is terrifying and mandates disqualification” @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/F49Ovzz00P
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) October 7, 2020
Shortish recap:
Flynn hasn’t yet been sentenced. The Department of Justice sought to have his case dropped – despite that conviction for lying to the FBI, reached as part of the special counsel’s Russia investigation – only to see Judge Emmet Sullivan resist and even enlist the help of John Gleeson, a retired judge who once put away Mafia figures including John “the Teflon Don” Gotti, in pushing back at Attorney General Barr’s attempts to make things easier for his client, one Donald J Trump of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.
Breath. Further reading:
AG Barr 'continues to test negative'
Peter Alexander of NBC News reports that Attorney General William Barr “continues to test negative for the coronavirus and he’s at the Department of Justice this afternoon and ‘taking precautions’, per a Department of Justice spokesperson – Barr has been tested six times since Friday”.
Barr attended the White House Rose Garden introduction of supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, on 26 September, which has been pegged as a potential “super-spreader” event in the coronavirus cluster around the president and his staff.
That handy graphic once again:
Elisabeth Moss, the star of the Handmaid’s Tale TV series (see posts re Amy Coney Barrett, passim), will soon star in an adaptation of a memoir by Katie Hill, a former Democratic congresswoman from California who resigned in October 2019 amid allegations she had a sexual relationship with a member of her staff.
The news that Moss’s production company, Love & Squalor Pictures, has picked up rights to Hill’s memoir, She Will Rise: Becoming a Warrior in the Battle for True Equality, prompted a very 2020 sequence of events.
First, an anonymous source purporting to be a former member of Hill’s staff posted a series of messages on her congressional Twitter account.
Among them: “This is an incredibly sensitive situation. We appreciate the instinct to defend our former boss, an LGBTQ+ woman who faced abuse from her husband. What happened to Katie Hill shouldn’t happen to anyone. But, this moment requires more nuance, as Katie Hill’s story - our story - is also one of workplace abuse and harassment.”
After that, Hill herself tweeted: “Thanks to all who let me know my government official twitter account was hacked. Control of my account was immediately handed back to the House Clerk when I resigned, including password changes and access restrictions. God knows who hacked it from there. Reported to @twitter.”
So far, so clear as mud. Washington bureau chief David Smith’s interview with Hill about her book makes for clearer reading:
Her very public shaming, she believes, was motivated by a toxic mix of “revenge porn”, partisan politics and the media’s insatiable appetite for clicks.
“In RedState, it was Republicans pushing it. I don’t know what the political leanings of people are at the Daily Mail, or if it matters, but it was definitely salacious and it was clickbait. That’s part of why I think it’s so exploitative. There were tame pictures that would have told the same story; you don’t need the X-rated ones but it was the sexualisation of it, the sensationalisation of it, the fact that I was young and bi.”
Here’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explain the second part of Dr Conley’s statement below:
Antibodies most commonly become detectable 1–3 weeks after symptom onset, at which time evidence suggests that infectiousness likely is greatly decreased and that some degree of immunity from future infection has developed.
However, additional data are needed before modifying public health recommendations based on serologic test results, including decisions on discontinuing physical distancing and using personal protective equipment.
White House doctor issues statement on Trump's health
We have a statement from White House physician Dr Sean Conley, about the president’s health as he lives with the coronavirus.
According to Dr Conley, who is not alone in having his words about Donald Trump’s health subject to more scrutiny than the average doctor might expect:
The president this morning says, ‘I feel great!’ His physical exam and vital signs, including oxygen saturation and respiratory rate, all remained stable and in normal range. He’s now been fever free for more than four days, symptom free for over 24 hours, and has not needed, nor received, any supplemental oxygen since initial hospitalisation.
There’s more from Dr Conley and I’m going to have to frenziedly find out what it means:
I’ve noticed today the president’s labs demonstrated detectable levels of SARS-CoV-2 LgG antibodies from labs drawn Monday 5 October initial IgG levels drawn late Thursday night were undetectable. We will continue to closely monitor and I will update you as soon as I know more.”
I’ll get back to you on that. In the meantime, here’s that handy White House Covid cluster graphic again:
Economy faces 'watershed moment'
Our business editor reports…
Economists warned on Wednesday that the US economy was facing a “watershed moment” as Donald Trump vacillated on agreeing to a new round of stimulus cash for people and businesses hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump pulled the plug on the fractious and lengthy discussions over more aid on Tuesday. “I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Stock markets fell, and on Tuesday evening Trump’s position appeared to soften as the president tweeted he was prepared to sign off on more aid for the US’s troubled airline industries and “a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY. I am ready to sign right now.”
That money would represent a fraction of the $2.2trn support which the Democrats are pushing for. On Wednesday, senior Trump officials added to the confusion as they appeared to pour cold water on the idea of a major new stimulus deal being agreed ahead of the election.
Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, told reporters: “The stimulus negotiations are off.”
US and UK markets rose after Trump’s apparent volte-face, but the situation remains volatile.
Full story:
At least 27 Trump insiders now have Covid
Covid-19 has created a dramatic situation in the Trump administration best summed up as “all the president’s men and women”. At least 27 people across Donald Trump’s White House, election campaign and military leaders have now tested positive for coronavirus.
Here’s a handy graphic guide to the White House Covid-19 cluster…
Updated
British Isis suspects flown to US to face trial
Two British-born citizens alleged to have been members of an Isis execution squad infamous for beheading hostages have been flown to the US to face trial, after two years in detention.
El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, believed to have been part of a squad known by their captives as “the Beatles” because of their British accents, arrived in the US on Wednesday and were due to make a first court appearance in Alexandria, Northern Virginia in the afternoon.
They were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, hostage taking and material support to a terrorist group.
“The case we are announcing today highlights when we have the evidence to do so, we will take responsibility for prosecuting those non-US citizens who have injured or killed Americans anywhere in the world,” assistant attorney general John Demers said. “If you have American blood in your veins, or you have American blood on your hands, you will face American justice.”
The two men were stripped of their UK citizenship but their extradition was held up by a British court until US attorney general William Barr agreed not to pursue death penalties. Following Barr’s announcement, the UK handed over evidence on the two men to US prosecutors in September.
The group’s victims included the British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, the US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and the US aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, who was also tortured and sexually abused.
In all, US prosecutors say the squad beheaded more than 27 hostages.
I like White House pool reports, while being quite relieved I’ve never been on the hook to provide them myself. Here’s today’s first dispatch, from Meredith McGraw of Politico:
Good morning from a very quiet White House on this beautiful fall day. The pool has completed Covid tests in the back office of the lower press area.
There is nothing on the president’s schedule today, although he has already tweeted up a storm on a variety of subjects this morning.
I’ll pass along any updates as I get them. Thanks!
In that tweet storm, many capital letters:
NOW THAT THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS GOT CAUGHT COLD IN THE (NON) FRIENDLY TRANSFER OF GOVERNMENT, IN FACT, THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN AND WENT FOR A COUP, WE ARE ENTITLED TO ASK THE VOTERS FOR FOUR MORE YEARS. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS WHEN YOU VOTE! https://t.co/gsFSghkmdM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
…which means I now have a title for my own memoirs that isn’t “American Limey”, and it is “In That Tweet Storm, Many Capital Letters: My Life As A Flailing Breaking News Editor, 2016-2020”. If Trump wins, I’ll write a second volume.
Of that socially divisive reaction to measures meant to address increasing Covid cases in some areas of New York City, Liam Stack of the New York Times has a fascinating and alarming report:
Orthodox Jewish and other religious leaders lashed out at Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday over new coronavirus restrictions on schools, businesses and houses of worship, as protests broke out in Brooklyn overnight, leading to scenes of chaos and the injury of at least one person.
“We are appalled by Governor Cuomo’s words and actions today,” four Orthodox Jewish lawmakers representing the areas affected by the shutdown said in a letter posted online late Tuesday. “He has chosen to pursue a scientifically and constitutionally questionable shutdown of our communities.”
Their frustration was reflected on the street, where video shared widely on social media showed hundreds of Hasidic men, most of them without masks, gathering after midnight and setting fires along 13th Avenue in the Borough Park neighborhood. The crowd soon turned violent, with a mob angrily swarming at least one Hasidic man they believed to be disloyal to the community.
Asked about events in Brooklyn overnight, Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised “no tolerance for assaults, setting fires or doing harm to others”.
Also from de Blasio and fair-dos really:
"In this moment in history I don't think anybody wants to be mayor of New York city," - @NYCMayor
— Gloria Pazmino (@GloriaPazmino) October 7, 2020
Fact check? I mean probs true.
Cuomo on Covid: Trump responsible for worst failure since Pearl Harbor
Greetings from New York, where I’m taking over the blog for a while, coffee mainlined to the veins and right leg jiggling under the desk like a jackhammer already and it’s not 11.30 yet. It’s that sort of year, if you’re a news editor.
By way of introduction, here’s something I wrote about New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s new book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic.
In a new book, Andrew Cuomo blames Donald Trump for thousands of deaths in New York in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, decrying “federal negligence” he says led to “the greatest failure to detect an enemy attack since Pearl Harbor”.
It’s not really news that Cuomo blames the president for the failure to act sufficiently swiftly to stop his state becoming the early US Covid hotspot. It’s not really news that the book, which we obtained a week before publication, is not particularly newsworthy, though it is an interesting day-by-day retelling of those early, terrifying days in March when the pandemic descended and it is coming out as cases in some areas of New York are showing worrying – and socially divisive – upticks.
It’s also not news that I am fascinated by the publishing trope which simply sticks the word “American” in front of another word and calls it a title, and want therefore one day to write either a US-based version of Diary of a Nobody called “American American”, or maybe a biography of someone like Mike Myers called “American Canadian”.
But there you go. Here’s the full story:
‘Red Sweater’ Guy from 2016 is back with a take on the 2020 debates
Ken Bone, the red-sweater wearing undecided voter from the 2016 presidential debates clarified his stance this election cycle, telling Newsweek that he’s “uncommitted” this go-round.
Very, very few people in either of these election cycles were truly undecided. They’re uncommitted, which means that you don’t really have a positive opinion of either candidate.
He with on to say watching August’s debate between Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden was “like watching your house burn down”.
Bone became famous for asking then-presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and the now president about their energy policies during the second presidential debate in October 2016.
NFL Coach takes aim at Trump over lack of fans
As the NFL season takes a hit with players testing positive for the coronavirus, Hsll of Fame coach, Mike Holmgrem is placing blame on Donald Trumps’s handling of the outbreak.
Former Packers coach Mike Holmgren speaks out again: pic.twitter.com/1yELDwjyjt
— Jessie Opoien (@jessieopie) October 7, 2020
Wisconsin, a key state in the 2020 presidential race, is currently experiencing a surge in cases of the coronavirus.
Good day, I’m reporter Kenya Evelyn: taking over for our politics liveblog today. Of course we’re following the latest out of Washington, and developments throughout the US on the coronavirus outbreak. So stay tuned.
But Happy Vice Presidential Debate Day today! Ok, that’s likely not a real thing but the excitement is brewing for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to take on Republican Mike Pence on the social-distancing-and-plexiglass-equipped debate stage Wednesday night.
The California senator’s legacy as a prosecutor, reputation questioning official in committee hearings makes her a formidable debate opponent up against the a more reserved Republican vice president. Will she live up to expectations?
Plus, we have more on the 2020 race, Senator Harris and Democrats’ push to galvanise their most loyal voting bloc: Black women.
I’m signing off for the day, and handing over to my colleague Kenya Evelyn. At least, unlike CNN’s Joe Johns, I haven’t had to fend off a raccoon in the White House grounds this morning…
This is what a consummate professional @joejohnscnn is. Seconds before his @NewDay live shot, he fends off a raccoon attack! Just another day in the nutty news cycle. #behindthescenes #whitehouseraccoon #wildlife pic.twitter.com/p13w3QICiD
— Alisyn Camerota (@AlisynCamerota) October 7, 2020
The New York Times this morning have tried to put a figure on the cost of Trump’s very public healthcare while being treated for the coronavirus. Sarah Kliff writes:
President Trump spent three days in the hospital. He arrived and left by helicopter. And he received multiple coronavirus tests, oxygen, steroids and an experimental antibody treatment.
For someone who isn’t president, that would cost more than $100,000 in the American health system. Patients could face significant surprise bills and medical debt even after health insurance paid its share.
The biggest financial risks would come not from the hospital stay but from the services provided elsewhere, including helicopter transit and repeated coronavirus testing.
It may seem like a frivolous exercise, but Kliff goes on to compare Trump’s experience with that of other Americans, observing that:
Across the country, patients have struggled with both the long-term health and financial effects of contracting coronavirus. Nearly half a million have been hospitalized. Routine tests can result in thousands of dollars in uncovered charges; hospitalized patients have received bills upward of $400,000.
Most Americans, including many who carry health coverage, do worry about receiving medical care they cannot afford. For some Americans, the bills could start mounting with frequent tests. Insurers are generally required to pay for those tests when physicians order them, but not when employers do.
Read it here: New York Times – How much would Trump’s coronavirus treatment cost most Americans?
Without any evidence, president Donald Trump has just claimed on Twitter that the Democratic party is seeking to permanently close churches in the US.
DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY. HOPE YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING. VOTE NOW! https://t.co/dqvqz6b1WD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
His opponent in November’s election, Joe Biden, was pictured attending mass in Wilmington at the weekend.
Reuters have just snapped that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has told Fox News that the president is “doing really well” and that he is “fully engaged in work”.
Currently the president is in the middle of pushing out a series of retweets including someone saying the election is a choice between “pro-america vs turn us into a third world hellhole”, promoting Lewandowski & Bossie’s book ‘Trump: America First: The President Succeeds Against All Odds’ and retweeting former pro football player Herschel Walker downplaying the scale of fatalities from coronavirus in the US because of “the comorbidity” in the numbers.
David Lightman writes for the Miami Herald today on one of the conundrums ahead of tonight’s VP debate: Democrats doubted Kamala Harris was liberal enough. Now Mike Pence calls her radical. What’s true?
Kamala Harris spent her presidential campaign trying to prove to her party she was a bona fide, enthusiastic liberal – not the “top cop” the former prosecutor called herself during her time as California’s attorney general.
Democrats nominated Joe Biden instead. Now that she’s the party’s vice presidential candidate, Republicans are working to redefine her again – as a mean-spirited radical leftist eager to grow the government while shrinking police forces.
Harris has been prominent in the national spotlight now for only about eight weeks. In a CNN poll in June, 2019, 36% of voters had never heard of her or had no opinion.
In the eight weeks since she’s been on the Democratic ticket, Trump has called Harris “vicious” and “extraordinarily nasty.” Republican Party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Harris “applauds defunding of the police.” Harris wants to put “bureaucrats in charge of the nation’s health care system,” said GOP national spokeswoman Liz Harrington.
Lightman goes on to examine where Harris actually stands on hot button issues like defunding the police, Medicare for all, and the Green new deal.
Read it here: Miami Herald – Democrats doubted Kamala Harris was liberal enough. Now Mike Pence calls her radical. What’s true?
The president is up and tweeting…
Because I’ve beaten him and his very few remaining clients so much, and so badly, that he has become a blathering idiot. He failed with John McCain and will fail again with all others. He is a total loser. @MarshaBlackburn is a Tennessee Star, a highly respected WINNER! https://t.co/SxUzvwIHxT
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
McConnell: 'attacks by Democrats and media on Amy Coney Barrett’s faith are disgrace'
Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has just tweeted in defence of Donald Trump’s US supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, saying that “ongoing attacks by Senate Democrats and the media on Judge Barrett’s faith are a disgrace. They demean the confirmation process, disrespect the Constitution, and insult millions of American believers.”
The ongoing attacks by Senate Democrats and the media on Judge Barrett’s faith are a disgrace. They demean the confirmation process, disrespect the Constitution, and insult millions of American believers. pic.twitter.com/Qg5mFQzWFO
— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) October 7, 2020
In it he explicitly attacks the reporting of the Washington Post, who this morning have published a piece claiming that Amy Coney Barrett served as a ‘handmaid’ in Christian group People of Praise.
The title of handmaid was adopted by People of Praise in reference to the biblical description of Mary as “the handmaid of the Lord,” according to the group.
Former members told The Post that handmaids, now known as “women leaders,” give advice to other women on issues such as child rearing and marriage. But the role did not carry authority equivalent to positions held by men in the group’s formal hierarchy.
In 2010, Barrett was one of three handmaids in the South Bend branch’s northwest area, according to the directory obtained by The Post. She and 10 other area handmaids were overseen by the branch’s principal handmaid.
Sean Connolly, a spokesperson for the group, has previously said that the title was dropped and replaced by the title “women leaders” out of a recognition that its meaning had “shifted dramatically in our culture in recent years.”
As the Post notes:
The phrase took on a particular meaning in popular culture after Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” was adapted for television in 2017. Atwood said in a tweet last month that she was inspired by “a different but similar” group.
McConnell’s statement also refers directly to an investigation from this newspaper by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, who yesterday revealed that Barrett lived in the home of one of the founders of the People of Praise while she was a law student.
The group has been criticized for dominating the lives of its members and subjugating women. You can read the report that McConnell has described as the output of “our self-parodying liberal media” here:
Nathan Robinson asks for us today will Trump’s Covid diagnosis hurt his political standing?
Donald Trump has one particular skill: pretending things are different than they seem. He was never a good businessman, but he was fantastic at playing a good businessman on TV. His coronavirus response has been abysmal, but his public insistence that everything is fine has somehow managed to keep him from losing significant support. Trump’s specialty is PR – spinning bad things rather than doing good things.
But PR can only do so much. Trump has consistently downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and encouraged people to resist public health measures. He mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask. Then, having taken few precautions to protect himself or others, he landed in the hospital with Covid-19. Trump has not, of course, responded by humbly admitting that he behaved stupidly and should have listened to his critics. Instead, he is reacting in the only way he knows: pretending nothing is wrong.
Read it here: Nathan Robinson – Will Trump’s Covid diagnosis hurt his political standing?
Putin says he noted 'quite sharp anti-Russian rhetoric' from Joe Biden
Russian interference into US elections has been a touchy subject. In 2016 the CIA concluded that Putin’s nation interfered in order to try and help Trump win the election, something which the Kremlin has strenuously denied, and which Trump has dismissed as a hoax.
A couple of weeks ago Putin proposed that the two countries agree a joint non-interference pact, however, the Russian president has had something to say about the US election today.
Reuters report that he has said this morning that he had noted what he called harsh anti-Russian rhetoric from Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, but that he had been encouraged by Biden’s comments on arms control.
Putin, who said Russia would work with any president, made the comments during an appearance on state television.
“As far as the candidate from the Democratic Party is concerned ... we also see quite sharp anti-Russian rhetoric. Unfortunately, we are used to to this,” Putin said.
But he added that Biden had made what he regarded as encouraging statements on New START, the last major nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States, which is due to expire in February.
“Candidate Biden publicly said he was ready for an extension of New START or to reach a new treaty to limit strategic ... weapons, and this is a very serious element of our cooperation in the future,” Putin said.
Julian Borger reports for us in Washington DC on how Trump’s Covid bravado has not necessarily resonated with others in the nation’s capitol.
What makes Washington different is that a significant part of the coronavirus threat comes from a single address, whose tenants have blatantly ignored the rules – and who have not even returned calls from Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office offering to help with contact tracing.
That address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the White House, where more than a dozen workers have tested positive for Covid-19 in recent days, including the chief executive. That is compared to 28 new cases recorded on Tuesday across the whole city of over 700,000 people.
“We have reached out to the White House on a couple of different levels: a political level and a public health level,” Bowser said. A city health official managed to get through by telephone, the mayor added, but only “had a very cursory conversation that we don’t consider a substantial contact from the public health side”.
Yolande Long, a human resources consultant, speaks for many in DC.
One of Long’s colleagues is currently hospitalised with Covid, and she was unimpressed by Trump’s tweeted claim that the US has now developed “some really great drugs and knowledge” that had led to his apparent recovery.
“The problem is, he’s the only person that right now will have access to those drugs,” Long said. “If I, all of a sudden, came down with Covid. I wouldn’t be treated like he was.”
Read it here: Two sides of DC – those threatened by Covid are unimpressed by Trump’s bravado
Jeff Stein and Erica Werner have their take this morning from the Washington Post on what they describe as “Trump’s erratic tweets on economic relief”. They say it leaves his strategy unclear.
To recap, Trump said on Twitter that he was cancelling talks between the two sides to agree a stimulus package. Then, seven hours later, he appeared to reverse himself in a new string of tweets which publicly urged members of his own administration to work with Democrats to approve specific additional federal stimulus measures.
The president has long sought an additional stimulus package ahead of the 3 November election, and it remained unclear exactly why he suddenly gave up on talks. During a call Tuesday with the president, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested to Trump that Pelosi was stringing him along and no deal she cut with Mnuchin would command broad GOP support to pass in the Senate, according to two people with knowledge of the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it.
Trump has also long claimed that good negotiators must know “when to walk away from the table,” and frequently boasts at campaign rallies that his hard-line negotiating style produces major concessions from his opponents. That approach appears unlikely to yield a successful stimulus package in time for the election. Pelosi speculated to other congressional Democrats Tuesday that the steroid medication the president is taking to recover from the coronavirus could be altering his thinking.
Read it here: Washington Post – Trump’s erratic tweets on economic relief - over several hours - leave strategy unclear
Speaking of the debate, there’s been a fascinating set of pictures coming through the wires showing the production staff preparing the set.
After some negotiation both parties agreed to be seated and further apart than you’d normally expect. There’s also the addition of plexiglass screens between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.
The Pence campaign team have been a little bit dismissive of these precautions in public, but you can’t blame Harris for having concerns. USA Today were reporting that the paper has spotted 23 times that president Trump and his staff defied CDC coronavirus guidelines since 1 September.
Face coverings will be mandatory for the audience. It was widely noted last week that the Trump entourage did not wear masks while sitting in the audience for the raucous first Trump-Biden debate, which took place just days before the president and first lady Melania Trump announced that they had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Max Greenwood at The Hill has pulled out his five things to watch out for in tonight’s keenly anticipated TV debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. He reckons:
- The coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s handling of it will almost certainly be among the most prominent issues to come up during the debate, but Harris will have to walk a fine line, given Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis last week and subsequent hospital stay.
- The vice president is calmer and more measured in his demeanor than Trump, and Mike Pence could help reassure Republican voters who are reeling from a chaotic week for the president’s administration and campaign, and from Trump’s performance at last week’s presidential debate.
- A lot of eyes will be on the moderator, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, Susan Page. She’ll face scrutiny for how she guides the debate, especially after the poor reviews given to last week’s showdown and how Chris Wallace handled it.
- The candidates will be seated rather than standing, and extra distance and plexiglass physical barriers may make for a calmer, less intense experience. How much will Covid precautions affect the nature of the event?
- Trump and Pence need a game changer, and they have fewer and fewer opportunities to stage a comeback. But Greenwood questions, can this debate really change anything?
Read it here: The Hill – Five things to watch in the 2020 VP debate
I mentioned earlier Florida being a hotly contested state in November’s election, after Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the voter registration deadline there to 7pm last night because the state’s online system crashed [see 4:54]. That’s going to lead to legal challenges, and they won’t be the only ones in Florida no doubt.
Lawrence Mower and Langston Taylor of the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times respectively have jointly published a piece this morning looking into another key voting issue in the state - whether felons will actually be able to vote.
Two years ago Florida voters approved a landmark constitutional amendment allowing felons to vote. Since then Republican lawmakers have continued to try and thwart them exercising that right, passing a law that felons haven’t completed their sentence if there are any unpaid court fees, fines or restitution regarding their case. That instantly disqualified some nearly 800,000 from voting again.
Mower and Taylor report:
State officials don’t know how many felons have registered. They also don’t know how many felons on the voter rolls owe court fees, fines or restitution that would disqualify them from voting under a subsequent state law that limited the amendment’s scope.
Florida officials have not removed any felons from the rolls for owing fines or fees, and they’re unlikely to do so before election day. It’s unclear whether those whom the state fails to prune are entitled to vote after all — or may face prosecution if they do.
Amid the confusion, the one certainty is that Florida’s Republican governor and Legislature have tamped down the felon vote. In a presidential election marred by voter suppression tactics, the weakening of Florida’s ballot measure, known as Amendment 4, may constitute the biggest single instance of voter disenfranchisement.
Like the poll taxes of the Jim Crow era, the restrictions have especially hit Black Floridians, who make up a disproportionate share of felons and register overwhelmingly as Democrats.
You may recall that one of Mike Bloomberg’s campaign interventions has been to try and raise funds to help felons pay off these fines in time for the election so they can cast a vote.
Read it here: Propublica – In Florida, the gutting of a landmark law leaves few felons likely to vote
Amanda Holpuch has been speaking to Derrick Smith for us. He’s the New York City nurse who struck a nerve across the US after sharing the last words of a Covid-19 patient six months ago, who minutes before being intubated asked: “Who’s going to pay for it?”
Today, Smith is shocked about how little the US has done to address healthcare costs during a global pandemic. In part because he has seen Covid-19 patients fearful of the eventual price tag for care leave his hospital against doctors’ advice.
Smith told the Guardian the inaction was “probably the most upsetting part about it. I don’t know another critical healthcare event that could take place that would necessitate instituting some sort of measure to universalize access to healthcare.”
Congress ordered insurers to cover testing costs in March, but there is no such order in place for treatment. A program created to cover testing and treatment of uninsured people has been riddled with problems leaving people with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. At the same time, health insurer profits are double what they were last year.
Read it here: Covid nurse who shared patient’s tragic last words shocked by US inaction
Catherine Rampell writes for the Washington Post today that Trump may have blown up his chances of reelection with his positioning on the stimulus talks. She writes:
Maybe Trump is bluffing, in hopes that his willingness to walk away from negotiations would wring more politically toxic concessions out of Democrats. Maybe the president has become convinced by the economic quacks advising him that passing further fiscal relief at this point would come too late to help his electoral odds.
Even so, Trump usually likes to be seen as doing something beneficent for Americans. Witness the self-aggrandizing letter he insisted on inserting in every federally funded food-aid box, or his push to have his name printed on the stimulus payments the Internal Revenue Service sent out in the spring.
Maybe he realizes there is some tension between labeling this the “Greatest Economy Ever” and simultaneously requesting a stimulus bill with a 13-digit price tag. Not that such cognitive dissonance has ever stopped Trump before.
My theory as to why Trump won’t just give the people what they want, and rescue (i.e., bribe) voters into reelecting him: He’s too self-absorbed to care about widespread economic pain, and either too dense or socially blinkered to realize his own political interests in stopping it.
As she points out, it was only four days ago that the president’s position was this:
OUR GREAT USA WANTS & NEEDS STIMULUS. WORK TOGETHER AND GET IT DONE. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 3, 2020
With his tweets overnight though, suggesting that negotiations aren’t really over, it’s just that he’s going to conduct them in public via Twitter, we may end up still none the wiser later today.
Read it here: Washington Post – Trump blows up stimulus talks, and with them perhaps his chances of reelection
David Smith in Washington has this analysis for us, suggesting that any hope the president and his allies would change their tune on the virus has quickly dissipated.
There was a school of thought that Donald Trump might be humbled by becoming infected himself with the coronavirus, see the light and encourage Americans to stay safe. It lasted about as long as the hope that he would “pivot” to a traditional presidency after his inauguration.
Instead Trump has sought to project the strongman image, flying to the White House by helicopter at sunset, standing on the balcony and taking off his face mask while still contagious, bragging that he feels better than he did 20 years ago and urging the public to neither fear the virus nor let it dominate their lives.
His campaign has sent out fundraising emails preaching a similar if-I-can-beat-it-so-can-you-message, hoping to turn personal and political disaster to their electoral advantage against the cautious Joe Biden. It is very on-brand for a president who views illness as a weakness and seeks each day to make himself the hero of his own reality TV show.
Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, said: “Now he is going to be an ‘expert’: he’s had it so nobody can tell him anything. If he ever even paused for a second for any medical advice before, that’s over. He knows more about wars than the generals; he will now know more about the coronavirus than any doctors.”
Read it here: ‘I’m back’: Trumpworld shows no sign of changing after Covid-19 diagnosis
US hits 7.5m coronavirus cases as analysis shows cases increasing in 32 states
The focus on Donald Trump as a coronavirus patient may have taken some attention away from the bigger picture in the US. Yesterday there were 43,562 new coronavirus cases, and 705 further Covid deaths recorded.
ABC News have just published an analysis of Covid trends across all 50 states, as well as DC and Puerto Rico, and it makes for some bleak reading. They found that there were “increases in newly confirmed cases over the past two weeks in 32 states plus Puerto Rico.”
The analysis also found increases in the daily positivity rate of Covid-19 tests in 25 states plus Washington DC, increases in Covid-19 hospitalizations in 36 states, and increases in daily Covid-19 death tolls in 19 states.
The total number of cases recorded in the US, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracking project, has now hit 7,501,817.
If you are confused about what Donald Trump’s position is on a new coronavirus stimulus package is, then you are not alone.
Yesterday he dropped the surprise that he was instructing senior Republicans to stop talking to their Democratic party counterparts about doing a deal on a coronavirus package, saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was not negotiating “in good faith”.
...request, and looking to the future of our Country. I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business. I have asked...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 6, 2020
However overnight he has sent two additional tweets which have shifted his position somewhat.
First of all he has asked the Senate to approve payroll support for the airline industry, and the paycheck protection programme for small businesses.
The House & Senate should IMMEDIATELY Approve 25 Billion Dollars for Airline Payroll Support, & 135 Billion Dollars for Paycheck Protection Program for Small Business. Both of these will be fully paid for with unused funds from the Cares Act. Have this money. I will sign now!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
Secondly the president has proposed that all sides work together so he can send out $1,200 stimulus checks – presumably with his own personal signature on like last time – a couple of weeks before an election.
If I am sent a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY. I am ready to sign right now. Are you listening Nancy? @MarkMeadows @senatemajldr @kevinomccarthy @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
White House management has been accused of being very lax in their efforts to prevent the coronavirus spreading in a building where not only does the president of the United States work, but also a whole slew of support staff.
Up until now, it hadn’t been mandatory to wear face masks inside in rooms where social distancing could not be maintained, and staff were only emailed with details of what to do after Trump’s positive test nearly two days after it had been announced.
There’s a huge shift apparent this week, though, as pictures have emerged of cleaning staff in full personal protective gear disinfecting working parts of the building.
Donald Trump has faced intense criticism for his comments on his return to the White House that people shouldn’t let coronavirus ‘dominate’ their lives. Understandably bereaved relatives and those suffering the ill-effects of ‘long Covid’ were unimpressed.
This morning we have another profile in our Lost on the frontline series, looking at the healthcare professionals in the US who have lost their lives during the course of the pandemic.
It took Carrie Wanamaker several days to connect the face she saw on GoFundMe with the young woman she had met a few years before.
According to the fundraising site, Adeline Fagan, a 28-year-old resident OB-GYN, had developed a debilitating case of Covid-19 and was on a ventilator in Houston.
Scrolling through her phone, Wanamaker found the picture she took of Fagan in 2018, showing the fourth-year medical student at her side in the delivery room, beaming at Wanamaker’s pink, crying, minutes-old daughter.
You can read more about Adeline Fagan here: Texas doctor, 28, dies of Covid: ‘She wore the same mask for weeks, if not months’
Also on voting logistics, a federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments this afternoon over whether North Carolina is providing voters sufficient opportunity to fix absentee ballots that arrive without full information on who witnessed it.
US District Judge William Osteen was holding a hearing on Wednesday afternoon concerning a trio of lawsuits filed over how the state handles absentee ballot. A key issue is the requirement in state law that people who cast absentee ballots have it witnessed by another adult.
Late last month, the State Board of Elections had agreed to allow voters to fix problems with incomplete witness info by sending in an affidavit and not starting a new ballot from scratch and having it witnessed again. But that change was temporarily halted by a different federal judge, who sent two cases brought by Republican leaders to Osteen.
Osteen was already presiding over a separate case brought by voting rights activists who argued that the state’s absentee ballot rules were too restrictive for voters coping with the coronavirus pandemic.
In August, Osteen asked the state to ensure voters have a fair process to fix errors on their ballots. But he said in court papers last week that he has concerns that the process put in place by the state would essentially eliminate the one-witness requirement.
A couple of bits of election logistics news. First up, last night Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the state’s voter registration deadline to 7pm, after the state’s online system crashed, potentially preventing thousands of people enrolling to cast ballots in next month’s presidential election.
Florida is a key state for November. If Joe Biden is able to flip the state back to supporting the Democratic nominee, the 29 Electoral College votes it gives severely narrows Trump’s possible paths to victory.
“You can have the best site in the world, but sometimes there are hiccups,” DeSantis said. “If 500,000 people descend at the same time, it creates a bottleneck.”
Florida secretary of state Laurel Lee, who oversees the voting system, said that at times on Monday the online registration system “was accessed by an unprecedented 1.1 million requests per hour.”
“At this time, we have not identified any evidence of interference or malicious activity impacting the site,” she said in a statement Tuesday night. “We will continue to monitor the situation and provide any additional information as it develops.”
There’s already legal action over it, with voting advocacy groups filing a suit claiming at least two additional days were needed to give those denied access enough time to learn of the extension and respond. They said that anything less would be voter suppression.
“No voter should be denied their right to vote during a global health pandemic because Florida did not have a functioning online voter registration system,” said Jorge Vasquez, power and democracy director at Advancement Project National Office. No hearing has been set.
AOC: Trump has 'walked away from every working person' over Coronavirus relief package
Overnight, New York’s progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has given her view on the president’s decision to shut down negotiations for a new coronavirus stimulus and relief package before November’s election.
She described Donald Trump as “walking away from every working person in this country”. She told MSNBC:
We’re already starting to see warning signs of the severe economic and health fallout that is to come. We are on the brink of an eviction crisis not just here in our district, but also across the country 30 to 40 million people are at risk of being evicted. That’s before we even get to mortgages, it’s before we get to unemployment extension. It’s before we get to another second stimulus check and just as we’re entering the fall, we are at risk of a second spike. We are looking at the potential of hunger in the United States exploding on a level that we have never seen since the Great Depression, and all of it is preventable. All of it. All we need to do is authorise a second stimulus check.
You can watch the clip here:
"We're already starting to see warning signs of the severe economic and health fallout that is to come." - @AOC pic.twitter.com/2bF9Q5wy0X
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) October 7, 2020
We are still quite a few hours away from the Pence-Harris debate – it begins at 9pm ET tonight (that’s 2am on Thursday morning if like me you are in London) – but Adam Gabbatt has got you covered here for everything you need to know in advance about the staging, the moderator, and the format:
It’s been a chaotic few days since Donald Trump was hospitalized after testing positive for coronavirus. But there’s a chance for something approaching an episode of normality in US politics on Wednesday, when the first and only vice-presidential debate takes place.
Democratic challenger Kamala Harris and Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, will face each other in Utah, where debate organizers have been forced to take extra precautions after Trump and a growing number of his entourage came down with Covid-19 shortly after last week’s first presidential debate. The coronavirus crisis is expected to dominate the proceedings.
Read it here: What you need to know about the first and only vice-presidential debate
Good morning. Today is the day of the vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. They’ll be separated by some plexiglass, for fears of the spread of the coronavirus outbreak that has gripped White House staff. Here’s a catch up on where we are, and what we can expect today…
- Nancy Pelosi said the White House is “in complete disarray” after Trump abruptly crushed talks on a fresh coronavirus economic relief bill. Pelosi accused Trump of “putting himself first at the expense of the country”.
- Joe Biden gave a speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Biden expressed concern that America is so divided it’s in a “dangerous place”. He also called on Americans to follow the “scientific recommendations” for how to protect themselves against coronavirus.
- Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, is the latest person in the president’s orbit to test positive for Covid-19. Here’s what we know so far about the Covid outbreak at the Trump White House.
- Facebook announced it is to ban QAnon-themed groups, pages and accounts in a new crackdown.
- Convalescent Donald Trump has nothing in his diary for today. Joe Biden is fund-raising.
- Mike Pence and Kamala Harris will debate in Salt Lake City for 90 minutes, starting at 9pm ET. You can watch it right here – we will be streaming the debate and offering live coverage, fact-checking and analysis.
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