Donald Trump has announced a "surge" of federal law enforcement into US cities, including Chicago, as his administration doubles down against Black Lives Matter protests with legally dubious federal police, justifying the response on recent violence crime spikes.
Under "Operation Legend," the president and US attorney general William Barr are sending federal police to Chicago and Albuquerque "to help state and local officials fight high levels of violent crime, particularly gun violence," the Department of Justice announced.
Attorney General Barr also claimed that violence unrelated to the protests "is a direct result of the attack on the police forces and the weakening of police forces," though no evidence suggests that.
He also has cast blame for the recent rise in coronavirus infections on protesters, despite no conclusive evidence pointing demonstrations as a source of new infections.
Eager to reopen schools in the fall amid widespread unemployment and economic fallout without any clear signal that infections will be under control, the president falsely claimed that "a lot of people are saying" that children don't "transmit" the virus to their families. Pressed on his insistence that schools reopen, potentially unknowingly spreading coronavirus to members of their families at home, he said that school children "don't bring it home with them" and "don't catch it easily."
A recent South Korea study found that school-aged children between ages 10 to 19 are more likely to spread the coronavirus to their household than any other age group.
In his second consecutive coronavirus briefing since April, the president also boasted that the nationwide coronavirus positive test rate is "coming down fairly rapidly" from its peak in April. But cases remain high overall – nearing 4 million since the beginning of the outbreak, including 2 million within the last month alone and at least 70,000 that were identified on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, at his return to the White House coronavirus briefing schedule, he admitted that coronavirus in the US “will get worse before it gets better” – a marked departure from his previous insistence that Covid-19 would simply fade away. He made the admission in his first briefing on the subject since April, when he suggested that injecting disinfectant could help fight infection.
At the same briefing on Tuesday, questioned on the detention of socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr Trump said he wished her well. He was at pains to avoid commenting substantively on her case, its links with Jeffrey Epstein or on Prince Andrew. Mr Trump used to socialise with Epstein and Ms Maxwell in Florida.
Meanwhile, the administration has ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, Texas. People have been seen burning documents in rubbish bins in the building’s courtyard, according to US media reports that cited emergency services. Beijing said the order to close was a “provocation” and went against international law.
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Donald Trump said the nationwide coronavirus positive test rate is "coming down fairly rapidly" from its peak in April. But cases remain high overall — nearing 4 million since the beginning of the outbreak, including 2 million within the last month alone and at least 70,000 that were identified today. Cases are still higher than they were in April when the outbreak was at its deadliest.
The nation is heading towards the peak number of hospitalised patients, roughly 60,000. The seven-day average for reported deaths is 800.
After his Democratic rival called him a racist, Donald Trump has once again compared himself to the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
"I've done more for black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln," he claimed.
On Wednesday, the former vice president condemned the way the president treats people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening.”
“No sitting president has ever done this,” he said. “Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.”
In response, Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson said: “President Trump loves all people, works hard to empower all Americans, and is supported by more Black voters than any Republican presidential candidate in modern history.
Pressed on his insistence that schools reopen, potentially unknowingly spreading coronavirus to members of their families at home, Donald Trump said that "a lot of people are saying they don’t transmit."
"They don’t bring it home with them," he claimed. "They don’t catch it easily."
But a recent South Korea study found that school-aged children between ages 10 to 19 are more likely to spread the coronavirus to their household than any other age group.
But there is no conclusive evidence pointing to Black Lives Matter demonstrations as a source of new infections.
At his second consecutive briefing following a two-month absence from the White House coronavirus briefing schedule, Donald Trump touted a nearly $2 billion deal with Pfizer and BioNTech to rapidly develop a vaccine that has showed some promise in early trials.
The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a measure on Wednesday to repeal Donald Trump's administration's bans on travel from majority-Muslim countries and to restrict the kinds of broad authority the White House has imposed against immigrants based on what proponents say are on discriminatory and unconstitutional grounds.
Roughly 200 civil rights and immigration advocacy groups signed on to support the NO BAN Act.
It's not likely to be taken up in the Republican-dominated Senate. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise condemned the measure as "lunacy."
If elected, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has pledged to overturn the ban.
Donald Trump and US Attorney General Bill Barr justified a "surge" of federal law enforcement into US cities that have demonstrated against police brutality, including Chicago, on a spike in violent crime, claiming that violence is a "direct result" of calls from protesters for police reforms.
Following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, "what we have seen then is a significant increase in violent crime in many cities, and this rise is a direct result of the attack on the police forces and the weakening of police forces," Barr said.
But no police forces have been weakened following protests, and amid several crisis – including widespread unemployment and a public health emergency and the overwhelming stress from a pandemic that has killed thousands of people and sickened countless others thus far – the president and his chief law enforcement official offered no evidence that connected protests to violent crime.
Increased federal presence was initially justified as a means to protect federal property, which is what officials said following the Portland surge. Today's announcement expands on that, as the president conflates the Portland scene with the unrelated violence in major cities under the umbrella of "chaos" on his watch.
Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he will "surge" federal law enforcement officers to Chicago "immediately" to quell violence there, building on a similar force already operating under legally questionable orders in Portland.
John T Bennett reports:
Trump announces 'surge' of federal officers to Chicago
The IndependentDemocrats say president's deployments are possibly illegal and part of a desperate re-election campaignTrump-Russia dossier was never meant to go public, ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele tells court
Giving evidence at the High Court in London on Wednesday, Mr Steele told Mr Justice Mark Warby that he took great care to ensure intelligence was handled and communicated carefully, as his business depends on confidentiality.
He said that he never “knew, intended or foresaw” that a media organisation would publish the dossier for the “world at large” to see.
Mr Steele is in court for a defamation case brought against him and Orbis Business Intelligence, a company he co-founded, by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian businessman named in the dossier.
Mr Gubarev said he was stunned when BuzzFeed reported that the Steele dossier had linked him to a “hacking incident” against the Democratic Party in the US ahead of the 2016 election.
Experts and lawmakers unsure if Trump's 'bulldozer' police tactics are legal
The president will have an opportunity on Wednesday afternoon to address a list of questions about just what the federal personnel, a hodgepodge force composed of Department of Homeland Security officers, are doing in Portland and under what legal authorities. He is slated to give remarks on the subject, though he rarely focuses on federal laws and statutes – Mr Trump prefers to speak of "anarchists" and left-wing "mobs".
Trump administration officials have yet to clearly explain under what federal authorities the law enforcement personnel are operating, other than to cite statutes allowing Washington to protect federal buildings. But Portland officials say the federal forces are doing more than that.
"We had a contained [situation], we were using our deescalation strategies. We were engaged in limited arrests of people who were engaged in illegal activity, that's modern policing. And then these guys came in like a bulldozer," Mayor Ted Wheeler said. "And what it did was re-energized Portlanders, it brought people back into the streets."
"It is a pandemic that has gotten worse before it will get better because of his inaction, and in fact, clearly, it is the 'Trump virus'," the California Democrat told CNN after Mr Trump left the White House briefing room.
Her comments came after Mr Trump spoke to reporters for just 25 minutes, a drastically pared back version of the coronavirus briefings from this spring that sometimes pushed the two-hour mark – and caused ample political headaches for the White House when the president would get angry with reporters or make gaffes like advising Americans to inject themselves with disinfectants to kill the virus.
Mr Trump, for one evening at least, had a more measured tone about the pandemic. When a radio reporter noted he seemed to be offering a "more realistic" outlook as cases are surging in Sun Belt states, Mr Trump nodded.
"It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better," he said. "Something I don't like saying about things – but that's the way it is."
Ted Yoho issues non-apology to AOC after allegedly calling her a 'f***ing bitch'
Mr Yoho did not apologise for that particular comment, however, claiming he did not say it to Ms Ocasio-Cortez during their brief confrontation, which he initiated.
"The offensive name-calling — words attributed to me by the press — were never spoken to my colleague, and if they were construed that way I apologise for their misunderstanding," he said in a speech on the House floor on Wednesday.
"It is true that we disagree on policies and visions for America, but that does not mean we should be disrespectful. Having been married for 45 years with two daughters, I'm very cognizant of the language I use," Mr Yoho said.
Scaramucci says president’s ‘well wishes’ to Ghislaine Maxwell are coded message: ‘Please don’t talk’
Andrew Naughtie writes: Former White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci has accused Donald Trump of covertly imploring the arrested socialite Ghislaine Maxwell not to reveal what she knows about him.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Mr Scaramucci wrote: “She has the goods on him. He is signaling ‘please don’t talk.’”
Mr Trump acknowledged Ms Maxwell during a press briefing on Tuesday, his first since April. Asked by a reporter whether he thought she would turn in other powerful men who were potentially involved with Jeffrey Epstein, the president said he hasn’t been following the case closely.
“I just wish her well,” he said. “I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.”
Mr Trump was photographed alongside Epstein and Ms Maxwell many times over more than a decade, and once called Epstein a “terrific guy”, saying “he [liked] beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.
