Donald Trump has reacted angrily to his predecessor Barack Obama’s criticism of his administration’s response to the coronavirus, saying the 44th president was “grossly incompetent” in office, despite presiding over almost 90,000 American deaths from the outbreak himself.
While Obama has kept a dignified silence for much of Trump’s tenure, his recent return to the limelight to back Joe Biden has seen the president attempt to mire him in controversy by whipping up a spurious conspiracy theory involving the FBI and attempts to entrap his incoming officials in 2017.
Eric Trump, the president’s son, has meanwhile been branded “unbelievably reckless” by Biden for suggesting the pandemic is a Democratic plot to stop his father campaigning and will “magically disappear” after election day in November.
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However, polls are not necessarily always indicative of what may happen during the November vote — which is still more than five months away. Previous surveys had shown Mr Trump besting the former vice president among older voters, including a Pew Research Centre poll conducted in early April.
Yet the latest tracking data reportedly still showed Mr Biden above Mr Trump by as much as two percent among voters 65 and older. When it comes to voters between the ages of 45 to 64, the former vice president was ahead of Mr Trump by nearly seven points.
In a new essay published at The Atlantic, Ms Warren – once a hopeful candidate in the Democratic primary – discussed the death of her brother and the emotional toll it has taken on her.
Ms Warren’s brother, Donald Reed Herring, 86, was hospitalised for pneumonia in February and contracted the coronavirus while he was recovering from the illness.
“And then when he said that the coronavirus test had come back positive, it’s like that note you hear far off – a warning. And I remember thinking I couldn’t breathe,” Ms Warren wrote.
President Donald Trump seemed to be slipping in the polls among a crucial faction of his base, as many older voters in critical states for his re-election appeared to support former Vice President Joe Biden.
The latest analysis from polling experts at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight showed Mr Trump falling behind Mr Biden in key swing states like Florida, where a Quinnipiac University survey had the former vice president above the Republican incumbent by 52 percent to 42 percent in mid-April among voters 65 and older.
Mr Biden was meanwhile leading in the state that helped Mr Trump win his 2016 election among all voters, albeit by a narrow three-point margin, according to a Fox News poll.
That analysis could be paired with another report from CNN, which showed Mr Biden polling nearly six points higher than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s final margin in the last presidential election. The CNN report included polls that had the presumptive Democratic nominee above Mr Trump in other states like Wisconsin, one of the determining states in 2016 along with Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Even Mr Trump’s own internal polling had him losing to Mr Biden among older voters, the New York Times reported, citing the coronavirus pandemic and his administration’s seemingly slow response to the Covid-19 outbreak in the US.
Story to come...
John T Bennett has this on what Peter Navarro's attack on the CDC on Sunday reveals about the administration's ongoing search for a scapegoat to pin the pandemic on, having already found fault with China, the World Health Organisation and the Democrats.
The president is back on Twitter and reacting hotly to the very suggestion he might behave "impulsively" towards Afghanistan.
He's also been resorting to the usual playground insults against his various political enemies.
Andrew Naughtie has this welcome update on the former 2020 candidate who left us all spellbound at that first debate and who, unlike Collins, really is an independent thinker. Arguably too much so.
Chris Riotta has this round-up of the president's Saturday and Sunday tweets, in which he swung the spotlight on Maine senator Susan Collins, last heard from bottling the chance to vote for his impeachment having heavily signalled that she might join Mitt Romney in rebellion against their GOP overlords.
Fabulous stuff here from the legendary Terminator star and ex-California governor.
You can see his full address to the graduating class on Instagram.
For Indy Premium, Chris Stevenson has this on the 44th president's timely return to the fray.
Here's Louis Chilton with the latest late night blow-up at the president, this time over his decision to unveil the Space Force flag when you might have hoped he would remain "laser-focused on this pandemic and nothing else", as Oliver so aptly put it.
Trump's working week begins with some all-caps sloganeering pressuring state governors to end the shutdown and the repetition of his favourite bogus claims that he was left with a bare cupboard by the Obama administration and that the US is doing more testing than the rest of the world combined.
I thought the White House had cancelled its subscription to The Washington Post...
He's also been reiterating his support for the anti-lockdown crowd in Long Island, saying: "They hate Fake News, and so do I!"
Here's Tom Embury-Dennis with a reminder of why their troubling actions are really not to be condoned.
A penny for Dr Anthony Fauci's thoughts on his boss right now...
The eccentric Tesla entreprenuer tweeted "Take the red pill" over the weekend - a reference to a fork-in-the-road proposition from the 1999 sci-fi classic that has since become a queasy conservative mantra -prompting the president's daughter to cheerily chime in, only for the film's director Lily Wachowski to scold the pair of them in admirably pithy style.
Here are the Indy100 crew to explain,
The celebrated stand-up, best known for Curb Your Enthusiasm and her scathing performance at the 2009 White House Correspondents' Dinner, has taken to Instagram to spell out exactly what the president's problem with his predecessor is.
Here's Greg Evans for Indy100.
The New York governor again showing real leadership here, demonstrating the simplicity of such testing to put "doubting Thomases" at ease.
You'd imagine Trump would be far too neurotic to follow suit if he can't even be persuaded to wear a mask in a crowded mask factory.
Here's Gino Spocchia's report.
Trump's secretary of state can expect to find himself with questions to answer about the dimissal of Steve Linick and what he knew when but, for now, he's continuing to stick it to stoke the New Cold War by goading China.
Andrew Naughtie has the latest on Jerome Powell, who was interviewed on the same 60 Minutes instalment Trump was so annoyed about and said the fate of the American economy is very tightly tied to the development of a vaccine for Covid-19.
The president also dedicated his time to call into NBC’s broadcast of a charity golf tournament on Sunday and promised Americans a speedy return to normalcy that sounded far more optimistic than most experts say is realistic.
Trump hailed the event and said he'd like to see crowds packing into sports venues by the autumn, whether or not a cure for the coronavirus is developed.
"We're looking at vaccines, we're looking at cures and we are very, very far down the line," he said, adding: "I think that's not going to be in the very distant future. But even before that, I think we'll be back to normal."
Experts, however, say finding a cure that fast is far from certain and have warned that easing restrictions too quickly could cause the virus to rebound.
Trump said events would likely resume with small crowds - if any - but hopes that by the time The Masters is played in November, the crowds can return.
"We want to get it back to where it was. We want big, big stadiums loaded with people," he said. "We want to get sports back. We miss sports. We need sports in terms of the psyche, the psyche of our country."
The TaylorMade Driving Relief was being played at Seminole Golf Club in Florida to raise money for Covid-19 relief. There were no crowds, no caddies and only a limited TV crew, all following social distancing guidelines.
Speaking of the good walk spoiled, here’s Trump’s response to Rory McIllroy after the Irishman lamented ever playing 18 holes with him.
What about the president himself?
On Saturday, he also retweeted a shot of his new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany as Supergirl and a video of his own face imposed over actor Bill Pullman’s in his rousing speech from the climax to the seminal 1996 blockbuster Independence Day.
Co-star Vivacia Fox was not happy about that one…
...nor was Pullman himself, who told The Hollywood Reporter: "My voice belongs to no one but me."
Ellie Harrison has more on this below.
