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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Tom Lutz, Bryan Armen Graham and Martin Pengelly in New York

US president says 'silent majority is stronger than ever before' – as it happened

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Tulsa.
Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Tulsa. Photograph: Sue Ogrocki/AP

Recap

Here’s what’s happened today:

  • The president’s rally in Tulsa came in for criticism after the president said he had asked for Covid-19 testing to be slowed down. The White House has claimed Trump was joking. But his remarks are in line with a series of previous remarks he’s made expressing doubts about testing and its uncanny ability to increase the number of recorded cases.
  • The president’s much hyped return turned to humiliation when he failed to fill the arena in the Republican stronghold of Oklahoma.
  • Our columnist Richard Wolffe says Trump’s Tulsa rally was just another sad farce. “Campaign officials should be ready for firings and fury after a pathetic event made worse by wretched attempted excuses”.
  • Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney behind inquiries into Trump allies, resigned after William Barr announced his firing

Oliver Laughland is on the ground for us in Tulsa and says scenes on the streets are peaceful at the moment:

Donald Trump declared “the silent majority is stronger than ever before” at his comeback rally on Saturday, but thousands of empty seats appeared to tell a different story.

The US president’s much hyped return to the campaign trail turned to humiliation when he failed to fill a 19,000-capacity arena in the Republican stronghold of Oklahoma, raising fresh doubts about his chances of winning re-election.

“The Emperor has no crowd,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama.

The overwhelmingly white gathering at Trump’s first rally since March was dwarfed by the huge multiracial crowds that have marched for Black Lives Matter across the country in recent weeks, reinforcing criticism that the president is badly out of step with the national mood.

The flop in Tulsa was an unexpected anticlimax for an event that seemed to offer a combustible mix of Trump, protests over racial injustice and a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 120,000 Americans and put more than 40m out of work.

You can read the full report below:

Updated

More on the protests in Tulsa.

Mason Haynes, 21, an Oklahoma film student who has been photographing and filming the protest, told the Guardian over the phone that law enforcement had used pepper-ball chemical irritant and shot bean bags at protesters near the corner of Fifth St and Boulder Avenue about half an hour ago.

The protesters in that area included both Black Lives Matter and pro-Trump protesters, Haynes said.

Various law enforcement vehicles had been trying to get through the intersection, he said, and a bus full of the national guard had “got stuck in front of the protesters, and the cops kind of had to take control,” he said, “by shooting peaceful protesters with chemical irritant.”


More recently, reporters with the Tulsa World and others tweeted that some protesters have marched to Tulsa’s historic “Black Wall Street” in Greenwood, where music is playing and the demonstration has become upbeat.

Protesters are still out on the streets of Tulsa following the Donald Trump rally. Police fired pepper balls into the crowd earlier but the situation appears to have calmed down for now.

Outrage as Trump says he asked for coronavirus testing to be slowed down

In one of the more remarkable moments of the night, Trump told the crowd in Oklahoma that he had told his “people” to slow down Covid-19 testing across the country.

The White House has claimed Trump was joking. But his remarks are in line with a series of previous remarks he’s made expressing doubts about testing and its uncanny ability to increase the number of recorded cases.

Trump’s admission has shocked even some of his most strident critics, with the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie equating it to a murder confession:

Updated

In an interview with Fox News, Donald Trump has repeated the conspiracy theory that the recent protests “are all paid for”.

There are reports of police using pepper balls to disperse a crowd protesting outside the BOK Center, where Donald Trump held his rally tonight.

Updated

The Trump campaign had reported hundreds of thousands of people had signed up for tonight’s rally. There were definitely not that many in Tulsa, and there are reports that social media campaigns on campaigns including TikTok had been used to get people to claim tickets they had no intention of using. A member of the president’s campaign denied to CNN that was the case.

“We had legitimate 300,000 signups of Republicans who voted in the last four elections. Those are not [TikTok] kids. It was fear of violent protests. This is obvious with the lack of families and children at the rally. We normally have thousands of families,” the official told the broadcaster.

Updated

Trump went after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez twice in his speech tonight. As Ocasio-Cortez herself says, it’s interesting that the most powerful person in the United States sees a first-term member of Congress as one of his main opponents. Perhaps because she represents what many of his most loyal supporters fear.

A bit more on Trump’s use of racist language tonight. He called Covid-19 “kung flu” and then illustrated a fictional story about a break-in by describing the intruder as a “hombre”.

One significant person Trump did not mention this evening: George Floyd, whose killing by police have sparked an extraordinary few weeks of protest in the US. Mike Pence, who spoke before Trump, did mention Floyd and said there was “no excuse” for his death.

Bill Mitchell, a long-time supporter of the president, said it was the best speech he had ever seen Trump give:

Meanwhile, David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s election strategist said the president laid out a simple message of fear to his supporters tonight, that “the nation is besieged by radical mobs and Biden is their puppet”. He added on Twitter that “this is Trump’s problem. Biden is culturally incovenient. He is not scary enough to voters Trump needs to scare. So his alternative line is that Biden is the puppet of scary people.”

Updated

Oliver Laughland is in Tulsa for us. Trump repeatedly said during his speech that counter-protesters made life difficult for his supporters tonight. From where Oliver is, the crowd seems pretty calm

Tulsa police have added that there has been no trouble at the protests this evening:

Updated

A few thoughts on Twitter and elsewhere:

The president says American will keep “winning, winning, winning” and the “best is yet to come”. Together, he says, “we will make America wealthy again ... safe again and great again”. And with that familiar comment, the president leaves the stage to cheers.

Trump says he will keep “America out of foolish foreign wars” if re-elected. He then says the US “will be the first nation to land on Mars” before repeating his promise to defend the right to keep arms, adding it’s “damned nice” to have guns when “lunatics” are protesting on the streets.

Updated

Trump says “the plague” has hurt the economy which was “the envy of the world” but America is coming back. “Retails sales: the greatest single numbers in history,” he says. He then returns to blaming China for Covid-19 and he predicts the economy will come back in October as the election approaches. He says that progress will be hurt if the Democrats are elected, but if he wins next year will be “the greatest in history” for the economy.

Trump says he has saved “millions of lives” during the pandemic and says it’s now time “to get back to work” even though cases of Covid-19 are rising in many states.

He then lists how he has helped the black community, working with black businesses and historically black colleges and universities. This, presumably, is part of the president’s play to say he is uniting the country, rather than dividing it.

Updated

Trump says “our country will be destroyed” if Biden is elected in November. Trump says he has done “more for the black community in four years than Joe Biden has done in 47 years.” He says “racial justice begins with the retirement of Joe Biden”. This comment gets huge cheers.

For further reading on what Trump has done for racial justice, read the following:

Trump returns to the subject of energy to the crowd in Oklahoma, a state whose economy relies heavily on the energy sector. He says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will shut down the energy sector and, this is an interesting one, ban airplanes. He also returns to one of his pet peeves, wind turbines.

He then turns to Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman from Minnesota. Omar is an American citizen but he refers to “her country” as Somalia. There are loud boos for Omar, who is Muslim.

Updated

Trump says “an emboldened left will launch a full scale attack on American life” if Biden wins November’s election. He says they “will expel anyone who disagrees with them, they call you a racist, they don’t like religion ... they want to take away your guns”. Loud boos from the crowd as he finishes that part of the speech.

The president then returns to the importance of making sure the supreme court justices are conservatives by electing him in November.

Updated

White House official: Trump was joking about slowing down testing

A White House official said that an earlier comment from Trump in the speech, when he said he told “my people” to “slow down the testing” was a joke.

Here’s the full quote: “When you do testing to that extent, you are gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down please. They test and they test. We have tests that people don’t know what’s going on.”

Updated

Trump says Ice gets “rid of the worst scum on earth”, effectively calling undocumented immigrants criminals. He says his administration defends Americans and deports dangerous outsiders. “We’ve got to keep the White House,” he says. He says Joe Biden has never done anything and has only been “a vice-president or something”. Somewhere Mike Pence sheds a tear of shame.

Updated

The NFL comes up. He says “we shall never kneel for the national anthem”. This comes after Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, apologised this month for not supporting players who protested peacefully. This comment gets the biggest cheer of the night, and many in the crowd are on their feet.

Worth remembering when the analysis of whether tonight’s rally was half-empty or half-full starts:

Trump is on his second free-jazz riff of the evening. This one is an in-depth story about getting a new aircraft for Air Force One from Boeing; Angela Merkel appears at some point. It ends, surprisingly, with Trump being proved to be correct despite other people telling him he was wrong. This one is getting less traction from the crowd than the one about the time he drank a glass of water at West Point, possibly because it makes very little sense.

Trump: Biden is a 'puppet of the left'

Trump says Joe Biden is “a puppet of the radical left”.

He says that a “bunch of maniacs” were outside the rally earlier so he could not attend an event outside. As reported by my colleague Oliver Laughland earlier, there was no evidence of violence from counter-protesters this evening outside the event.

Updated

He turns to “leftist radicals” statues of Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus being torn down. He says that anyone burning the American flag “should go to jail for a year”. He says he believes in freedom of speech but not “desecration”. Respect of the flag is something Trump has turned to recently, even turning on NFL quarterbacks about the subject.

“The unhinged leftwing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments, tear down our statutes, and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform their demands for absolute and total control,” he says. “We’re not conforming.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Tulsa, Black Lives Matter, is holding a small counter-event:

Updated

Trump says that he shook hands with some of the graduates at West Point last week, despite orders not to as he wanted to reward “these beautiful young people”. He is still on the ramp story, by the way.

Updated

The president turns to his appearance at the graduation ceremony for the US Military Academy at West Point last week. I can’t argue with his next statement that West Point’s setting is “beautiful”. He says he saluted every single graduate but all the “sick” media could do was pick up on his unsteady walk as he left the stage. It’s obviously an accusation that still stings a week later. He has now spent longer talking about this crucial piece of geopolitics than he did about the ailing economy, America’s healthcare system, a pandemic, police killings or civil unrest sweeping a divided nation. As a sidenote, Trump, as we know, is an expert at talking to his supporters and there are plenty of chuckles and cheers as he tells the story.

Trump calls Covid-19 'Kung-Flu'

More racist language from Trump: he calls Covid-19 “Kung Flu”. Dismally, his comment is cheered.

Updated

He turns to the subject of calls to defund the police. He says: “It’s 1am in the morning and a ‘very tough hombre’ is trying to break into the house of a young woman whose husband is away, and the reply is ‘Sorry, this number is no longer in service’”. Aside from the racist imagery in that comment, very few people are seriously calling for the end to law enforcement altogether.

Trump has now turned to the recent protests following the death of George Floyd. He is talking about Seattle’s protest zone and says it is “probably best just for us to watch that disaster”. He says “let people see what radical left Democrats will do to our country”. He says these same “radicals” have looted businesses and injured police officers. And soon he’s back to the “China virus” and how the media have failed to thank him for saving “hundreds of thousands of lives”. Many experts have pointed out that holding tonight’s rally risks lives being lost from Covid.

We have the first reference of the evening to “the China virus”. It’s swiftly followed by a reference to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - he asks whether the crowd would want her in charge of energy. Her name is roundly booed.

Trump asks the crowd if they have ever noticed that Joe Biden ever gets the names of states wrong and that makes him lose credibility. The following link is posted with no further comment:

Trump says anyone who disrespects veterans will “be fired” to huge cheers. He said he had never known the “swamp” in Washington was “so deep” until he became president. He goes on to say he has granted huge tax cuts while the Democrats will raise them.

Trump says the Republican party is the party of “liberty, equality and justice for all” and “law and order” expect that final phrase mentioned plenty of times in the coming months. He hails the number of Republican judges appointed during his administration so far. Trump also says the Republicans could get a “few more” supreme court justices if he is reelected. Not that that’s helped Trump in the last week or so.

Updated

The president starts by thanking “Oklahoma and Mike Pence”, who preceded him on stage. He says he has been watching “fake news” for weeks saying people should stay away from the rally, and there were “very bad” people outside trying to prevent people from entering. There are boos at mention of the media. He says “the silent majority” will beat “sleepy Joe Biden” in November.

The president, wearing his familiar red tie, is taking the stage in Tulsa. He was due on stage at 7pm local time and made it on for 7.12pm. Say what you want about the president - and there’s plenty to say - but he knows how to get his most partisan supporters going.

Updated

The cameras have shown a wide view of the arena, and there are plenty of empty seats in the upper decks and on the floor (there are more people in the lower ring of seats). The president was due on stage by now, and Mike Pence has left the stage so he should be on soon. Fox News says it looks “packed” but it’s ... not? Anyway, it’s probably not the most important issue in the country right now.

Updated

People are still entering the arena in Tulsa as the crowd awaits the president’s speech, which is due in five minutes or so. Meanwhile, Mike Pence is on stage and says there was “no excuse” for George Floyd’s death before adding (to cheers) that there is “no excuse” for rioting either.

Vice President Mike Pence waves to the crowd in Tulsa
Vice President Mike Pence waves to the crowd in Tulsa. Photograph: Sue Ogrocki/AP

The Trump campaign blamed “radical protesters” for stopping some of the president’s supporters from attending today’s rally. Our southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, is on the ground tonight and saw no evidence of that.

Mike Pence has entered the arena in Tulsa to big cheers from the crowd. He will address the president’s supporters before Donald Trump takes the stage. The arena look pretty full now from what I can see, although there are a few empty spots on the floor.

Eric Trump tosses a hat into the crowd at the Tulsa rally on Saturday
Eric Trump tosses a hat into the crowd at the Tulsa rally on Saturday. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Updated

Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has said she is “deeply concerned” after Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney behind inquiries into Trump’s allies, resigned after the US attorney general William Barr announced his firing.

“I am deeply concerned about the sudden removal of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, especially given serious questions about who gave the order and the timing of the firing,” wrote James in a statement. “I hope the Department of Justice heeds its own advice and puts public service over public spectacle. Ongoing investigations must not be interfered with, period. There is still much work to be done and it must be done independently. Americans deserve leaders who are committed to justice.”

You can read the full story on Berman here:

Updated

Donald Trump lands in Tulsa ahead of rally

The president has landed in Tulsa, and is due to speak at 7pm local time (around 40 minutes) but Trump isn’t known for arriving on time for events. You’d hope he’d start as soon as possible, given that the longer the crowd is in the arena, the longer they will potentially be exposed to Covid-19.

Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, spoke to CNN earlier about the risks of indoor gatherings during the pandemic. “We know what makes transmission of the virus occur more frequently, and that includes close contact, particularly without masking, crowds, [being] indoors versus outdoors, the duration of the contact, and then shouting also increases the possibility of transmission,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

The president - on board Air Force One - has just flown a loop over Tulsa as the city prepares for his rally later tonight.

Updated

Donald Trump’s campaign has blamed “radical protesters’ for frightening away the president’s supporters from tonight’s rally in Tulsa. Sure, that and the prospect of sharing a confined space with thousands of others in the middle of a pandemic. And maybe the armed guys “protecting” the rally, despite the presence of police and national guard.

“Sadly, protesters interfered with supporters, even blocking access to metal detectors, which prevented people from entering the rally. Radical protesters coupled with relentless onslaught from the media, attempted to frighten off the President’s supporters. We are proud of the thousands who stuck it out.,” said campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh.

Updated

Attorney behind inquiries into Trump allies resigns

Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York who has overseen investigations and prosecutions of key Trump allies including Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen, has resigned.

The news came after William Barr, the US attorney general, said Berman had been fired by Donald Trump. Confusingly, the president then said he had not fired Berman. “That’s all up to the attorney general. Attorney General Barr is working on that,” said Trump, even though Barr said it was the president who ultimately fired Berman. “That’s his department, not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general, so that’s really up to him. I’m not involved.”

Hours later, Berman confirmed he had resigned. “In light of Attorney General Barr’s decision to respect the normal operation of law and have Deputy US Attorney Audrey Strauss become Acting US Attorney, I will be leaving the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, effective immediately,” he said in a statement.

Barr had been widely accused of undermining Department of Justice independence even before he moved against Berman.

In a surprise statement released on Friday night, the attorney general said Trump intended to nominate Jay Clayton – chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission but with little experience as a federal prosecutor – as US attorney. The US attorney in New Jersey, Craig Carpenito, would be acting US attorney until Clayton could be confirmed by the Senate.

But Berman said he had not known of the move until Barr’s statement.

Updated

Oliver Laughland spoke to some of the workers at tonight’s rally about working at an event where the crowd are no required to wear masks:

It’s obviously well before the start of the rally - and before Trump’s headline act takes to the stage - but early reports have the BOK Center far under capacity. It could well start to fill as we get closer to the main act, and temperature checks and the handing out of masks could be delaying entry, but this photo from the New York Times’ Astead Herndon shows plenty of space.

Updated

Atlanta’s acting police chief has assured residents of the city that their 911 calls will still be answered despite reports of officers calling in sick after two of their colleagues were charged over the killing of Rayshard Brooks.

“It is factual that over the past few days, we’ve seen higher than average number of officers call in sick, which caused us to shift resources to ensure proper coverage ... The explanation for calling out sick varies and includes officers questioning their training, officers being challenged and attacked, and unease about officers seeing their colleague criminally charged so quickly ... Neither APD leadership nor the administration are dismissive of these notions. I want each of you to know that we are in this together and we are here to support you,” Rodney Bryant said.

Donald Trump had planned to address the public outside the BOK Center before tonight’s rally, but that segment of proceedings has now been cancelled. Protesters and counter-protesters have been gathering in Tulsa today, and some of them are armed so that may well have played into the decision.

Meanwhile, Oliver Laughland has been inside the BOK Center and reports that most of those gathering are not wearing masks. As a reminder, public health officials think holding an indoor rally in a state where Covid-19 cases are rising, is a very bad idea.

A source has told that ABC’s Briana K Stewart that Tiffany Crutcher, the sister of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man shot by police, was invited to speak with Mike Pence before this evening’s rally in Tulsa. Crutcher, who has become a prominent activist since her brother’s death, apparently turned down the invitation as she “did not want to be used as a photo-op when so little progress has been made on police reform and civil rights”.

Crutcher is also a descendant of survivors of the massacre of black people in Tulsa by a white mob in the early 20th-century.

Updated

Eric Trump has deleted an Instagram post which contained a graphic from QAnon, a conspiracy theory that states a powerful group of paedophiles control the world (although, at least, they are not secretly lizards). The theory is popular among some Trump supporters and the ADL calls it “a dangerous theory that has inspired violent acts”.

Updated

Public health officials in Oklahoma have expressed concern about tonight’s rally as cases of Covid-19 in the state rise. There has not been an order for those attending the rally to wear facemasks, and Oliver Laughland on the ground (don’t worry, he’s wearing one), says most people he has seen are not wearing face coverings.

Donald Trump has spoken to reporters as he leaves for tonight’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “The event in Oklahoma is unbelievable,” he said. “The crowds are unbelievable. They haven’t seen anything like it. We will go there now. We’ll give a hopefully good speech, see a lot of great people, a lot of great friends.”

He was also asked about the firing of Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney behind inquiries into the president’s allies. “That’s all up to the attorney general. Attorney General Barr is working on that,” said Trump, even though Barr said it was the president who ultimately fired Berman. “That’s his department, not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general, so that’s really up to him. I’m not involved.”

Trump also said his former national security adviser, John Bolton, has a “big problem” after a judge declined to block his tell-all book on the president’s administration.

Trump said the judge was “very powerful in his statements on classified information and very powerful also on the fact that the country will get the money – any money he makes. So I hope a lot of books – uh, well, I probably shouldn’t hope that but whatever he makes, he’s going to be giving back.

“I think the judge was very smart and very indignant at what Bolton did. It was a great ruling. Obviously, the book was already out. It leaked and everything else. But he leaked classified information so he’s got a big problem.”

Updated

As Trump supporters gather for the campaign rally in Tulsa tonight, Oklahoma has reported 331 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, pushing the state’s total to more than 10,000.

While Oklahoma is far from having the most coronavirus cases or deaths nationwide, the recent increase puts it among more than a dozen states moving in a troubling direction, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

Tulsa itself saw 136 new cases of coronavirus yesterday, as the daily growth in confirmed cases in Tulsa has continued to hit new records each day.

The number of new cases confirmed daily across Oklahoma has also risen sharply in the past week. The state has seen nearly 2,000 new confirmed cases since 13 June.


As coronavirus cases grew in Tulsa, which announced a then-record high of 96 new daily cases on Wednesday, the city’s public health director said publicly that he hoped the Trump rally would be postponed.

“I think it’s an honor for Tulsa to have a sitting president want to come and visit our community, but not during a pandemic,” Dr Bruce Dart said, according to the Tulsa World. “I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well.”

Only one additional coronavirus death was reported in Oklahoma on Saturday, pushing the state’s total to 368.

Across the United States, there were 29,909 new confirmed coronavirus cases, and 678 new deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data cited by Oklahoma’s public health department.

Updated

Washington, a team not exactly known for their racial progress (they were the last NFL team to integrate and then there is their ... problematic nickname), have announced they will retire the number of their first black player, Bobby Mitchell. The Hall of Famer died in April aged 84.

“Bobby was our Jackie Robinson,” said Brig Owens, a teammate of Mitchell. “He had to handle the pressure of being the first African American football player to integrate [the team]. He, like Jackie, was a military officer headquartered in the DC area when he received notice of his trade.

“In the face of great adversity, he served as a role model for the Washington DC community, the team, its fan base and the NFL. ... He was more than an exceptional football player and athlete, he was an exceptional human being. He was like a brother to me.”

The announcement came a day after a statue of the team’s former owner, George Preston Marshall, was removed from outside their former home, RFK Stadium. Marshall only integrated the team after outside pressure.

Donald Trump fires attorney behind inquiries into his allies

The US attorney general, William Barr, said on Saturday Donald Trump had fired Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York who has overseen investigations and prosecutions of key Trump allies including Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen.

Berman earlier refused to confirm his resignation from the prestigious role, despite Barr announcing it on Friday night.

In a statement on Saturday, Barr said: “Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the president to remove you as of today, and he has done so.”

Barr said Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, would become the acting US attorney.

Leaving the White House for his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump told reporters Barr was in charge of the issue and said: “I’m not involved.”

Barr had been widely accused of undermining Department of Justice independence even before he moved against Berman.

In a surprise statement released on Friday night, the attorney general said Trump intended to nominate Jay Clayton – chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission but with little experience as a federal prosecutor – as US attorney. The US attorney in New Jersey, Craig Carpenito, would be acting US attorney until Clayton could be confirmed by the Senate.

But Berman said he had not known of the move until Barr’s statement.

“I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate,” he said. “Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption.

“I cherish every day that I work with the men and women of this office to pursue justice without fear or favor – and intend to ensure that this office’s important cases continue unimpeded.”

You can read the full story below:

Updated

The Jacksonville sheriff, Mike Williams, has described as “extremely disturbing” an incident in which a mannequin dressed in a police uniform and wearing a pig mask was hung from an overpass. He called called it an attempt to create “anti-police sentiment and drive a divide in our community”.

The mannequin was removed early on Saturday morning and an investigation is underway. “This type of act will not be tolerated by our agency or our community, and we will work together to hold those responsible accountable,” Williams said. Authorities had initially been called to what observers thought was a suicide.

Updated

Here’s a bit more on the Bikers for Trump. Oliver Laughland spoke to two members of the group, who are currently in Tulsa.

Josh Cupps, 34, from Wagoner, Oklahoma, said it was the first time he had been to a Trump rally and said he was here “to keep the protesters at bay”. Asked why he felt the need to patrol the area when there is a strong police and national guard presence, Cupps, who is armed, said that “they had heavy police presence in every other state [the protesters] are tearing up, and they’re not burning Oklahoma down”. To people who suggest that turning up armed to a rally is inflaming tensions, Cupps said those people “needed to grow balls, our forefathers would be ashamed”.

Cupps added that he believed there were enough police in Tulsa to control the crowds but “they could be outnumbered real quick, you just don’t know”.

Our southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, is on the ground in Oklahoma. A spokesman for Bikers For Trump, tells him 50 members of the group are in the city to “protect the rally” from “antifa”. Many of the bikers are armed. Police and national guard are already guarding the area. There have also been reports of arrests at counter-protests nearby. It looks like it’s going to be a long, hot afternoon.

Florida records record daily rise in infections

Florida reported 4,049 new infections on Saturday, the biggest daily increase since the beginning of the outbreak.

The state’s total number of confirmed infections is now 93,797.

Infections rose by 4.5% over the past 24 hours, compared with an average increase of 3.4% in the previous seven days, Bloomberg reports.

Deaths among Florida residents reached 3,144, an increase of 1.3%, the state health department reported.

Cumulative hospitalizations of Florida residents rose by 165, or 1.3%, to 12,939.

On Thursday and Friday, Florida also recorded daily infection records of 3,207 and 3,822 new cases, respectively, as we reported earlier.

It has been seven weeks since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, an ally of US president Donald Trump, took a coronavirus “victory lap” and pressed ahead with a swift reopening program in the state while berating the media for a “doom and gloom” approach to the pandemic.

The former Atlanta police officer charged with felony murder in the death of Rayshard Brooks was involved in another shooting five years ago that left a man with a punctured lung, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported.

More from the Associated Press:

Citing court documents, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the older case was investigated by Atlanta police and turned over to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, who cleared the officers involved including Garrett Rolfe in February.

A judge on Friday denied bond for the 27-year-old Rolfe, who has been charged with felony murder and other crimes after fatally shooting Rayshard Brooks in the back outside of a Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta after Brooks fired a stun gun in his direction. Rolfe is white; Brooks was Black.

The 2015 shooting was not mentioned in the original incident report or in documents made available to the court-appointed attorney for the man who had been shot, Jackie Harris, the newspaper reported.

Retired Fulton County Superior Court Judge Doris Downs presided over Harris’ 2016 trial. She told the newspaper that it was the first time she had ever come across a case of an incident report failing to mention that shots were fired.

Harris, 40 at the time, had tried to flee from police after he was spotted driving a stolen truck, records show. He eventually crashed into a gas meter and twice ran into a parked police car.

Six Trump campaign staffers in Tulsa test positive for coronavirus

Six members of the Trump campaign’s advance team in Tulsa ahead of Saturday’s rally have tested positive for coronavirus, NBC News is reporting.

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, said the six staffers were a small fraction of the hundreds of tested performed and “quarantine procedures were immediately implemented”.

“No Covid-positive staffers or anyone in immediate contact will be at today’s rally or near attendees or elected officials,” Murtaugh said in a statement. “As previously announced, all rally attendees are given temperature checks before going through security, at which point they are given wristbands, facemasks and hand sanitizer.”

Donald Trump rally
A banner is pictured outside the venue for Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Updated

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has issued a statement on a federal judge’s decision to decline to block the publication of a tell-all book by John Bolton, Donald Trump’s third national security adviser.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia today vindicated the Government’s claims against former National Security Adviser John Bolton, ruling that “Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations.” The court rightly chastised Bolton for treating as “intolerable” a review process for his book that the court believed was “reasonable.” As the court explained, “Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States,” hoping to secure profits by violating his nondisclosure agreements. But Bolton bet wrong, and the downside of his losing bet is that he “stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security.”

The court denied the Government’s request for an injunction solely because Bolton’s wrongful conduct – carried out in secret – had already ensured that the book was so widely disseminated that the court believed it could no longer grant an effective remedy.

The Government intends to hold Bolton to the further requirements of his agreements and to ensure that he receives no profits from his shameful decision to place his desire for money and attention ahead of his obligations to protect national security.

One person was killed and another was in critical condition in a pre-dawn shooting in Seattle’s protest zone, authorities said on Saturday.

The shooting happened at about 3am in the area near downtown known as the Chaz, short for “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”, police said in a statement on Twitter.

Sgt Lauren Truscott of Seattle police told the Seattle Times she did not know if police had taken anyone into custody and had no immediate details about how the shooting unfolded.

Investigators were reviewing public-source video and body-camera video for clues and authorities planned to disclose more information about the shooting later, Truscott said.

Oliver Laughland, the Guardian’s US southern bureau chief, is on the ground in Tulsa ahead of tonight’s Trump rally where a festival-like atmosphere of vendors, InfoWars correspondents, protesters and counter-protesters has prevailed.

An arrest warrant for first-degree arson has been issued in Georgia for a woman fire officials suspect of burning down the Wendy’s restaurant where police shot and killed Rayshard Brooks just over a week ago.

In a tweet posted Saturday lunchtime, Atlanta Fire Rescue identified a woman named Natalie White, who is white, as the suspect, accompanied by two photographs of her in what appears to be a convenience store.

No age or hometown was given for her in the tweet, but media reports say she is 29.

Police were called to the Wendy’s on the night of 12 June, where Brooks was asleep in his car. Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe shot Brooks in the back and killed him after Brooks ran from him. The killing sparked renewed protests over police brutality following the earlier death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and led to the resignation of Atlanta’s chief of police.

Rolfe was fired and charged with felony murder.

The restaurant was burned down 24 hours after Brooks’ death amid protests at the scene.

At a press conference earlier this week, police shared photographs of two white women they suspected of being involved in the arson.

Randy Travis, an investigative reporter for Fox5 Atlanta, tweeted on Saturday that Brooks – who was married with three children – was caught on police bodycam calling out for a Natalie White, whom he referred to as his girlfriend.

Pam Bondi, one of Trump’s lawyers who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, downplayed concerns by public health officials about today’s rally in Tulsa.

“We hope that people are going to stay socially distanced, are going to wear a mask, (use) hand sanitzer and be respectful of each other,” Bondi told the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland on Saturday afternoon.

She added: “It’s not a legal requirement, it’s people’s own free choice. But we hope everyone will be peaceful and happy and have a great rally and social distance.”

NBC News reported on Friday that both Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, and the White House coronavirus taskforce’s response coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, had raised concerns about the wisdom of such a large event in the middle of a pandemic that remains undefeated.

The network reported the two experts had “both vocalized concerns internally” in the past week, but to no avail.

The 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa will host the rally on Saturday night, marking Trump’s return to active campaigning in the 2020 election.

Updated

Protesters in San Francisco tore down and defaced statues of white men who had enslaved black and indigenous people, targeting statues of Father Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key, and former US president Ulysses S Grant.

Videos posted on social media and from local news outlets on Friday night show a small crowd in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park cheering as people toppled the monuments with rope, covering them with blood-red paint, and, in at least one instance, dragged them through the grass.

Junipero Serra was a Spanish priest who played a central role in the violent colonization of California. His path towards being canonized as a saint in the Catholic church has long been met with protest from Native Americans.

Serra’s own contemporaries, including French explorer Jean François de Galaup de la Pérouse, compared the Catholic missions the priest founded across California to slave plantations, where indigenous people were forced to work and harshly disciplined.

“By law, all baptized Indians subjected themselves completely to the authority of the Franciscans; they could be whipped, shackled or imprisoned for disobedience, and hunted down if they fled the mission grounds,” PBS News wrote in its biography of Serra. “Indian recruits, who were often forced to convert nearly at gunpoint, could be expected to survive mission life for only about ten years.”

“Everywhere they put a mission the majority of Indians are gone,” Ron Andrade, executive director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, told the Guardian in 2015. “Serra knew what they were doing: they were taking the land, taking the crops, he knew the soldiers were raping women, and he turned his head.”

Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star-Spangled Banner, America’s national anthem, not only personally enslaved people, but also tried to silence the free speech of abolitionists. He used his position as the district attorney for Washington DC in the 1830s to launch high-profile cases attacking the abolitionist movement.

Protesters dragged the Key statue through the grass and were going to dump it in a nearby fountain, until they were told the fountain was a memorial to the AIDS epidemic and stopped, a witness tweeted.

Grant, a general who fought on the side of the United States during the Civil War, was the last US president to have personally owned another human being. While Grant’s father was an abolitionist, he went on to marry a woman from a slaver family and personally direct the labor of the family’s enslaved workers.

As president, Grant also “launched an illegal war against the Plains Indians, and then lied about it,” as Smithsonian Magazine reported.

Even as Grant was leading battles against the Confederate Army, his wife, Julia, was traveling around army camps with a woman named Jules who was still enslaved, a decision that prompted public condemnation. The Grant family did not free Jules after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation; instead, Jules self-emancipated by running away, according to the White House Historical Association.

On Friday, Americans celebrated Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the end of slavery. Juneteenth also marks the long period of waiting between when the United States government officially ended slavery, and when formerly enslaved people across the country actually learned they were free.

Donald Trump has entered the chat to claim victory in today’s court decision, which denied his administration’s attempt to block the forthcoming publication of a tell-all book by former national security advisor John Bolton.

“BIG COURT WIN against Bolton,” the US president tweeted. “Obviously, with the book already given out and leaked to many people and the media, nothing the highly respected Judge could have done about stopping it...BUT, strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION were made.”

He continued: “Bolton broke the law and has been called out and rebuked for so doing, with a really big price to pay. He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!”

Although it strains credulity to frame Saturday’s ruling by US district judge Royce C Lamberth as anything but a defeat for the administration, Trump’s framing of the outcome leans heavily on the opinion of Lamberth, who Bolton said had failed to complete a national security review and “likely published classified materials”.

Updated

Donald Trump has promised a “wild evening” for his supporters in Tulsa in an interview with Axios published on Friday night, saying: “We have to get back to living our lives.”

Oklahoma’s second-largest city is braced for Trump’s first campaign rally since the coronavirus pandemic struck the United States, claiming more than 118,000 lives so far, plunging the economy into recession, and leading to widespread criticism of the president’s botched response to a crisis that has seen his approval ratings tank in recent polls.

The indoor rally, at Tulsa’s 19,000-person capacity BOK Center, comes as the city and the state of Oklahoma experience a surge in Covid-19 cases and local public health officials urge the campaign to reschedule the event over fears that the close contact between attendees – who will not be forced to wear face masks – could lead to more deaths.

The embattled president has used Twitter to threaten “protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes” in the city that they would “not be treated” in the same way they have in other parts of the country.

Judge rules Bolton can publish tell-all despite Trump's efforts to block it

A federal judge ruled Saturday that former national security adviser John Bolton can move forward in publishing his tell-all book despite a last-ditch attempt by the Trump administration to block the release citing national security concerns.

US district judge Royce C Lamberth on Saturday denied the administration’s request for a restraining order. The Room Where It Happened is due to be published on Tuesday.

As Lamberth noted, hundreds of thousands of copies have been shipped for sale. But the judge did say it appeared Bolton had failed to complete a national security review.

“While Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns,” the US district court judge wrote, “the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy.”

You can read Lamberth’s opinion here and more from my colleague Martin Pengelly here.

Updated

Greta Thunberg has said the Black Lives Matter protests show society has reached a tipping point where injustice can no longer be ignored.

Reflecting on the protests that have swept the globe in recent weeks, the Swedish climate activist told the BBC: “It feels like we have passed some kind of social tipping point where people are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things. We cannot keep sweeping these things under the carpet, these injustices.

“People are starting to find their voice, to sort of understand that they can actually have an impact.”

Tipping point’: Greta Thunberg hails Black Lives Matter protests – video

Donald Trump was outraised by Joe Biden in May, taking in $74 million for his reelection, but he maintains a sizable advantage in cash on hand over the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to campaign finance reports filed with the FEC.

The Associated Press reports:

The pro-Trump effort, which includes fundraising by the Republican National Committee, on Saturday reported its total days after Biden and Democrats said they had amassed nearly $81 million last month for his White House bid.

Trump reported having $265 million in the bank at the end of May. Biden and Democrats have yet to disclose their comparable numbers for that period, but the figures were expected to be available later Saturday once the campaign made its official filing with the Federal Election Commission. The total was $103 million in the bank at the end of April.

Trump’s campaign announced this week that it raised $14 million last Sunday, which was the president’s birthday.

Biden on Monday brought in $6 million at a single event featuring Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a onetime rival for the nomination. He plans a fundraiser Tuesday with former President Barack Obama.

Trump’s campaign has begun wide-scale general election ads, spending about $24 million on television and digital spots over the past month, but it has come as the president’s standing in both public and private surveys has taken a hit.

Death seems to follow Donald Trump wherever he goes. At least, the Trump Death Clock does. The real-time tracker, that estimates the number of Americans who have died needlessly as a result of White House incompetence and inaction, has arrived in Tulsa ahead of the US president.

The clock, which currently puts the number of preventable deaths in the US at 71,662, is now beaming out from three strategically-located billboards in the Oklahoman city where they will be hard to miss by Trump supporters and detractors alike. A truck is also circling the Bank of Oklahoma Center where Trump will be speaking, carrying the clock and blasting out the names of Covid-19 dead over a loudspeaker.

Trump Death Clock
The Trump Death Clock has arrived in Tulsa ahead of tonight’s rally. Photograph: Ed Pilkington

Eugene Jarecki, an award-winning filmmaker who is the mastermind behind the clock, is billing its presence in Tulsa as a public service. “We want everyone who attends Trump’s rally to have an opportunity to make an informed choice based on real numbers,” he said.

It has been seven weeks since Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis took a coronavirus “victory lap”, pressing ahead with a swift reopening program while berating the media for a “doom and gloom” approach he said bore little relation to reality.

“We haven’t seen an explosion of new cases,” DeSantis insisted during a 29 April news conference, a day on which the state’s Covid-19 tally increased by 347.

“There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” DeSantis, a keen Trump ally, added.

This week, however, it became clear that the Republican governor’s garden of roses is wilting fast in the face of a resurgent virus.

A period that began with Florida’s daily record of new cases below 1,700 saw eight consecutive days above that figure, five of them topping 2,000 and both Thursday and Friday seeing the highest numbers of all: 3,207 and 3,822 cases, respectively, eclipsing the previous recorded high by more than 35%.

The staggering figures have caused experts at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania to conclude that Florida has “all the markings of the next large epicenter of coronavirus transmission”.

My colleague Richard Luscombe has more from Miami here.

Robert Mueller and his investigators thought it possible Donald Trump lied to them about conversations with Roger Stone, according to previously redacted sections of the special counsel’s report which were were released on Friday night.

The release, part of litigation over portions of Mueller’s findings which remain secret, was largely overshadowed by US attorney general William Barr’s announcement of the resignation of the attorney for the southern district of New York, Geoffrey Berman, who then denied he was stepping down.

Stone, a political dirty trickster and longtime Trump aide and ally, famously claimed advance knowledge of material obtained by WikiLeaks which proved damaging to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Earlier this year, Stone was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election. He is due to report to prison this month, to serve a 40-month sentence.

In a hugely controversial move, Barr overruled prosecutors who recommended Stone be sentenced to seven to nine years.

In written answers, Trump told Mueller he did not recall talking to Stone about WikiLeaks. Multiple witnesses said he did.

The sections of Mueller’s report released on Friday include the following paragraphs: “It is possible that, by the time the president submitted his written answers two years after the relevant events had occurred, he no longer had clear recollections of his discussions with Stone or his knowledge of Stone’s asserted communications with WikiLeaks.

“But the president’s conduct could also be viewed as reflecting his awareness that Stone could provide evidence that would run counter to the president’s denials and would link the president to Stone’s efforts to reach out to WikiLeaks.”

Trump has repeatedly hinted at a pardon for Stone.

Speaking of the AP, here’s a section of its report on the toppling of a statue of Confederate general Albert Pike, which until last night stood in Washington, the capital of the Union from which he seceded and which he fought against in a brutal civil war with the aim of maintaining African American slavery in the Confederate states. It’s always seems worth spelling all that out, to me.

Eyewitness accounts and videos posted on social media indicated that police were on the scene but did not intervene. President Donald Trump quickly tweeted about the toppling, calling out DC mayor Muriel Bowser and writing: “The DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our country.”

Jubilant protesters read out Trump’s tweet over a bullhorn and cheered. After the statue fell, most protesters returned peacefully to Lafayette Park near the White House.

The full report is here.

The AP also reports overnight from Raleigh, North Carolina, where “protesters pulled down parts of a Confederate monument and hanged one of the toppled statues from a light post”.

An interesting report from the Associated Press about the Associated Press, which has “changed its writing style guide to capitalise the ‘b’ in the term Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context”.

The change conveys ‘an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa,” said John Daniszewski, AP’s vice-president of standards. ‘The lowercase black is a color, not a person.’

The news organization will also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.

Daniszewski said the revisions aligned with long-standing identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. He said the decision followed more than two years of research and debate among AP journalists and outside groups and thinkers.

‘Our discussions on style and language consider many points, including the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language, he wrote. ‘We believe this change serves those ends.’

The AP said it expects to make a decision within a month on whether to capitalize the term white. Among the considerations are what that change might mean outside the US.

More here.

The Guardian Style Guide says this: “Black should be used only as an adjective when referring to race, ie not ‘blacks’ but ‘black people’ or whatever noun is appropriate. Lower case unless an individual or organisation specifically prefers to use Black.

Updated

Good morning …

… and welcome to our live coverage of US politics, protests, the coronavirus outbreak and more.

Donald Trump will fly to Tulsa, Oklahoma today for his first campaign rally since early March.

As Covid-19 cases rise in Oklahoma (and other reopening, mostly Republican-led states), leaders of the White House coronavirus taskforce reportedly advised him not to go. Tulsa public health authorities, a local newspaper and more have asked him not to come. The Trump campaign has insisted that all attendees sign a waiver accepting responsibility should they contract Covid-19 at the BOK Center. The campaign says it is providing masks, sanitiser and more. But the rally is on.

There is also widespread civil unrest still to think about, ongoing since the killing by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May, still rippling across the country. Trump moved the rally back a day to avoid a clash with the Juneteenth holiday in a city which, 99 years ago, saw the worst race massacre in US history.

Wary of trouble between pro- and anti-Trump demonstrators, Tulsa was going to institute a curfew. Then Trump, who on Twitter seemed to threaten protesters with a harsh response from law enforcement, intervened. There will be no curfew.

Our southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, is in Tulsa. Here’s his report, as a city wakes to an uncertain day:

Trump will leave the White House late this afternoon.

There is of course much more to watch before then. For starters, in Washington last night protesters pulled down (and set on fire) the only Confederate statue in the District of Columbia. Hands up if you’d heard of Albert Pike, a general (and Mason) who some say was an influential figure in the early Ku Klux Klan, before this? Now you have. Statues continue to be attacked elsewhere.

In a familiar late-night Friday move, meanwhile, the attorney general, William Barr, announced the resignation of Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney in the southern district of New York who has investigated Trump allies including Rudy Giuliani.

But this was news to Berman. Problem.

In the words of Steve Vladeck, a widely read commentator and professor of law at the University of Texas: “It’s worth not losing sight of the fact that the Attorney General of the United States out-and-out lied in a written statement – and in a context in which there could have been little question to him that Berman would publicly call him out for doing so. And he did it anyway.”

More to come.

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