Summary
We’ll be shutting down today’s blog shortly. Here’s a look at the days major news items:
- Trump refuses to commit to accepting election result as Biden enjoys poll lead. In an extraordinary interview with Fox News Sunday recorded at the White House on Friday, Trump said “I’m not losing, because those are fake polls” and refused to say if he would accept the result if Biden won in November.
- Trump bids to stop billions in track-and-trace funds as virus cases spike. The president is seeking to block billions of dollars in funding for coronavirus testing and contact tracing efforts even as cases rise across the US, where around 70,000 people are testing positive each day.
- Portland protesters’ outrage grows over federal officers’ ‘blatant abuse’. Trump tweets ‘we are trying to help Portland, not hurt it’ but the presence of militarized federal agents has prompted shock and anger in the Oregon city.
- Honor John Lewis by passing voting rights bill, leading Democrat urges. House majority whip James Clyburn called on Sunday for both voting rights legislation and an infamous bridge in Alabama to be named after the late civil rights hero.
- Roger Stone uses racial slur on black radio host’s show. The political operative whose 40-month prison sentence was commuted by Donald Trump, his longtime friend, used a racial slur on air while verbally sparring with a black Los Angeles-based radio host.
- Trump equates support for Confederate flag with Black Lives Matter. The president has equated the Black Lives Matter movement with displays of the Confederate flag, saying: “I’m not offended either by Black Lives Matter, that’s freedom of speech. You know the whole thing with cancel culture – we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the north and the south fought.”
- Republican senators post pictures of Elijah Cummings in John Lewis tribute. Social media accounts for two Republican senators, Marco Rubio of Florida and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, mistakenly posted photos of the late congressman Elijah Cummings alongside comments meant to honor John Lewis.
If you missed Donald Trump’s combative interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, my colleague Amanda Holpuch has you covered.
The US president’s first Sunday show appearance in more than a year was peppered with a series of extraordinary moments, including a claim not to care what the military has to say about renaming its bases and an argument about whether identifying an elephant was strong evidence of mental stability.
“Nearly four years into his wild and unlikely presidency,” Holpuch writes, “Donald Trump managed to shock the world again.”
Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti conceded Sunday that his city relaxed Covid-19 restrictions too quickly and warned that the city was “on the brink” of new shutdown orders following a week that saw Los Angeles county record both its highest number of daily new cases and new hospitalizations since the pandemic began.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Garcetti criticized the “lack of national leadership” in engendering an atmosphere conducive to backsliding.
“I think a lot of things went wrong,” Garcetti said. “But, here, where we have had fewer deaths than many of the big cities, and our rate of increase hasn’t accelerated as much as others – we’re kind of in the middle of the pack – we have seen no national leadership. We have had to stand up testing centers on our own. We have had to do so much that is outside of our lane because of the lack of national leadership.
“But, also, I think that there are people who are just exhausted. They were sold a bill of goods. They said this was under control. They said this would be over soon. And I think, when leaders say that, people react and they do the wrong things. They stop distancing themselves. They stop washing their hands. They stop wearing masks.”
Garcetti did not dispute the main thrust of a Los Angeles Times editorial published on Wednesday that stated the state’s rapid reopening “wasn’t a good idea, especially because it suggested to a public desperate for release that the coronavirus was in retreat”.
“I do agree that those things happened too quickly,” Garcetti said. “But ... It’s not just what’s open and closed. It’s also about what we do individually. It’s about the people who are getting together outside of their households with people they might know. It might be their extended family. It might be friends. They might think, because they got a test two weeks ago, that it’s OK. But it’s not. This virus preys on our division. It preys when we get exhausted. It preys on us in those moments when we don’t have a unified national front or we as individuals think, ‘Oh, this ain’t going to be a big deal.’ We have to be as vigilant right now as we were the first day, bring 100% of our strength, the way we did the first or second month. I kind of feel like people are 20% or 30% of their strength these days.
“But we are seeing some hopeful signs. And then you have to be patient. You have to be patient when you close things down again, as we have done, wait two or three weeks to see the effect. And you have to be patient when you reopen things, and don’t have this domino effect of, hey, last week, it was the restaurants. Next week, it can be the bars. Week after that, everything’s open. That is a failed way to go forward. Listen to the science. Track the data, and be smart.”
Louisiana officials said on Sunday they have temporarily suspended an emergency rent assistance program to help those hurt economically by the coronavirus pandemic because they were deluged with applicants.
The Louisiana Housing Corporation (LHC) said more than 40,000 renters have expressed interest in the Louisiana Emergency Rental Assistance Program in the less than four days since the program was launched during a press conference on Thursday, with both the LaRentHelp.com website and 2-1-1 phone line getting overwhelmed.
“The response to our state’s emergency rental assistance program proves how significant the economic burden of Covid-19 is for our citizens,” Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, said on Sunday. “This program was designed to help mitigate and off-set evictions and homelessness, and while we have allocated an additional $17 million for a total of $24 million in federal assistance, we know that much more is needed to address this serious crisis for the hard-working men and women who continue to keep our state going during this crisis.”
The LHC, which had estimated it had enough money to assist roughly 10,000 at-risk tenants, said it will try to find more funds to help applicants in addition to the $24m in federal money originally allotted. Housing advocates had previously warned more relief would be needed with the $600-per-week federal unemployment payments due to expire at the end of the month.
“We know there are many individuals and families whose lives have been upended by this pandemic and that there is a great sense of urgency for housing assistance,” LHC executive director E Keith Cunningham Jr said. “As the state’s housing agency, we are committed to doing everything we can to meet the needs of renters and landlords and are hopeful that additional federal dollars will become available as soon as possible.”
A number of NFL players took to social media on Sunday to publicly express their concerns and anger over the lack of agreed-upon coronavirus safety protocols with teams preparing to open training camps this week.
America’s most popular sports league has moved full speed ahead with plans to start the season on schedule in early September, All 32 teams having conducted their offseason programs remotely under the assumption that training camps will be held in person starting no later than 28 July.
But some of the league’s biggest stars expressed alarm on Sunday that too many outstanding issues remain before players can report in good conscience.
“We need Football! We need sports! We need hope!” New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees wrote on Twitter. “The NFL’s unwillingness to follow the recommendations of their own medical experts will prevent that. If the NFL doesn’t do their part to keep players healthy there is no football in 2020. It’s that simple. Get it done @NFL.”
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson said he is concerned because his wife, Ciara, is pregnant.
He wrote: “My wife is pregnant. @NFL Training camp is about to start.. And there’s still No Clear Plan on Player Health & Family Safety. ???? We want to play football but we also want to protect our loved ones. #WeWantToPlay.”
The Houston Texans’ JJ Watt, a three-time NFL defensive player of the year, highlighted a list of issues that need to be resolved before camps open on Tuesday, including information about how often players will be tested and what will happen if someone does test positive for the coronavirus.
Once again in the interest of keeping everyone (players & fans) as informed as possible, here is an updated list of what we as players know and don’t know as the first group gets set to report to training camp tomorrow.#WeWantToPlay pic.twitter.com/xQcjs33zgM
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) July 19, 2020
Watt noted that an opt-out clause “for those at higher risk or those with family members at higher risk” had still not been agreed upon.
The NFL is America’s richest sports league with an estimated $15bn in revenue last year, but Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s top infectious disease expert, has described the sport as a “perfect setup” for spreading Covid-19 due to the full-contact nature of the sport on every play.
Updated
It came as little surprise when Donald Trump lost New York state by 22 points in the 2016 presidential election, a landslide powered by Hillary Clinton’s overwhelming 60.9% margin of victory in the massively populated five boroughs of New York City.
And while polling shows the US president trailing Joe Biden by an even wider margin ahead of November’s election, Trump’s supporters in his home state made themselves heard on Sunday by taking to the water for the TrumpStock boat parade, which started with a flotilla near the Statue of Liberty before heading up the Hudson River toward the George Washington Bridge.
Footage posted to social media showed vessels and jetskis carrying Trump 2020 flags as they cruised up the Hudson from New York Harbor amid clear skies and 93F temperatures.
Updated
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has issued a statement in response to Donald Trump’s pre-recorded interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace that aired on Sunday morning, describing the US president’s coronavirus response as “actively undercutting our ability to save lives and stop Covid-19”:
Yet again this morning, President Trump attacked the CDC and the public health experts who should be guiding our response to Covid-19, saying that they “don’t know” what they’re talking about.
The past six months have proven again and again that it’s Donald Trump who doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to Covid-19. He said the virus would disappear. He said anyone who wants a test could get a test. He said the virus was under control. When it comes to the coronavirus, you can’t believe a word he says.
It’s astonishing that even after 140,000 Americans have died in the worst Covid-19 outbreak in the developed world, President Trump continues his offensive against the CDC and scientists like Dr Fauci, instead of heeding their clear advice about the steps we must take to stop this virus – from ramping up testing to getting protective equipment to the heroes on the front lines.
But what’s truly disturbing is that President Trump isn’t just attacking our leading health experts – he’s waving the white flag and actively undercutting our ability to save lives and stop Covid-19 by shamefully trying to block critical additional new funding for the CDC, as well as for testing and tracing. Think about that again: In the middle of a pandemic that continues to worsen on his watch, President Trump is trying to keep money away from the public health measures that we know will keep us and our families safe. He even went on to attack the value of testing again in the same interview, perpetuating a terrible months-long streak.
Mr President, your ignorance isn’t a virtue or a sign of your strength – it’s undercutting our response to this unprecedented crisis at every turn and it’s costing Americans their jobs and their lives.
It’s long past due for President Trump to listen to somebody other than himself in how to fight this virus, because after six straight months of deadly mismanagement it is spiraling even more out of control. He can start immediately by adopting the proposals I have laid out for months now that experts tell us will help us stop this virus, save lives, and safely re-open our economy.
Donald Trump is back at the White House after this morning’s visit to Trump National Golf Club across the Potomac, his ninth trip to his Loudoun county property in 29 days.
A White House pool report describes what’s become a regular scene outside the club during the president’s twice-weekly visits over the past month.
Outside the club entrance, about 15 or so protesters displayed mostly handmade anti-Trump signs like “The World Despises You,” “Have a Nice Convention,” “Trump the Body Snatcher. What Country Is This?” “No Trump. No KKK. No Racist Fascist USA,” “Trump Is The Virus,” “Trump Is Corrupt,” “Grifter and Failure,” and one that said “PIG” with the “I” in the shape of a female stick figure.
About five or so POTUS supporters waved pro-Trump flags (versions of “Trump 2020: Keep America Great”), planted a “Trump-Pence” sign in the grass or held up a handwritten “Jobs Not Mobs” sign. A Jeep flying a blue “Trump: Make America Great Again” flag and a US flag drove back and forth repeatedly with patriotic songs playing on the radio. Other drivers honked as they passed by, although it was not always clear which camp they were cheering on.
Trump fired off a couple of tweets on his ride back to the White House, taking a shot at “Radical Left Democrats” as the motorcade neared the Beltway and popping off at Obama and Biden once again on the final approach to the executive mansion, according to the pool report.
Georgia Democrats to pick Lewis successor
Georgia Democrats will gather on Monday to decide a replacement for John Lewis, the great civil rights leader who died on Friday aged 80, after serving more than 30 years in Congress.
Lewis’s Atlanta-area seat will remain empty until Governor Brian Kemp schedules a special election but the Democratic party of Georgia is accepting applications for the nomination online until 6.30pm on Sunday.
A special seven-member committee – including Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, 2018 gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and 2014 gubernatorial nominee Jason Carter – will then choose between three and five candidates. The state party’s executive committee will then choose a nominee and submit the name to the Georgia secretary of state by 4pm on Monday.
In November, the nominee will face Republican Angela Stanton-King. Stanton-King is a reality TV personality who was pardoned earlier this year by Donald Trump for her role in a stolen car ring, for which she served six months of home confinement in 2007.
Lewis won more than 84% of the vote when he last faced a Republican, in 2016.
Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor and like Abrams a possible vice-presidential pick for Joe Biden, paid tribute to Lewis on Sunday.
On CBS’s Face the Nation, she said: “You know, growing up in Atlanta, we have the great privilege of having these giants walk amongst us. So for me personally, John Lewis was more than this historical figure. He’s a person you see in the grocery store, that you see a church, that you see out and about around town.
“And his legacy really speaks to so much about where we are with this movement and this moment in America. What he instilled in all of us was just courage and to do the right thing and treat people in a way that would then in turn have dignity and respect upon all of us. And so I am so grateful for his leadership and legacy.
“I don’t think it happenstance that his last public appearance was on the Black Lives Matter Plaza [near the White House in Washington]. Because I think in his own way, he was leaving with us this reminder that the fight continues.”
To adapt the words of the great Bruce Robinson, writer of Withnail and I, Donald Trump has finished thwacking his orb about and is prepared to step back into society. Or if not quite that, this huge thatched head of state with his earlobes and golf ball is back at the White House from his course in Virginia and has been tweeting again. Here’s the pool report, from Peter Baker of the New York Times:
The motorcade arrived back at the White House at 1.16pm. The ride was uneventful. POTUS lobbed a Twitter shot at ‘Radical Left Democrats’ just as the Beast neared the Beltway and another at Obama and Biden as the vehicles approached the White House. Your pool briefly spotted POTUS in a white shirt and red baseball cap heading back into the building.
The tweet aimed at Obama and Biden was Obamagate-themed, which is what it is, but the one about “radical left Democrats” was again aimed towards Portland, where federal agents acting alongside city police continue to confront and sometimes detain protesters against police brutality and structural racism.
Here’s what Portland mayor Ted Wheeler had to say to CNN’s State of the Union this morning:
The president has a complete misunderstanding of cause and effect. We have dozens, if not hundreds of federal troops descending upon our city. And … they are sharply escalating the situation. Their presence is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. It’s not helping the situation at all. They’re not wanted here. We haven’t asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.
The tactics that the Trump administration are using on the streets of Portland are abhorrent. People are … being denied probable cause and they’re denied due process. They don’t even know who’s pulling them into the vans. The people aren’t identifying themselves. And, as far as I can see, this is completely unconstitutional.”
Here’s Hallie Golden’s report, which includes interviews with three protesters who have been subject to the attentions of such federal officers, or seen them in action:
A sliver of good news from Vermont. The state has now gone 30 days without reporting a Covid-19 death, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. A total of 56 people have died from the virus in the rural, northeastern state but none since 19 June.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has told CNN that cutting funding for the Centers for Disease Control during the pandemic would be extremely foolish.
“The administration is talking about – Republican McConnell is talking about cutting it – that would be cutting your nose to spite your face. We need the CDC to help us fight Covid,” he said. “To not have the facts, to not have the science makes no sense at all.”
Schumer added that the Democrats would fight to keep funding for the CDC. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure that the CDC is fully funded in the stimulus package,” he said.
Schumer also said it was important to keep data about the pandemic public. “For the president, the administration to want to sweep the facts under the rug so they can hide them, it’s not gonna work,” he said. “Whenever the President has tried to avoid the problem, like this will go away, this wont affect many people, it’s gotten worse.”
Some have sought to downplay the alarming rise in Covid-19 cases across the US by saying that it is mostly younger, healthier people who are contracting the virus. Apart from the fact that young people can spread the virus to more vulnerable populations, there are also plenty of examples of healthy people suffering devastating effect from Covid-19.
And they don’t get much healthier than professional athletes. Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, one of the best players in baseball, said he prayed for his life after contracting the virus.
“I said a little prayer that night,” Freeman said, describing how his temperature rose to 104.5F (40.2C) at one point. “I’ve never been that hot before. My body was really, really hot. ... I said ‘Please don’t take me’ because I wasn’t ready.”
The 30-year-old Freeman has since recovered but says he does not know if he will be ready for the start of the MLB season, which is due to get underway on Thursday.
Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, has called national testing for Covid-19 “a disgrace” during an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press.
“So, the national testing scene is a complete disgrace,” said Polis. “So, every test we send out to private lab partners nationally, Quest, Labcorp, seven days, eight days, nine days maybe six days if we’re lucky. Almost useless from an epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective. Fortunately, our state lab has done yeoman’s work. We’re running three shifts a day there, 24 hours a day.
“So while some are still sent out of state, and unfortunately that takes a long time and we can’t count on it and our country needs to get testing right, we’re trying to build that capacity in Colorado to process tests at that one to two-day turnaround, and we already are able to do two or three-thousand a day that way, and even more along with our private lab partners in-state like UC Health.”
The Florida Department of Health reported 12,478 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday, a rise from the 10,328 cases reported on Saturday. In addition, 87 new deaths were reported, down from the 90 on Saturday. A total of 4,982 people have died from the virus in Florida since the start of the pandemic.
In an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, congresswoman Donna Shalala, who represents Florida’s 27th congressional district, attacked the state and federal response to the pandemic.
“It’s terrible,” she said. “We have community spread, which means the virus is out of control. The lack of leadership in the White House and in our governor’s office, they simply have not hit this with a hammer, which is what we needed to do, and starve the virus. They opened too soon. And they misunderstand what you need to do – or they understand it and they’re not willing to do it.
“Next week, the Kaiser Family Foundation will report for the hotspot states that it’s seniors again, in nursing homes, and young people now. In my district, it’s low-income minorities, Hispanics and African Americans, who were forced to go back to work for economic reasons and because their employers demanded they go back to work. And they live in multigenerational situations, in small quarters, and the disease simply spread in those areas.”
There has been some confusion as to whether Kanye West’s run for the presidency is serious. Earlier this week, he qualified to appear on the presidential ballot in Oklahoma while on Friday he asked his followers to plead with supporters to get him on the ballot in South Carolina, where he missed the deadline for registration. However, earlier in the week West’s adviser said he “is out” of the running.
On Sunday, a tweet appeared to show West still thinks the dream is alive. He posted a drawing of the White House with the caption “THE WEST WING”.
THE WEST WING #2020VISION pic.twitter.com/QvhgIzJCcv
— ye (@kanyewest) July 19, 2020
While many view West’s run as a stunt, others worry he could take votes off the presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden in crucial battleground states if he does run.
Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press and said he is concerned about the direction Covid-19 is taking in his state.
“We are at the point where we could become Florida, you know. Where you look at our numbers today versus where Florida was a month ago, we have very similar numbers. So we’re very, very concerned,” said DeWine.
DeWine then avoids a question about whether he has confidence in Donald Trump’s leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I think people look frankly to the governors. Historically, we’ve looked to governors to deal with, you know, crises, whether it’s tornado damage, whether it’s a flood, a pandemic,” says DeWine. “We look to governors. And so, you know, what this administration has been able to provide us and that Congress has provided us, and we thank both of them, is the money.”
DeWine is asked again if he has confidence in the president’s leadership, and he again largely avoids the question, instead mostly praising Mike Pence rather than Trump.
“I have confidence in this administration,” says DeWine. “We’re on a phone call every week, every governor, Democrats and Republicans, sometimes twice a week, with the vice president. The vice president has been doing an absolutely phenomenal job in leading that and, of course, the president has delegated that to the vice president.”
The New York Times reports that Roger Stone, the longtime friend and former campaign adviser for Donald Trump, has used a racial slur during an interview with a broadcaster who is black.
The president commuted Stone’s prison sentence earlier this month and Stone appeared on Morris W O’Kelly’s radio show to discuss the issue on Saturday.
O’Kelly referenced Stone’s relationship with the president when he asked: “There are thousands of people treated unfairly daily, how your number just happened to come up in the lottery, I am guessing it was more than just luck, Roger, right?”
It then sounded like Stone, who was being interviewed over the phone, spoke to someone nearby stating: “arguing with this Negro”. When challenged about his use of the word, Stone remained silent before denying he had used it.
“It’s the diet version of the N-word, but as an African-American man, it’s something I deal with pretty frequently,” O’Kelly told the Times. “If there’s a takeaway from the conversation, it is that Roger Stone gave an unvarnished look into what is in the heart of many Americans today.”
The number of patients in hospital in New York with Covid-19 is at its lowest since 18 March. There were 722 hospitalizations due to Covid reported on Sunday, down from 743 on Saturday. Thirteen deaths from the virus in New York were reported on Sunday.
“We’re continuing to progress forward through the Covid-19 pandemic in the face of a continued explosion of cases throughout the United States, and that’s reflected in today’s hospitalizations – the lowest number since March 18 – and rate of positive cases,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.
Karen Bass, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, is on ABC’s This Week to talk about civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis, who died on Friday.
“What we have to do is live up to his legacy,” says Bass. “We need to continue that fight for social justice. And again, the first thing we need to do is to pass the Voting Rights Act and get it signed, because we’re very concerned about the election coming up and voter suppression, and the fact that people are going to have to vote in dangerous conditions. They need to be able to vote from home.
“And I know that if he was still with us, he would be leading that fight.”
Dr Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, has appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press.
He is asked whether he has been told to fire or demote Anthony Fauci by anyone in the White House. “Nobody has asked me to do that and I find that concept unimaginable,” he says. “And I am amused that everybody’s calling me Dr Fauci boss because his real boss is his wife, Christine Grady. She might have something to say about that.”
Collins also expresses confusion at the fact that mask wearing has turned into a political question.
“Well, it is bizarre that we have turned the mask wearing into something political,” he says. “Imagine you were an alien coming to the planet Earth, and looking around, looking at the scientific data or going from various place to place and looking to see who’s wearing masks.
“You would be totally astounded, puzzled, amazed, you’d wonder, ‘What is going on here? How could it be that something as basic as a public health action, that we have very strong evidence can help, seems to attach to people’s political party?’”
The interview ends with Trump being asked how he will remember his years in the White House. He strikes a familiar, self-pitying tone.
“I think I was very unfairly treated,” he says. “From before I even won I was investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.”
Trump refuses to say he will accept result of election
Trump says he will win the election in November against an opponent who is “mentally shot”.
Trump then continues his tactics of depicting Biden as a tool of the “radical left”.
“He will destroy this country, but it won’t be him, it will be the radical left – the same ideology that took over Venezuela… they now have no water or medicine ... the same will happen here.”
Disturbingly, he then refuses to say he will accept the result of the election. “Can you give a direct answer you will accept the election?” asks Wallace.
“I have to see ... I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes,” says the president.
Updated
Trump says he is “not a big fan” of Fox, and says the channel has changed since the death of its former CEO Roger Ailes.
Updated
Trump says niece's attacks on his parents hurt
Attention turns to the recent book by the president’s niece, Mary, that depicts Trump and his wider family as dysfunctional.
“She was not exactly a family favorite,” he says. “We didn’t have a lot of respect or like for her. I would’ve never said that except she writes a book that’s so stupid and so vicious and it’s a lie.”
He says he objected to criticism of his parents. “It hurts me more by attacking my father and not being kind to my mother,” says Trump.
You can read our review of Mary Trump’s book here:
Updated
Trump claims Democrats want to keep the economy closed down before the election so that it will reflect badly on him.
Trump is asked why he replaced his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, if he is winning the election campaign. “He’s a great digital guy, we all like him a lot, but I have somebody that was involved. You know they were all on the 2016 campaign,” he says.
Trump 'won't say' if he thinks Joe Biden is senile
Attention turns to November’s election. Trump is shown a poll that shows people trust Joe Biden more to handle coronavirus, race relations, and the economy, and that Biden leads by eight points overall. He says such polls are “fake”.
Trump’s tactics this fall are likely to attempt to depict Biden as a radical socialist. But in Sunday’s interview he appears to go after Biden’s mental faculties. “Biden can’t put two sentences together. They wheel him out. He goes up – he repeats – they ask him questions,” he says. “He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement.”
Trump is then asked if he thinks Biden is senile. “I don’t want to say that. I’d say he’s not competent to be president,” he says.
He is also asked about a poll that says people think Biden is more mentally sound than Trump. “Let him take the same test that I took.” I’ll guarantee you that Joe Biden could not answer those questions.”
Trump is asked about renaming military bases that are named after Confederate figures. “Go to the community, say how do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg, and then what are we going to name it? We going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton?” he says.
Trump is asked if the Confederate flag is racist.
“When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the south,” says Trump. He then equates Black Lives Matters flags with Confederate flags, a staggering and offensive claim given that the latter represents a system that thrived on slavery.
Next up is crime in America. Trump has long depicted himself as a law and order president, even if that doesn’t always extend to clamping down on his friends’ activities.
He is asked about rising crime in US cities in recent weeks. “I explain it very simply by saying they’re Democrat-run cities. They’re liberally run. They’re stupidly run.”
He then makes a false claim about Biden, saying: “It’s really because they want to defund the police, and Biden wants to defund the police.”
“No, sir, he does not,” Wallace says. In fact, Biden has repeatedly said he does not support calls to defund the police and has instead called for policing reform.
Trump says he would consider not signing another economic stimulus package if there is no payroll tax cut.
Trump says he wants states to reopen schools where possible. “There is going to be a funding problem because we aren’t going to fund them if they don’t open their schools.”
Trump is asked about enforcing a nationwide mandate for masks to be worn in public. “No, I want people to have a certain freedom,” says Trump. He later says he believes masks can help stop the spread of Covid-19 though.
Trump: Fauci is 'a little bit of an alarmist'
Trump is asked about his top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci. Reports indicate the White House is looking to discredit Fauci. Trump denies he has fallen out with Fauci, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. “I spoke to him yesterday at length, I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci” he says. He also says Fauci, who has emerged as a frank public voice on the pandemic, is “a little bit of an alarmist”
Trump adds that he believes Covid-19 will “eventually disappear”.
Updated
Trump says the surge in Covid-19 cases is down to an increase in testing. Wallace points out that testing is up but that does not account for the overall increase in positive tests, as well as the increase in positivity.
Trump then reverts to blaming China, an old tactic. He says rates are lower in Europe because testing is not as widespread there.
Trump is now on Fox News being interviewed by Chris Wallace. First up is the coronavirus. Trump is asked about the surge in cases of coronavirus. Trump says the US has one of the lowest mortality rates in the world, which is untrue. He is then shown a chart that shows the US has the seventh worst rate in the world.
Fox News’ interview with Donald Trump will broadcast in the next 10 minutes. The interview, with Chris Wallace, was conducted on Friday and by all accounts was a little spicy. The Guardian spoke to Wallace earlier this year about his views on Trump and his relationship with a broadcaster that some believe shapes his policy:
Portland, Oregon remains the site of anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests and confrontations with police and federal officers sent to the north-western city by the Trump administration. Hallie Golden has been speaking to some of the protesters:
Lindsey Smith, 26, a preschool teacher who has been attending protests regularly, said she started noticing federal officers firing tear gas into the crowd and detaining and arresting people at the beginning of July.
On three recent occasions, she said, she witnessed people bang on the boarded-up doors of the federal courthouse in downtown Portland. Officers opened a door, grabbed the person and pulled them into the building, before slamming it shut again.
But she said it was important not to let such officers’ actions overshadow the fact that the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has been “extremely violent” to local protesters for much longer.
“This has been going on for months with PPB enacting the same kind of violence that we’re seeing from the feds now,” she said.
Hallie’s full report will be live soon. In the meantime, Donald Trump has tweeted on the matter, claiming: “We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!”
Here’s Trevor Timm’s powerful take on what is going on:
Remarkable as it may seem, the Texas Republican party has been fighting to be allowed to stage its convention with large, in-person indoor events, even as coronavirus cases surge in the state and Houston, the intended venue, emerges as a hotspot, hospitals creaking under the strain.
On Saturday, a federal appeals court overruled a judge’s Friday decision allowing the in-person convention to go ahead in the fourth-largest US city. Judge Lynn Hughes, of the southern district of Texas, had ruled that the city of Houston violated the GOP’s constitutional rights by canceling the event. Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, appealed that ruling.
The ruling against Judge Hughes came as Texas reported more than 10,000 new cases of Covid-19 for a fifth consecutive day and more than 100 deaths for a fourth day in a row. The total number of Texans hospitalised rose to 10,658. The seven-day average for positive tests was just over 16%.
James Dickey, chairman of the Texas Republican party, has said the party will try a virtual gathering.
On Saturday, it took Donald Trump 14 hours to tweet a tribute to John Lewis, the Democratic congressman and civil rights leader who died aged 80 on Friday night. When the presidential tweet did come – after the president had played golf – it was short and to the point.
“Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing,” Trump wrote. “Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.”
Today, meanwhile, flags at the White House which were ordered lowered to half-staff in Lewis’s memories have reportedly been raised to their full height again.
But at least Trump hasn’t sent out a tweet or posted to Facebook pictures of Lewis which are in fact pictures of somebody else. It’s a trap into which two Republican senators fell, as the Associated Press reports:
Social media accounts for two Republican senators, Marco Rubio of Florida and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, mistakenly posted photos of the late congressman Elijah Cummings alongside comments meant to honor John Lewis.
The posts were quickly revised with photos of Lewis, the civil rights leader and lawmaker who died on Friday at the age of 80.
Rubio acknowledged the error and displayed a video of himself with Lewis.
“Earlier today I tweeted an incorrect photo,” he wrote. “John Lewis was a genuine American hero. I was honored to appear together in Miami three years ago at an event captured in video below. May God grant him eternal rest.”
Sullivan’s Facebook tribute to Lewis featured a photo of Sullivan and Cummings, a congressman from Maryland who died last year, at the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The revised tribute omitted reference to the museum, and the photo was replaced with a picture of Lewis alone. The changes were made without comment. In response to an email, Sullivan spokesman Mike Anderson wrote: “Senator Sullivan’s staff made a mistake trying to honor an American legend.”
Lewis represented an Atlanta district from 1987 until his death. Cummings, a fellow civil rights activist who won 12 terms in Congress representing a district in Maryland, died last October, aged 68.
For what it’s worth, Trump seems to be heading out to play golf.
Pool reporter Peter Baker, of the New York Times, says reporters were “loaded into the motorcade for an excursion to an undisclosed location but your guess is probably right. For what it’s worth, the temperature in Sterling, Virginia, is set to climb to a muggy 98F today.”
He adds: “The motorcade is rolling as of 8.12am. A man in a golf shirt, shorts and cap was escorted into the motorcade moments before departure, presumably a guest. Will endeavor to identify him.”
Presumably that’s an extra guest to Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator and former presidential candidate who famously called Trump a “nutjob”, “a loser” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who would “destroy” the Republican party, but has since become Trump’s golfing partner and close ally on Capitol Hill.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reports that it “looks like Graham is headed to the golf course with President Trump for the second day in a row. They were just spotted … leaving the White House together.”
Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean Graham had a sleepover with his best friend, getting to stay up and watch The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix and have cookies and milk and then sit talking till, like, forever – sorry, tired dad of three young girls writing here – but you have to agree it’s an image.
Good morning…
…and welcome to another day of coverage of politics in the US, which means coverage of the presidential campaign, the coronavirus pandemic, tributes to the late John Lewis and more.
Fox News Sunday will this morning broadcast an interview with Donald Trump, his first with a Sunday show in more than a year, which sees the president questioned by Chris Wallace, one of the more incisive interviewers in American television. A clip released on Friday showed Wallace putting Trump right on his claim Joe Biden wants to defund the police – which Biden doesn’t – and Trump not liking it.
The interview was recorded on Friday, however. Wallace said he did ask the president about the pandemic and efforts to tackle it. But they were speaking a day before the Washington Post and then the New York Times reported that as Congress and the Trump White House negotiate the next stimulus and relief package for an economy and a nation hammered by Covid-19, the White House is seeking to block funding for testing and tracing efforts, and other key areas of the pandemic response.
As itemised by the Times, Senate Republicans – many from states experiencing frightening surges in cases and hospitalisations – have proposed:
- $25bn to states for conducting testing and contact tracing
- About $10bn for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- About $15bn for the National Institutes of Health
- $5.5bn to the state department and $20bn to the Pentagon “to help counter the virus outbreak and potentially distribute a vaccine at home and abroad”.
But in talks over the weekend, administration officials instead pushed to zero out the funding for testing and for the nation’s top health agencies, and to cut the Pentagon funding to $5bn.
The suggestions infuriated several Republicans on Capitol Hill, who saw them as tone deaf.
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the US has now seen more than 3.7 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 140,000 people have died, with around 70,000 new cases being confirmed every day.
But Trump, remember, thinks the US should do fewer tests, because that means it will discover fewer cases.
We’ll be looking for reaction throughout the morning, as well as other news lines. In the meantime, here’s essential reading from Tom McCarthy, our national affairs correspondent, on what the experts say is coming down the tracks in the fall:
