As summer ends, and as deaths near 200,000 amid severe economic damage, experts say the next few months are vital
Even with three decades of experience in the travel industry, Jorge Pesquera has never seen a downturn in business like this one.
Related: Could western Pennsylvania win Trump a second term?
Continue reading...President says US must look seriously at case but suggests media should be looking into China
President Donald Trump said the United States must look “very seriously” into the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but that his administration had not yet seen any proof.
“I think we have to look at it very seriously, if it’s the case,” he said, before talking at length about his diplomatic efforts in North Korea and nuclear non-proliferation in Russia. “I don’t know exactly what happened. It’s tragic. It’s terrible, it shouldn’t happen. We haven’t had any proof yet, but I will take a look.
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Jennifer Griffin, a national security correspondent for Fox News, said she has confirmed reporting by The Atlantic with two former senior Trump administration officials.
One former official told her: “When the President spoke about the Vietnam War, he said, ‘It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker.’”
This former official heard the President say about American veterans: "What's in it for them? They don't make any money." Source: "It was a character flaw of the President. He could not understand why someone would die for their country, not worth it."
Regarding McCain, "The President just hated John McCain. He always asked, 'Why do you see him as a hero?" Two sources confirmed the President did not want flags lowered but others in the White House ordered them at half mast. There was a stand off and then the President relented.
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A furious Joe Biden castigated Donald Trump after it was reported that the US president had called dead soldiers 'losers' and 'suckers'. 'If what is written is true, it's disgusting,' Biden said. 'It affirms what most of us believe to be true: Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief.'
Trump reportedly made the remarks when he cancelled a visit to pay respects at an American military cemetery outside Paris in 2018. He has denied the allegations, first reported in the Atlantic magazine
Continue reading...Trump claims accusations, confirmed by two former DHS officials, are ‘totally false’ as Biden criticizes president
Current and former members of the military, elected officials and the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, have reacted with outrage and sadness as former members of the Donald Trump administration confirmed key details of a bombshell report in which Trump referred to fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”.
Related: Khizr Khan: 'Trump may damage American democracy permanently'
Continue reading...Nogales residents say the city is struggling amid the pandemic and after years of Trump painting the area as a ‘war zone’
When Francis Glad was a child growing up in Nogales, Arizona, the US-Mexico border near her home was nothing like it is now. “It was more like a neighbor fence, like you have at your house,” she remembers. “It was very symbiotic. Just people coming back and forth.”
But today, a towering 30ft border wall, made of dizzying steel bollards, slices through the Nogales sister cities.
Continue reading...Americans are increasingly encountering barriers to exercising their most fundamental of democratic rights during this 2020 presidential election – the right to vote.
The Guardian's Sam Levine looks at how voter suppression has been unfolding across the US, four key tactics being used in attempts to block votes, and how president Donald Trump is trying delegitimize November's election
US president Donald Trump slammed House speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Democrat was filmed at an indoor hair salon with her face covering around her neck. Trump, a longtime critic of Pelosi, pounced on the opportunity to attack her over the incident. “I’ll tell you what, she must have treated that beauty salon owner pretty badly. She uses the salon and the salon turned her in?” he said. “So I just put out that if she was set up, then she shouldn’t be leading the House of Representatives. I want the salon owner to lead the House of Representatives.”
Continue reading...Joe Biden said he sought common ground while Trump, he said, stoked division and was actively obstructing racial progress
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Thursday warned that Donald Trump’s behavior “legitimizes the dark side of human nature”. He made the remarks during a visit to Wisconsin, where he spoke by phone to Jacob Blake, a Black man whose shooting by a white police officer renewed nationwide protests against systemic racism.
Related: Joe Biden meets privately with Jacob Blake's family amid protests over shooting
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The Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn reports:
Joe Biden will meet Jacob Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr, later today as well as other members of the family of the 29-year-old who is gravely wounded and still fighting for his health in a local hospital in Kenosha after being shot in the back by a white police officer on August 23.
Trump and his advisers are trying to walk back his comments encouraging North Carolinians to vote twice in the November elections.
The president said yesterday, “Let them send it in and let them go vote. And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.
Trump yesterday: “If you get the unsolicited ballots ... send it in early, and then go and vote.”
Trump in May:
“If you told a Republican to vote twice, they'd get sick at even the thought of it."pic.twitter.com/bjWMotfXrP
White House summit irritates EU diplomats, who say deal brokered by them is near
The leaders of Kosovo and Serbia will meet at the White House on Thursday and Friday, in an encounter that some see as a push for a diplomatic win for Donald Trump to brandish during his re-election campaign.
Kosovo’s prime minister, Avdullah Hoti, will meet with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, in talks that Trump aides say will be primarily about economic issues between the two countries, but may pave the way to a broader deal.
Continue reading...White House manipulation of US intelligence on Russian and Chinese interference may rival WMD fiasco that led to Iraq war, say experts
Two months before the presidential election, the US intelligence agencies are under increasing pressure from the Trump administration to provide only the information it wants to hear.
After installing loyalist John Ratcliffe at the pinnacle of the intelligence community, the administration is seeking to limit congressional oversight, and has removed a veteran official from a sensitive national security role in the justice department
Continue reading...Anti-democratic attitudes in America helped to scrub our election, while US-Nile geopolitics could become a powder keg
When US presidents comment on events in other countries, their remarks have impact.
When, for example, President Barack Obama congratulated the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) on an apparent landslide election victory in 2015, it signalled to some Ethiopians that the world’s most powerful country would not favour a legal challenge to the election results.
Continue reading...US president Donald Trump told voters in North Carolina they should vote twice, once by mail and once in person, even though doing so would be illegal. Trump was asked whether he has confidence in the mail-in voting system before suggesting voters break the law as he cast further confusion over the process ahead of November's election. 'Let them send it [their mail-in ballot] in and let them go vote, and if their system’s as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote,' he said.'So that’s the way it is. And that’s what they should do'
Continue reading...House speaker Nancy Pelosi says she was 'set up' after she was photographed in a San Francisco hair salon without a face covering, breaking the city's coronavirus prevention rules. 'I take responsibility for trusting the word of a neighbourhood salon that I have been to over the years many times,' she said. 'I don't wear a mask when I'm washing my hair. Do you wear a mask when you're washing your hair?' Security camera footage of Pelosi in the salon was obtained by Fox News, sparking outcry over the incident which was pounced on by Donald Trump
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From me and Joan E Greve:
A Bay Area police officer has been charged with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of a Black man in a Walmart store in April.
The district attorney in California’s Alameda county announced the charge against officer Jason Fletcher, 49, in the killing Steven Taylor, 33. Responding to a call about a possible shoplifter with a baseball bat at a Walmart, Fletcher fired first his taser and then his pistol at Taylor, killing him.
Lee Merritt, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said Taylor was going through a mental health crisis on Saturday afternoon, and that he has previously suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar depression. “He was shot after he had become completely helpless and no longer represented a threat,” Merritt told the Guardian on Monday.
Merritt said he wasn’t sure yet whether police shot Taylor with a Taser or bullet after he was already down, and that an autopsy was under way.
Related: 'Don't shoot him no more!' California police face backlash over killing of man in Walmart
Continue reading...Democratic candidate sought to put virus at heart of the campaign as rivals gave duelling speeches on Wednesday
Joe Biden attempted to regain the narrative in the US presidential election on Wednesday, telling Donald Trump to “get off Twitter” and focus on safely reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Covid cases could surge in battleground midwest during Labor Day holiday
Continue reading...Joe Biden has described school closures as a ‘national emergency’ as he sought to put the coronavirus pandemic back at the heart of the US election campaign, after two weeks of Trump seeking to capitalise on sporadic scenes of violence in cities to push a ‘law and order’ theme
Continue reading...Make no mistake: this is Trump’s America, where protesters are shot by vigilantes as police look on
Donald Trump took a trip to a place called Biden’s America on Tuesday. It is a strange land where the president of the United States is a helpless guest, a doomed corner of his own country that is somehow ruled by a former vice president.
It is a topsy-turvy place, this Biden’s America. Occasionally, the president can regain his magical ruling powers by summoning assorted minions in uniforms and incanting a spell with his thumbs to tweet the words LAW AND ORDER.
Continue reading...US president blamed police discrimination on ‘bad apples’. Plus, US refuses to join coronavirus vaccine cooperation over WHO stance
Good morning. Trump blamed discriminatory policing on “bad apples”, and denied it was “systemic”, as he visited Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kenosha has been the site of daily anti-racism protests since police shot and paralysed Jacob Blake, an African American man, as he was getting into his vehicle with his three children inside.
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