Frustrated, some Republicans have become anti-Trumpers: ‘This guy couldn’t lead his way out of a wet frickin’ paper bag’
The anti-Trumpers are at it again – only this time, they’re Republicans.
Kevin, a lifelong Republican voter and pastor from Arizona, says he voted for Trump in 2016 “with high hopes for the future”. He knew that Trump didn’t have the same political experience as the other contenders, but he was optimistic he could grow into his new role.
Continue reading...Trump’s commutation ‘does not have to be the end of the story’, Andrew Weissmann wrote in a New York Times column
Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence for lying to Congress and other crimes discovered in the Russia investigation “does not have to be the end of the story”, the former Mueller team member Andrew Weissmann said on Tuesday, advocating that the self-confessed political dirty trickster be brought before a grand jury.
Related: Roger Stone speaks in Fox News interview after Trump commutation
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This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
The latest challenge in the country’s coronavirus crisis centers on whether schools should reopen this fall, with the president and many of his advisers pushing for schools to resume in-person instruction.
Adm. Brett Giroir has been doing the TV round this morning, and gave a pretty snappy response when he was asked about the accusation that Donald Trump retweeted yesterday that the CDC and “most” doctors were lying about the coronavirus outbreak.
Asked directly on NBC’s Today whether the CDC and other doctors are lying, Giroir, a top member of the White House coronavirus task force, said that mistakes have been made and that public guidance is updated when more is learned about the virus, “but none of us lie. We are completely transparent with the American people.”
Continue reading...Trump has claimed he received 'rave reviews' for commuting the prison sentence of Roger Stone, his long-time ally. Stone, 67, was convicted in November 2019 of obstructing a congressional investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Both Democrats and Republicans have criticised the move as a miscarriage of justice
Donald Trump has rebuffed reports that the White House is briefing against Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top public health expert. 'I have a very good relationship with Dr Fauci,' he said. The president's press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, denied that officials had shared 'opposition research' with reporters. Over the weekend, Trump aides told news outlets that Fauci, who has become the public face of the government’s response, had made a series of 'mistakes' in his predictions
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Hi all - Sam Levin here, taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day, writing from Los Angeles, which is returning to strict closures for a number of industries, as Covid infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to surge here.
Business owners in LA have told me that it’s been particularly painful to restart and then shut down again, and that they have been pouring money into making their indoor operations safe, with little certainty about when they can properly reopen. Here’s more from my colleague Vivian Ho on the state of the crisis and new restrictions across California:
Related: California rolls back reopening of bars, restaurants and indoor venues
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Sam Levin, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Continue reading...The president says the scientist leading the US fight against the virus has ‘made a lot of mistakes’
He is the US scientist who became the figurehead of attempts to combat the country’s coronavirus epidemic, described in some quarters as “America’s doctor”.
Now Anthony Fauci appears sidelined by Donald Trump’s White House after repeatedly contradicting the president’s view about the effectiveness of the government response.
Continue reading...If he’s to stay in power, Trump needs to repeat his victory in Wisconsin. But the landscape is very different now – and support is shrinking
Donald Trump claimed to have done so much for African Americans that his campaign decided to open the first ever Republican office in a black neighbourhood of Milwaukee.
Related: White House attacks Fauci as states see record new coronavirus cases – live updates
Continue reading...With Germany at the EU helm, there’s a unique chance for Europe to fill the vacuum left by the retreating US
With Trump’s US missing in action from the global stage, the European Union should be stepping into the vacuum. Germany, which has just taken over the bloc’s rotating presidency, could use the next six months to provide the leadership to boost Europe’s global impact. But is it ready to shake off its traditional reticence?
Immediate economic challenges will dominate EU leaders’ first in-person encounter since the lockdown, on 17 and 18 July. And Berlin is right to prioritise agreement on the EU’s new seven-year budget and a pandemic recovery plan, a task complicated by internal rifts and new forecasts warning of an even deeper recession than expected across the 27-nation bloc. As Angela Merkel said in a recent Guardian interview: “For Europe to survive, its economy needs to survive.”
Continue reading...US special counsel defends his investigation into allegations of corruption during 2016 election
The former special counsel Robert Mueller made a rare move on Saturday to publicly defend his two-year investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election – and to castigate Donald Trump’s decision to commute Roger Stone’s prison sentence.
Mueller wrote an opinion article for the Washington Post [paywall] published under the headline “Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so”.
Continue reading...Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope
“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.
It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.
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The grim news from Florida continues: The state reported 15,000 new cases on Sunday. That breaks not only the record for a state in the US in a single day but is also more new cases than any European country has reported in a single day during the pandemic. Only the US, Brazil and India have reported more new cases in a day than Florida did on Sunday.
Related: Florida wrestles with impossible question: when can schools reopen safely?
The row over Goya Foods is spreading to some unlikely places. Last week, Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue heaped praised on Donald Trump, saying: “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder”.
There was backlash due to the fact that the head of an organization that describes itself as the largest Hispanic-owned food company in America praised a president who has introduced policies that have hurt Latinx people.
Continue reading...In a powerful new book, the journalist and historian reveals how her former friends and colleagues became agents of populism
Anne Applebaum can look at the wreck of democratic politics and understand it with a completeness few contemporary writers can match. When she asks who sent Britain into the unending Brexit crisis, or inflicted the Trump administration on America, or turned Poland and Hungary into one-party states, she does not need to search press cuttings. Her friends did it, she replies. Or, rather, her former friends. For if they are now embarrassed to have once known her, the feeling is reciprocated.
Applebaum’s latest book, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, opens with a scene a novelist could steal. On 31 December 1999, Applebaum and her husband, Radosław Sikorski, a minister in Poland’s then centre-right government, threw a party. It was a Millennium Eve housewarming for a manor house in the western Poland they had helped rebuild from ruins. The company of Poles, Brits, Americans and Russians could say that they had rebuilt a ruined world. Unlike the bulk of the left of the age, they had stood up against the Soviet empire and played a part in the fall of a cruel and suffocating tyranny. They had supported free markets, free elections, the rule of law and democracies sticking together in the EU and Nato, because these causes – surely – were the best ways for nations to help their people lead better lives as they faced Russian and Chinese power, Islamism and climate change.
Continue reading...Donald Trump wore a face mask in public for the first time during a visit to a military hospital on Saturday evening.
'When you’re in a hospital, especially … I think it’s expected to wear a mask,' the US president said as he left the White House in a helicopter to visit the Walter Reed national military medical centre in suburban Washington DC to meet wounded service members and healthcare providers caring for Covid-19 patients.
Coronavirus cases have surged to record levels in the US, with guidelines recommending the wearing of face masks in certain circumstances to stop the spread of the virus
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We’ll be shutting down the blog shortly. Here’s a look at today’s top news lines:
Donald Trump was wearing a black mask as he walked down the entryway of Walter Reed medical center accompanied by hospital staff, marking the first time he has been seen wearing a protective face covering in public.
The president did not stop to take questions from the White House pool before turning down a hallway. His meeting with injured troops and staff is closed to the press.
Continue reading...President wears face covering during visit to military hospital as cases of coronavirus surge across the United States
Donald Trump wore a mask in public for the first time during a visit to a military hospital a short helicopter ride from the White House on Saturday evening. The president’s decision to wear a mask came as cases of coronavirus surged to record levels in the US and after aides and experts urged Trump to follow his own government’s guidelines on face coverings.
Trump flew to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in suburban Washington DC to meet wounded service members and health care providers caring for Covid-19 patients.
Continue reading...Outrage is growing among opponents of Donald Trump’s decision to commute the prison sentence of his longtime friend and notorious Republican fixer Roger Stone. Special counsel Robert Mueller weighed in on Saturday night, declaring that “Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”
The president commuted Stone’s sentence on Friday despite the US attorney general previously having declared Stone’s conviction “righteous”.
Continue reading...Analysis: The president’s commutation of his longtime adviser’s prison sentence was spectacularly unsurprising
The law and order president has decided that a convicted criminal should not go to prison.
It may be mere coincidence that Roger Stone is an old friend and fellow resident of Florida with a shared crush on Richard Nixon.
Continue reading...Move means Stone, due to serve more than three years for crimes related to Russia investigation, will not set foot in prison
Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser who was to spend three years and four months in jail for crimes related to the Russia investigation.
In a statement released on Friday evening, the White House denounced the prosecution of Stone on charges stemming from “the Russia Hoax” investigation. “Roger Stone has already suffered greatly,” the statement reads. “He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”
Continue reading...President made remark hours after his Mexican counterpart thanked him for not bringing subject up in public
Donald Trump has claimed that the US would be “inundated” with coronavirus, were it not for new sections of the border wall – mere hours after his Mexican counterpart thanked him for avoiding the thorny subject during a summit meeting this week.
Related: Amlo unscathed after Trump meeting but snags cameo role in US election
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