Category Archives: Donald Trump

Sanders says his supporters will vote for Biden but he needs to court them

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Sanders: Biden should focus on student debt relief, health insurance coverage, a living wage, climate change and racism

Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has said he thinks his supporters will vote for Joe Biden in November’s US election, despite a former aide’s warning that Biden was not consolidating Sanders supporters.

In a memo released last week, former Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver said Sanders supporters were “currently unsupportive and unenthusiastic” about Biden and “there is a real and urgent need to help Biden consolidate Sanders supporters”.

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‘William Barr is not done’: experts raise concerns about attorney general’s legal reach

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Former justice department officials and legal experts have pointed to Barr’s intervention in cases involving Trump associates

Legal experts and and alumnae of the US Department of Justice have begun sounding the alarm about Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.

Recently Barr’s justice department withdrew charges against Michael Flynn, the former Trump administration national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal law enforcement officials about his dealings with Russia’s ambassador over sanctions, just before Trump took office.

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Trump, Putin and Bolsonaro have been complacent. Now the pandemic has made them all vulnerable

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The world’s strongmen may well end up paying a political price for their cynicism and incompetence

If Boris Johnson is mishandling the pandemic, he is not alone. Falsely claiming everything is under control, dodging responsibility, hiding from public view, exploiting the crisis for political gain, mounting artificial distractions and blaming the media: these are common behaviour patterns exhibited by some of the world’s most powerful – and shifty – leaders.

Will they pay a price for their lethal incompetence and cynicism? It’s possible some will, though it may take a while. The pandemic is changing political calculations around the globe. Leaders who looked invulnerable suddenly appear less so. That in turn could shift the strategic calculus and alter the balance of power between countries in ways both unexpected and permanent.

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Putin, Johnson, Bolsonaro and Trump: men too macho for masks

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Why leaders who want to be seen as strongmen are afraid to take Covid-19 safety precautions

With the news this week that Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, is in hospital with Covid-19, the virus has now penetrated the Kremlin, 10 Downing Street, the Palácio do Planalto and the White House.

Putin, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are all very different politicians. But all have had one thing in common in their responses to coronavirus: a belief or suggestion, at least in the early stages, that taking personal protective measures against the virus is somehow unseemly and at odds with their macho political brands.

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Barack Obama attacks Trump administration’s response to coronavirus pandemic

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Former president breaks tradition of refraining from criticism of successor, while also highlighting the high-profile killing of Ahmaud Arbery

Barack Obama has attacked the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic during speeches to graduating students.

The comments on Saturday were a rare rebuke of a sitting president from one of his predecessors, and come in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 88,000 people in the United States, a death toll far higher than any other country, and had devastating and disproportionate effects on communities of color.

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Trump says US is developing a ‘super duper’ missile – video

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Unveiling the flag for his new space force, Donald Trump said the US was developing a 'super-duper missile' to outpace its military adversaries. 'We have no choice, we have to do it with the adversaries we have out there. We have, I call it the super duper missile and I heard the other night [it’s] 17 times faster than what they have right now,' the US president said on Friday

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‘It eats him alive inside’: Trump’s latest attack shows endless obsession with Obama

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The president seems more interested in blaming his predecessor than tackling the coronavirus – so what’s driving Trump’s fixation?

President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump once sat together in the Oval Office. “I was immediately struck by Trump’s body language,” wrote journalist Jon Karl in his memoir Front Row at The Trump Show. “I was seeing a side of him I had never seen. He seemed, believe it or not, humbled.”

Related: Trump campaign focuses fire on Biden as pandemic undermines strategy

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‘Perhaps you should look into it’: Kayleigh McEnany dodges Obamagate question – video

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During a press briefing, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked why Donald Trump accused Barack Obama of committing a crime this week and asked her to name the crime. After listing issues with people in office while Obama was president, she said it was reporters' responsibility to 'answer the question' of what Obama did that was against the law. She ignored the reporter pointing out it is the White House press secretary’s duty to respond to questions about something the president said

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Trump unveils ‘warp-speed’ effort to create coronavirus vaccine by year’s end

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Donald Trump has announced details of a “warp-speed” effort to create a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year, even as experts warn that such a breakthrough could take longer than 18 months.

Related: Coronavirus US live: Trump's press conference disrupted by trucker protest

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‘That’s the sign of love’: Trump claims truckers’ disruptive honking is ‘in favour’ of him – video

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Trucking industry protesters disrupted a press briefing in the White House rose garden on Friday by honking their horns. Donald Trump said the sound was truckers ‘showing support’, but the honking may have been a protest. Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that a convoy of trucks in Washington DC blasted their air horns to protest against low shipping rates, which truckers say threaten their livelihoods

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Trump campaign focuses fire on Biden as pandemic undermines strategy

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With few positive messages available, advisers have launched a multi-pronged attack on the former vice-president

Donald Trump had planned to run on a pledge to “Keep America great”. But with a global pandemic claiming the lives of more than 85,000 Americans and causing economic devastation, the slogan does not seem to hold the same promise it did at the start of the year – even for his most ardent fans.

In a recently released campaign ad titled American Comeback, the president instead returned to the “Make America great again” slogan that first brought him to power and whose Maga initials have become global shorthand for Trumpism and its adherents.

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World looks on in horror as Trump flails over pandemic despite claims US leads way

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The president’s outlandish behavior as Americans suffer has inspired horror and confusion while alienating allies

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.

Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.

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Global report: Trump threat to cut trade ties over Covid-19 branded ‘lunacy’ by Chinese media

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President says he doesn’t want to speak to counterpart Xi; Brazil passes 200,000 infections; Baltic travel ‘bubble’ begins

An escalation of rhetoric between Donald Trump and China over the coronavirus pandemic has sparked concerns that a trade deal between the nations is in peril, as Chinese state media dismissed as “lunacy” a suggestion by the US president that he could “cut off relations” with Beijing.

The US president said he was very disappointed with China’s failure to contain Covid-19 in an interview with Fox Business news. Trump said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment.

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Ousted whistleblower warns US facing ‘darkest winter in modern history’

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Rick Bright testified before congressional committee that as virus spreads in US the ‘window is closing to address this pandemic’

Americans should brace themselves for the risk that they will suffer their “darkest winter in modern history” due to the ongoing federal government failures in addressing the coronavirus pandemic, a recently ousted public health official turned whistleblower warned the US Congress.

Rick Bright, who was removed from his role heading a federal agency in charge of vaccines last month, told a congressional committee on Thursday that as the virus continues to spread in the US the “window is closing to address this pandemic” because the Trump administration still lacks a comprehensive plan to tackle Covid-19.

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How Trump has berated, insulted and demeaned female reporters – video

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Donald Trump abruptly halted a press conference on Monday after being challenged by two female reporters. The US president told Weijia Jiang, an Asian American journalist who works for CBS, to 'ask China' in response to her question over why he sees coronavirus testing as a global competition when more than 80,000 Americans have died. Trump then refused to respond to another White House reporter, CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

Trump has frequently clashed with journalists, but some have suggested a pattern is emerging in the way the president responds to being held to account by members of the press who are women, particularly those of color. Here's a look back at several key exchanges

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Trump says Fauci lockdown easing warning ‘surprising’ – video

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Donald Trump accused Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top public health expert, of 'playing all sides of the equation' after Fauci warned in the Senate that reopening the US economy too early could cause a spike in new coronavirus cases. 'To me, it's not an acceptable answer,' Trump said, suggesting there was little risk in the young and healthy returning to work and education

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Global report: WHO says Covid-19 ‘may never go away’ and warns of mental health crisis

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Trump brands Fauci’s caution over reopening ‘unacceptable’; Russia has second highest infections; Japan eyes lifting national emergency

The World Health Organisation has warned that coronavirus “may never go away” as its experts predicted that a global mental health crisis caused by the pandemic was looming.

The global health body on Wednesday cautioned against trying to predict how long coronavirus would keep circulating, and called for a “massive effort” to overcome it.

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‘Obamagate’: Trump seeks to draw Biden into conspiracy theory

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Donald Trump has ratcheted up his “Obamagate” conspiracy theory to implicate Joe Biden and other former White House officials in what critics say is a desperate attempt to distract from the coronavirus pandemic.

Related: What is 'Obamagate' and why is Trump so worked up about it?

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Coronavirus US live: gap grows between White House and experts over safety of reopening

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Rick Bright, former director of a key office in the Department of Health and Human Services, will testify in front of the Senate tomorrow that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and there will be dramatic consequences if the US fails to develop a national coordinated response, reports CNN.

Documents of the prepared testimony indicate that Bright will tell Congress that he fears “the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged” without a response “based in science”.

Republican Maryland governor Larry Hogan and Democratic New York governor Andrew Cuomo released a joint statement today as the leaders of the National Governors Association asking Congress to deliver “urgent state fiscal relief” to address the soaring costs states are bearing because of the Covid-19 crisis.

Maryland Gov. Hogan (R) and New York Gov. Cuomo (D) urge Congress to send aid to states. “This is not a red state or blue state crisis. This is a red white and blue pandemic. The coronavirus is apolitical. It does not attack Democrats or Republicans. It attacks Americans.” pic.twitter.com/1kkSw3USey

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Mitch McConnell: Obama ‘should have kept his mouth shut’ – video

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The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said Barack Obama should have 'kept his mouth shut' instead of criticising Donald Trump, and called his intervention 'classless'. McConnell was speaking to Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump in an online fundraiser on Monday night

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