Category Archives: US Politics

Trump says he’s taking hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19 despite FDA warnings

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President says he’s been taking drug for ‘a couple of weeks’ but FDA has issued repeated warning about the dangers of the drug

Donald Trump has told reporters at the White House that for “a couple weeks” he has been taking a malaria drug as a defense against Covid-19 – despite warnings from his administration that it is dangerous.

Trump said he was taking hydroxychloroquine – a drug approved to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis – in response to the coronavirus threat.

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Watchdog was investigating Pompeo for arms deal and staff misuse before firing

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State department inspector general Steve Linick was reportedly close to finishing his report before his dismissal on Friday

The government watchdog who was fired last week had been investigating the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for sidestepping Congress to approve arms sales to the Gulf and using staffers for personal errands, according to congressional sources.

Donald Trump declared his intention to fire the state department inspector general, Steve Linick, in a letter sent to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, late on Friday night. The White House said the decision was taken at Pompeo’s advice.

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Trump sons provoke outrage with baseless attacks on Biden and lockdown

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  • Donald Trump Jr says pedophile allusion was ‘joking around’
  • Eric Trump claims coronavirus is a political hoax

Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, the US president’s oldest sons, have attracted fierce criticism for attacking Joe Biden and Democrats in terms most observers considered beyond the pale even in America’s toxic political climate.

Related: ‘They don’t give him enough credit’: the voters who back Trump, even through the pandemic

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Democrats feel tide turning their way in battle to flip US Senate

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The electoral map does not favor Republicans and the pandemic has helped put them on defense in states they once thought safe

Just three months ago, centrist Democrats were panicking. After strong performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders appeared poised to sail away with the nomination for president. Some in the party feared the self-identified democratic socialist would wreak havoc down the ballot.

Related: Could Susan Collins' vote for Kavanaugh help the Democrats flip the Senate in 2020?

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Trump accuses Obama of being ‘grossly incompetent’ after his coronavirus criticism

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Former president rebuked Trump administration’s response to pandemic, which has killed almost 90,000 Americans so far

Donald Trump has hit back at Barack Obama’s criticism of his administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, accusing the former US president of being “grossly incompetent” during his time in office.

Related: Barack Obama attacks Trump administration's response to coronavirus pandemic

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Trump accuses Obama of ‘gross incompetence’ – video

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Donald Trump has given his first public response to Barack Obama’s criticism of the current administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. 'Look, he was an incompetent president, that’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,' said Trump when asked about Obama's comments on Sunday

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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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Obama criticises Trump in virtual graduation speech – video

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The former US president attacked the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic during a virtual commencement ceremony for historically black colleges and universities on Saturday. Barack Obama told graduates: ‘More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge’

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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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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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‘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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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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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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Richard Burr steps down as Senate committee chair over FBI investigation

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Burr’s cellphone seized overnight in inquiry into claims he used private coronavirus briefing to sell stocks before market plunge

A Republican US senator stepped down from a key committee leadership role in Congress on Thursday after his phone was seized overnight by investigators with a warrant looking into allegations that he used private briefings as inside information to dump shares before the market plummeted over the coronavirus crisis.

Related: Republican senator urged to quit after report he sold stocks before Covid-19 market plunge

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US could face ‘darkest winter in modern history’, warns former vaccine official – video highlights

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Rick Bright, a former top vaccine official, has told a Congressional committee that the US faces its 'darkest winter in modern history' if it does not develop a coordinated response to the pandemic. Bright has turned whistleblower and claims his removal from his federal government role last month was retaliation by the Trump administration for his resistance to the promotion of unproven drugs to treat Covid-19

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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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‘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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California special election: Republicans take back Katie Hill’s House seat

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Mike Garcia will replace Hill, who resigned amid scandal in 2019 after securing the first Democratic victory in district in decades

Republican Mike Garcia has beat Democrat Christy Smith in the special election to fill the seat of the former US representative Katie Hill, who resigned amid scandal in late 2019.

After a bitter political battle complicated and constrained by the pandemic, Garcia’s win was a blow for Democrats who in 2018 had secured the suburban Los Angeles district for the first time in since 1990. But the candidates will soon have a rematch. Garcia will serve only five months before the seat is up for a vote again in November.

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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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