Trump news – live: President accuses ‘crazy’ media over bad poll numbers as he loses support in six states and 1.5m Americans apply for unemployment
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Donald Trump has continued his attack on the media, specifically recent poll numbers showing the president down in six key battleground states. A poll released on Thursday found former Vice President Joe Biden leading the president in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Blaming the media on his slip in the polls comes as an additional 1.5m Americans file for unemployment benefits amid the coronavirus pandemic, bringing the official count to about 47.2m. Mr Trump has attempted to curb worries about the surge in coronavirus cases by saying it's due to increased testing, but that doesn't explain an increase in hospitalisations in states like Texas.
On Twitter, the president also slammed peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, labelling them “roving gangs of wise guys, anarchists & looters” as statue-toppling continues across the nation and the country reckons with its dark history in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis a month ago today.
The president ended his day giving a speech in Minnesota, where he called the Democrats a little crazy and said when the military is concerned, there is no budget.
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Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Trump continues to rage at Black Lives Matter activists over statues
Donald Trump has continued his attack on peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, labelling them “roving gangs of wise guys, anarchists & looters” on Twitter as statue-toppling continues across the nation and the country reckons with its dark history in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by
police in Minneapolis a month ago today.
The president also disparaged the anti-racism activists as he met with Polish president Andrzej Duda in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, accusing them of tearing down America’s cultural heritage and history and insisting he would not allow it to happen on his watch.
Trump appears to be fixating on the actions of the demonstrators against divisive monuments - and in Seattle’s occupied zone - to shore up Republican support as he finds himself lagging in the polls behind Joe Biden (by as much as 14 percentage points, according to The New York Times this week).
The same tactic appears to explain his sudden pivot towards accusing his predecessor, Barack Obama, of ruining Maine’s fishing industry, seemingly out of nowhere.
He was entirely wrong about that...
...and it duly aroused the mockery it deserved, given that the US has frankly several hundred bigger problems to contend with right now.
President meets with Polish counterpart, at odds over troops
Trump’s joint press conference with Duda - already controversial in Poland as it gave the incumbent an unfair platform on the world stage just days before a general election - saw the American resume his criticism of Nato members, whom he accused of failing to pay their “dues” to the defence alliance, even though many have agreed a timeline for meeting their two-per-cent-of-GDP spending commitment.
With amazing gall, Trump also denounced “foreign extortion” as though his own impeachment for attempting to extort a political favour from Ukraine had never happened, suggested the statue topplers would be going after Jesus Christ next and completely blanked a question on whether he felt any personal responsibility for the country’s 123,000+ deaths.
President Duda cut an admirably stoic figure through all of that but did break with Trump over his threat to withdraw some 27,000 American troops from Germany over his Nato beef, remarking that removing any of the 52,000 soldiers would be "very detrimental to European security".
Here’s John T Bennett’s report.
Coronavirus cases soar in 26 states, with Texas suffering 'massive outbreak'
The US is meanwhile seeing a fresh spike in coronavirus cases, with 26 states reporting new highs after emerging from lockdown and Texas governor Greg Abbott forced to admit the Lone Star State is suffering a “massive” hike in infections after reporting 5,000 in just one day on Wednesday.
Here’s Louise Hall’s report.
What the surge in US coronavirus cases looks like
This graph from Statista illustrates that June uptick in Covid-19 cases in pretty stark terms, after the states had done so well in bringing down numbers following the high seen in mid-April.
Whatever he says, as a cheerleader for reopening, Trump has to take the lion's share of the responsibility for this.
(Statista)
Nancy Pelosi: Trump has no plan except 'urging us to inject Lysol and drink bleach’
Scorching stuff from the House speaker on NBC as she prepares to renew her battle with the administration on healthcare reform.
William Barr to testify before House panel investigating 'politicisation' of Justice Department
Trump’s attorney general and chief enabler has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on 28 July, which is investigating him for the “unprecedented politicisation” of the Department of Justice (DoJ).
It will be the first time Barr, who assumed office in February last year after being handpicked by the president, has appeared before the panel tasked with overseeing his actions.
As Barr’s spokeswoman announced the news on Twitter yesterday, the Judiciary panel was interviewing three current and former DoJ officials who have accused him of applying political pressures within the department to benefit friends of the president in hot water.
“I was privileged to serve in the Department of Justice under two Republican and one Democratic [presidents], and I am here because I believe that William Barr poses the greatest threat in my lifetime to our rule of law and to public trust in it,” former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer told lawmakers on Wednesday, his testimony disrupted by some astonishingly undignified desk-banging by Republican congressman Louie Gohmert.
Griffin Connolly has more on this below.
NYC mayor to install Black Lives Matter mural outside of Trump Tower
Solid trolling from Bill de Blasio here, borrowing an idea from DC and Seattle to ensure Trump gets the message whenever he looks down on Fifth Avenue from his skyscraper lair.
Chris Riotta has more details.
MeidasTouch attack ad accuses Trump of ‘mass murder on national scale’
Relatively new on the scene, these boys are giving the Lincoln Project a run for their money when it comes to scathing assaults on the president turning his own words against him.
Team Biden, take note.
Louise Hall has this report.
Trump’s plans for Fourth of July fireworks display at Mountain Rushmore sparks anger
The Independence Day spectacular plotted by the president is drawing sharp criticism from Native Americans who view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to native people.
Several groups led by Native American activists are planning protests for Trump's Fourth of July visit, part of his "comeback" campaign for a nation reeling from sickness, unemployment and, recently, social unrest. The event is slated to include fighter jets thundering over the 79-year-old stone monument in South Dakota's Black Hills and the first fireworks display at the site since 2009.
But it comes amid a national reckoning over racism and a reconsideration of the symbolism of monuments around the globe. Many Native Americans activists say the Rushmore memorial is as reprehensible as the many Confederate monuments being toppled around the nation.
"Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that's still alive and well in society today," said Nick Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and the president of a local activist organisation called NDN Collective. "It's an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people's land then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide."
While some activists, like Tilsen, want to see the monument removed altogether and the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, others have called for a share in the economic benefits from the region and the tourists it attracts.
Trump has long shown a fascination with Mount Rushmore. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem said in 2018 that he had once told her straight-faced it was his dream to have his face carved into the monument. He later joked at a campaign rally about getting enshrined alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. And while it was Noem, a Republican, who pushed for a return of the fireworks on the eve of Independence Day, Trump joined the effort and committed to visiting South Dakota for the celebration.
The four faces, carved into the mountain with dynamite and drills, are known as the "shrine to democracy."
The presidents were chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum for their leadership during four phases of American development: Washington led the birth of the nation; Jefferson sparked its westward expansion; Lincoln preserved the union and emancipated slaves; Roosevelt championed industrial innovation.
And yet, for many Native American people, including the Lakota, Cheyenne, Omaha, Arapaho, Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache, the monument is a desecration to the Black Hills, which they consider sacred. Lakota people know the area as Paha Sapa - "the heart of everything that is."
As monuments to Confederate and colonial leaders have been removed across US cities, conservatives have expressed concern that Mount Rushmore could be next. Commentator Ben Shapiro this week suggested that the "woke historical revisionist priesthood" wanted to blow up the monument. Noem responded by tweeting, "Not on my watch."
Tim Giago, a journalist who is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, said he doesn't see four great American leaders when he looks at the monument, but instead four white men who either made racist remarks or initiated actions that removed Native Americans from their land. Washington and Jefferson both held slaves. Lincoln, though he led the abolition of slavery, also approved the hanging of 38 Dakota men in Minnesota after a violent conflict with white settlers there. Roosevelt is reported to have said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are.."
The monument has long been a "Rorschach test," said John Taliaferro, author of Great White Fathers, a history of the monument. "All sorts of people can go there and see it in different ways."
The monument often starts conversations on the paradox of American democracy - that a republic that promoted the ideals of freedom, determination and innovation also enslaved people and drove others from their land, he said.
"If we're having this discussion today about what American democracy is, Mount Rushmore is really serving its purpose because that conversation goes on there," he said. "Is it fragile? Is it permanent? Is it cracking somewhat?"
The monument was conceived in the 1920s as a tourist draw for the new fad in vacationing called the road trip. South Dakota historian Doane Robinson recruited Borglum, one of the pre-eminent sculptors at the time, to abandon his work creating the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia, which was to feature Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson.
Borglum was a member of the Klu Klux Klan, according to Mount Rushmore historian and writer Tom Griffith.
Borglum joined the Klan to raise money for the Confederate memorial and Griffith argues his allegiance was more practical than ideological. He left that project and instead spent years in South Dakota completing Mount Rushmore.
Native American activists have long staged protests at the site to raise awareness among the history of the Black Hills, which were taken from them despite treaties with the United States protecting the land. Fifty years ago this summer a group of activists associated with an organisation called United Native Americans climbed to the top of the monument and occupied it.
Quanah Brightman, who now runs United Native Americans, said the activism in the 1970s grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He hopes a similar movement for Native Americans comes from the Black Lives Matter movement.
"What people find here is the story of America - it's multi-dimensional, it's complex," Griffith said. "It's important to understand it was people just trying to do right as best they knew it then."
AP
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