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
Follow the latest updates
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
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.
Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Floridians accuse officials of ‘obeying devil’s laws’ by ordering children to wear face masks at wild public hearing
Given that the Sunshine State’s total number of Covid-19 cases has quadrupled since reopening prematurely from shutdown on 11 May - Republican governor Ron DeSantis having been slow to close its beaches in the first place to accommodate Spring Break - you’d think the locals might be chastened into listening to official advice.
Far from it.
"The problem with humanity today is ignorance, arrogance and apathy," commented one spirited participant, onlly for her opinions to be resoundingly ignored and a vote on enforcing mask-wearing in public schools passed unanimously.
Here’s Greg Evans for Indy100 on the eccentrics taking their lives into their own hands in Palm Beach County, many of them - unsurprisingly - backing Trump for re-election in November.
Devin Nunes told he can’t sue Twitter over fake cow and spoof mother accounts, judge rules
The California Republican congressman and laughing stock has been told by a Virginia court that he cannot sue the social media giant for hosting accounts pretending to be one of dairy cows or his mother.
Both accounts - and many others like them - ruthlessly and relentlessly troll the politician, whom you might recall pushing conspiracy theories in Trump’s defence at the impeachment hearings, despite having questions to answer himself over the Ukraine affair, notably an unexplained trip to Vienna.
The former is responsible for such delightful bovine pun tweets as: “Devin’s boots are full of manure. He’s udderly worthless and it’s pasture time to mooove him to prison.”
You get the idea.
Joe Biden to bash Trump on healthcare failures in Pennsylvannia
The Democratic presidential candidate is visiting the heart of the must-win battleground state on Thursday to highlight healthcare policies that his campaign hopes will sway voters to choose him over the president.
As part of a slow creep out of his Delaware home amid coronavirus concerns to destinations further afield, Biden, who grew up in the Pennsylvania rust-belt city of Scranton, is headed to the city of Lancaster as part of a trip intended to weaken Trump's standing with swing-state voters.
Trump, meanwhile, plans to visit Green Bay, Wisconsin, another critical election battleground in his 3 November contest with Biden, where he was expected to address police reform.
Biden's campaign said he will meet with families to talk about the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, the signature legislative achievement of his time as Barack Obama's vice president, which Republicans want to overturn.
Later, in a speech, Biden will reportedly argue that African-Americans and Latinos disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus will benefit from strengthening that law. The Trump administration is expected to file papers with the Supreme Court on Thursday asking them to declare the act illegal.
The president has touted quick moves to curtail international travel as helping control the spread of the coronavirus and he has promised to dispose of Obamacare while preserving insurance benefits for people with expensive medical conditions.
Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso said Biden's hostility to energy industry jobs would cost "hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians" their jobs and healthcare.
"In contrast, President Trump's pro-growth policies, tax cuts, and deregulation built a booming economy once and he is the leader we need to do it again," he said.
Democrats believe pitching pragmatic tweaks to Obamacare in 2018 won them moderate voters and helped them wrest control of the House of Representatives and they want to make it a key issue again this year.
House Democrats unveiled a bill on Wednesday that would provide more insurance premium assistance to low-income people and offer more healthcare funding to states. The effort is unlikely to win support from Republicans.
Reuters
Texas public health expert warns of state's 'horrifying' coronavirus surge
Andrew Naughtie has more on the escalating coronavirus flare-up in the southern state, as Dr Peter Hotez sees signs that Houston could be headed for a New York-level state of disaster.
Mexican president's plan to meet Trump branded ‘colossal political, electoral, diplomatic and long-term strategic error’
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday he plans to travel to Washington to meet with his US counterpart, an announcement that was met with a storm of criticism in Mexico.
Lopez Obrador said he wants to make his first trip abroad in the first week of July to mark the start of the new US-Mexico-Canada free trade accord, which was negotiated with the Trump administration.
But Trump is deeply unpopular in Mexico because of his remarks about the country. And Mexicans remember former president Enrique Pena Nieto's ill-starred meeting with Trump that many feel strengthened the American as a candidate in the 2016 election. Mexico's Foreign Relations Department then issued a statement saying Lopez Obrador's administration wants to steer clear of the US elections.
The two leaders have displayed surprisingly cordial relations since despite ideological differences. Trump said of Lopez Obrador on Tuesday: "He's really a great guy. I think he'll be coming into Washington pretty soon." Lopez Obrador has called Trump a friend and said his administration has shown respect for Mexico (er, has he?!).
Roberto Velasco Alvarez, the Foreign Relations Department's director of North American affairs, wrote in his Twitter account that "Mexican diplomacy is based on building bridges with all people."
"The main objective of the meeting proposed by President Lopez Obrador is promoting our interests, and is not related to internal (US) political processes," Velasco Alvarez wrote.
The critics were out in force, though.
Mexico's former ambassador to the US, Arturo Sarukhan, called the trip "a colossal political, electoral, diplomatic and long-term strategic error."
"Trump is only interested in using the Mexican president as a theatrical prop for the elections," wrote Sarukhan. "For broad sectors of US society, visiting Trump now, when the country is experiencing its deepest social and ideological crisis in 50 years... will be interpreted by many here as a show of support for the most polarising president in modern US history."
Though he is famous in Mexico for declining international travel, Lopez Obrador said early on Wednesday that he wants to go to Washington. He said he hopes Canada will participate in the meeting as well, "but at any rate we will go because it is very important to participate at the launch of an agreement that I consider historic."
The president has studiously avoided conflict with Mexico's much larger neighbour, even after Trump threatened to put crippling tariffs on Mexican goods imported into the US unless Mexico did more to stop migrant caravans. Mexico effectively blocked the caravans.
Trump angered many Mexicans when as a candidate in 2016, he said Mexicans crossing the border brought drugs, crime and "tremendous infectious disease" to the US. At the time, critics said Pena Nieto gave him a pulpit when he invited both US candidates to Mexico City in 2016, but only Trump accepted. After taking office, Trump continued to promise to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it.
In a recent piece for The Washington Post, Mexican columnist Leon Krauze wrote about the 2016 meeting, "Why would Lopez Obrador, who was so critical of Pena Nieto's decision to prop up Trump during a contentious election, risk international opprobrium and condemnation at home over the exact same mistake?"
Krauze noted Lopez Obrador hasn't yet discussed meeting with Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden.
"It could simply be another step in the Mexican president's strange appeasement of the American president, a plan that has led him to embrace controversial immigration measures far from the humanitarian approach he promised as a candidate," Krauze wrote.
AP
'Bill Barr is the best tool in Trump's authoritarian toolbox'
For Indy Voices, here's Ahmed Baba on yesterday's House Judiciary Committee hearing on the recent exploits of the attorney general.
Another 1.5m Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week
That takes the total to 47.2m since the pandemic hit US shores in March, the heighest since the nightmare of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Let's see if the president acknowledges that fact, given that his re-election argument is so dependent on an economic bounceback.
Here are those statistics in detail.
Trump vows to protect statues of Jesus and Lincoln from being toppled: ‘Not gonna happen’
This was the president getting hysterical on the subject in the Rose Garden yesterday:
Andrew Naughtie has this on the self-proclaimed "LAW & ORDER" president's latest tough guy posturing against statute-knockers.
North Carolina fires cops who said black people could be wiped out in second civil war
Police in Wilmington announced on Wednesday that Jessie Moore, James Gilmore and Kevin Piner had all had their contracts terminated over misconduct and “extensive” conduct violations after they were recorded discussing the "slaughter" of African Americans, the department also publishing an internal report documenting its investigation.
“Why are we releasing this information this way and at this time? Because it is the right thing to do,” said police chief Donny Williams.
Gino Spocchia has the full story.
More than 1m dead Americans received Trump’s stimulus cheques, watchdog tells Congress
That detail emerges as the independent Government Accountability Office issues its report into the muddled rollout of lockdown relief payments by the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, an operation that involved 160m payments being made to US citizens worth $269bn (£217bn) in total.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies