Trump news – live: President says he would have done ‘nothing’ differently to stop pandemic as death toll nears 94,000 and will soon stop taking hydroxychloroquine
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump travelled to Michigan to tour a Ford factory making ventilators for the coronavirus pandemic. He said he wore a mask in the back room, but didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing him wear it, even though it looked very nice on him. Even better than without a mask.
Michigan's attorney general Dana Nessel says Trump is not welcome back to the state after refusing to wear the mask, and she threatened Ford with legal action for allowing him to do so.
Trump may hold back federal funding from the state, which has suffered catastrophic flooding after two dams broke. He has tied unspecified funding to mail-in voting, which he says leads to mass voter fraud.
Trump has said he would have done "nothing" differently to stop the spread of the coronavirus - even as a new Columbia University model indicates that going into lockdown two weeks earlier would have saved 36,000 American lives. The country's death toll is currently approaching 94,000.
Internationally and interplanetary, Trump confirmed that the US has pulled out of the Open Skies weapons treaty with Russia while saying he might attend the NASA SpaceX launch of two Americans to the International Space Station next week.
He also revealed that he will stop taking the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine "in two days", which he has been heavily criticised for by his usual cheerleaders over at Fox News.
The president's day ended with a Twitter rant lamenting that Fox News was littered with garbage because they were doing nothing to help him get re-elected in November, while his former fixer Michael Cohen was released from prison early with the ominous comment that "there is so much I want to say".
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Stop the monkey business, says legendary monkey conservationist
While Harvard has been monkeying around with coronavirus vaccine trials, renowned great ape researcher Dr Jane Goodall says we brought the pandemic on ourselves with our treatment of animals.
The chimpanzee primatologist and anthropologist delivered a Class of 2020 commencement speech from her family home in England, saying we only had ourselves to blame for the coronavirus.
"The sad thing is we brought it on ourselves. We've been very disrespectful of the environment, very disrespectful of animals. We've been gradually invading the world of the animals," she said.
"We've been forcing them to spend more time together which enables a virus or a bacteria to cross the species barrier from an animal into a human."
Louise Boyle has the story.
Lawmaker kicked out for refusing to wear a mask
Continuing our live coverage of masks, a Republican lawmaker was kicked out of an Illinois House session for refusing to wear a, you guessed it, mask.
On the day State Rep Darren Bailey was kicked out, the state's House enacted rules stating all members, staffers and visitors at the Bank of Springfield Center - the state's temporary legislative venue - had to wear masks if they were medically able.
Graig Graziosi has the report.
Ford Motor Co chimes in on Trump's mask
Statement from the company: "Bill Ford encouraged President Trump to wear a mask when he arrived. He wore a mask during a private viewing of three Ford GTs from over the years. The President later removed the mask for the remainder of the visit."
No mention of whether the president looked very, very nice while wearing it backstage.
Michael Cohen leaves prison, wearing mask
Michael Cohen tweeted "there is so much I want to say," after being released from prison early due to coronavirus fears.
Mr Cohen, Donald Trump's former attorney, was released from the federal prison in Otisville, New York, on Thursday, and is scheduled to serve the remainder of his three-year sentence under home confinement.
After he returned to his residence, Mr Cohen tweeted: "I am so glad to be home and back with my family. There is so much I want to say and intend to say. But now is not the right time. Soon. Thank you to all my friends and supporters."
Whatever he says, it'll be from behind a mask.
James Crump has the story.
Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden suffer from the same sickness as Trump
From The Independent's John T Bennett: Words -- they're supposed to be important. Yet this week, Americans were subjected to an unproductive and embarrassing war of words among two septuagenarians and one octogenarian, each with low national approval ratings they have worked hard to earn. And earn them they have, in spectacularly depressing fashion. That's about all Washington has to offer right now. Loud, empty, utterly meaningless insults that do little more than widen the red-blue tribal divide.
Read more.
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