Trump news: Native Americans protest ahead of president's Mount Rushmore event as coronavirus cases continue to spike
Nation surpasses 50,000 cases for third consecutive day as violent Fourth of July speech defends monuments
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Donald Trump drew on his dark, campaign-style vision of a divided America at his Fourth of July fireworks show at Mount Rushmore, held in front of hundreds of people packed together and not wearing masks as the nation's coronavirus crisis reaches nearly 3 million cases and more than 128,00 deaths.
The US reported more than 50,000 cases on Friday for a third straight-day, with spikes in nearly every state as the US entered the three-day holiday weekend.
In his remarks, he promised to defend monuments and condemned what he called "far-left fascism" among protesters calling for the removal of statues honouring slaveholders and Confederates.
Roughly 100 protesters were met by National Guard troops who fired pepper spray at several people and arrested a handful of others.
The president promised to build a National Garden of American Heroes – "a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans who ever lived" – including a complicated and likely controversial selection of American figures, from Amelia Earhart and Harriet Tubman to Antonin Scalia and Billy Graham.
The president also argued that Black Lives Matter protesters angered by the police killings of George Floyd and other black Americans would have wiped out the city of Minneapolis had he not sent in the National Guard to stop the demonstrations, while he picked fights with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and Dr Anthony Fauci as he seeks to distract from the resurgent coronavirus.
Dr Fauci warned on Thursday that the US is “not going in the right direction” after the country reported 55,000 new cases of Covid-19 in a day, beating the world record for a daily rise set by Brazil on 19 June. Arizona, California, Florida and Texas alone accounted for 25,000 of that total as assistant health secretary Brett Giroir cautioned: “We are not flattening the curve right now. The curve is still going up.”
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Lincoln Project goes after Trump's cosy relationship with Putin
Here's the latest from the Never Trump Republican outfit, wasting no time in gunning for the president on Russia.
Danielle Zoellner has some background.
Democrats say Russian troop threats should be pursued 'relentlessly' as Pelosi argues the real 'hoax' is Trump himself
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer also said on Thursday that any threats to US troops must be pursued "relentlessly," rebuking Trump after receiving a highly classified briefing about intelligence that Russia offered bounties for killing American and British troops in Afghanistan.
House speaker Pelosi and Senate minority leader Schumer said Trump, who has downplayed the threat, was "soft" on Russian president Vladimir Putin and distracted by less important issues.
"Our armed forces would be better served if President Trump spent more time reading his daily briefing and less time planning military parades and defending relics of the Confederacy," Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement.
Trump and the White House have repeatedly insisted that the president wasn't originally briefed because the information was unverified, even though it's rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of doubt before it is presented to senior government decisionmakers. Officials have said that the information was included in one of the president's written daily briefings last year and again on 27 February.
The criticism comes as Trump is working to change the narrative but has faced increasing pressure from lawmakers in Congress - including some Republicans - who have demanded more answers about the intelligence assessment.
Top officials, including CIA director Gina Haspel and director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, conducted the closed-door briefing for a group of lawmakers dubbed the "gang of eight" - Pelosi, Schumer, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and the top Republicans and Democrats on the two intelligence committees.
In a news conference shortly afterward, Pelosi called for tougher sanctions on Russia. She said the White House has "put on a con" that there has to be 100 per cent consensus on intelligence for it to rise to a presidential level.
Without sharing details, Pelosi said "it was a consequential level that the intelligence community should have brought it to us."
Speaking on MSNBC later, the House speaker attacked Trump's habit of labelling everything he finds politcally inconvenient - climate change, his impeachment, coronavirus and now the Russian bounty story - as a "hoax".
The House intelligence committee also received a briefing on the matter on Thursday afternoon and still lawmakers have pressed for more answers. A group of House Democrats who were briefed at the White House earlier this week said Trump was bowing to Putin and risking US soldiers' lives by not making a stronger public statement about the matter.
Texas congressman Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said his panel would "leave no stone unturned" in seeking further information. GOP senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania called on the administration to provide a briefing to all senators after he reviewed some of the intelligence in a secure room in the Capitol.
"If it is concluded that Russia offered bounties to murder American soldiers, a firm American response is required in short order," Toomey said.
AP
'Russia has a long history in Afghanistan - this is how we got to this point'
For Indy Voices, our diplomatic editor Kim Sengupta looks back at the Kremlin's decades of intervention in the war-torn Middle Eastern state as the bounty story refuses to go away.
'Trump is the president we deserve'
Also for our Voices desk, here's John T Bennett on another looooong week in Washington.
Independent journalist arrested covering police clearance of Seattle protest zone
Shout out to my man Andrew Buncombe, our chief US correspondent, who spent 10 hours in custody yesterday after law enforcement accused him of "failing to disperse" while attempting to report on the break-up of the city's Capitol Hill Occupied Zone - despite his repeated efforts to explain that he was there to observe as a reporter.
He's OK, I'm glad to say, but anyone concerned about press freedom in the United States under this administration should read Phil Thomas's story.
Trump quotes Lou Dobbs in all-caps AND SOUNDS LIKE A LUNATIC
This tweet is all we've heard from the president so far today and combines two of his least-interesting genres: the Fox quote and the basic stock market observation.
Right up there with the right-wing book plug for tedium.
US will be on 'red list' of banned travel destinations over high rate of infections, UK confirms
Passengers arriving in Britain having flown the Atlantic will not be exempted from quarantine rules, UK transport minister Grant Shapps has said.
Asked by the BBC on Friday whether the US would be on a “red list” of countries to which a 14-day quarantine period will apply, Shapps said: “I’m afraid it will be.”
“The US from a very early stage banned flights from the UK and from Europe so there isn’t a reciprocal arrangement in place,” he added.
"They have got very high numbers of infections, which is why they are not on the list today."
Here’s Gino Spocchia’s report.
Troops deployed in DC during protests were equipped with bayonets, Army chiefs confirm
Yikes. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has confirmed that some service members mobilised to Washington, DC, during the George Floyd demonstrations in May and June had been issued with bayonets - as though they were still fighting the War of Independence.
Here’s Gino Spocchia to tell us more
Trump mocked on Morning Joe after bragging he 'aced' cognitive test
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski laughed openly at the president live on air during their MSNBC breakfast show earlier today over his brag that he passed a basic mental acuity test, inspiring Twitter to put together a montage of him mangling words as a reposte to his frequent accusations of senility against Joe Biden.
Incidentally, since Eric Trump is deleting bad taste tweets, maybe his brother should follow suit.
Andrew Naughtie has more on this one.
Teenagers troll Trump by posting negative reviews of his businesses online
For Indy100, here's Greg Evans on the rise and rise of the TikTokers after they humiliated the president by coming together to register for Tulsa rally tickets they had no intention of turning up to claim.
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