The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is chaired by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, released its long-awaited 156-page report detailing its investigation into allegations that Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 election.

And what did their investigation find? That Russia engaged in a deep and broad effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 race, aiming to help Donald Trump win. "The Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community's conclusions," said Burr in a statement on his committee's findings.

Which now means that the following committees and communities have concluded the exact same thing about Russia's attempted interference in the last presidential election:

* The Senate Intelligence Committee

And to be honest, Trump has made his feelings about the proof that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him very, very clear. He's, um, skeptical.

So, yeah.

Here's the thing that the Senate Intelligence Committee report should drive home for Trump -- and everyone else: it is now entirely and completely beyond dispute that Russia sought to interfere in the last presidential election to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

In order to not believe that, you have to accept that the entire intelligence community, Mueller and his entire team and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee are ALL in on some sort of elaborate and incredibly well-coordinated scheme to deceive the American public because, uh, they all don't like Trump or something?

It's fanciful. It's a conspiracy theory without even any nuggets of fact.

Why, then, is the President of the United States not convinced? Simple: Because he has never been able to hold these two ideas in his mind at the same time: 1) Russia meddled in the election to help him and 2) He's President anyway.

"That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily. And, frankly, we beat her -- and I'm not even saying from the standpoint -- we won that race. ... We ran a brilliant campaign, and that's why I'm President."

In Trump's mind, acknowledging the fact -- and yes, it is a fact -- that Russia tried to help him win somehow robs him of the credit for winning that he obviously thinks he so richly deserves. I did this, not Russia, Trump is essentially saying. I get the credit. Not them. Me. Me!

It's, of course, obvious to anyone paying attention that both things can be true: Russia tried to interfere in the election and Trump ran a great race. Elections are very rarely won by a single factor alone. Luck, skill, your strengths, your opponent's weaknesses, uncontrollable outside events -- all of these things go into who wins and who loses. In 2016 and every other election.

Trump's blindness to the Russia reality isn't just a chapter for the history books either. Because we know Russia viewed its involvement in the 2016 race as a success and are hungry to create more chaos this November.

All of which means that the President's unwillingness to accept the FACT that Russia interfered once and they will do it again makes it much more likely that we won't be properly prepared for what's coming over the 195 days between now and November 3.

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The Senate just proved Donald Trump wrong -- again -- on Russian interference in 2016 - CNN

Trevor Noah doesnt like much of what Donald Trump is doing to protect the country during the pandemic. His Daily Social Distancing Show makes that clear.

Tonight, he likened the President of the United States to the detached narrator dealing with a deranged fan in Eminems Stan, all because Trump said he disagreed with Georgia Governor Brian Kemps decision to open up certain businesses in that state soon. I respect him, Trump said. But Id wait a little longer.

Because Kemp is a Republican and supports Trump, Noah saw that as the ultimate betrayal, akin to telling Kemp to show up on a road at a certain time while Trump drove a bus over him.

This is what you get, said Noah. These guys trying so hard to suck up to him, then Bam!

Noah also took issue with Trump not knowing the name of a scientist dismissed from his job who was working on a coronavirus vaccine. He felt since Trump has time to watch television, including reruns of baseball games, that he should know the man.

If you have time to watch reruns of baseball, you have time for anything, Noah said, mentioning that baseball is boring even in real time. Reruns of it? Its like watching paint dry through a PowerPoint slide.

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Trevor Noah Says President Donald Trump Is Like Eminem In The Song Stan - Deadline

After more than a month of near-daily White House coronavirus press briefings, Donald Trump stayed behind closed doors on Saturday after advisers reportedly warned the president that his appearances were hurting his campaign.

Trump himself referenced his absence when he wrote on Twitter that the briefings are not worth the time & effort. The president wrote the tweet on Saturday evening, when he would usually be taking the podium to address journalists.

What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately, he wrote. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!

In recent weeks Trump has used the briefings to dole out unproven and debunked medical advice, suggesting that things like sunlight and an anti-malaria drug are cures to Covid-19, often causing his own medical experts to try to correct the record.

But on Friday Trump surprised observers by taking no questions and stalking out of the room after an unusually short briefing of just 22 minutes. Some took the move as an acknowledgement from Trump himself that he may have taken things too far when he said on Thursday that disinfectant could be used to cure Covid-19.

Those comments sparked shock and ridicule and warnings from healthcare experts and prompted Trump to make a ham-fisted attempt at a clawback when he later said he had made the remarks sarcastically despite video proving he had not.

While the press briefings are meant to give members of the coronavirus task force an opportunity to provide updates on the state of Covid-19 in the country, the attention around the briefings has been centered on Trumps use of the podium as his bully pulpit.

The president has used the briefings as uncensored airtime, praising his administration for its response to the crisis while criticizing the media and Democrats for any negative comeback.

Advisers close to the president told him to stop making appearances at the briefings unless special announcements needed to be made, according to multiple reports published Saturday morning. The advice comes as Trump trails Joe Biden in polls from swing states. Perhaps, his advisers believe, because his appearances are overkill.

I told him its not helping him, one adviser told Axios. Seniors are scared. And the spectacle of him fighting with the press isnt what people want to see.

Trump has reportedly been hesitant to end his briefing appearances, Axios reported, because he said they bring in good television ratings.

The president has also used the briefings as an opportunity to rile up his base in a way that would typically be done at his rallies. Trump has criticized Democrats and attacked Biden, referring to him as Sleepy Joe during briefings, veering far away from the subject of Covid-19.

It is unclear whether Trump can stay away from the podium, or whether his instincts as a reality television star will kick in and the show will go on.

Hes going to want to get media attention and control his message, Sam Nunberg, a political consultant who briefly worked on Trumps campaign in 2016, told Politico. He is the only one who thinks he can do his message best, and thats just the reality. Thats how he works.

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Trump says briefings 'not worth the effort' amid fallout from disinfectant comments - The Guardian

Donald Trump had been intending to run a re-election campaign based on a strong economy and a socialist opponent. Both have vanished in the past month. But the US president still has his ultimate weapon: xenophobia.

Trump this week announced in a late-night tweet that he would temporarily suspend immigration into America. Two days later, when he signed an executive order, it only applied to people seeking green cards to move to the country permanently, not to temporary workers, and there were plenty of loopholes.

But by then the headlines had been written, the outrage expressed and the objective achieved: Trump was cracking down on immigration again because, he claimed, he was putting America and its workers first. The exercise was arguably less about policy than politics.

A nativist, populist message helped him win the presidency in 2016. He tried it again in the 2018 midterm elections for Congress with mixed results. Now, with his handling of a deadly pandemic under scrutiny and the economy in freefall, critics say he is ready to bet the White House on his ability to stir nationalist and racist sentiment with little subtlety.

Apart from antipathy to globalised trade, Trump is said to be a man of few core political beliefs and little ideology

This is a president who doesnt use the dog whistle of Republicans in the past, and even Democrats in the past who used dog whistle politics to talk about race in code, said Juan Cartagena, president and general counsel of Latino Justice, a civil rights organisation. This guy talks about it openly. Under normal circumstances he would have been a one-term president, but his base is pretty loyal and were still talking about a country that barely comes out in large turnout numbers.

Apart from antipathy towards globalised trade, Trump is said to be a man of few core political beliefs and little ideology. But when he descended an escalator at Trump Tower in New York in June 2015 to declare his long-shot candidacy for president, he started as he meant to go on. Mexico, he complained, was not sending its best people across the border. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists.

Trump also announced his signature issue: I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and Ill build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.

There followed an incendiary, taboo-busting election campaign in which Build that wall! became a familiar chant at Trump rallies, where he railed against the presidency of Barack Obama and threw red meat to his base. He lashed out at a judge of Mexican ancestry and a Muslim whose son died fighting for the US in Iraq. He threatened to ban Muslims from the country. He promised America first. And he won.

Two years later, campaigning on behalf of senators and representatives, Trump used rallies to stoke fears that caravans of undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were set to pour into the US from Mexico. To the frustration of Republicans who wanted him to focus on economic achievements, he used vivid language to demonise criminal gangs and human traffickers and put victims families on public display.

What you will absolutely see this fall is that Donald Trump will come out and he will make up a story

This time, the strategy was only partially successful: Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate but lost 40 seats in the House of Representatives, where the new Democratic majority went on to impeach Trump.

Early in 2020, the Trump re-election campaign appeared to be built on firm foundations. There were economic talking points unemployment at its lowest for half a century, the stock market at record highs even if it did not always feel that way on the ground. Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, was leading the Democratic presidential primary race, prompting Trump and allies to warn darkly of the radical left.

These scripts have been torn up. The coronavirus pandemic has killed about 50,000 Americans and is likely to surpass US losses in the entire Vietnam war. Since the outbreak also put the economy into a coma: at least 26 million people have requested unemployment benefits, wiping out all the job gains since the great recession of 2008.

Rick Wilson, a political strategist and author of Running Against the Devil, an analysis of how the 2020 election could play out, said: The predicates of Donald Trumps campaign were fundamentally: The economy is great and I made the economy great and also, by the way, this is my great economy. Have you noticed my great economy? Thats gone. If you claim you have sole control and credit for something, then when it goes wrong, the shoe gets placed on the other foot rather quickly, and it has.

In the Democratic primary, meanwhile, Sanders quickly fell away against former vice-president Joe Biden, a moderate who served under Obama and will be much harder to caricature as a socialist menace.

Short of ammunition, his record in tatters, Trump can still fall back on the politics of division and made-for-TV partisan outrage. His daily White House coronavirus taskforce briefings have become a substitute for campaign rallies and regularly include progress reports on the border wall. The executive order on immigration, probably bearing the fingerprints of senior adviser Stephen Miller, was billed as a way to ensure that American workers take priority over foreigners in any economic recovery.

It has struck a chord with some of Trumps supporters. Douglas Collins, 86, a neurologist from Pensacola, Florida, said: Weve got to get the economy up and running, and people who live pay cheque to pay cheque and are American have to be the first consideration. Is prejudice a major factor? I dont think so.

Doug Peltier, 69, from Forest Lake, Minnesota, said: Its a valid position to be concerned about the economy and immigrants coming and taking jobs from Americans. Im not a bigot, Im not against immigrants, I have a great deal of respect for Mexicans and blacks. I do believe Americans should come first. I guess you could call me a nationalist.

Peltier, a retired school administrator who attended a Trump rally in Minneapolis last year, added: I think Trump has more support than a lot of people believe. We dont boast; we tend to be more silent. I would never put a Donald Trump sticker on my car because I know it would get keyed.

But opponents see something else: a president whose world collapsed around him, suddenly flailing in strange surroundings and grabbing on to a familiar lifeline. Wilson, the political strategist, argues that bigotry, hatred and prejudice arent a bug of the Trump program those are a feature.

He will pursue what he looks at as something that was highly effective for him in the last campaign and that is a racially and ethnically inflected campaign that tries to tell Republican voters in particular that all of their problems and concerns and issues come from the brown people.

Already Trump and Republican allies have hardened their line on China, fuelling a theory that the coronavirus might have accidentally escaped a laboratory in Wuhan and condemning the country for not raising the alarm earlier. They hope to couple this with an attack on Biden, dubbing him Beijing Biden and claiming he had a cosy relationship with China in the past.

Wilson, who is co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee aiming to prevent Trumps re-election, added: What you will absolutely see this fall is that Donald Trump will come out and he will make up a story and it will be something like, Theres boats full of diseased Chinamen coming our way, bar the door.

Democrats are braced for another bitter fight with a president who looks certain to lose the popular vote again but hopes to squeeze by in a few battleground states that decide the electoral college.

Neil Sroka, communications director for the progressive group Democracy for America, added: What we should expect in 2020 is, because of the economic implosion, because of his massive mishandling of this crisis, he will pursue a xenophobic campaign that makes the 2016 effort look like patty cake.

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Donald Trump set to fall back on xenophobia with re-election plan in tatters - The Guardian

The 2016 election left the US gaping at a brewing battle between the president-elect and the most senior members of the law enforcement and intelligence communities.

Into the conflagration jumped Virgil, a pseudonymous contributor to Breitbart, who wrote of a deep state within the US government, bolstered by the mainstream media and a galaxy of contractors, profiteers, supporters, all purportedly intent on destroying Donald Trump.

His near-4,000 word essay appeared weeks before the FBI director, James Comey, briefed the president-elect about the Steele dossier, on 5 January 2017, before 11 January when Trump compared Americas intelligence agencies to Adolf Hitlers Gestapo. For Trump and his minions, Virgils take became a touchstone.

Enter the New Yorkers David Rohde. Under the subtitle The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth About Americas Deep State, the two-time Pulitzer-winner rejects the nomenclature of conspiracy theorists. In doing so he relies in part on Will Hurd, a moderate Republican congressman from Texas who served overseas with the CIA, opposed impeachment and is not seeking re-election.

Trump placing his hand on the shoulder of an FBI director and whispering into his ear is the stuff of Scorseses films

But Rohde does little to dispel the notion that government is riddled with entrenched interests, and that career officials can find themselves at odds with incumbent presidents and vice versa. In Rohdes view, civil servants are part of institutional government, a relatively benign term that masks turf fights, budget battles, policy skirmishes, built-in biases and well-formed points of view. The left has frequently derided the military industrial complex. Name-calling plays both ways.

Rohde acknowledges that all countries have permanent governments, but says the US imposes greater political control over its employees and the resultant process. Even so, campaign finance records reflect that the federal bureaucracy is not a Republican bastion.

Going back in time, in 2012 Internal Revenue Service employees donated to Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a 41 ratio while lawyers at the National Labor Relations Board and the education department shut out Romney completely. In 2020, Joe Biden is outpacing Trump at the IRS and the justice department, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

Of course, who joins the federal government is not necessarily in sync with who prevails on election day. But the Trump presidency appears unique and disheartening. The fight between the president and law enforcement and intelligence was an avoidable consequence of Russias active measures in support of the Trump campaign, and a candidate all too willing to accept the sordid bounty.

I love WikiLeaks was bound to gain attention. And as Rohde makes clear, Trump has waged a persistent assault upon the rule of law, the ideal of a justice department removed from politics and the concept of an intelligence community loyal to the country rather than the man in the Oval Office.

A recent Senate intelligence committee report observed that the intelligence community has present[ed] a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. As Robert Mueller reminded us, absence of indictment was not akin to prosecutorial absolution, despite what the attorney general, William Barr, may have thought and said.

On that score, in an opinion issued last month Reggie Walton, a George W Bush appointee to the federal bench, seriously questioned Barrs integrity and credibility, using words like distorted and misleading to drive the point home.

Suffice to say, all this is coming with a steep cost to our democracy and our post-Watergate system, which sought to make law enforcement something other than the handmaiden of the White House. Trump placing his hand on the shoulder of an FBI director and whispering into his ear is the stuff of Martin Scorseses films. Lock her up is chant befitting a democracy in decay or worse.

In Deep also pays attention to the Trump administrations privatization of foreign policy

Rohde, however, reminds us that Trumps predecessor was by no means angelic when it came to encroachment on civil liberties, despite stints on the Harvard Law Review and as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Under Obama the Pentagon regarded leaking non-classified information as tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States.

Rohde recalls how the intelligence community under Obama spied on a Senate committee, misled Congress about spying on Americans and expanded the use of drone warfare. He offers granular detail on how James Clapper, Obamas director of national intelligence, obfuscated before the Senate intelligence committee on data collection and surveillance of US citizens.

Years later, Clapper would accuse Trump and his administration of an assault on truth and posit that Trump might be a witting or unwitting Russian asset. Regardless of the validity of the charges, Rohde voices discomfort with intelligence community alumni playing an outsized role in clashes with the administration.

In Deep also pays attention to the Trump administrations privatization of foreign policy. Among other things, Rohde describes at length how the efforts in Ukraine of Trumps personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, helped lead to Trumps impeachment. Not surprisingly, Republican stalwarts have failed to thunder paroxysms of outrage over this dubious practice as they do over the supposed deep state.

As Rohde repeatedly reminds us, negative partisanship increasingly drives our politics. With social chasms underlying most of the divide, dont expect it to disappear anytime soon. In our cold civil war, elections have morphed into safety valves and battlefields. Wisconsins potentially lethal conflict over mail-in ballots is just the latest reminder.

In assessing the existence of a deep state, or otherwise, it is worth remembering what Steve Bannon had to say about it the same Steve Bannon who skippered Trumps upset victory and signed Virgils paycheck back in his Breitbart days. As Bannon admitted to James Stewart of the New York Times, the deep state conspiracy theory is for nut cases, because America isnt Turkey or Egypt.

True enough, but our freedom and trust continue to erode with no end in sight.

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In Deep review: Trump v intelligence and Obama vs the people - The Guardian

Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonThe Memo: Bully pulpit may be backfiring for Trump Poll: Trump has 5-point lead over Biden in Texas China emerges as new flashpoint in 2020 campaign MORE on Friday knocked President TrumpDonald John TrumpWH officials discuss HHS secretary replacement following criticism of pandemic response: WSJ Pentagon leaders at impasse about next steps for Capt. Brett Crozier: report Trump forgoes WH press briefing for the first time since Easter weekend MOREs controversial comments about disinfectant possibly being used to treat coronavirus patients, warning people not to poison themselves based on the presidents statement.

Please dont poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea, the former secretary of State wrote on Twitter.

Please dont poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea.

The dig from the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee comes as Trump faces criticism from medical professionals for his remarks.

During a White House briefing on Thursday, Trump suggested medical experts shouldstudy exposing the human body to heat and light as a treatment for coronavirus. He also asked if there was a way to use disinfectants on the body "by injection inside or almost a cleaning."

"Maybe you can, maybe you cant ... Im not a doctor. But Im, like, a person that has a good you-know-what," Trump said, pointing to his head.

The presidents comments triggered Lysol manufacturer Reckitt Benckiserto issue a rare statement that under no circumstance should its products be administered into the human body or be used as a treatment for the coronavirus.

The company, which also sells Dettol in the United Kingdom, sharedin a statement on its websitethat due to recent speculation and social media activity, they had been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus.

As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route). As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. Please read the label and safety information, the company said Friday.

The hashtag #DontDrinkBleach began trending across the United States on Friday afternoon as Twitter users reacted to Trumps comments.

Watching Trumps Press Conferences be like #lysol #disinfectant #DontDrinkBleach pic.twitter.com/36YpRLcPdR

Remember that skit on SNL. This one? Yeah! They warned us too- but we chuckled. #DontDrinkBleach pic.twitter.com/ypcFrSoIzN

The look on Dr. Birx face as Trump talks injecting a #disinfectant and "light and heat" to kill the coronavirus is the look people have when an insane person gets on the NYC subway and launches into a conspiracy laden rant. #DontDrinkBleach #Lysol https://t.co/ptoUq1QPlk

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Hillary Clinton: 'Please don't poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea' | TheHill - The Hill

President Donald Trump. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On Thursday, President Trump wondered aloud if blasting peoples insides with ultraviolet light and injecting their lungs with disinfectant might be a more effective way to slow the coronavirus than the measures currently in use. It was one of the more irresponsible things hes said in a presidency defined by its irresponsibility. He was able to say this, without fear of how guileless Americans might act on his suggestion, because he recognizes that responsibility is only required of people who cant afford to evade it, and he is not one of those people.

Heres the quote:

So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful, light and I think you said that hasnt been checked but youre going to test it and then I said suppose you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said youre going to test that, too. Sounds interesting.

Then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside? Or almost a cleaning, cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So itd be interesting to check that. So youre going to have to use medical doctors but it sounds interesting to me, so well see but the whole concept of the light. The way it kills it in one minute, thats pretty powerful.

Flooding ones body with disinfectant and UV rays is an effective coronavirus remedy in much the same way that getting cancer and dying is which, incidentally, is among the risks of doing what Trump suggested. Interpreted generously, the president was not saying that people should do this at home, but enough medical experts, elected officials, and manufacturers of household cleaning products seem to have heard about the Arizona man who died after self-administering a chemical touted by Trump as a cure to dissuade Americans from it anyway. Trumps pandemic response team, meanwhile, was left to the unenviable task of pretending, or intending, to take his musings seriously and assent to follow-up research, knowing full well that they have better things to do. A familiar chorus of Trump stalwarts in conservative media set about recasting his suggestion as, alternately, essentially benign or willfully misinterpreted by liberals too blinded by their hatred of the president to recognize his epidemiological brilliance.

One of the more striking features of the American response to the coronavirus pandemic has been the inverse relationship between whos expected to practice the most individual responsibility and whos doing the most damage by exhibiting none. We each have a role to play in stemming COVIDs spread; personal decisions such as washing ones hands, practicing social distancing, and using personal protective equipment, whenever possible, are three simple things that all but the most deprived Americans and essential workers can do to help. Yet more often, its the people least equipped to protect themselves who are most readily left to their own devices poor people, prisoners and when misfortune befalls them, either tacitly or explicitly blamed for its occurrence. This is how centuries of structural deprivation can besiege black and Latino Americans,including outsize exposure to toxins and pollutants and sparse access to healthy food and medical care,and still, once these same communities start to see COVIDs highest death rates and costliest economic fallout, the sober response given by the federal government points to their purported irresponsibility, namely alcohol, tobacco, and drug use: We need you to understand especially in communities of color, we need you to step up and help stop the spread so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable, said U.S. surgeon general Jerome Adams, who is black, at a press conference earlier this month.

The incongruity of Adamss remarks has a few possible explanations. On the one hand, he did acknowledge that the burden of social ills fuels these disparities, though he wasnt explicit about what he meant. On the other, Adamss calls for black and brown people to step up implies that they were doing less than was standard to begin with, on top of being the only directed statement on the matter to come out of an administration whose conduct and rhetoric dont just routinely blame nonwhite people for the struggles they face, but for white peoples problems as well. In Trumps view, black people wallow in urban hellscapes kept in squalor by a mix of their own innate filth and the machinations of corrupt black leaders; Latino immigrants, shaped by the shithole countries in which they were spawned, represent a scourge of job theft, sexual predation, disease, and drug-related crime. Both are major contributors to the disaster that Trump has claimed the United States was without him leading it, the reason why it was no longer the great country it had been. Even if Adams has a more nuanced view of the matter, the administration whose orders he follows has had little of substance to contribute to fixing the issues of racial and class inequality that the pandemic has brought to the fore.

The reality, as practiced, looks more like old hat: a stated desire for more personal responsibility, invoked as an excuse to avoid fixing structural problems. This is a longstanding feature of American political life, and has always been racialized; black joblessness rates, use of public assistance, crime in black communities, the black-white education gap all have been attributed, at one point or another, by conservatives and liberals and black and white Americans alike, to pathologies that are either genetically inborn or otherwise culturally unique to black people. Pointing to these supposed pathologies has been enough to turn swathes of Americans against investment in improving black lives. Black-on-black crime is the canard invoked most commonly to justify unchecked police brutality and staggering incarcerations rates; research has demonstrated that white opposition to welfare policies in recent years is driven in large part by their feeling that economic mobility is a racial zero-sum game, whereby improved prospects for nonwhites mean worse ones for them.

But responsibility evaporates at the top. I do not take responsibility at all, Trump said in March, at a press conference where he was asked about the United States lack of coronavirus testing capacity. This statement, dazzling in its clarity, could describe his own attitude toward governing, where nothing is his fault and he feels personally responsible for nobodys well-being but his own, as well as that of his party, whose zeal for funneling billions of dollars into corporate coffers and the pockets of the rich define its tax policy and pandemic bailouts alike. The GOP, more than any other political entity, has been the most strident proponent of the need for more personal responsibility in the U.S. But when confronted by a president whose literal job is to be responsible and take responsibility, but who couldnt be less interested in either, they have dutifully advanced his policy agenda, defended his behavior and pandemic response, and dismissed concerns about his unhinged and often dangerous behavior, which now includes rambling glowingly about the public health merits of injecting a human being with disinfectant, as partisan bias. (Trump has since said his remarks were a prank to goad the media.)

Trump will not stop, will not become responsible or take responsibility, because he has no incentive to, and Trump only responds to incentives, specifically those that enrich and empower him. Conversely, in recent decades, countless joules of political energy have been expended bemoaning supposed irresponsibility in communities wracked by institutional neglect. Conservatives, some liberals, and Republicans in particular have staked their moral cachet on demanding an answer to when, at long last, Americas losers and layabouts will finally take responsibility for the circumstances theyre responsible for. The coronavirus pandemic is a timely reminder of what theyve been more consistently willing to settle for: one of their own, standing astride the suffering of millions, and proudly exclaiming, Not I.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

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The Luxury of Irresponsibility - New York Magazine

Donald Trump has a share in a New York property development that borrowed tens of millions of dollars from China, it was reported on Friday.

The debt derived from a 30% share the US president owns in a billion-dollar building on the Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, which was refinanced in 2012 with $211m of the funding coming from the state-owned Bank of China, Politico reported on Friday.

However, the Bank of China said it had sold the loan in the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) market less than a month after the loan was made, and so Trump was not even indirectly indebted to the bank.

But the Trump Organisations far-flung real estate business has involved dealings with Chinese state-owned firms on several occasions, complicating Trumps emerging election strategy of portraying his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as being soft on China. In a briefing on Saturday, Trump said that China will own the United States if Biden was elected in November.

But among the known Trump Organisation business dealings with Beijing, a Chinese state-owned construction company is helping build the Trump World Golf Club in Dubai, and Beijing has awarded trademarks to the presidents daughter, Ivanka. In the past, Ivankas husband (and a White House adviser), Jared Kushner, has sought Chinese finance for at least one major real estate deal.

The president is a passive minority investor in the 1290 Avenue of the Americas office tower which received the Bank of China funding in 2012. The main investor is Vornado Realty Trust, which owns 70%.

A Bank of China spokesperson said: On November 7, 2012 several financial institutions including the Bank of China participated in a commercial mortgage loan of $950 million to Vornado Realty Trust. Within 22 days, the loan was securitized and sold into the CMBS market, as is a common practice in the industry. Bank of China has not had any ownership interest in that loan since late November 2012.

Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization responded to requests for comment. Trump has officially handed over the day-to-day running of his business empire to his sons, but he benefits financially from its profits, producing multiple conflicts of interest. The Trump Organization has recently applied for coronavirus compensation from the government.

Trumps approach to China has alternated between combative and unctuous, particularly in relation to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, with whom Trump has consistently claimed to have an excellent personal relationship.

Trump tweeted on 24 January, in the early stages of the pandemic: China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!

This article was amended on 25 April 2020 to include a response from representatives of the Bank of China concerning the 2012 loan. The original headline, which wrongly suggested Donald Trump had a current debt with the bank, was also amended.

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Trump attack on Biden highlights president's own past dealings with China - The Guardian

Throughout these weeks of lockdown I'm sure most of us have been binge-watching Netflix, box sets and various mini-series.

My current TV addiction starts every evening at around 6pm and a single episode can run for up to two hours.

It's full of drama, conflict and plot twists. It's Donald Trump's daily media briefing.

I may soon have to find a new series however, amid reports that this hit TV show could be axed.

Not long after taking office in 2017, the Trump administration abandoned traditional press conferences.

Under previous presidents, the White House Press Secretary would give daily, on-camera updates to the media, with even POTUS himself making appearances in the briefing room.

Donald Trump changed all that.No more formal briefings but lots of impromptu 'press gaggles', where the president stops and talks to journalists on his way to or from engagements.

Often times this would take place in the White House South Lawn before MrTrump boarded his chopper, Marine One.

This had its advantages.The 'gaggle'would sometimes last for up to 40 minutes with the president taking questions from all the journalists present.

There were also major disadvantages.At times of controversy Mr Trump could ignore questions, claiming not to be able to hear over the roar of the helicopter, or he could just skip the entire thing altogether and walk past the journalists with a wave.

The White House would dismiss criticism over the lack of press briefings by pointing to these regular gaggles as evidence of a transparent, accessible presidency.

Mr Trump, who had rarely darkened the door of the James S Brady Briefing Room, began making nightly appearances at the podium when the coronavirus outbreak began.

At the start, the president would give Covid-19 updates but the press conferences quickly evolved into something else.

In the absence of any public gatherings because of the lockdown, Mr Trump has frequently used his daily briefings as campaign rallies.

He promotes his own handling of the crisis and has even played campaign-style videos inside the briefing room.

As the president frequently points out, his appearances are getting big TV ratings and this has given hima major advantage over his rival Joe Biden who has no such platform.

Early in the coronavirus crisis, MrTrump saw an increase in his approval ratings and a majority of Americans were happy with his handlingof the outbreak.

In recent weeks however, his poll numbers have slipped and Joe Biden is predicted to beat him in many key states.

The power of the press briefing has waned and the president has no one to blame but himself.

On some days, there hasn't been any new coronavirus information to provide but the media conferences have been held anyway just to give Mr Trump some prime-time TV coverage.

In the absence of updates on the virus, he frequently goes off script and embarks on ramblingrants.

He attacks journalists, governors and Democrats.

He also offers his own views on treatments and cures, something which has led to controversy.

On Thursday night, he asked his scientists to explore if heat, light and disinfectants could be applied to the human body to treat the virus.

It led to an outcry with medical experts urging people to ignore Mr Trump and it even prompted the company that makes Dettol to issue a statement warning the public not to inject its products.

Donald Trump claimed he was being sarcastic and blamed the "fake news media" but the damage was done.

Would this mark the end of the daily press briefing?Would this be the moment that the TV execs decided not to commission a second season?

The news website Axios has reported that the White House is planning to scale back the media conferences with fewer and shorter appearances by the president.

According to the article, Mr Trump's advisers have told him the briefings are hurting his poll numbers, and "the spectacle of him fighting with the press isn't what people want to see".

If the briefings are to be wound down in the coming days, no doubt there is still plenty of drama and plot twists to come.

Every TV show goes out with a bang and who knows what this season finale will have in store.

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Season finale: Is this the end of the Trump show? - RTE.ie

The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a miracle cure for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week.

In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk is a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body. He added that it can rid the body of Covid-19.

A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To the astonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. One minute!

He went on to say: Is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so itd be interesting to check that.

Trump did not specify where the idea of using disinfectant as a possible remedy for Covid-19 came from, and the source for his notion remains obscure. But the Guardian has learned that peddlers of chlorine dioxide industrial bleach have been making direct approaches to the White House in recent days.

Grenon styles himself as archbishop of Genesis II a Florida-based outfit that claims to be a church but which in fact is the largest producer and distributor of chlorine dioxide bleach as a miracle cure in the US. He brands the chemical as MMS, miracle mineral solution, and claims fraudulently that it can cure 99% of all illnesses including cancer, malaria, HIV/Aids as well as autism.

Since the start of the pandemic, Genesis II has been marketing MMS as a cure to coronavirus. It advises users, including children, to mix three to six drops of bleach in water and drink it.

In his weekly televised radio show, posted online on Sunday, Grenon read out the letter he wrote to Trump. He said it began: Dear Mr President, I am praying you read this letter and intervene.

Grenon said that 30 of his supporters have also written in the past few days to Trump at the White House urging him to take action to protect Genesis II in its bleach-peddling activities which they claim can cure coronavirus.

On Friday, hours after Trump talked about disinfectant on live TV, Grenon went further in a post on his Facebook page. He claimed that MMS had actually been sent to the White House. He wrote: Trump has got the MMS and all the info!!! Things are happening folks! Lord help others to see the Truth!

Paradoxically, Trumps outburst about the possible value of an injection of disinfectant into the lungs of Covid-19 sufferers came just days after a leading agency within the presidents own administration took action to shut down the peddling of bleach as a coronavirus cure around the US.

Last week the US Food and Drug Administration obtained a federal court order barring Genesis II from selling what was described as an unproven and potentially harmful treatment for Covid-19. The FDA also ordered a disciple of Genesis II, Kerri Rivera, to remove claims that MMS cured coronavirus from her website.

Last August the FDA issued an urgent warning urging Americans not to buy or drink MMS, which it said was a dangerous bleach which has caused serious and potentially life-threatening side effects. Drinking MMS can cause nausea, diarrhea and severe dehydration that can lead to death, the federal agency said.

The Guardian contacted the White House asking whether Grenons letter had influenced Trumps comments on disinfectant, but did not immediately receive a response.

Another advocate of bleach as a miracle cure who has been seeking to interest Trump in the treatment is Alan Keyes. He is a former ambassador and adviser to Ronald Reagan who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for the US Senate and on three occasions for the US presidency.

Keyes has featured Genesis II bleach products as a miracle cure on his online conservative TV show, Lets Talk America.

It is not known whether Keyes has discussed MMS with Trump. But the two men have overlapping interests.

Not only have they both featured in Republican party and presidential politics, but they were both leading proponents of the Birther conspiracy theory that wrongfully suggested Barack Obama was born outside America.

Keyess TV show is hosted on IAMtv, a rightwing web-based channel. IAMtvs other leading anchor is Bob Sisson, who has also advertised Genesis II bleach products on air.

In one of his shows, first reported by the Daily Beast, Sisson held up two bottles of Genesis II MMS and said: Gonna meet Trump, its only a matter of time. President Trumps gonna invite us up there, when he finds out about this stuff.

On Friday Trump claimed he was being sarcastic in his remarks but there is no evidence to back up that claim and he appeared entirely serious as he made them.

Read more:

Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus 'cure' wrote to Trump this week - The Guardian

Donald Trumps conduct in a week when Wednesdays record number of coronavirus deaths doubled next day to a new record of 4,591 can only be understood if you realize that the president is not a 73-year-old man with the experience and maturity that suggests. Trump is actually a 10-year-old having aged in reverse dog years. He has the crimped emotions and empathy of a deluded superhero (only I can fix it), the limitations of a C-student, and the work ethic of a pre-teen who resents any challenge to his fragile ego and responds positively only to praise. All he does now is try to make to reality disappear.

Seeing Trump as a captive of his immaturity is a way to anticipate and perhaps defend against his dangerous behavior that is getting worse as the stakes get higher. A know-it-all, hes opening the countrys parks, gyms, and restaurants not just against the advice of experts and the views of 80 percent of the country, but of usual sycophants like Sen. Lindsey Graham and a long list of CEOs, who constituted the highest IQ on a call ever but who for all their smarts, found their names read off without their permission. If you took a drink every time Trump called them and red state governors people who love our country as opposed to Democrats, whom he calls half-wits and whiners, youd be intoxicated by 7 p.m.

Trump requires close supervision, strict limits on his screen time, and guidance on how to tell real doctors from single-named celebrity ones like Dr. Oz.

To advance his plan, Trump cited large areas where the virus has been totally eradicated to justify premature emancipation. Is the large area hes referring to called Mars? Or is it South Dakota, one of those 29 states ready to open any moment, yet with a spot so hot the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls had to close after 777 workers tested positive?

Thats tragic for those who consider bacon one of the four major food groups, and for Trumps argument. If a part of the country isnt infected, just give it a few days without social distancing and it will be. If an area is opened before it should be, wait a few days, and it will be reinfected. If Trump did his homework, hed know that after the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who acted to stop Democrats from harming the presidents economy, called students back to Liberty University, he saw the town hit by 78 new cases.

Parental guidance is advised. Trump requires close supervision, strict limits on his screen time, and guidance on how to tell real doctors from single-named celebrity ones like Dr. Oz, who told Trumps good buddy Sean Hannity that a mortality rate of 2 to 3 percent is an appetizing trade-off for jump-starting the economy. He needs a constant reminder that car accidents and smoking arent contagious.

Hes right about one thing: We cant believe the job hes done.

And how about getting Trump to put in a days work on a matter of life and death? Until D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowsers mid-March stay-at-home directive confined him to the White House,Trump spent much of the crisis at rallies and golfing. Hes home (mostly alone) now but still needs to spend less time in front of the TV, which only generates ill-advised tweet storms, and attend a meeting or two of his task force in the Situation Room, where the seating chart changes daily depending on who up and whos down in the presidents clique.

If Trump had anyone on staff not afraid of his cruel temper, he might have fixed his testing problem before the press noticed that his Power-Point presentation passing as a plan did nothing to increase that essential step in the process. While hes taken credit for tests that are the envy of the world and sniffed that hes president, not a guy clutching swabs in a parking lot 2,000 miles away, hes still stuck on his March 6 lie that anybody who wants to get a test can get a test and that Barack Obama didnt leave him one when the virus didnt exist back then.

At a rate of 3 million tests in three months, a majority of the country would be tested in six years. Cornered, Trump turned to Dr. Deborah Birx. After a word salad shes as famous for as for her scarves didnt fool anyone, Trump took his ball and left, clocking his shortest briefing ever on Thursday.

That didnt end the criticism. The next morning he was assailed by his arch-nemesis Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whos held his fire the last couple of weeks to move from the ungrateful ledger to the grateful one to wheedle ventilators out of the national stockpile Jared Kusher thought was his. Cuomo pleaded that a national problem required a national strategy and federal funds. Why dont you show as much consideration to your states as you did to your big businesses and your airlines? he asked. What am I supposed to do, send a bouquet of flowers?

Trump still has a childlike belief he can spin the virus, putting 60,000 deaths on the house, having chosen a model that predicted 2.2 million fatalities if he did nothing and by that faulty reasoning, congratulating himself for a job so well done no one can believe it.

What no one can believe, except the hardest core of his base, is that a con man in a gimme cap and a superhero cape clings to the notion he alone can fix everything, including a broken Dow Jones, and get us all to Splash Mountain at Disneyland without testing Mickey. Hes right about one thing: We cant believe the job hes done. On top of all the deaths that wouldnt have happened if thered been an adult in the White House, its too much to take in.

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Donald Trump Keeps Trying to Make Reality Disappear - The Daily Beast

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin issued a rare joint statement on Saturday commemorating a 1945 World War Two link-up of U.S. and Soviet troops on their way to defeat Nazi Germany as an example of how their countries can cooperate.

FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump shake hands during a bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The statement by Trump and Putin comes amid deep strains in U.S.-Russian ties over a raft of issues, from arms control and Russias intervention in Ukraine and Syria to U.S. charges that Russia has spread disinformation about the novel coronavirus pandemic and interfered in U.S. election campaigns.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the decision to issue the statement sparked debate within the Trump administration, with some officials worried it could undercut stern U.S. messages to Moscow.

The joint statement marked the anniversary of the April 25, 1945 meeting on a bridge over the Elbe River in Germany of Soviet soldiers advancing from the east and American troops moving from the West.

This event heralded the decisive defeat of the Nazi regime, the statement said. The Spirit of the Elbe is an example of how our countries can put aside differences, build trust, and cooperate in pursuit of a greater cause.

The Journal said the last joint statement marking the Elbe River bridge link-up was issued in 2010, when the Obama administration was seeking improved relations with Moscow.

Trump had hoped to travel to Moscow to mark the anniversary. He has beencomplimentary of Putin, promoted cooperation with Moscow, and said he believed the Russian leaders denials of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Senior administration officials and lawmakers, in contrast, have been fiercely critical of Russia, with relations between the nuclear-armed nations at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday issued a bipartisan report concurring with a 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia pursued an influence campaign of misinformation and cyber hacking aimed at swinging the vote to Trump over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

U.S. intelligence officials have warned lawmakers that Moscow is meddling in the 2020 presidential election campaign, which Russia denies.

Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by Steve Holland, editing by Ross Colvin and Chizu Nomiyama

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Trump and Putin issue rare joint statement promoting cooperation - Reuters

EPA Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the White House - EPA

US President DonaldTrumphas said"emerging" research suggests disinfectants and sunlight might be able to used as treatments and diminish the threat ofthe new coronavirus.

Mr Trump saidat a White House briefing on Thursdaythat researchers were looking at the effects of disinfectants and wondered aloud if they could be injected into people, saying the virus "does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that". ButWilliam Bryan of the Department of Homeland Security said there was no consideration of that.

Past studies have not found good evidence that the warmer temperatures and higher humidity of spring and summer will help tamp down the spread of the virus.

However, Mr Bryan said that there are "emerging results" from new research that suggest solar light has a powerful effect in killing the virus on surfaces and in the air.

He said scientists have seen a similar effect from higher temperatures and humidity. A biocontainment lab in Maryland has been conducting testing on the virus since February, Mr Bryan said.

"The virus is dying at a much more rapid pace just from exposure to higher temperatures and just from exposure to humidity," Mr Bryan said.

Mr Bryan said having more knowledge about this could help governors when making decisions about how and when to open their state economies. However, he stressed that the emerging results of the light and heat studies do not replace social distancing recommendations.

Mr Trump, who has consistently looked for hopeful news about containing the virus, was asked if it was dangerous to make people think they would be safe by going outside in the heat, considering that so many people have died in Florida.

"I hope people enjoy the sun. And if it has an impact, that's great," MrTrumpreplied, adding, "It's just a suggestion from a brilliant lab by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant man."

"I'm here to present ideas, because we want ideas to get rid of this thing. And if heat is good, and if sunlight is good, that's a great thing as far as I'm concerned," the President said.

In pictures: Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak around the world

The President has often talked up prospects for new therapies and offered rosy timelines for the development of a vaccine.

Earlier in the month, scientific advisers told the White House there's no good evidence yet that the heat and humidity of summer will rein in the virus without continued public health measures.

Researchers convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine analysed studies done so far to test virus survival under different laboratory conditions as well as tracking where and how Covid-19 has spread so far.

"Given that countries currently in 'summer' climates, such as Australia and Iran, are experiencing rapid virus spread, a decrease in cases with increases in humidity and temperature elsewhere should not be assumed," the researchers wrote earlier in April in response to questions from the White House Office of Science and Technology.

In addition, the report cited the global lack of immunity to the new virus and concluded, "if there is an effect of temperature and humidity on transmission, it may not be as apparent as with other respiratory viruses for which there is at least some preexisting partial immunity."

They noted that during 10 previous flu pandemics, regardless of what season they started, all had a peak second wave about six months after the virus first emerged.

In March, Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergencies chief. said, "We have to assume that the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread, and it's a false hope to say yes, it will just disappear in the summertime like influenza."

Go here to read the rest:

Donald Trump says disinfectants and sunlight could be used as coronavirus treatments - msnNOW

Whatever order Trump issues will have significant political ramifications. Cutting off all immigration would bolster Trumps standing with his hard-line conservative base, but anger the business community, which wants Trump to ease restrictions on temporary worker visas. Conversely, if Trump chooses to exempt any temporary workers from his immigration ban, hell bolster his standing with the business community but risk creating a backlash among his more conservative base.

Trump kicked off speculation about his intentions Monday with a late-night tweet proclaiming: In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!

The tweet did not indicate what specific action Trump would take: He could simply suspend entries for a period of time, or cancel a specific program for the year. The White House did not offer clarity when it issued its first official statement on the issue Tuesday morning.

President Trump is committed to protecting the health and economic well-being of American citizens as we face unprecedented times, said White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. As President Trump has said, Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. At a time when Americans are looking to get back to work, action is necessary.

When asked what prompted the decision, a top DHS official responded: 22 million unemployed Americans and counting due to Covid-19.

Since the pandemic began, international travel has come to a virtual standstill as countries across the globe have imposed travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

In the U.S., the Trump administration has restricted foreign visitors from China, Europe, Canada and Mexico, and has paused processing for immigrants trying to come into the U.S. on nonworker visas because of office closures. Trump has boasted that such moves demonstrated his administrations serious and early response to the growing outbreak. Public health experts say the moves likely bought the U.S. some time but that the administration did not use that time to properly prepare for a domestic surge in cases.

Trump has faced calls from conservative groups to go further than the slate of travel restrictions. They have been urging the Trump administration to halt all foreign workers from entering the U.S., citing the millions of Americans who have been put out of work amid economic shutdowns intended to help slow the coronavirus outbreak.

But for weeks, his administration has allowed the foreign workers to enter.

Specifically, the U.S. eased requirements for immigrants to get certain jobs, such as farmworkers, landscapers and crab pickers, aware that certain industries, including those that fill grocery store shelves, could be hurt during the pandemic if they couldnt hire foreign employees. It has also begun easing the process for companies looking to hire foreign workers, altering some paperwork requirements, including allowing electronic signatures and waiving the physical inspection of documents.

In early April, under pressure from immigration activists, the administration did backtrack on a plan to pause the approval of 35,000 more seasonal worker visas, pending further review.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is running for a Senate seat in Alabama, pushed for a complete moratorium on immigration to the U.S. on Tucker Carlsons show on Fox News last week. Carlson has been in close contact with Trump during the course of this virus and was one of the primary outside allies pushing him to do the China travel ban back in early January.

Immediately after the presidents tweet on Monday night, hard-line immigration groups cheered the decision.

The president's comments reflect a sensitivity to a primary purpose of all immigration laws of every country, and that is to protect a nation's vulnerable workers, said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, which supports restrictions. With tens of millions of Americans who want to work full time not able to, most immigration makes no sense today, and to allow it to continue at its current level at this time would show a callous disregard for those enduring deep economic suffering.

The excitement could change if the White House confirms exemptions for foreign worker visas in its upcoming order.

One question remains, said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors immigration restrictions. Are there any caveats like guest workers being excluded from the order? Well see.

More:

Trump's surprise immigration ban expected to include major exemption - POLITICO

"VOA should be leading the charge in exposing the exact timeline of the lies of the CCP concerning human-to-human transmission and community spread. Instead, we get Amanda Bennett, Bannon told POLITICO. She is a classic 'useful idiot' who kowtows to Beijing's Party Line.

The vitriol from the right doesnt sit well with mainstream journalists, who fear that Trump, through Pack, could transform VOA into a vehicle for his own brand of politics. The National Press Club issued a statement strongly backing Bennett, and citing VOAs history of providing accurate and unbiased news to counter the lies of totalitarian regimes.

Michael Freedman, president of the National Press Club, said that VOA has produced exemplary reporting under Bennett. "Amanda is a respected journalist, he said. When you're providing accurate and fair information, somebody is going to be unhappy with it."

The independence of the federal governments broadcast media for foreign audiences has been an issue for decades, dating back to the Cold War. Conservative activists have long sought to remake the U.S. Agency for Global Media, formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors with its annual budget of $750 million and a weekly audience of nearly 350 million people in a more confrontational mold. Trumps election renewed the issue, sparking speculation that he and Bannon would move quickly to turn Voice of America into full-throated, pro-Trump state TV.

But such changes have not come to pass, and as the White House looks again to advance its nominee, Democrats are pushing back against Pack, who served as president of the conservative Claremont Institute until 2017 and is the producer, most recently, of "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.

On Monday, Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) sent the White House a letter about Pack, saying his nomination remains tainted by unanswered questions about possible self-dealing during his time at Claremont and unresolved issues with the Internal Revenue Service over money from government grants to his non-profit that ended up being paid to his production company.

Mr. Pack has acknowledged that he made false statements to the IRS, yet he has indicated that he has no intention of correcting the record, Mendendez wrote to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Does the White House agree that there is no need for Mr. Pack to provide accurate information or required disclosures to the IRS? If so, how did the White House arrive at this conclusion and does the IRS agree? Does this position apply only to Mr. Pack, or does it apply more broadly to Trump Administration nominees and other U.S. taxpayers?

Pack did not respond to requests for comment. A person familiar with his nomination said he was following standard procedure for nominees by avoiding contact with the press.

In 2017, the White House settled on Pack as its pick to head the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which was renamed the U.S. Agency for Global Media the following year. In addition to VOA, the agency oversees the funding of Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, which are privately incorporated but publicly funded and often take a more antagonistic stance than VOA does towards covering authoritarian regimes.

Pack, whom Bannon has described as his mentor in documentary filmmaking, has previously served on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Council on the Humanities, two other flashpoints for political fights over publicly funded cultural programming.

That culture war lens has had an enduring influence on his approach to media. "There's a lot of complaining sometimes on the right that there aren't documentaries like this, he said of his Clarence Thomas film during a recent radio appearance. But the left supports its documentary filmmakers and in that sense it deserves to own the culture because it shows up for it."

Trump formally put Pack forward in 2018, but his nomination languished in the Senate, in large part due to a lack of enthusiasm from Republicans on Capitol Hill. Former Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee at the time and was one of few Senate Republicans to openly defy Trump, showed little interest in moving Packs nomination.

Corkers replacement as chairman, James Risch of Idaho, is a more reliable ally of Trumps, and support from conservative activists has rekindled Packs nomination in recent months. In September, Pack got a hearing, but since then, his nomination has again stalled as he has jousted with Menendez over questions related to his taxes and his tenure at Claremont.

In November, a group that included former Attorney General Ed Meese, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, and Justice Thomass wife, Ginni Thomas, signed an open letter in support of Pack.

Per Senate rules, Packs nomination was sent back to the White House in January, which re-submitted it on February 25. By the time Pack had sent in his paperwork in March, coronavirus had brought Senate proceedings to a halt.

It is expected Pack would fire Bennett if confirmed. For some Hill Republicans who remain lukewarm on Pack, the drawn-out nomination fight has already diminished his chances of successfully remaking VOA in a more hawkish image.

Trumpworld has known about [Bennett] since the transition but they didnt care because they didnt think VOA mattered, said a congressional Republican aide. Now they have a problem because she had four years to install her people at every level and shes going to absolutely steamroll Pack. From day one everything he sees and hears is going to be prebaked. He doesnt have a chance.

VOAs coverage of China under Bennett had been drawing fire from the right at least as early as 2018, when Stanford Universitys conservative Hoover Institution relayed complaints of a pattern of avoiding stories that could be perceived to be too tough on China in a lengthy report on Chinese influence in the U.S.

Amid the coronavirus crisis, the White House has seized again on VOAs China coverage and Packs nomination to oversee it.

Behind the scenes, White House Chief Digital Officer Ory Rinat who worked at the Heritage Foundation and is aligned with many of Packs movement conservative supporters has been active in pushing for change at the governments broadcasters.

On April 10, Rinats office blasted Voice of America in the White Houses 1600 Daily newsletter, writing, VOA too often speaks for Americas adversariesnot its citizens.

The day before, White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino had taken issue with VOAs coverage of a light show marking the end of the lockdown in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus outbreak began. American taxpayerspaying for Chinas very own propaganda, via the U.S. Government funded Voice of America! DISGRACE!! Scavino tweeted.

Bennett issued a lengthy response, pointing to VOAs critical coverage of Chinas coronavirus response and saying, One of the big differences between publicly-funded independent media, like the Voice of America, and state-controlled media is that we are free to show all sides of an issue and are actually mandated to do so by law as stated in the VOA Charter signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley did not respond to a request for comment.

Bennett did not respond to requests for comment and VOAs press office declined to make her available for an interview.

Bennetts husband Don Graham, whose Graham Holdings sold the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos in 2013, has taken to defending her on his personal Facebook page, appealing to taxpayers.

You, through your tax payments, have built up a worldwide broadcasting organization with considerable worldwide credibility. And now we have a chance to throw it away, he wrote, in addition to authoring a lengthy post about Bennetts work as an editor at Bloomberg News in exposing the riches of Chinese President Xi Jinpings family.

She has been a truthful reporter and editor, he wrote, willing to stand up to the Chinese government (as the family of Xi Jinping will attest), at Bloomberg and at VOA.

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

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Whats behind Trumps fresh push to wrest control of Voice of America - POLITICO

Donald Trump took a break from his scattershot coronavirus-pandemic management and his regular Twitter program to wish the New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams a happy birthday on Wednesday, writing, Happy Birthday to the great Cindy Adams of the New York Post. Cindy is 90, but looks 39 to me. She is going strong!

He also called her earlier in the week, according to Adamss column on Tuesday.

The column addressed the birthday celebration shed been planning before the crisis, which wouldve been held this coming Friday. Reached by phone on Wednesday, Adams said that with the party off, she had no plans. Im not gonna do anything, she said. She added that her housekeeper would like to make me goat curry. And I really dont think I want any goat curry for my birthday, instead of the 500 people I was going to give a huge five-course dinner to.

On the call with Trump, I remember saying, Dont worry about [Joe] Biden, he cant find his way to the urinal in the White House, Adams said. She was on speakerphone in the Oval Office, and the room erupted in laughter. I dont remember what other things we said or what Im gonna tell you about it, she said.

The cozy column and backatcha tweet caused some minor commotion on Twitter, coming as it did in the middle of a crisis that, by the confirmed numbers, has killed just under 50,000 people in the U.S., infected over 800,000 more, and generally thrown the country into varying degrees of distress. There was also Adamss waxing nostalgic about how the president used to try to date Miss Universe contestants while she was an official for the competition. In the column Adams wrote that she told Trump on the phone, If you could handle a locked skirt you can handle a locked-down country. The room broke out laughing. (At least 23 women have publicly made allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump. He has denied all the allegations.) Not that Adams was reading the comments, as it were. He tweeted whatever it was he tweeted today, she said on the phone on Wednesday.

Trump has long had a kind of codependent relationship with the New York City tabloids. If you worked for a newspaper in New York in the 1980s, you had to write about Trump, the former Post and Newsday editor and columnist Susan Mulcahy wrote for Politico a few months before Trumps election. At times, I would let several months go by without a single column mention of The Donald, she added. This doubtless upset him, as he loves Page Six and used to have it brought it to him the moment it arrived in his office.

Adams said that she and Trump have been friends for 50 years. Hes been to her home for dinner, as have many other politicians. Ive had mayors, governors, Ive had presidents here for dinner, Adams said. But they were nice, small little dinners. I never had 500 people at a dinner that I was arranging and I was paying for, and Im not ever doing it again.

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Yes, Cindy Adams Is Still Besties With Donald Trump: What Did We Expect? - Vanity Fair

To get a sense of just how much damage Donald Trump is doing each day, by making the daily White House briefings on the coronavirus pandemic mostly about himself, and distracting attention from vital updates on the public health emergency delivered by scientists, it helps to look at how very differently this is handled in other democracies.

In Greece, for example, the nation is briefed at 6 p.m. each evening by Dr. Sotirios Tsiodras, an unassuming professor of medicine who studied infectious diseases at Harvard and now leads the Greek governments coronavirus task force. Tsiodras, often reading from his notes, has been credited with helping to rally the nation to quickly accept a national lockdown that has, so far, been more successful than most, largely by presenting the science in a calm, rational voice of authority. On the rare occasions when his level-headed facade has cracked like a moment last month when he appealed to Greeks to protect their elderly relatives by staying at home the impact has been all the more powerful.

On Friday, Tsiodras announced that there were 56 new cases of Covid-19 in Greece, and four more deaths, bringing the total number of cases to 2,011, with 90 fatalities. He ended his opening remarks by calling for solidarity with the countrys Roma minority. There is no room for discrimination, for hatred, for fear, for division, for divisions in our society or in the rest of the worlds societies, Tsiodras said. What we need to overcome, what will help us overcome this pandemic, is above all unity and solidarity between us.

Greeces prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has used Twitter not to attack regional officials or complain about the lockdowns impact on the economy, but to share a video showing how successful the drive to empty the nations streets has been.

In other words, Greeks live in something like the parallel universe Americans could inhabit if Trump would refrain from commenting on subjects he knows nothing about and let Dr. Anthony Fauci deliver calm, fact-based updates on the fight against virus, and occasional empathetic comments on the health disparities it has revealed in American society.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron is nowhere to be seen when the daily update on the spread of Covid-19 is delivered on live television by Dr. Jrme Salomon, an epidemiologist who is the chief medical advisor to the nations department of health. Salomon also takes questions from the press, because, according to LObs, a French news magazine, Macron wanted the public to be informed by a trusted expert, not a politician.

Although Macron did spend Thursday in Marseille, meeting with Prof. Didier Raoult, a virologist researching the potential use of the drug hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 patients, the French president, unlike Trump, has declined to endorse the untested treatment as a miracle cure.

Germans also get their daily updates on the battle to slow the spread of the virus from a medical expert, Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, the federal agency responsible for disease control.

In Ireland, updates are delivered daily by Dr. Tony Holohan, the countrys chief medical officer, despite the fact that its current leader, Leo Varadkar, is also a doctor.

Holohan, like Tsiodras and Fauci, has become a local celebrity since the start of the pandemic because he is seen as a man of integrity who speaks in plain language.

Canadians get bilingual updates on the virus from news conferences led by an elected politician, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, but she largely defers to the medical experts, the chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, and her deputy, Dr. Howard Njoo.

Rather than attacking his political opponents or whining about criticism from the press, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has dedicated his media appearances to making the case to the public for the necessary measures recommended by the scientists.

At a provincial level in Canada, British Columbias daily briefings are led by Dr. Bonnie Henry, a public official modest enough to admit that part of the regions success so far has been down to luck.

In Spain, ministers deliver the updates, but alongside a medical expert, Dr. Fernando Simn, the director of Spains health emergency center, who was himself infected with the virus in March. The doctor, who has achieved a kind of cult status, recently rejoined the briefings by video link from quarantine.

Even in countries where politicians take the lead in providing updates, like Austria and Japan, officials have, unlike Trump, modeled good public behavior by observing social distancing and wearing masks.

The daily briefings in Britain, which are led by a senior politician, have been criticized by some observers as overly political even Trumpian defensive look-how-well-were-doing drivel. At one news conference before he became infected with Covid-19, Prime Minister Boris Johnson even shared the Trump-like boast that he had continued to shake hands, even while visiting a hospital treating coronavirus patients.

Yet at each briefing in London, the senior elected official leading it has been flanked by two medical experts who have been free to field questions from journalists after the politicians opening remarks.

Even two of the planets most Trump-like leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, have allowed the experts to speak, mostly unimpeded.

Erdogan was criticized for initially downplaying the threat posed by the virus, but permits his health minister, Dr. Fahrettin Koca, to deliver science-based, daily updates on the effort to combat its spread.

Bolsonaro, who has denounced social distancing and threatened to fire his health minister, Dr. Luiz Henrique Mandetta for supporting it, still lets the doctor lead the daily updates for the public. On Thursday, Mandetta warned the public to beware of false prophets, promising cures, and mocked anti-vaxxers, claiming that as soon as a vaccine is developed for Covid-19, they will be the first to take it.

Bolsonaro shares Trumps fixation on the possibility that the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine could be a miracle cure for Covid-19, and his impatience with medical experts who want to see proof that it is safe and effective in randomized clinical trials before recommending it to patients. Last month, Facebook and Twitter deleted video of Bolsonaro saying that the drug was working everywhere to cure Covid-19, flagging it as a violation of their policies against spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.

As a result, Mandetta has reportedly resisted pressure from Brazils president to approve the use of hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 patients at the first signs of illness. The health minister said earlier this week that doctors could prescribe the drug for outpatients, but they would have to take responsibility for the risks of possible side effects if they do. In the past two weeks, there have been 43 cases of heart trouble related to hydroxychloroquine treatment among coronavirus patients in France, according to that countrys drug safety agency.

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No Other Leader Politicizes Pandemic Briefings Like Trump - The Intercept

In Navarros second memo, dated 23 February, he urged for immediate funding to minimize economic and social disruption.

Any member of the Task Force who wants to be cautious about appropriating funds for a crisis that could inflict trillions of dollars in economic damage and take millions of lives has come to the wrong administration, Navarro wrote.

But at a press gaggle on 24 February, Navarro assured that coronavirus was nothing to worry about for the American people under Trumps leadership.

Since the day that President Trump pulled down the flights from China to the US, he has been actively leading the situation in terms of this crisis with the task force. Nothing to worry about for the American people.

This countrys done a beautiful job under [the] presidents leadership [sic] in terms of managing this situation. Hes working on a daily basis with the task force and were taking steps to anticipate where the pucks gonna be. Were skating there in defense of the American people and the American economy. So you can be sure youre that in great hands with the Trump administration.

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Trump says he's 'not determined' to open the country in May as it happened - The Guardian

As President Donald Trumps coronavirus press briefing stretched to two hours, he took a question from CNNs chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, that clearly set him off.

We hear from a lot of people who see these briefings as sort of happy talk briefings, Acosta said. And some of the officials dont paint as rosy picture of what is happening around the country. If you look at some of these questions do we have enough masks? No. Do we have enough tests? No. Do we have enough PPE? No.

Trump then interrupted him. Why would you say that? The answer is yes. I think the answer is yes.

For the next five minutes, he sparred with Acosta over the notion that the U.S. does not have enough of the medical supplies. Trump said that there was now enough supply of ventilators, for instance, that other countries are asking the U.S. for them.

Related StoryAs TV News Ratings Surge, Historians Remind That Media Can Be Weaponized During Elections

But Acosta tried to cite news coverage of doctors and other medical officials who have appeared on the network complaining of scarcities.

Trump interjected,A lot of it is fake news.

As Acosta went on, Trump said, Well yeah, depending on your air they are always going to say that because otherwise you are not going to put them on.

Trump challenged Acostas characterization of the briefings as happy talk.

This is not happy talk. Maybe it is happy talk for you, Trump said. It is not happy talk for me. Were talking about the greatest economy in the world, one day I have to close it off. And we did the right thing because maybe it would have been two million people died.

He added, This is sad talk. These are the saddest news conferences that I have ever had. I dont like doing them. You know why? Because I am talking about death.

Earlier on Friday, Trump boasted about the TV audiences for the coronavirus news conferences, writing, Because the T.V. Ratings for the White House News Conferences are the highest, the Opposition Party (Lamestream Media), the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats &, of course, the few remaining RINOS, are doing everything in their power to disparage & end them. The Peoples Voice!

Trump also told Acosta of having to face the decision of whether to reopen the U.S. economy, perhaps after the current social distancing guidelines end on April 30, and having to weigh whether it is the right time to do so.

He later said that he faces what he called the biggest decision of my life because I have to say, OK, lets go. This is what were going to do.

By the end of the five minutes, he chided Acosta for even asking the question.

You shouldnt be asking that kind of question, he said. You should say, You know what, its been really incredible whats been happening.'

Trump has been aware not just the ratings for his briefings but the reaction to them.

The briefing was one of Trumps longest since the coronavirus crisis started. Less than 24 hours earlier, he appeared for only about 20 minutes at an evening briefing, as even some of his supporters and allies have suggested that they be truncated.

As Fridays session went past 90 minutes, Trump turned to the reporters gathered and asked them whether he should continue.

He decided to keep taking questions but told the reporters, Youre not going to criticize me that the conference was too long? You know yesterday I left short. [They say] It was too short. If I stay too long they say it was too long. Some day we are going to get it just right.

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Donald Trump Berates CNNs Jim Acosta Over Happy Talk Question: These Are The Saddest News Conferences That Ive Ever Had - Deadline

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a Coronavirus Task Force news conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, April 10, 2020.

Kevin Dietsch | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump said on Friday that he will not reopen the economy "untilwe know this country is going to be healthy."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reportedly projected that lifting stay-at-home orders, school closures and social distancing after just 30 days would lead to an infection spike this summer, according to documents first reported by The New York Times.

When asked whether Trump had seen federal projections that the coronavirus could resurge if the 30-day shelter-in-place orders were lifted, he said he had not seen the projections.

"We're looking at a date, we hope we'll be able to fulfill a certain date, but we're not doing anything until we know this country is going to be healthy," Trump said during a White House press briefing. "We don't want to go back and start doing it over again, even though it would be in a smaller scale."

Trump said he also plans to announce an "Opening our Country Council" on Tuesday comprised of business leaders and doctors and potentially governors that will help determine how to reopen the economy.

"I've gained great respect for governors, both Republican and Democrat. I've actually become friends with some of the Democrat governors that I wouldn't have really had the privilege of getting to know," Trump said.

He added that he wants the states' governors to ultimately decide whether to reopen parts of the country, but said he has "great authority" if he wanted to use it and said the question of when to ease social distancing restrictions will be "the biggest decision" he's ever made.

"I don't know that I've had a bigger decision, but I'm going to surround myself with the greatest minds, not only the greatest minds, but the greatest minds in numerous different businesses, including the business of politics andreason, and we're going to make a decision," Trump said, adding that, "Hopefully it's going to be the right decision."

Trump said that he would be open to reshuttering the U.S. economy if it were opened initially but another outbreak of COVID-19 cases followed.

"I want to get it open as soon as possible. This country was meant to be open and vibrant..." Trump said. "I would love to open it, I'm not determined to anything. The facts will determine what I do, but we do want to get the country open."

Dr. Anthony Fauci,White House health advisor, said that whenever governments begin to pull back restrictions, there could be a resurgence in new cases. The goal at that point would be to quickly identify new cases, isolate infected people and contact trace, or determine the origin of infection.

"When we decide at a proper time when we're going to be relaxing some of the restrictions, there's not doubt you're going to see cases, Fauci said. "I'd be surprised if we didn't see cases. The question is how do you respond to them."

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Trump says he's not going to reopen economy 'until we know this country is going to be healthy' - CNBC