Trump news – President golfs as US passes six million coronavirus cases and unrest continues in Portland leaving one dead
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One person has been shot and killed as a caravan of Donald Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed in the streets of Portland, Oregon.
It comes as it was announced that the US president will travel to Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, amid outrage over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man who was shot in the back, leaving him paralysed.
Political observers on the Sunday morning talk shows see Trump as doubling down on his law and order message and that his presence both in person and online inflames tensions.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases has passed six million, with new hotspots emerging in the Midwest.
Follow the latest updates
The president has no public events scheduled today. This morning he tweeted and retweeted more than 90 posts.
The White House press pool reports that they are on the move with the motorcade and have just crossed into northern Virginia.
Could this be golf day 294?
Speaking on ABC's This Week, on Portland, Acting Department of Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf says that state officials are not allowing law enforcement to do their job to end the violence in the city.
On NBC's Meet The Press, Hallie Jackson notes that the administration continues to frame itself as being on the side of law and order, that it's an effective message to the Trump base, and that it is unlikely to change over the next 65 days.
On CNN's State of the Union Democratic representative Karen Bass says that the president's upcoming visit to Kenosha will do nothing except make things worse by inflaming tensions. She points to one of the president's many retweets - one in particular showing his supporters firing paintballs at protesters.
"He only means to agitate things."
Here's the tweet Ms Bass refers to.
It is a golf day
Some on-the-ground coverage from today's pool reporter David Nakamura of The Washington Post:
Surprise! The presidents motorcade arrived at Trump National in Sterling at 10:15 a.m. after an uneventful commute. Pool did not have eyes on Potus. A handful of protesters lined one side of the entrance with a row of faux tomb stones and a person dressed as the Grim Reaper wearing a sign reading, “183k dead.” Another waved a Biden campaign flag and another had a sign reading “no, Donald, this is what it is” apparently referring to the tomb stones. On the pro-Trump side there were flags reading “Build the wall!” and “Finish the wall.” One woman have the motorcade the middle finger and one man gave it the thumbs down side. So, anyway, happy Sunday morning.
Anyhow the pool peeled off and arrived at a nearby restaurant where we are holding. Sinatra’s “Fly me time the moon” is playing on the speakers.
Coronavirus update
The golf course protesters are a timely reminder that the coronavirus pandemic continues and the case numbers and death toll continue to climb.
As of Sunday morning, there have been 5.97 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the United States, and 183,000 officially recorded deaths.
The CDC projects 200,000 deaths by 19 September.
This week's Republican National Convention showed that the Trump campaign's way of framing the administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic is to present it as having been overcome. To look at it in the rearview mirror.
PBS's Yamiche Alcindor contrasted the Biden and Trump campaign's approaches to the virus on Meet The Press.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy spoke his mind this weekend regarding the president’s coronavirus response. On Saturday he tweeted that “Trump is deliberately killing people.”
In a series of follow up tweets on Sunday morning he laid out his case (see next post).
On Sunday, Senator Murphy sought to explain Saturday's tweet by explaining his reasoning. He wrote:
1/ From the start of the epidemic, Trump has mostly refused to wear a mask and engage in social distancing. He often does this very publicly and brazenly (like in Oklahoma City).
2/ His RNC speech was his biggest stage. 23m watched.
The question is - WHY did Trump choose not to socially distance guests or require them to wear masks, as his own CDC guidelines below recommend?
There seems to be no good reason. He easily could have.
3/ He and his advisors KNEW the consequences of brazenly thumbing their nose at their own CDC.
They know viewers follow his example, and thus it will now be impossible to convince many people social distancing/masks are important. Bc Trump has made it crystal clear they AREN'T.
4/ And they KNOW that masks/social distancing have proven to save lives (see the NIH Director below).
So for no good reason, they chose a path that will make it harder to beat COVID, and would lead to more people dying. They made this choice, consciously.
5/ Think of it this way - say you told your wife you're going to drive to the grocery store, and on the way ignore all the stoplights.
You don't have a good reason - you just want to get to the store faster. She tells you before you leave that you're going to get people killed.
6/ But you do it anyway, and you run over people.
You had no good reason to be reckless. You knew the consequences beforehand and did it anyway.
You'd be rightly called a killer.
The difference btwn you and Trump is that you killed 3 or 4. Trump's actions killed thousands.
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