Trump news – live: President boasts of 'high marks' despite spiralling coronavirus death toll, as Pence and Harris both take campaign to swing state
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Donald Trump once more boasted about the United States’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic on Monday, claiming the country was “starting to get VERY high marks” when compared to other nations.
The US president, who added that a coronavirus vaccine was “coming, and fast”, made those remarks despite rises in the number of infections across 22 US states, according to Reuters analysis., and the wolrd’s largest death toll.
Elsewhere on Monday, vice president Mike Pence and his would-be successor, Kamala Harris, are making separate visits to Wisconsin, a crucial swing state that was largely neglected by the 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, as the 2020 campaign enters the homestretch.
Trump threatens schools over slavery project
Donald Trump has threatened schools who teach about American slavery through a programme called the 1619 Project, with cuts to their funding.
In a Twitter post, he said the Department of Education would defund public schools that include the 1619 Project – reviving his claim that children are “taught in school to hate our country”.
“Department of Education is looking at this,” wrote Mr Trump. “If so, they will not be funded!”
Despite his ability to cancel funding being limited, the president issued the new threat whilst quoting a right-wing Twitter account, @Ocitman that claimed you “wont recognise America” following the teaching of slavery in California schools.
Andrew Naughtie reports:
Trump says schools will lose funding if they add 1619 project to curriculum
President’s campaign against history of slavery follows Republican senator’s bill proposing to ban it from schools entirely
After a summer of unrest over systemic racism in the United States, Donald Trump’s real problem with race is bias against white Americans, writes Peter Baker.
On his visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, last week, he did not mention the name Jacob Blake, the black man shot seven times in the back by police, but instead praised law enforcement.
Mr Trump then, on Friday, issued an order that would purge the federal government of racial sensitivity training that his White House called “divisive, anti-American propaganda”.
The president later tweeted about his action by playing identity politics, with claims that such training were “a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue".
Read the analysis, here:
Trump uses final stages of campaign to cast himself as defender of white America
Not in generations has a sitting president so overtly declared himself the candidate of white America
Trump has ‘low opinions of all Black folks’, claims Cohen
In another excerpt from the memoir of Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer”, Michael Cohen, the president was said to have held “low opinions of all Black folks", and used homophobic slurs.
The book, titled “Disloyal: A Memoir,” describes the president’s opinions on both Black culture and politics, with world leaders such as Nelson Mandela , who was elected as South Africa’s first post-apartheid and Black head of state, as “no leader”.
According to The New York Times, who reported on the claims, Mr Cohen also alleges that the president said: “Tell me one country run by a Black person that isn’t a shithole".
The revelation comes two months after Mr Trump claimed to have “done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln”, following national demonstrations against the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man.
The president, who has meanwhile tried to paint his Democratic opponent Joe Biden as having a racist past, was alleged to have hired an impersonator of former president Barack Obama, so that he could humiliate him.
Mr Cohen also claimed that Mr Trump used a homophobic slur to describe Kwame Jackson, a Black contestant on his reality TV show “The Apprentice".
The book is due to be released on Tuesday.
Michael Cohen claims Trump ogled teenage daughter
Michael Cohen has claimed that Donald Trump ogled his teenage daughter in his explosive new memoir, according to the Associated Press.
The disgraced attorney, who was one of the president’s closest confidants and self-described “fixer” for years, outlines an uncomfortable incident in the book when Mr Trump allegedly leered at Cohen’s 15-year-old daughter.
It took place in 2012 at the president’s New Jersey golf resort, the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.
When Mr Cohen told Mr Trump that the girl was his daughter, the president followed with a question: “When did she get so hot?” he asked, Cohen was reported to have written.
It is among many explosive claims contained with the book, which has been dubbed “fan fiction” by the White House".
Griffin Connolly reports:
Michael Cohen claims Trump ogled his 15-year-old daughter in new memoir
Cohen writes in new memoir that the president is ‘guilty of the same crimes’ that got him sent to jail
Trump comments on veterans ‘will resonate'
Donald Trump was on the defensive on Sunday over what critics have described as a "pattern" of disrespect towards the US military following reports he made disparaging remarks about fallen veterans buried in France, who were called “losers” and “suckers”.
Amid a fallout that could hurt his re-election campaign, Democratic and Republican opponents alike were seen to seize on the reports - with a former secretary of defence, Chuck Hagel, telling ABC's "This Week" that the remarks, if true, were "despicable."
Mr Hagel, a Republican, added that the reports were "credible" because they were consistent with previous public remarks president Trump had made which denigrated military personnel, including former US defence secretary James Mattis, as well as the late Senator John McCain.
"It will resonate" with the military, he added.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
Don Jr. says Joe Biden ‘career politician’ who sent troops to Iraq
In a Twitter post on Sunday, the US president’s eldest son offered these remarks on Joe Biden, who was blamed for sending American troops to serve in the Iraq war.
The criticism comes despite former president George W Bush, a Republican, having launched that campaign in 2003.
President Trump, meanwhile, spent the weekend tweeting in anger after a report in The Atlantic claimed that he called American war dead “losers” and “suckers”.
Condemning the reported remarks, Mr Biden responded on Twitter, saying: "Mr. President, if you don't respect our troops, you can't lead them".
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