Coronavirus: Trump re-election campaign events pulled over COVID-19 spikes Visits to Florida and Arizona, which have seen record infections, are postponed out of "an abundance of caution," say officials. US Vice President Mike Pence has been forced to cancel re-election campaign events as the coronavirus surged in a number of battleground states.
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode June 27, 2020 Jun 28, 2020 On this edition for Saturday, June 27, COVID-19 cases surge across the country prompting some states to rollback reopening, and the unpredictable race for a coronavirus vaccine. Also, how the dream of home ownership for many low-income families has turned into a nightmare. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from Florida.
June 26 - President Donald Trump was harshly criticized on Friday after abombshell New York Times reporton Russia offering bounties for the killing of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. “American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there,” the newspaper reported,” the newspaperreported.
Russia celebrates 75th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany
June 25 - Russia observed the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany amid a pandemic and historically low approval ratings for President Vladimir Putin. CNN's Matthew Chance reports.
...Fred said: 'At the time that our lawsuit with the family was resolved, Mary and I had each received a generous financial settlement from the family and were more than willing to agree to execute non-disclosure provisions, all of which had been approved and recommended by our attorneys and advisors at that time.'
'In my opinion, those provisions of the 2001 settlement agreement are still in effect and binding today and I have continued to honor them.' ... more
House Democrats caution about going too far with Trump probes as 2020 prospects brightena June 25 - (CNN)House Democrats are showing little appetite to flex their investigative muscles in the final year of President Donald Trump's first term, with many eager to proceed cautiously and avoid overzealous probes that could backfire politically as their party nowleads comfortably in the polls fewer than five months before the election.
After House Democrats launched a series of high-profile probes in 2019, whichultimately led to Trump's impeachment in December, Democrats say they are facing an election-year dilemma: They believe that there are serious abuses of power that must be investigated by their House majority, but many privately concede that doing so could end up benefiting Trump politically by taking the focus away from his handling of the crises facing the country.
JUNE 23, 2020 The Room Where it Happened John Bolton, President Trump’s former national security adviser, sat down with the Washington Post to discuss his book: “The Room Where it Happened.” Ambasador Bolton spoke about various moments during his 17 months working for President Trump, including a NATO summit where the president was very close to withdrawing from the alliance. Mr. Bolton described the it as one of the most “disturbing” moments during his time in the administration. He also repeated claims in the book that the president has misused his office for political gain.
June 23 - “Donald Trump’s exhausted trudge from Marine One toward the White House after his botched rally in Tulsa, his red tie undone, a grim look on his face, a crumpled MAGA hat in his hand, is now an iconic image of his presidency. And as always with Trump, he’s already looking for someone to blame. The most obvious candidate, according to sources, is his embattled campaign manager, Brad Parscale,” Gabriel Sherman, of Vanity Fairreported Monday.
Why everyone who works for Donald Trump should be *very* nervous right now June 23 - (CNN) The list of things that make President Donald Trump the maddest goes something like this: 1) Small crowds at his rallies 2) Small crowds at his rallies3) Negative press coverage of small crowds at his rallies
Social media users are claiming they're responsible for the smaller than expected turnout at Donald Trump's first campaign rally in months. Groups of Korean pop fans as well as users on the social media platform Tik-Tok say they spread messages online, urging people to pretend to register their interest in attending the event in Tulsa. The US president last week boasted that more than a million people had registered interest in attending the rally but estimates suggest less than half of the 19,000 seats in the arena were filled. source
June 19 - President Trump is appearing at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday, his first since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd, which spurred nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice. The rally was originally scheduled for Friday, June 19, but was pushed back amid controversy over holding a campaign event on Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. The rally is taking place at the Bank of Oklahoma Center, which holds 19,000 people, with an additional stage in the outdoor area adjacent to the venue that can hold several thousand more. Health experts have raised concerns about having so many people gathered in one place, particularly as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise in Oklahoma and several other states. more
What we learned from John Bolton's eye-popping tale of working with Trump June 18 - Washington (CNN)John Bolton details a troubling and shocking series of allegations in a new book about his tenure as President Donald Trump's national security adviser, alleging Trump requested Chinese help to win the 2020 election, that the President argued Venezuela is part of the US, that he casually offered to intervene in the criminal justice system for foreign leaders and that his own senior officials mocked him behind his back.
June
19 - ...John Bolton fired back at Donald Trump on Thursday after the
president unleashed a firestorm of critical tweets about his former
national security adviser and his new book, "The Room Where it
Happened."
"I think it's unbecoming of the Office of President,"
Bolton said Thursday. "I think it degrades the political civil discourse
in our country and [I'm] just not going to respond to him."
Trump
called Bolton a "sick puppy" and a "wacko" on Twitter and said his new
memoir -- set to be released next week -- is "a compilation of lies and
made up stories."...
John Bolton says Trump ‘not fit for office’President Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz the president doesn’t have “the competence to carry out the job.”
Rayshard Brooks family call for murder charges after police killing June 16 - The family of Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed black man who was shot twice in the back by a white Atlanta police officer on Friday after he fell asleep in his car, have called for murder charges and a radical overhaul of the city’s police department.
June
16 - The first officer to respond the 911 call that resulted in the
death of Rayshard Brooks considered just letting the incident go but
decided to check one more time on the man whom he found drunk and asleep
at the wheel, DailyMail.com can reveal.
“I watched the interaction with Mr Brooks and it broke my heart,” Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, said on CNN. “This was not confrontational. This was a guy that you were rooting for.”
But when an officer moved to arrest him, Brooks struggled with him and another officer at the scene before breaking free and running across the parking lot with what appears to be a police Taser in his hand, a bystander’s video showed.
A video from the restaurant’s cameras shows Brooks turning as he runs and possibly aiming the Taser at the pursuing officers before one of them fires his gun and Brooks falls.
Bottoms said on Saturday: “I do not believe this was a justified use of deadly force.” ... more
....The president responded on Saturday night,tweeting: "The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery. The last thing I was going to do is 'fall' for the Fake News to have fun with. Final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!"... more
The way President Obama runs down the stairs of Air Force 1, hopping & bobbing all the way, is so inelegant and unpresidential. Do not fall!
At an event promoted as discussing "justice disparities," President Trump warned
against labeling "tens of millions of decent Americans as racist or
bigots." He confirmed the White House is working to finalize an order on
policing standards. source
The Senate Judiciary Committee met to consider authorizing subpoenas for individuals involved in the FBI investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
George Floyd's Brother Testifies At House Hearing On Police Brutality | NBC News
June 10, 2020
Top military officer: I was wrong to go with Trump to Bible photo-op https://t.co/xQ3CjP2YU2
— The American Independent (@AmerIndependent) June 11, 2020
A day later, Esper reversed his decision and ordered several hundred troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to return home to Fort Bragg in North Carolina."... more
June 10 - Trump was reportedly on the brink of firingMark Esper last week, when the defense secretary voiced opposition to the president’s idea of sending active-duty troops to states withGeorge Floyd protests. The Wall Street Journalreports:
The president consulted several advisers to ask their opinion of the disagreement, intent that day on removing Mr. Esper, his fourth defense secretary since taking office in January 2017, according to [several] officials.
Thousands pay tribute in George Floyd’s hometown | WNT
Jun 8, 2020
George Floyd’s funeral on June 8, ‘a call to justice’ June 9 - George Floyd — whose final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry, sparking widespread protests against police brutality and racial injustice — will be laid to rest Tuesday at Houston Memorial Gardens.
His burial will follow a private funeral at Fountain of Praise church, whose co-pastor, Mia K. Wright,called Floyd’s deathin police custody “the spark of a movement in the nation and in the world.” The service, which will be live-streamed, will include “a call to justice, a call for social reform,”Wright saidon the same day congressional Democratsunveiled sweeping police reform legislation. more
June 6 - This is what freedom of the press in America has looked like over the past week. As of 9pm Thursday, the US press freedom tracker has received 192 reports of journalists being attacked by police forces while covering the protests across the US... more
June. 5 - The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Donald Trump, William Barr and different federal officers over the assault on peaceful protesters near the White House on Monday, to permit the president to carry a photograph op at a historic church.
Former US defense secretary condemns Trump's handling of mass protests Former defense secretary James Mattis has broken his silence on the Trump administration, fiercely criticizing the president’s handling of the recent mass protests over George Floyd’s death. In statement published by the Atlantic, Mattis accuses the president of dividing the country and ordering the military to violate the constitutional rights of Americans. “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
Mattis, who resigned as defense secretary in 2018 in protest over Trump’s widely criticized decision to withdraw US forces from Syria, goes on to accuse the president of having violated the rights of Americans for a photo op in Washington DC this week. “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,”the statement says. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.” more
