Outrage over Trump’s retweet of supporter shouting ‘white power’ – live

The number of coronavirus cases in Florida rose by 8,530 to 141,075 on Sunday, according to the daily report from the state’s health department.

The news comes one day after the state established a daily record for new cases with 9,585 reported on Saturday, part of an alarming weeklong trend of 43,784 confirmed cases, which accounts for more than 30% of Florida’s overall tally.

As of 9.25am on Sunday, there have been 141,075 positive cases of the coronavirus statewide. The case count includes 138,567 Florida residents and 2,508 non-Florida residents.

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere has issued a statement on Trump’s retweet, saying the US president “did not hear” the portion of the video in which one of his supporters yelled ‘white power’ in an argument with anti-Trump demonstrators.

“President Trump is a big fan of The Villages,” Deere said of the central Florida retirement community where the video was captured. “He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

Florida is seen as a key battleground state in the 2020 election and has been controversially picked as the site of a Trump rally in late August to celebrate his nomination for a second term.

Donald Trump has deleted a tweet in which he approvingly shared a video showing one of his supporters yelling “White power!” at a group of anti-Trump demonstrators.

The US president, or someone with access to his Twitter account, deleted the controversial tweet at 11am Eastern time, more than three hours after it was posted at 7.39am.

“This is really not about the president taking it down,” the famed civil rights attorney and academic Sherrilyn Ifill said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “This is really about his judgment in putting it up in the first place.”

US vice-president Mike Pence has attributed the alarming rise in coronavirus cases throughout the United States in part to young people who are failing to follow social distancing guidelines.

“What is happening here is a combination of increased testing – we’re able to test a great deal more Americans than we were able to several months ago – but it also may be indication that as we’re opening our economy up, that younger Americans have been congregating in ways that may have disregarded the guidance that we gave on the federal level for all the phases of reopening,” Pence said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus task force, called off campaign events for this coming week as the states experience a surge in new coronavirus cases, though he will still travel to those states to meet with their governors and health teams.

South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the US Senate, has condemned Donald Trump’s retweet of a video containing a white power message and said it should be removed from Twitter.

“There’s no question that he should not have retweeted it and he should just take it down,” Scott said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“It was so profanity laced, the entire thing was offensive. Certainly, the comment about the white power was offensive,” he added. “It’s indefensible. We should take it down.”

Donald Trump’s motorcade has just arrived at Trump National Golf Club in Loudoun County, according to the White House press pool.

This marks the 272nd day he spent at one of his golf clubs and 364th at one of his properties since taking office, according to CNN’s running tally.

Like yesterday, a group of protesters were waiting outside the club for the US president, including one woman holding a sign that said “I ordered Mary’s book”.

Donald Trump is coming in hot on Sunday morning, appearing to approve of a video showing one of his supporters yelling “White power!” at a group of anti-Trump demonstrators in central Florida.

The embattled US president retweeted a video that he said was from the Villages, a retirement community in central Florida, that showed Trump supporters clashing with protesters.

“Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!” he wrote.

Trump’s health secretary, Alex Azar, responded to the video on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.

“I’ve not seen that video or that tweet, but obviously neither the President, his administration nor I would do anything to be supportive of white supremacy or anything that would support discrimination of any kind,” Azar said.

… and welcome to another day of coverage of US politics, the coronavirus outbreak and all things in between.

Confirmed coronavirus infections have surpassed the 10 million mark worldwide. A tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University registered the grim milestone Sunday, after India and Russia added thousands of new cases.

The United States reported more than 42,000 new coronavirus cases on Saturday with infections on the rise in 29 of 50 states. Overall, US deaths from Covid-19 have surpassed 125,000 with more than 2.5 million confirmed cases, the most in the world.