Trump claims US on way to ‘tremendous victory’ over Covid-19 as cases surge – live

Richard Luscombe has taken a look at The Villages in Florida – where video last week showed a resident spewing racism, retweeted by the president. It has long been Trump country, but minds may be changing

It promotes itself as “Florida’s friendliest hometown”, a retirement playground where seniors while away their golden years in a carefree world of golf and swimming, fine dining, drinking, and nightly line dances in the village square.

But one reckless and controversial retweet from Donald Trump, featuring some ugly racism from a resident in a golf cart, and The Villages’ carefully crafted image as a peaceful utopia for retirees began to dissipate. As elderly white voters, one of Trump’s key voting blocs in 2016, show signs of abandoning the erratic president, some are even wondering if the door has been opened for Democrats here, an area that until now has been unashamedly “Trump country”.

“He’s definitely turning off some of the older voters in The Villages,” said Chris Stanley, president of the Democratic Club in the 32-square mile retirement community of 125,000, and a resident herself for almost six years.

“They’re concerned about his plans for Medicare and social security of course, but they also didn’t allow their children to behave like this, they don’t allow their grandchildren to behave like this, and they’re very much turned off by it.

“This is the generation that watched Walter Cronkite, had John F Kennedy, and Eisenhower, when politics was a whole different animal. When even if your party or your chosen candidate didn’t win, you were never afraid of damage done to your family or your country. And now? Whoever thought we’d see something like it is right now?”

The resident captured on the video yelling “White power! White power!” at a demonstrator was taking part in a parade of golf carts, the preferred mode of transport in The Villages, organised by Villagers for Trump, a rightwing group of residents that claims a membership of 2,000.

Although the group has distanced itself from the comment and asserted the person is not a member, there are other allegations of the president’s more fervent supporters behaving badly.

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Two country judges in Texas have urged residents to shelter in place and wear face coverings as hospitals in their areas reach capacity.

“The local and valley hospitals are at full capacity and have no more beds available. I urge all of our residents to please shelter-in-place, wear face coverings, practice social distancing and AVOID GATHERINGS,” wrote Judge Eloy Vera of Starr county, adding that some patients had to be flown to areas with more capacity. In nearby Hidalgo county, Judge Richard Perez posted a similar warning.

Earlier this week, Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, issued an executive order for masks to be work in public in counties with more than 20 Covid-19 cases.

Donald Trump barely mentioned the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the US in his incendiary speech at Mount Rushmore on Friday night. But in an appearance at the White House to wish Americans a happy fourth of July, the president referenced the virus, albeit to tell people how great a job he is doing. Predictably, he also recycled his old tactic of blaming the virus on China.

“We were doing better than any country had done in history … and then we got hit with this terrible plague from China and now we’re getting closer to fighting our way out of it,” said the president as numbers show Covid-19 cases are rising in 37 states across the US, and falling significantly in only one, Vermont.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the president then suggested America was on its way to beating the virus. “Our country is coming back, our jobs numbers are spectacular, a lot of things are happening that people don’t quite see yet,” he said. “We’re on our way to a tremendous victory. It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen big. Our country will be greater than ever before.”

Gregory “Joey” Johnson, who won a supreme court decision in 1989 that makes burning the American flag a constitutionally protected right, has said he will stage a flag burning ceremony in LA today “in defiance of the fascist Trump’s call to re-criminalize burning the flag in protest.” The president said last month he wants the burning of the flag to be punishable by up to a year in jail.

Johnson, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, urged people to “defy the fascist in chief, the white supremacist in chief, the misogynist, xenophobic, jingoistic, America first chauvinist imperialist in chief. We all should have nothing but contempt and revulsion for him and his fascist regime – and be determined to mobilize millions of people to drive the regime from power.”

Covid-19 continues to affect the sports world. In Major League Baseball, 38 of the 3,185 samples collected from players and staff were positive for the virus. Thirty-one of the positive tests were from players – the league is due to start on 23 July. Elsewhere, Major League Soccer has had to postpone of the games in its upcoming tournament after 10 members of FC Dallas tested positive. Elsewhere, seven-time Nascar champion Jimmie Johnson has tested positive for Covid-19, and will miss this weekend’s event at Indianapolis Speedway.

Florida reported at least 11,445 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, a record single-day total for the state. More than 190,000 people have tested positive for the virus in the state, which has a population of 21.5 million. More than 3,700 have died of the infection in Florida, and two new deaths were reported on Saturday. According to CNN, just one state in the US – Vermont – reported a decrease in new cases in the past week. Cases were about the same in 12 states and increased in 37.

Michael McFaul, who served as US ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, has called Donald Trump’s speech on Friday night un-American.

“Trump obviously has no idea what words like facism and totalitarianism mean,” wrote McFaul on Twitter. “To those who wrote that speech, shame on you. To those that cleared on this speech, shame on you. Perhaps the most un- American speech ever delivered by an American president, on the eve of July 4th.”

The former Republican speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, meanwhile said the speech was definitely American. It’s almost like American politics and society is massively divided.

“President Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech should be read by every American,” he wrote on Twitter. “It draws the line between radicals who would impose a totalitarian thought and speech dictatorship and those who would defend America.President Trump made it clear line our rights come from God.”

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic candidate for November’s presidential election, has written an op-ed for NBC to commemorate the Fourth of July in which he warns that Donald Trump is eroding the freedoms that America has built up during its history.

“Title IX. The Indian Self-Determination Act. The Americans with Disabilities Act. Marriage equality. DACA. Black Lives Matter. Brick by brick — and, all too often, against long odds and violent opposition — the American people have labored to expand the scope, strength and meaning of American democracy,” writes the former vice president.

Biden then adds: “That pursuit of a more perfect union has been thrown off course in recent years — and no one bears more responsibility than President Donald Trump. Every day, he finds new ways to tarnish and dismantle our democracy …He has systematically gone after the guardrails of our democracy: the free press, the courts, and our fundamental belief that no one in America — not even the president — is above the law. He has made it clear time and again that he won’t hesitate to tear apart our most cherished democratic structures for an ounce of personal gain. And that corruption of our founding principles threatens everything this nation has worked so hard to build, blighting our ability not only to elevate our values, but also to lead the world.”

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Donald Trump continued his history of using songs from musicians who are not exactly aligned with his brand during his speech on Friday night. During the rally at Mt Rushmore, Neil Young’s Like a Hurricane and Rockin’ in the Free World were played before the President made his appearance. Shortly afterwards, the official Neil Young Archives account tweeted a message of defiance reading: “I stand in solidarity with the Lakota Sioux & this is NOT ok with me”.

The land around Mt Rushmore is sacred to the Lakota Sioux, who lived in the area before being forced out after gold was discovered in the region. Indigenous protesters blocked roads near the rally on Friday and held signs reading “You’re trespassing on our land”. Local tribes were also worried that fireworks at the event could cause wildfires due to recent dry conditions and contaminate water supplies.

Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, said in a statement on Friday that the sculpture on Mt Rushmore, is an insult to Native Americans. Local tribes considered the mountain sacred before it was carved with faces of US presidents. “Nothing stands as a greater reminder to the Great Sioux Nation of a country that cannot keep a promise or treaty than the faces carved into our sacred land on what the United States calls Mount Rushmore,” said Frazier.

Young, who is a supporter of Bernie Sanders, has objected to the Trump campaign using his songs in the past. “Every time … one of my songs is played at one of your rallies, I hope you hear my voice,” wrote Young in an open letter to the president. “Remember it is the voice of a tax-paying US citizen who does not support you. Me.”

The Rolling Stones have threatened legal action against the Trump campaign if they continue to use the band’s songs at rallies. “Despite cease and desist directives to Donald Trump in the past, The Rolling Stones are taking further steps to exclude him using their songs at any of his future political campaigning,” a spokesman for the band said last month.

Donald Trump’s speech in front of Mount Rushmore, in which he said American is under threat from “far-left fascism”, has elicited strong response in the media.

The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan said the president “peddled his fiction” on Friday night as he appealed to his base. “The setting for President Trump’s early Fourth of July celebration was magnificent, as the Black Hills of South Dakota tend to be,” wrote Givhan. “The scene was also full of painful history, willful ignorance and deliberate fearmongering.”

Givhan also noted that few of those in attendance wore masks as Covid-19 cases rise across the US. “And just to add to the upside-down, inside-out madness of the mass gathering, Ivanka Trump, presidential adviser and daughter, tweeted a reminder to be safe over the holiday weekend by social distancing and wearing a mask. Her nearest and dearest did not listen to plea,” she wrote.

The New York Times said the rally came as Trump is floundering in the polls. “With the coronavirus pandemic raging and his campaign faltering in the polls, his appearance amounted to a fiery reboot of his re-election effort, using the holiday and an official presidential address to mount a full-on culture war against a straw-man version of the left that he portrayed as inciting mayhem and moving the country toward totalitarianism,” wrote Annie Karni.

The Associated Press noted the speech appeared made to stoke divisions: “At the foot of Mount Rushmore and on the eve of Independence Day, President Donald Trump dug deeper into America’s divisions by accusing protesters who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a ‘merciless campaign to wipe out our history.”

The New York Daily News described the speech as “Mt Rushmore Madness” along with a cover depicting the president’s on the monument with their eyebrows raised.

There was praise elsewhere for Trump. Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review said it was “A superb speech, tough but appropriately so, gave our forefathers their due, invoked the wonders of American culture, and accurately stated the stakes of the culture war – Trump’s best since Warsaw.” Sean Davis, co-founder of the Federalist, said: “Trump’s Independence Day defense of America was far and away the greatest speech of his presidency.”

While the number of Covid-19 cases surge across the United States, CNN reports that key public health figures such as Dr Anthony Fauci have not been given permission by the White House administration to appear on American television.

Members of the White House’s task force on Covid-19 were familiar figures on US television in the early days of the pandemic. Fauci in particular won praise for his calm, no-nonsense advice, which was often in contrast to the more speculative and confused messaging from Donald Trump.

Fauci last appeared on US television on 12 June, and CNN says other members of the Covid-19 taskforce, such as Dr Deborah Birx and Dr Robert Redfield, now rarely grant interviews. One source told CNN that high-profile officials, including Fauci, have been unable to gain permission to appear on television. “Now is the time to be sending a strong public health message,” the official told CNN, noting that the cases of the virus are rising across large part of the country. The source added that Fauci is though to be too blunt about the dangers of Covid-19 during his appearances, or too “doom and gloom.”

Even figures who are seen as more amenable to the administration have struggled for airtime. The surgeon general, Dr Jerome Adams, has made just two broadcast appearances in the last few weeks, one was a local radio interview and the other was on NBC on Friday where he avoided answering questions about Trump’s decision not to wear a facemask at public gatherings. “Every single person has to make up their own mind,” Adams said on the subject.

CNN added that Dr Robert Redfield, the director of the Center for Disease Control, gave a briefing to reports on 25 June, but has otherwise been off air. Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, has been more active and has appeared on most major networks in the last few weeks.

Fauci, meanwhile, has been getting his message across on other platforms. He has appeared on media that may not be used by the White House administration, such as podcasts and foreign broadcasts.

News from St Louis, where the Associated Press reports that on Friday night, peaceful protesters returned to a house where a white couple famously appeared with guns last Sunday, during a march demanding the resignation of the mayor:

Several hundred protesters made a peaceful return trip Friday to the St Louis mansion owned by a white couple whose armed defense of their home during an earlier demonstration earned both scorn and support.

Chanting protesters stopped at the gate just outside the palazzo-style home of Mark McCloskey, 61, and his 63-year-old wife, for about 15 minutes. Extra metal barriers blocked the entrance to Portland Place, where the protesters had walked earlier in the week on their way to the mayor’s home nearby.

More than a dozen men in plain clothes walked the grounds and peered out from a second-floor balcony. One protester briefly straddled an iron gate as if he was going to jump over, but did not. No one threw anything and no one behind the gates showed aggression. One man on the balcony clapped along with the chanting protesters. It was not known if the McCloskeys were home.

The McCloskeys are personal injury attorneys who became famous last Sunday. As an estimated 500 demonstrators marched near their home, the couple heard a commotion and saw a group of people break an iron gate marked with “No Trespassing” and “Private Street” signs, according to a police report.

Video posted online and viewed by millions showed Mark McCloskey wielding a long-barreled gun and Patricia McCloskey waving a small handgun. No shots were fired. Donald Trump retweeted the video.

An attorney for the couple, Albert Watkins, said they are longtime civil rights advocates and support the message of the Black Lives Matter movement. He said they grabbed their guns when two or three protesters who were white violently threatened them, their property and that of their neighbors.

Protest organizer Darryl Gray said on Friday: “Are we angry? Damn right we’re angry. But we’re nonviolent.”

A letter released on Wednesday by more than three dozen neighbors of the McCloskeys condemned “the behavior of anyone who uses threats of violence, especially through the brandishing of firearms, to disrupt peaceful protest, whether it be in this neighborhood or anywhere in the United States.”

The president is most likely asleep at the moment, given that he arrived back at the White House from South Dakota at 4.11am ET. His Twitter account, therefore, lies momentarily dormant.

Here’s a taste of what White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had to say to reporters on the flight back from Mount Rushmore:

“I think it was a historic speech with a historic backdrop. The response that we’re getting from all across America is … one that … applauded the boldness, the directness, and, candidly, the resolve with which the president wants to make sure that the America that we have today and tomorrow is the America that we celebrate each Fourth of July.”

In the words of the pool report, “Meadows was asked by a reporter why Trump did not mention the coronavirus pandemic ‘much’ during his remarks.

“He mentioned the pandemic. I don’t know that focusing on a pandemic is necessarily a topic that you would espouse on 4 July. It’s not to say that it’s … something that you ignore, which he didn’t, he acknowledged it.

“But at the same time, he’s put forth unbelievable resources to make sure that we address the Covid-19 virus. I’m confident that we’ll have a vaccine by this fall and we’re already seeing therapeutics being used more and more to start to lessen the death rate. And again it’s really a time for celebrating who we are as a nation – and that’s in good times and bad. There are still people wanting to come to America. They’re not fleeing America.”

Here’s David Smith again, on how Trump has fueled a growing (and increasingly absurd) culture war over face masks and their role in preventing American deaths:

Disturbing news from Seattle, where last night a car drove into a crowd of protesters on a closed portion of Interstate 5.

Two women were injured, authorities said. One suffered life-threatening injuries and the other had serious injuries. The Seattle fire department said the injured women appeared to be in their 20s.

Shortly after 2am on Saturday, video on social media showed a white car traveling at a high speed navigate around two vehicles which were positioned across the lanes as a barrier.

The car careened toward a handful of protesters on the freeway, striking two who flew into the air before landing on the ground.

“A vehicle drove through the closure and struck multiple pedestrians on the freeway,” a state patrol spokesman tweeted, shortly after 2am. The vehicle was stopped and the driver was in custody.

Later on Saturday, police said the driver and a passenger were uninjured, having fled the police earlier in the city of Ferndale. The driver had not been impaired, police said.

Seattle has been the site of prolonged unrest following the 25 May police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked nationwide protests over police brutality and systemic racism.

… and welcome to another day’s coverage of US politics, protest and public health crisis.

In the shadow of Mount Rushmore last night, Donald Trump marked Independence Day with an appeal for unity, calm and a common goal. Not really – he marked the national holiday by claiming the US was under assault from “far-left fascism”:

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.

Trump likes Confederate flags and statues, remember. Perhaps Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis, men who rebelled against America in the name of slavery – and were beaten trying – will be included in Trump’s “National Garden of American Heroes”, a vast outdoor park featuring statues of “the greatest Americans to ever live” which he announced by executive order.

Of course, there’s an election four months away and Joe Biden leads in most polls, national and battleground state, so think more of the president’s speech last night as an aperitif for that five-course contest than a sure sign of squabbles over building permits and bad statues of Senator Joe McCarthy to come. Pretty, it won’t be.

In other news, Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a senior Trump campaign official, has the coronavirus. She joins a growing club: nearly 2.8 million Americans have been confirmed to have been infected and nearly 130,000 have died. The Trump White House’s reported new slogan for a country mired in a growing public health crisis? “We need to live with it.”

In South Dakota on Friday night, masks were voluntary, social distancing scarce.

Here’s Ed Pilkington on how New York is attempting to reopen. And here’s David Smith, from Washington, on how Trump is fuelling a culture war over the need to wear a mask:

More follows.