The president’s diagnosis is also impacting plans for campaigning, as a Central Florida rally has been canceled.
First lady Melania Trump called out former friend and adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff on Friday as “dishonest” and “self-serving,” weeks after Wolkoff released a tell-all book about their friendship.
“Major news outlets eagerly covered salacious claims made by a former contractor who advised my office,” Trump said in a White House essay without referring to Wolkoff by name. “A person who said she ‘made me’ even though she hardly knew me, and someone who clung to me after my husband won the Presidency.”
Trump said conversations Wolkoff secretly taped and shared with the media were taken “out of context,” and the book, “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” was filled with “idle gossip” meant to “distort” her character.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Wolkoff on Tuesday, alleging the author breached a nondisclosure agreement and did not provide a draft copy of the book to the government for review.
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump stand on the South Lawn of the White House, Aug. 27, 2020, in Washington. (Associated Press)
The government claims Wolkoff “promised to maintain strict confidentiality over ‘nonpublic, privileged and/or confidential information’” when she volunteered to serve as an adviser to the first lady in 2017. That nondisclosure agreement is said to have had no termination date.
By failing to submit a draft of her book for review, lawyers from the Justice Department claim she failed to obtain required authorization to divulge details included in the book, which they note has been referred to as a “scathing tell-all.”
The book is filled with unflattering allegations against the first lady, including that she renovated a White House bathroom to avoid using the same facilities as former first lady Michelle Obama, that she complained about having to decorate the White House for Christmas and appeared to be dismissive of children being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border after their parents crossed illegally.
“Her ‘memoir,’” Trump wrote, “included blaming me for her ailing health from an accident she had long ago, and for bad news coverage that she brought upon herself and others. Never once looking within at her own dishonest behavior and all in an attempt to be relevant. These kinds of people only care about their personal agenda — not about helping others.”
Trump said news outlets chose to cover “pettiness” rather than her “positive work,” a reference to her Be Best campaign for children.
“There are plenty of opportunists out there who only care about themselves, and unfortunately seek to self-aggrandize by knowingly taking advantage of my goodwill,” she wrote.
With more than 18 million votes already cast, Donald Trump is struggling to find a coherent closing argument for the US presidential election as opinion polls put him in danger of humiliating defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.
Long queues have formed across the country for early in-person voting, a sign that this year could see a record turnout in spite, or perhaps because, of a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 215,000 Americans and put millions out of work.
But there could still be surprises before election day on 3 November and fears persist that, in the event of a Biden victory, Trump could plunge the world’s oldest constitutional democracy into crisis by disputing the result in court, spreading conspiracy theories online and mobilising militant supporters in the streets.
Biden leads by 17 percentage points in an Opinium Research/ Guardian poll, 16 points in a CNN poll, and 11 points in an NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll. The last incumbent president to suffer such deficits was the last incumbent president to lose: George HW Bush, beaten by Bill Clinton in 1992.
Biden’s consistent advantage includes the crucial swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college and raises the prospect that Democrats could regain the White House and Senate and expand their majority in the House of Representatives.
“Trump’s going to get killed,” said Joe Walsh, a former congressman who unsuccessfully challenged the president in this year’s Republican primary. “I think we’ll know election night that he lost. Republicans are going to lose the Senate. It’s probably going to be the highest turnout in a hundred years in this country and it’s going to be a bloodbath for Republicans.”
Trump appears to be haemorrhaging support among two crucial voting blocs. One is elderly people, who were crucial to his victory over Hillary Clinton in states such as Florida in 2016. Walsh added: “One of the big stories that we’ll all analyse after this election will be that Trump lost older voters in this country.
“He beat Hillary when it came to older voters but Biden will win them by a healthy amount because they think Trump is a fucking lunatic who screwed up this pandemic big time and a bunch of older Americans died.”
The other group deserting Trump is suburban women, apparently rejecting his vulgar insults and shows of machismo regarding the virus. With a hint of desperation this week at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the president begged: “Suburban women, will you please like me? Please, please. I saved your damned neighborhood, OK?”
Trump had appeared confident of re-election at the start of the year based on his economic record but Covid-19, and his persistent downplaying of it, wreaked havoc. The president himself was hospitalised with the virus earlier this month but has since recovered and is back on the campaign trail.
But his rallies do not soak up media coverage like they used to, with some commentators suggesting that the carnival barker act, so novel in 2016, has become routine and even boring. His need to hold them in states such as Iowa and Georgia, traditionally safe Republican territory, suggest he is on the defensive. Speaking in North Carolina on Thursday, he pointed skywards and joked: “We need help from the boss.”
Biden, a former senator who was Barack Obama’s vice-president from 2009 to 2017, came from behind to win the Democratic primary nomination and, amid America’s interlocking health, economic and racial crises, has maintained a remarkably steady poll lead over Trump. His low-key campaign with far smaller events appears to be working.
Walsh commented: “Joe Biden has ignored Twitter, which is brilliant. His people have kept their heads down, campaigned responsibly within this pandemic and let Donald Trump spout off every single day. Biden has slowly developed trust with the vast majority of the American people and it will deliver him a big victory.”
Trump, 74, has attempted to portray 77-year-old Biden as mentally declining and a puppet of the radical left. This week he tweeted a doctored image of Biden in a wheelchair at a nursing home and claimed: “Simply put, it’s a choice between a socialist nightmare and the American dream.”
But the “Sleepy Joe” branding seems to have been a poor sequel to “Crooked Hillary” and Biden has been more difficult to demonise than the widely unpopular Clinton. Trump has also tried hard to change the subject from the pandemic to “culture wars” or law and order but the virus has proved an implacable foe.
His campaign has been just as chaotic as in 2016. Its manager, Brad Parscale, was demoted and then resigned after being hospitalised following reports that he threatened to harm himself at his Florida home. The campaign has been forced to withdraw advertising from battleground states after running low on cash, even as Biden breaks fundraising records.
And Trump, who hit populist notes about immigration and trade in 2016, has veered off script constantly this year. In October alone he has pushed a conspiracy theory questioning Osama bin Laden’s death, criticised America’s leading infectious disease expert, described Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, as a “monster” and, in duelling town hall events with Biden on Thursday night, failed to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Monika McDermott, a professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, said: “It’s been terrible, especially lately, because Trump himself just has no discipline and no control. He’s alienating people left and right and doesn’t seem like he’s actively trying to win this. It actually seems almost like he’s self-sabotaging or just in denial in some way and that’s not where a winning candidate or strategy comes from.”
Biden, she added, benefited from riding out part of the pandemic by doing interviews and fundraisers from his basement at home in Wilmington, Delaware. “The fact that the Democrats kept him in the basement for so long was actually to his advantage. Since he’s been out and about, he’s been relatively gaffe-free and solid and steady and I think that’s what people are looking for right now, as opposed to the craziness of what’s going on with Trump these days.”
More than 18 million people have cast ballots so far, according to data compiled by the US Elections Project. Democrats led Republicans in mail-in ballots in Florida by more than 400,000 as of Wednesday morning. But there has been little sign of complacency on the Democratic side, with memories still raw from 2016 when many state polls were off the mark.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign manager, warned Twitter followers: “Early voting is already under way in many states. Millions of voters have already cast their ballots. But there is still a long way to go in this campaign, and we think this race is far closer than folks on this website think. Like a lot closer.”
As he runs out of time, Trump could become even more reckless in his efforts to alter the trajectory of the race. During a virtual fundraiser on Thursday, Biden warned supporters that the president is “going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at me” and deliver “an overwhelming torrent of lies”.
Biden’s son, Hunter, came under renewed scrutiny after a New York Post report outlining an email that Hunter allegedly received from a Ukrainian businessman discussing a meeting with his father. Biden’s campaign denied the meeting ever happened, and experts raised questions about the veracity of the emails.
Biden rides the train on a campaign tour in Pennsylvania in September. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images
Election watchdogs remain on alert for signs of voter suppression or intimidation. Trump has spent months making baseless claims to discredit mail-in voting, which research suggests that Democrats are more likely to use than Republicans. The president has also refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, fuelling worries about weeks of legal wrangling and potentially explosive street protests. Asked about this at Thursday night’s town hall, he was still somewhat equivocal. “They talk about, ‘Will you accept a peaceful transfer?’ And the answer is yes, I will – but I want it to be an honest election, and so does everybody else.”
Activist groups are girding themselves to protect the integrity of the count. Sarah Dohl, co-founder and acting chief campaign officer of Indivisible, said: “With every tweet and refusal to commit to accepting the legitimate election results, Trump is trying to stoke chaos and fear. It’s all he has left in his playbook. But we are ready.
“Should Trump declare victory before all the votes are counted or prevent the legitimate counting of votes, we will mobilise in every corner of this country to ensure voters have the last word in November.”
Democrats have argued that the best antidote is to win by such a massive margin that the result is beyond dispute. Such an outcome, once seen as highly improbable, is now at least possible as Trump’s candidacy threatens to implode.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Trump has run the worst presidential campaign in modern American history. Biden’s got a lead that’s beyond the margin of error and I consider those numbers real.
“There is nothing going for Trump that’s going to shake up the election. He needs a hydrogen bomb to go off. The election seems to be almost frozen. It’s remarkable when you look at the averages of the polls, you go state by state, it’s fairly consistent and there’s not a lot of up and down. So to me, this election is practically over.”
Democratic nominee campaigns in Michigan while Harris forced off the trail; Peter Doocy reports.
Journalists piled on Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., on Friday for mispronouncing the name of his colleague, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. — even though Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden did the same thing himself, also on Friday.
Perdue, who is facing a tough reelection battle against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, spoke at a Trump rally on Friday before the arrival of the president.
The Ossoff campaign knocked Perdue, who was seen struggling to say Harris’ first name.
“David Perdue is just gross. He mispronounced @KamalaHarris’ name just now warming up the stage for @realDonaldTrump to score race-baiting, cheap political cheers,” Ossoff communications director Miryam Lipper tweeted.
Members of the media shamed the Republican for not nailing the pronunciation of the first name of Harris, with whom he has worked for four years.
“David Perdue has served with Kamala Harris in the Senate for four years. He knows how to properly pronounce her name,” Washington Post White House bureau chief Philip Rucker declared.
“Utterly shocking behavior from the former CEO of Dollar General. He should ask former Senator George Allen how this dumb racism plays,” The Intercept DC bureau chief Ryan Grim tweeted.
“Disgusting racist appeal from David Perdue,” CNN correspondent John Harwood scolded the senator.
“I wonder what Perdue will say to Harris in their next Senate Budget Committee meeting,” NBC News correspondent Leigh Ann Caldwell said.
However, Perdue isn’t the only one who misspoke on Friday. Harris’ own running mate, Joe Biden. also mispronounced his VP’s name during a campaign speech in Detroit.
Journalists, though, weren’t nearly as outspoken with their criticism of the Democratic nominee.
The justices put the case on a fast track and said they will hold a hearing Nov. 30. By then, it probably will be a nine-member court again, if Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, giving the court a 6-to-3 conservative majority. The administration says timing matters, because it must present the plan to Congress in January.
One day in June 2019, Jitarth Jadeja went outside to smoke a cigarette. For two years he’d been in the virtual cult of QAnon. But now he’d watched a YouTube video that picked apart the last element of the theory he believed in. Standing there smoking, he would say later, he felt “shattered.” He had gone down the QAnon rabbit hole; now, having emerged from it, he had no idea what to do next.
Federal agencies including the Treasury Department, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services saw their spending soar as they funneled loans to small businesses, subsidized farmers and provided funding for hospitals. Much of the money also went to households through stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits that gave workers an extra $600 per week.
That spending was crucial to preventing families from falling into poverty and keeping businesses afloat. New research from the Federal Reserve released this week showed that Americans used one-time stimulus checks to save money and pay off debt.
Households spent just 29 percent of the money they received earlier this year, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a post on its website, citing its Survey of Consumer Expectations, conducted in June and August. Another 36 percent of the cash was saved, while 35 percent was used to pay down debt.
Even the most ardent deficit hawks agreed that the virus, which shut down large swaths of the economy and tossed millions out of work, necessitated a huge fiscal response.
But with Election Day approaching, Republican lawmakers have shown little appetite for more spending, despite the fact that millions remain unemployed and previous aid has largely dried up. While the White House and Democrats want to bankroll another $1 trillion-plus aid package, Senate Republicans are preparing a $500 billion bill to vote on later this month. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats support a $2.2 trillion package, while President Trump has endorsed going higher than the $1.8 trillion proposal the White House previously proposed.
On Thursday, he told Mr. Mnuchin, who is leading the negotiations, to make a bigger offer and said, “go big or go home.”
The Treasury secretary acknowledged this week that the deficit is a long-term concern but said now is not the time to worry about bringing it down. Given low interest rates and the severe nature of a health crisis that has stalled so many parts of the economy, he said the deficit was not an immediate priority.
Emails were written by the Democratic nominee’s son; Mike Emanuel has the latest on ‘Special Report’
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was finally asked about the explosive New York Post report that alleges emails show his son made millions trading on his father’s influence.
His response? “I have no response.”
After not being asked about the growing controversy surrounding Hunter Biden at the ABC News town hall by moderator George Stephanopoulos, the former vice president spoke to reporters outside his private jet Friday following his campaign events in Michigan. And when he was approached about the subject by CBS News reporter Bo Erickson, Biden went after the journalist.
“Mr. Biden, what is your response to the New York Post story about your son, sir?” Erickson asked.
“I know you’d ask it,” Biden fired back. “I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.”
The Biden 2020 presidential campaign previously responded to the Post story on Wednesday, saying the former vice president “carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” and that “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”
The Post obtained a 2015 email indicating that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, thanked Hunter Biden for “giving an opportunity” to meet his father, who was then serving as vice president under Barack Obama.
The elder Biden has previously said he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
The controversy further escalated after Facebook and Twitter began cracking down on the spreading of the article on social media.
“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone tweeted Wednesday. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
Twitter claimed in a statement that it had taken action against the article in keeping with the company’s “Hacked Materials Policy” and prevented users from sharing the report. The company rolled back its overzealous crackdown amid backlash, which included a mea culpa from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
President Donald Trump abruptly changed course Friday on denying California federal aid for wildfires that have scorched the state, a decision that came hours after Governor Gavin Newsom vowed to appeal an initial denial.
“Just got off the phone with President Trump who has approved our Major Disaster Declaration request. Grateful for his quick response,” Newsom said in a statement Friday.
The state had planned to appeal a denial from the administration and believed it had a strong case. Earlier in the day, Newsom responded on Twitter to a New York Times report on the administration’s “rare refusal” with a promise to appeal.
Friday’s exchange is just the latest example of ongoing finger-pointing between California and the Trump administration over wildfires.
Newsom says the increasing intensity and frequency of the wildfires are evidence of global warming, but Trump has sought to blame forest management.
This year’s wildfires have burned more than 4 million acres — more than double the previous record.
“If that’s not proof point, testament, to climate change, then I don’t know what is,” Newsom previously said.
For at least two years, the president has criticized California’s handling of the fires, particularly over what he says is inadequate management of its forests.
Federal agencies, such as the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, own and manage 19 million acres, or 57% of the forests in California, according to the University of California Cooperative Extension.
Among the fires listed in the now-approved aid application is the Creek Fire, which erupted in the Sierra Nevada on Sept. 4 and is 60% contained after burning 850 homes and more than 537 square miles in Fresno and Madera counties.
Neither Newsom nor the White House immediately gave details on why the administration shifted positions only hours after it initially denied the state’s request for a declaration that officials said could provide the state with hundreds of millions of dollars.
White House spokesman Judd Deere previously said California’s request “was not supported by the relevant data” needed for approval and that Trump agreed with a recommendation from the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator to reject the declaration.
Newsom had asked for the major disaster declaration on Sept. 28 to cover fires in Fresno, Los Angeles, Madera, Mendocino, San Bernardino, San Diego and Siskiyou counties.
Contributing: Jessica Flores and Doug Stanglin; Visalia Times Delta; The Associated Press
Speaking before the president arrived at a campaign rally in Macon, Ga., Perdue said, “Ka-ma-la, Ka-ma-la, Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever,” seeming to pause for a smattering of laughs. His campaign wrote in a statement that Perdue “simply mispronounced Sen. Harris’s name, and he didn’t mean anything by it” — despite calls that the mix-up was purposeful.
A three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the new policy violated federal law. In an unsigned opinion, the panel said the question was “not particularly close or complicated.”
“The secretary is required to report a single set of figures to the president — namely, ‘the tabulation of total population by states’ under the ‘decennial census’ — and the president is then required to use those same figures to determine apportionment using the method of equal proportions,” the panel wrote, quoting the relevant statutes.
Two of the judges on the panel, Richard C. Wesley and Peter W. Hall, were appointed by President George W. Bush. The third, Jesse M. Furman, was named by President Barack Obama.
Much of the panel’s opinion concerned whether the plaintiffs had suffered the sort of injury that gave them standing to sue. It concluded that the new policy made it less likely that undocumented immigrants and others would participate in the census, harming its accuracy. Census data is used for many purposes, including how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending are distributed.
The case, Trump v. New York, No. 20-366, was complicated by the order on Tuesday allowing the administration to end the census count, which may undercut the three-judge panel’s reasons for finding standing.
In asking the Supreme Court to step in, the Trump administration, represented by the acting solicitor general, Jeffrey B. Wall, defended the new policy, saying that the term “persons in each state” can be understood to require “a sovereign’s permission to remain within the jurisdiction.”
In response, Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, representing state and local governments, said the administration was asking the court to endorse a stunning departure from the nation’s traditions. “Since the Founding,” she wrote, “the population base used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives has never excluded any resident based on immigration status.”
Former NFL running back Herschel Walker shares his thoughts on ‘The Story’
Joe Biden gave an “insulting” response to an attendee at Thursday night’s ABC News town hall who pressed the Democratic presidential nominee on his claim that if an African-American who has trouble deciding between him and President Trump they “ain’t Black,” Herschel Walker told “The Story” Friday.
“Besides ‘you ain’t Black’, what do you have to say to young Black voters who see voting for you as further participation in a system that fails to protect them?” the man asked Biden, who responded that he had spent his Senate career making the criminal justice system more equitable and added the U.S. must put Black Americans “in a position to gain wealth.”
“It’s insulting, very insulting that he didn’t answer the question,” Walker told host Jon Scott. “Let’s look at his record: Since 1976, almost every crime bill that’s been written, Biden has some affiliation with it.”
The former Dallas Cowboys running back added that many of the tenets of Biden’s plan for Black America echo a lot of what Trump has already done.
“I’m not sure what he is going to do, but he’s not good at telling the truth right now because he’s had 47 years to correct it …” Walker said. “Wake up, America. Prison reform was done by Donald Trump. The Historic Black Colleges[‘ funding] — which he mentioned — also was done by Donald Trump, [Biden] had a chance to do that.
The RNC claims that Twitter’s blocking of The New York Post articles amounts to an “illegal corporate in-kind political contribution” to the Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, which is seeking to unseat President Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent.
A computer hard drive said to be owned by Hunter Biden was used as source material by the New York Post for the articles subject to Twitter’s ban. A copy of the hard drive was provided to the newspaper by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, the Post said.
Twitter has said it banned the Hunter Biden articles in question because they were found to be in violation of Twitter’s Hacked Material Policy, which does not “permit the use of our services to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information, may put people in physical harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.”
The social media giant also said it was banning links to the articles because they contained images of hacked material with personal and private information.
But the RNC said in its Federal Elections Commission Complaint that Twitter is “engaged in arguably the most brazen and unprecedented act of media suppression in this country’s history, and it is doing so for the clear purpose of supporting the Biden campaign.”
The complaint notes that Twitter has “also suspended, or locked, the accounts of users who shared the articles or details about the articles, including the Trump campaign (@TeamTrump), White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany), Republicans on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (@JudiciaryGOP).”
The RNC wants the FEC to investigate the claim, and to impose the maximum penalty allowed if Twitter is found to have violated the law.
The complaint notes that federal campaign finance law “strictly prohibits corporations from making contributions to federal candidates.”
“The term ‘contribution’ is defined in relevant part to mean ‘anything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing an election,’ and includes in-kind contributions such as services,” the complaint says.
Twitter’s “suppression of the New York Post articles provides a thing of value to the Biden campaign,” the RNC argued in its complaint.
“Respondent is acting as Biden’s media operative, taking proactive steps to shield Biden from negative news coverage by blocking its distribution and muzzling those who try. If Respondent charged for this service, Biden no doubt would gladly pay a significant price.”
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement, “Twitter’s decision to censor news articles that harm Joe Biden’s candidacy is so transparently biased it would make even the governments of China or North Korea blush.”
Spokesman for Twitter and for Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A firetruck drives along state Highway 168 last month while battling the Creek Fire in the Shaver Lake community of Fresno County, Calif.
Noah Berger/AP
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Noah Berger/AP
A firetruck drives along state Highway 168 last month while battling the Creek Fire in the Shaver Lake community of Fresno County, Calif.
Noah Berger/AP
The White House has rejected a California request for federal disaster relief to help it recover from wildfires that have burned through nearly 3,000 square miles in the state, killing at least three people and destroying nearly 1,000 homes.
In a statement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, press secretary Lizzie Litzow said that damage assessments conducted by the agency had determined the fires last month“were not of such severity and magnitude to exceed the combined capabilities of the state, affected local governments, voluntary agencies and other responding federal agencies.”
California asked for federal assistance in recovering from fires that have ravaged nearly 2 million acres – the Creek Fire in Fresno and Madera counties, the Valley Fire in San Diego County, San Bernardino County’s El Dorado Fire, the Slater Fire in Siskiyou County, the Oak Fire in Mendocino County and the Bobcat Fire in Los Angeles County.
The Creek Fire alone – the state’s largest-ever single fire, not counting fire complexes — damaged more than 550 structures and forced nearly 25,000 people to evacuate, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The rejection, which comes after FEMA granted other fire-related relief to California in August, raises questions about the administration’s motive, given President Trump’s frequent public sparring with California officials over the wildfires.
At an August rally in Pennsylvania, for instance, Trump seemed to telegraph that he might reject California’s requests for wildfire aid: “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us.”
In a letter to the president requesting the latest aid, Newsom estimated $346 million would be needed for the fires, with $200 million to be earmarked for the Creek Fire.
FEMA has previously turned down requests from other states on a similar rationale as the one provided to California — including an application in June from Texas for $190 million in aid for tornado damage dating from last year. Requests from Minnesota and South Dakota have also been rejected, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The frequency and intensity of wildfires in California have been attributed in part to climate change – something Trump has repeatedly downplayed or denied. The president, during a visit last month to the state, was pressed by California Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot about the role of climate change in the fires, the most intense in the state’s history. Trump replied: “I don’t think science knows” what is happening.
During the visit, the president also repeated a claim that California’s wildfires are caused by poor forest management: “When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry — really like a matchstick,” he said. “And they can explode. Also leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, it’s just fuel for the fires.”
In a statement provided to NPR, White House spokesman Judd Deere noted that the president had previously “quickly approved relief” for the state, including money this week that authorized “an increase in the level of Federal funding to 100% for debris removal and emergency protective measures undertaken as a result of the wildfires, beginning August 14, 2020, and continuing.”
“The more recent and separate California submission was not supported by the relevant data that States must provide for approval and the President concurred with the FEMA Administrator’s recommendation,” Deere said.
Christie, who announced he had tested positive on Oct. 3, is one of roughly three dozen people who has been diagnosed with the coronavirus in relation to a White House outbreak that emerged in late September and early October.
Christie attended a Rose Garden ceremony on Sept. 26 for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that was accompanied by indoor receptions and has since been described as a “superspreader event” by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
The former governor was seen hugging guests without a mask at that event, and he has said he did not wear a mask during Trump’s several preparation sessions for the first presidential debate on Sept. 29.
Christie was admitted to New Jersey’s Morristown Medical Center upon the news of his infection and was released last Saturday after a week of treatment in intensive care.
In a statement Thursday to The New York Times, Christie reflected on his fight against the coronavirus and acknowledged he was “wrong” for not wearing a mask at the Rose Garden ceremony or in Trump’s debate prep.
Christie repeated those sentiments Friday, arguing that leaders “need to be telling people that there is no downside to you wearing masks and, in fact, there can be a great deal of upside.”
Trump, during his televised NBC News town hall Thursday night, said he was “good with masks” and “OK with masks.” But he also promoted misleading data about their efficacy as a mitigation measure and told a story about a waiter “playing with his mask” while serving him food.
WASHINGTON — Utah Sen. Mitt Romney wasn’t finished with President Trump after Tuesday’s scathing Tweet ripping him and other leaders about the current state of U.S. politics.
On Friday, Romney took to Twitter again to attack Trump’s refusal to denounce QAnon during last night’s nationally-televised town town hall in Miami.
When questioned by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie about QAnon, Trump said he knew nothing about it, but said “I do know they are very much against pedophilia.”
Guthrie followed up by saying, “You do know,” but Trump insisted he did not.
QAnon believes a group of political and Hollywood elites run a worldwide child sex-trafficking rink and that Trump will stop them.
In his Tweet, Romney said the president’s “unwillingness to denounce an absurd and dangerous conspiracy theory last night continues an alarming pattern: politicians and parties refuse to forcefully and convincingly repudiate groups like antifa, white supremicists (sic), and conspiracy peddlers.”
Romney seems to believe politicians will do, say or support anything they believe could help them at the polls.
“Rather than expel the rabid fringes and the extremes, they have coddled or adopted them, eagerly trading their principles for the hope of electoral victories.”
“As the parties rush down a rabbit hole, they may be opening a door to a political movement that could eventually eclipse them both.”
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