John Bolton calls Trump incompetent as president plans Phoenix speech amid pandemic – live

The Guardian’s Daniel Strauss reports:

Longstanding tensions within the Democratic party have reemerged in a New York congressional race where an insurgent candidate is seeking to unseat a long-time senior party figure.

The divide is largely between establishment Democrats lining up behind incumbent congressman Eliot Engel, a member of congress for three decades who chairs the House foreign affairs committee, and liberals and anti-establishment Democrats backing Jamaal Bowman, a teacher and middle school principal.

The race has emerged as the next battlefield between divergent wings of the Democratic party. It is the latest chance for progressives to finally notch a win after a long drought of primary contest wins and a stinging defeat of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in the presidential race.

The hope for progressives is that Tuesday’s primary contest will result in a similar outcome to the 2018 Democratic primary race for New York’s 14th congressional district where progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a virtual unknown, ousted incumbent congressman Joe Crowley, a member of Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives.

A Bowman win is far from a sure thing. Polling is sparse but Engel’s campaign recently tweeted that the incumbent congressman still leads by single digits – arguably a lot less than an incumbent should be ahead against a first-time candidate.

Trump has clarified his position on meeting with Nicolás Maduro, after indicating in a Friday interview that he was open to sitting down with the Venezuelan dictator.

“I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!” Trump wrote in a new tweet.

But the president told Axios on Friday, “I would maybe think about that. … Maduro would like to meet. And I’m never opposed to meetings — you know, rarely opposed to meetings.”

Trump also voiced little confidence in opposition leader Juan Guaidó, even though his administration has worked extensively to promote Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader.

The White House said it is scaling back its temperature checks, as Washington enters the second phase of its reopening today.

In a statement, White House spokesperson Judd Deere said those in close proximity to the president and the vice president would still be temperature-checked and receive a coronavirus test.

A White House reporter noted this morning that the journalists entering the building had not been checked or asked about potential coronavirus symptoms. The tents where guards usually asked such questions were also being taken down.

The decision to wind down the temperature checks will likely intensify questions over whether the White House is downplaying the threat of coronavirus even as nearly half of US states report an increase in cases.

The supreme court issued one decision this morning in a rather obscure case related to the securities and exchange commission seeking “punitive sanctions” from defendants.

The 8-1 decision in Liu v SEC, which was written by justice Sonia Sotomayor, says, “The Court holds today that a disgorgement award that does not exceed a wrongdoer’s net profits and is awarded for victims is equitable relief permissible under §78u(d)(5).”

Major decisions related to abortion and the release of Trump’s tax returns still await. The court is next expected to release decisions in their remaining cases on Thursday.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Pengelly.

Both chambers of Congress will vote on police reform bills this week, but Senate Republicans’ proposal might be quashed before it even gets taken up for debate.

House Democrats’ bill, which bans police chokeholds and no-knock warrants, is expected to pass the chamber without much Republican support, considering Trump has called on members of his party to oppose it.

Senate Republicans, on the other hand, need at least seven Democrats to vote with them on the motion to proceed to advance senator Tim Scott’s bill, which incentivizes police departments to ban chokeholds.

Democratic senators have voiced criticism of the Scott bill, arguing it does not go far enough, but it’s unclear whether Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer will advise his fellow Democrats to vote against the motion to proceed.

Democratic senator Doug Jones of Alabama said on MSNBC last night that he was likely to vote in favor of the motion to proceed, despite his reservations about the bill.

“I’m not really that crazy about senator Scott’s bill,” Jones said. “But I also think there needs to be an open discussion about this. So, I’m inclined to vote to proceed with debate on the bill. That doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily vote for the final passage on that bill.”

More from NPR’s talk with John Bolton, which touches on an area the president discussed with Axios in an interview published on Sunday: North Korea, China and Trump’s attitude to and fondness for dictators and authoritarian rulers.

Asked why he compares Trump’s courtship of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to the president’s dating life, Bolton said: “Well, he said that he always, back in the day, as they say, he always wanted to be the one who broke up with the girl first. He didn’t want the girl to break up with him. And he used that to describe whether he would cancel the summit with Kim Jong-un first or whether we would risk the North Koreans canceling it.

“And I thought it was an insight into the president, candidly given, that showed how he approached this. As opposed to looking at it from the perspective of what our ultimate strategic interest was, in my view, would have been better not to agree to the summit to begin with.

“And I might say, as we’ve seen just in recent weeks, where North Korea has literally blown up the office building that had been used as a liaison with the South Koreans, that this entire two-year-long effort with North Korea ended in diplomatic failure. But that allowed the North Koreans the time that they need to continue to pursue nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems.

Bolton was then asked if Trump has “a kind of romantic approach to numerous dictators”. Remarkably enough, he answered: “Yeah, I think that’s an accurate description, and I don’t discount the importance of personal relations between the top leaders of the countries … I think the president had a continued problem in discerning the difference between having a good personal relationship with Xi Jinping, let’s say, and the US having good relations with China in the sense of advancing American national interest.”

Speaking to Axios, Trump said he had not pressed China over human rights issues regarding the treatment of Muslim minorities, let alone sanctioned the Chinese government, because he was pursuing a trade deal.

Bolton said: “I think that this is an example of how the president’s policy is so often incoherent and how it responds to domestic political pressure. So, for I recount several incidents in the book with respect to the Uighurs, with respect to the anniversary of the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square and a number of other issues where the president said, ‘Well, you know, we have human rights problems, too.’

“Now, just recently, he signed legislation designed to clarify his power to exact sanctions on China against the Uighurs. But even as recently as Sunday afternoon, he was pointing out that doing so could interfere with trade negotiations with China. So it sounds like he’s tough on one day, the next day he’s not. And I think once the November election is behind us, if he wins, I think it’s entirely possible he’ll be right back to the trade negotiation.”

NPR has published an interview with John Bolton this morning.

Bolton defends himself against what the judge who cleared his book for publication said was irresponsible behaviour and use of senstive material. He was also asked about Trump’s attempt to seize all royalties and profits from the book.

“I wrote this book,” he said, “as a matter of philosophy and belief in the importance of putting the facts about the Trump administration before the American public, for them to make up their mind. I felt I had an obligation to do it. I explain that in the book itself.

“And I knew there would be trials and tribulations when you displease Donald Trump. Ask his niece who he’s now saying signed a nondisclosure agreement that prohibits her book from being published. So this is all par for the course.

“And I didn’t look forward to it. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t anything I thought would be pleasant. But I have been determined and was vindicated, I think, by the court in laying the story before the American people. They will be the ones who decide.”

In remarks that may enrage Democrats still furious Bolton did not testify during impeachment proceedings against Trump, Bolton told NPR all such House Democrats managed to create with their impeachment effort was “a bitterly partisan debate that prefigured essentially what was then going to happen in the Senate”, which is where every Republican except Mitt Romney voted to acquit Trump and move on.

Bolton insisted he was right to deny testimony to the House but offer it to a Senate that wasn’t going to take it.

“Impeachment is probably the gravest constitutional responsibility the House has,” he said. “And I’m sorry that that grave responsibility was affected by their own political calculus. But in effect, that’s what the Ukraine allegations about Trump were all about, torquing legitimate government power around his own political interest. So this is part of the impeachment malpractice that I’ve complained about.”

Bolton also says he has written “a book about how not to be president” – which might interest former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who is out this morning with extracts from her own book saying Bolton thought he was president, not Trump.

It’s a long interview – more to come.

Here comes an attempt at a dead cat bounce, of a sort, it being that thing where a scandal-ridden politician lobs something shocking on the table and cries, “Look! A dead cat!” and everyone looks so the pressure on the other thing goes away.

Trump on Twitter this morning (capitals author’s own):

RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!

There is no evidence that mail-in voting leads to mass, or even more than very rare, voter fraud, involving foreign countries or not. Trump himself has both voted by mail and tried to do so using the wrong address. Republican secretaries of state across the country (and Democrats, obviously) have mailed out ballots to voters living under a pandemic. Election infrastructure is already subject to chaos, shortages and abuse which can depress turnout and disproportionately affect minorities. In general, Republicans benefit from lower turnout. Trump is well behind Joe Biden in national polls and most polls in battleground states.

Sam Levine, our voting rights correspondent, knows a lot about this:

Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has blasted former national security adviser John Bolton for being “a classic case of a senior White House official drunk on power, who had forgotten that nobody elected him to anything” and who sometimes “acted like he was president”.

Sanders left the Trump White House in June 2019, two months before Bolton resigned. Bolton will publish his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, on Tuesday.

Sanders, who has remained loyal to the president amid rumours of her own political ambitions in Arkansas, which her dad Mike Huckabee used as a springboard for two presidential runs, has a book out in September.

It’s called Speaking for Myself. Critics of Sanders will no doubt observe that during her time as White House press secretary, she rarely spoke for the president: daily briefings withered on her watch, shrank to nothing under her successor Stephanie Grisham, then made a comeback under the current occupant of the role, Kayleigh McEnany.

But here Sanders comes with a book and, in a very Washington way, she has provided a spot of exclusive “perfect smokey eye” to the Axios website.

During Trump’s state visit to London last year, Sanders writes, “Bolton apparently felt too important to travel with the rest of us. As we were ready to depart for the Winfield House [the US ambassador’s residence] we loaded onto a small black bus.

“We waited and watched as Bolton sped by and left us in the dust. The discussion on the bus quickly moved … to how arrogant and selfish Bolton could be, not just in this moment but on a regular basis.”

Sanders also claims “Bolton acted like he was the president, pushing an agenda contrary to President Trump’s”, and details a chewing out from then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who reportedly called Bolton “a fucking self-righteous, self-centered son of a bitch”.

Sanders doesn’t print the swearwords – I did that – but she says “That epithet … was the culmination of months of Bolton thinking he was more important and could play by a different set of rules than the rest of the team. … Bolton backed down and stormed off.”

In response, Axios quotes Sarah Tinsley, longtime senior adviser to Bolton, as absolving him of such bad behaviour about transportation arrangements. She doesn’t say whether he thought he was president.