Subterms
Donald Trump
Facing a feared interviewer, the president ended up insisting that identifying an elephant proved his mental capacity
Trump refuses to commit to accepting election result More
US elections 2020
Trump’s 2020 strategy: paint Joe Biden as a puppet for the ‘radical left’
As Biden builds an impressive coalition of supporters, the Trump campaign hopes to link the candidate to high taxes and socialism More
Anthony Fauci, the top public health expert on the White House coronavirus taskforce, is determined to get his message out. Despite the White House reportedly blocking TV interviews, and political forces undercutting him from Donald Trump down, the doctor who has served six presidents spent this week speaking out online.Here are five highlights:‘We haven’t even begun to see the end of it yet’On Monday, Fauci talked to Lloyd Minor, dean of medicine at Stanford University, in what was billed as a virtual fireside chat.Fauci added: “Look at the films on TV of people in some states going from shutdown to completely throwing caution to the wind … there are things you can do now: physical distancing, wearing a mask, avoiding crowds, washing hands. Those things, as simple as they are, can turn it around.”‘I think you can trust me’On Tuesday, Fauci sat for a virtual forum staged by Georgetown University.He said: “Republican, Democrat, anybody else, we are all in this together. I believe for the most part you can trust respected medical authorities. I believe I’m one of them, so I think you can trust me … [and other experts] who have a track record of telling the truth.”‘Stop this nonsense’On Wednesday, the Atlantic magazine interviewed Fauci about the administration’s pandemic response, Donald Trump and White House aides seeking to undermine him, and his professional future.“It is a bit bizarre,” he said. “The divisiveness that’s going on … We’ve got to own this, reset this and say, ‘OK, let’s stop this nonsense. We’ve got to do better.”States and the federal government must be on the same page, Fauci said. “So, rather than these games people are playing, let’s focus on that.”He added: “I just want to do my job … and I’m going to keep doing it.”‘You’re propagating the pandemic’On Thursday, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg interviewed Fauci on his own platform. Again, the doctor lambasted state lawmakers rushing to reopen and young people crowding bars or staging parties without masks or social distancing.“Time out,” he said. “Look what’s happened … there really is no reason that we’re having 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 [new US cases a day], other than we are not doing something correctly.”He also told revelers it’s “not just you in a vacuum. You’re propagating the pandemic”.‘We need to get better control’On Friday, talking to the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation in Washington, Fauci said the US had been hit “very severely” by the coronavirus. Hospitalizations and deaths are rising. But, Fauci said, controlling Covid-19 and reopening the economy do not have to be mutually exclusive.“We’ve got to have a delicate balance of carefully and prudently going towards normality and opening up at the same time that we contain and not allow these surges,” he said.“Staying shut down has economic, employment, health and other negative consequences that are significant [but] we need to get better control.” More
Opinion
Donald Trump
Donald Trump has unified America – against him
Robert Reich
The president’s assault on decency has created an emerging coalition, across boundaries of race, class and partisan politics More
Coronavirus outbreak
US logs more than 70,000 new cases a day as stimulus debated
Senate Republicans frustrated by White House stance – report
US faces terrifying autumn as Covid-19 surges More
Activists in Portland, Oregon, are expressing severe alarm about recent incidents involving federal law enforcement officers using unmarked cars to detain peaceful protesters.Federal officers deployed teargas and fired less-lethal rounds into a crowd of protesters on Thursday, hours after the the head of the Department of Homeland Security visited the city and called the demonstrators “violent anarchists”.Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that federal law enforcement officers had been “using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters” since at least 14 July.“Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off,” it added.Anti-racism protests have taken place for nearly two months in Portland, since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.During a visit to Portland earlier on Thursday, Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, said state and city authorities were to blame for not putting an end to the protests, angering local officials.Wolf characterized the protests in a tweet, claiming: “The city of Portland has been under siege for 47 days straight by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city. @DHSgov stands ready to assist to bring this violent activity to an end.”In captions of pictures posted on Twitter, Wolf praised police dressed in military-style fatigues, and toured property that appeared undamaged apart from graffiti, such as “BLM” and “If not us, who? If not now, when?”Chad defended the actions of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, saying, “These valiant men and women have defended our institutions of justice against violent anarchists for 48 straight days. We will prevail.”Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, and other local officials have said they did not ask for help from federal law enforcement and have asked them to leave.A few hundred people had gathered near the federal courthouse on Thursday night, news outlets reported. Police told protesters to leave after announcing they heard some chanting about burning down the building, according to the Oregonian.A short time later, federal officers fired rounds and deployed teargas to break up the crowd. Some protesters remained in the area early on Friday and were detained, but it was unclear whether any arrests were made, the newspaper reported.Ken Cuccinelli, the homeland security acting deputy secretary, said on Friday morning on Fox & Friends that the federal government had a responsibility to protect buildings such as the courthouse. More
China has accused the Trump administration of being “very pathetic” amid reports that Washington is considering a sweeping visa ban on Communist party members.Donald Trump is reportedly reviewing a proposal to refuse entry for all members of China’s ruling party – which encompasses a who’s who of the political and business elite in the world’s most populous nation.Mike Pompeo, US secretary of state, asked about the reports on Fox News, said the administration was looking at “pushing back against the Chinese Communist party”.“We want to make sure we do it in a way that reflects America’s tradition, and there are lots of ideas that are under review by the president and by our team,” he said, without commenting directly.White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said of Trump at a briefing: “He has not ruled out any action with regard to China.”Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the reported visa ban idea “very pathetic” for the world’s “strongest power”.“We hope the US will refrain from doing more things that disdain the basic norms governing international relations and undermine its reputation, credibility and status as a major country,” she told reporters.Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the state media title Global Times, described the plan as “crazy and vicious, reflecting the Trump administration has lost rationality”.“The US ruling team is committing a crime ruining the foundation for world peace,” he said.Reaction to news of the proposed ban was mixed among Chinese netizens. Some were supportive of the idea, saying that party members should stay in China anyway out of patriotism, and that ending travel could help stop corruption. Others accused the US of hypocrisy with an attack on political freedom.“The US protests against everything except the pandemic,” wrote one on Weibo. Another said: “The ban on party and family members is basically equivalent to breaking off relations. Aren’t the embassy staff party members?” However by Friday, hashtags relating to news of Hua’s response had been removed from search functions.Trump has been ramping up pressure on China, repeatedly blaming the Asian power for not preventing the coronavirus pandemic, which is taking a heavy toll in the United States months ahead of elections.Last week the US state department said it would refuse visas for three senior Chinese officials over abuses in the Xinjiang region, where rights groups say more than one million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims are incarcerated.But a sweeping ban on members of the Chinese Communist party would be an extraordinary undertaking, requiring US authorities to step up screening of the approximately 3 million Chinese people who visited each year before the pandemic disrupted travel.Chinese state media last year said that more than 90 million people belonged to the party, with 35% of them “workers and peasants.”For many Chinese, membership in the 99-year-old party is seen as vital for advancement. Many observers were startled in 2018 to learn that Jack Ma, the billionaire businessman behind e-commerce titan Alibaba, belonged to the party.Additional reporting by Pei Lin Wu. More
The US attorney general, William Barr, has assailed the Walt Disney Company and Hollywood studios, accusing them of “kowtowing” to the Chinese Communist party.Barr’s allegations are part of a sustained diplomatic and public relations offensive by the Trump administration against Beijing, which the attorney general accused of engaging in “economic blitzkrieg – an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s pre-eminent superpower”.In a speech in Michigan, Barr railed against US corporate leaders whom he accused of abetting China’s hegemonic aims, particularly in the film industry. He said Disney had initially resisted Chinese pressure not to make the 1997 film Kundun, about the Dalai Lama and Beijing’s annexation of Tibet.“But that moment of courage wouldn’t last long,” Barr noted. China banned Disney films, leading to an apology from the company for making Kundun. The management then lobbied China to build a Disneyland in Shanghai, allowing Chinese officials to have a role in running the theme park.Barr alleged the officials “display hammer-and-sickle insignia at their desks and attend party lectures during business hours”.“If Disney and other American corporations continue to bow to Beijing, they risk undermining both their own future competitiveness and prosperity, as well as the classical liberal order that has allowed them to thrive,” Barr said.The Disney company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.The attorney general also criticised Hollywood studios for bowing to Chinese pressure to tweak scripts in return for Chinese distribution, citing two cases in which the nationalities of characters were allegedly changed so as not to irritate Beijing.Beijing objected to a virus in a zombie apocalypse film, World War Z, being shown as originating in China, and a mystic character, the “Ancient One” in the fantasy film, Dr Strange, was changed from being Tibetan to Celtic, to avoid upsetting China, Barr said.The attorney general also lashed out at US technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and Cisco, calling them “pawns of Chinese influence”.“All too often, for the sake of short-term profits, American companies have succumbed to that influence – even at the expense of freedom and openness in the United States,” he said.Cisco rejected Barr’s allegation it had helped the Communist party build “the Great Firewall of China”, which Barr referred to as the world’s “most sophisticated system for Internet surveillance and censorship”.In an emailed statement to the Guardian, Cisco said it “builds its products to global standards, and Cisco does not supply equipment to China that is customized in any way to facilitate blocking of access or surveillance of users”.“The products we supply to China are the same we provide worldwide, and we comply fully with all export control rules applicable to China including those related to human rights,” the company statement said.Apple also responded to Barr’s criticism of its decision to transfer a portion of its iCloud data to servers in China, on the grounds that it would make it easier for Beijing to conduct electronic surveillance.The company emailed a statement dating from May saying: “We sell the same iPhone everywhere, we don’t store customers’ passcodes and we don’t have the capacity to unlock passcode-protected devices. In data centers, we deploy strong hardware and software security protections to keep information safe and to ensure there are no backdoors into our systems. All of these practices apply equally to our operations in every country in the world.” More
