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      'Be afraid of Covid': New York governor Cuomo blasts Trump over coronavirus 'denial' – video

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      New York governor Andrew Cuomo has denounced Donald Trump over remarks he made telling Americans ‘to get out there’ and not fear Covid-19. Cuomo attacked Trump’s comments as ‘just more denial’ after the president returned from the White House following a three-night stay at the Walter Reed national military medical center. ‘Don’t be afraid of Covid? No. Be afraid of Covid. It can kill you. Don’t be cavalier.’
      Trump tells negotiators to halt talks on Covid economic relief measures

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      Footage suggests Trump was short of breath during maskless photo op at White House – video

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      After a three-day stay at a military hospital to treat symptoms of coronavirus, a contagious Donald Trump returned to the White House and immediately took off his face mask while posing for cameras.
      Video footage suggests the US president was experiencing laboured breathing during part of the photo op in which he also gave two thumbs up and saluted as he watched Marine One lift off from the south lawn. 
      Trump later waved and walked inside, where masked staff were visible, only to reemerge for what appeared to be a film shoot. In the film, which he tweeted soon after, Trump offered some bizarrely contrary advice about the virus, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans: ‘Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it’
      How Covid is accelerating the fight for Black voting rights in the US – video
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      Melania Trump discusses Stormy Daniels in secretly recorded tapes

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      Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a New York socialite turned author of a tell-all book about her relationship with Melania Trump, has released another recording of America’s first lady in embarrassingly candid conversation, this time discussing an adult film star accused of an affair with her husband.On the recording Melania Trump discusses Stormy Daniels, who the first lady calls “the porn hooker”. Wolkoff released the recording on Mea Culpa, a podcast presented by Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer.Cohen has also written a tell-all but Wolkoff’s book, Melania & Me, has perhaps become more of a headache for the White House, as the author releases recordings of conversations with the first lady that she says she made in self-defence.Wolkoff left the White House amid investigations of fundraising for the inauguration. In February 2018, the New York Times reported that from $107m raised, a company started by Wolkoff received nearly $26m. Wolkoff reportedly banked $500,000. The Times also reported that a government watchdog accused the inaugural committee of “fiscal mismanagement at its worst”.Wolkoff, who denies wrongdoing, says Melania Trump refused to defend her.Speaking to Cohen, Wolkoff said she had “needed to let a reporter listen to the tapes, because [the White House] made sure that people didn’t believe what I was saying … once I had already been severed and accused of criminal activity.”“The White House created a narrative,” she added, “because I didn’t follow along with the one they wanted.” That narrative, she said, was that the Trumps did not know about fundraising for the inaugural and any alleged improprieties.“Nothing took place without Donald’s approval,” Wolkoff told Cohen. “Nothing took place without Melania knowing.”Midway through the hour-long interview, Wolkoff played a snatch of tape in which the first lady complained about a Vogue photoshoot from 2018.“Go Google and read it,” the first lady says. “Annie Leibovitz shot the porn hooker, and she will be [in] one of the issues, September or October.”“What do you mean?” Wolkoff asks.“Stormy,” Trump says.Donald Trump denies an affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. But Cohen orchestrated a hush money payment in the case, an act that contributed to his three-year prison sentence arising from the work of special counsel Robert Mueller.“Shut the fuck up,” Wolkoff responds on the tape. “For what?”“It was yesterday it came up,” Melania Trump says. “For Vogue. It will be in Vogue. Annie Leibovitz shot her.”Leibovitz photographed Daniels and her then attorney, Michael Avenatti, for an August 2018 story entitled Stormy Daniels Isn’t Backing Down.In her book, Wolkoff writes of meeting the then Melania Knauss at the Vogue offices in New York in 2003.Speaking to Cohen, she said: “I actually opened the door for her while I was working at Vogue, and I think I was more of an attraction to Melania and Donald than they were for me. Because what were they doing for me? It wasn’t as if I needed anything from them. I actually saw Melania as this nice, sweet, young, striving model.”Cohen also asked Wolkoff about how the first lady reacted to reports of her husband’s affairs, such as with Daniels, which the model says happened shortly after the birth of Melania’s son, Barron.“She told me,” Wolkoff said, “that Donald had to be prepared for his whole life to be open to the media, to the world if he won [the presidency]. And in that moment I thought to myself, ‘And so do you.’”Last week, the Trumps both announced they had contracted the coronavirus. On the same night, Wolkoff provided to CNN a recording of the first lady complaining about having to supervise White House decorations (“Who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff?) and being criticized over her husband’s policy of separating migrant families (“Give me a fucking break”). More

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      Donald Trump drives past supporters after saying he has 'learnt a lot about Covid' – video

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      After releasing an upbeat video message from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, US president Donald Trump left hospital to wave to his supporters in a motorcade. Throngs of flag-waving Trump supporters gathered outside the hospital where Trump was being treated for Covid-19. The move was criticised as insanity’ by one Walter Reed doctor. In the video message Trump thanked the medical team, saying: ‘The work they do is just absolutely amazing.’ He added that his time in hospital has been ‘a very interesting journey’ and that he has ‘learnt a lot about Covid’. 
       

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      Welcome to Flatland, where shallow appeal ousts substance and reason | Kenan Malik

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      Four international art galleries decide to “postpone” a controversial exhibition. Donald Trump and Joe Biden take part in what has aptly been called a “shitshow” of a presidential election debate. Celebrity activist Laurence Fox launches a political movement to reclaim “British values”. On the surface, these disparate events have nothing in common. However, that is also what they have in common – each shows how art and politics are now lived on the surface with little consideration of depth or meaning.The four galleries – Tate Modern in London, Washington’s National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts – decided to postpone, until 2024, a long awaited show by the artist Philip Guston because the Black Lives Matter movement has shown the need for “the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the centre of Philip Guston’s work… [to] be more clearly interpreted”.But why should the galleries do all the “interpreting”? Art, after all, is about engagement – the same painting, novel, play or film can have many readings. That’s one reason why art can be so thrilling. We live in a world, though, in which many insist that there can only be one way of interpreting contentious issues, whether racial justice or trans rights.The other side of the denial of independent interpretation is the tyranny of the literal: that what’s on the surface is all that matters, that the external form cannot be distinguished from deeper meaning. The problem with Guston’s paintings, for the show’s curators, seems to be that many depict the Klu Klux Klan in white hoods. Guston was unswervingly anti-racist – one of his works, The Studio, shows him painting in a hood, to illustrate what he saw as his own complicity in white supremacy. If any artist fits the current political mood, it’s Guston.Politicians today seem more interested in feeding the outrage machine than in illuminating debateHowever, the galleries seem to think it impossible for audiences to be able, without their aid, to tell the difference between racism and a critique of racism. So the cultural gatekeepers have taken it upon themselves both to interpret the paintings for us in the right way and to protect us from being upset or discomfited.A world in which we fetishise surface appearance, in which people cannot be trusted with their own interpretations and in which we fear being offended or unsettled, leads also to the spectacle that was the US presidential election debate. It was less a forum for politics than a form of real-life trolling.The character of the debate was clearly shaped by Trump’s needs and his insistence on dragging politics into the gutter. But it also exposed in a particularly extreme form an aspect of politics that extends well beyond Trump. Politicians today seem too often to be more interested in feeding the outrage machine than in illuminating debate, preferring slogans to reasoned argument, dismissing scrutiny as “partisanship” and treating truth as if it were a form of entertainment.And then we have Laurence Fox’s Reclaim, “a new political movement that promises to make our future a shared endeavour, not a divisive one”, the seeming opposite of the Trump approach. It has apparently already received £5m in funding.A political movement, though, needs, well, politics. And on this, we have so far heard nothing. Where does Reclaim stand on the question of “offshoring” asylum seekers? On whether people should be fined for breaking self-isolation rules? On how far we should be able to offend others? More

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      'I feel much better': Trump releases first video message from hospital room

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      President says next few days will be the ‘real test’ as he battles Covid-19
      Donald Trump diagnosed with coronavirus – live updates

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      Trump films first message from hospital: ‘We’re going to beat this coronavirus’ – video

      Donald Trump released a new video message on Saturday evening saying that he is “doing well”, his wife Melania is “doing very well” and the next few days will be the “real test” after he was taken to hospital with Covid-19.
      “I came here, wasn’t feeling so well, I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back,” Trump said from behind a desk in his suite at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
      The US president, looking pale, said: “I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon, and I look forward to finishing up the campaign the way it was started and the way we’ve been doing and the kind of numbers that we’ve been doing.”
      The video countered some reports that Trump’s prognosis had worsened since he was admitted to the military hospital on Friday evening, several hours after he announced on Twitter that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had contracted the virus.
      Shortly after the video was released, White House doctor Sean P Conley said Trump was free of fever and making substantial progress, but was “not yet out of the woods”.
      “He spent much of the afternoon conducting business, and has been up and moving about the medical suite without difficulty,” Conley said in a statement.
      Earlier on Saturday, the White House had sent contradictory messages about the president’s health, with a senior official saying his vital signs were “very concerning” even as doctors portrayed a patient recovering well from Covid-19.
      While one doctor said Trump had told them “I feel like I could walk out of here today”, the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows gave reporters a less rosy assessment, saying: “The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care.
      “We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”
      In his message, Trump did not directly contradict Meadows, saying: “I just want to tell you that I’m starting to feel good. You don’t know over the next period of a few days, I guess that’s the real test, so we’ll be seeing what happens over those next couple of days.”
      Trump said his wife was “doing very well” and joked about their age gap.
      “Melania is really handling it very nicely. As you’ve probably read, she’s slightly younger than me – just a little tiny bit – and therefore, just, we know the disease, we know the situation with age versus younger people, and Melania is handling it statistically like it’s supposed to be handled. And that makes me very happy, and it makes the country very happy.”
      The president thanked his medical team – “the incredible medical professionals, the doctors, the nurses, everybody, at Walter Reed Medical Center – I think it’s the finest in the world – for the incredible job they’ve been doing.”
      And he referred to the coronavirus epidemic, which has taken the lives of around 200,000 Americans, derailed the US economy and in recent days threatened Trump’s re-election campaign as White House staff and Republican senators have become infected.
      “This was something that happened, and it’s happened to millions of people all over the world, and I’m fighting for them. Not just in the US, I’m fighting for them all over the world. We’re going to beat this coronavirus, or whatever you want to call it, and we’re going to beat it soundly,” Trump said.
      The decision to put Trump in hospital came after he had experienced difficulty breathing and his oxygen level dropped, according to a source familiar with the situation.
      In his message, Trump said he had “no choice because I just didn’t want to stay in the White House”.
      “I was given that alternative. Stay in the White House, lock yourself in, don’t ever leave, don’t even go to the Oval Office, just stay upstairs and enjoy it, don’t see people, don’t talk to people and just be done with it and I can’t do that,” he said.
      “I can’t be locked up in a room upstairs and totally safe and just say: ‘Hey, whatever happens happens.’ I can’t do that.”
      After being admitted to Walter Reed, Trump was placed on a cocktail of drugs including a five-day course of Remdesivir, an intravenous antiviral drug sold by Gilead Sciences that has been shown to shorten hospital stays.
      He is also taking an experimental treatment, Regeneron’s REGN-COV2, one of several experimental Covid-19 treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, as well as zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and aspirin, according to Conley.
      During his message Trump made no mention of being placed on supplemental oxygen before he was admitted. “If you look at the therapeutics, which I’m taking right now, some of them, and others are coming out soon that are looking like – frankly, they’re miracles if you want to know the truth. They’re miracles,” he said.
      Trump is considered vulnerable because of his age and weight. He has remained in apparent good health during his time in office but is not known to exercise regularly or to follow a healthy diet.
      Trump also thanked Americans for their “almost bipartisan” well wishes and concluded his message by saying: “I think we’re going to have a very good result.”

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