President Trump was still struggling to fully grasp the severity of the coronavirus pandemic during a task force meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday, CNN reports.
Said the source: “He still doesn’t get it. He does not get it.”
During the meeting, officials on the task force continued to have trouble convincing Trump to take the pandemic more seriously. As some members of the task force tried to stress the dire nature of the situation to the President, the source said Trump repeatedly attempted to change the subject.
Dr. Anthony Fauci agreed that the United States has the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world, CNBC reports. Said Fauci: “Yeah, it is quantitatively if you look at it, it is. I mean the numbers don’t lie.”
He added: “Every country has suffered. We, the United States, has suffered … as much or worse than anyone. I mean when you look at the number of infections and the number of deaths, it really is quite concerning.”
“U.S. testing for the coronavirus is dropping even as infections remain high and the death toll rises by more than 1,000 a day, a worrisome trend that officials attribute largely to Americans getting discouraged over having to wait hours to get a test and days or weeks to learn the results,” the AP reports.
The Lincoln Project takes aim at Jared Kushner in a new video.
“U.S. businesses slowed their hiring dramatically in July, adding only 167,000 new workers to their private payrolls — a steep drop from analysts’ expectations that could add new urgency to stalled congressional talks over another round of federal coronavirus relief,” the Washington Post reports.
“The numbers reported mark a significant departure from the roughly 1 million jobs that some economists had predicted and a sharp falloff from hiring gains reported just a month prior, with virtually no sector of the U.S. economy untouched by the new slowdown.”
President Trump told Fox & Friends he has “redone” a very specific 82% of very unspecific “Obama things.” He also still couldn’t name a specific thing he would do when asked what he wanted to accomplish in a second term.
“My view is the schools should open. This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away, and my view is that schools should be open.” — President Trump, on Fox & Friends, once again falsely claiming children are “almost immune” to the coronavirus.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded that he will lack Republican support to pass further coronavirus aid and instead will rely on Democrats to fashion a deal with the White House, NBC News reports. Said McConnell: “If you’re looking for total consensus among Republican senators, you’re not going to find it. We do have division about what to do.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) tore into his fellow Republicans on Fox News for considering a coronavirus relief package that could cost more than $1 trillion. Said Paul: “I am very upset with my colleagues. They went 8 years. They should apologize now to President Obama for complaining he was spending and borrowing too much. He was a piker compared to their borrowing and what they’re doing now.”
Axios: “Paul’s comments, while tongue-in-cheek, underscore the divisions within the Senate Republican conference, where as many as 20 GOP senators are likely to vote against any coronavirus relief bill — even if a deal is reached between Democrats and Trump administration.”
Michelle Obama said in a new episode of her podcast that she is “dealing with some form of low-grade depression” this year.
Said Obama: “Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.”
She added: “I have to say that waking up to the news, waking up to how this administration has or has not responded, waking up to yet another story of a Black man or a Black person somehow being dehumanized, or hurt or killed, or falsely accused of something, it is exhausting. And it has led to a weight that I haven’t felt in my life, in a while.”
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) was skeptical President Trump could give his Republican convention acceptance speech at the White House, Politico reports.
Said Thune: “Is that even legal? I assume that’s not something that you could do. I assume there’s some Hatch Act issues or something. I don’t know the answer to that but I haven’t, and I haven’t heard him say that. But I think anything you do on federal property would seem to be problematic.”
“The internal State Department watchdog, whom President Trump installed after the previous inspector general was abruptly fired, has resigned, the department said in a statement, marking another significant shake-up for an office sworn to investigate malfeasance and wrongdoing,” the Washington Post reports.
“Public school students in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest district, will begin the academic year remotely in September, leaving New York City as the only major school system in the country that will try to offer in-person classes when schools start this fall,” the New York Times reports.
“White House chief of staff Mark Meadows appeared to put a time limit on talks to reach a new deal on a congressional coronavirus relief package on Wednesday, saying if negotiators can’t reach an agreement by Friday, they likely won’t be able to do a deal,” The Hill reports.
Said Meadows: “I think at this point we’re either going to get serious about negotiating and get an agreement in principle or I’ve become extremely doubtful that we’ll be able to make a deal if it goes well beyond Friday.”
Politico: “Vulnerable Republicans have a clear message for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: no deal, no recess.”
“With talks between the White House and Democratic leadership at an impasse, Senate Republicans up in November are pressing for the chamber to stay in session until some agreement is reached.”
“Thousands of foreign workers who entered the U.S. on temporary work visas received $1,200 checks in error during the first round of stimulus payments, and many of them are spending the money in their home nations,” NPR reports.
Pentagon officials have no idea what President Trump was talking about when he described the gigantic and deadly Beirut explosion as a “terrible attack” carried out using a “bomb of some kind,” CNN reports.
Travelers from 35 states are now required to quarantine for 14 days when traveling to New York. New Jersey and Connecticut have joined New York with the order.
The Wall Street Journal says New York City will set up bridge and tunnel checkpoints to enforce the quarantine order. People caught violating the order could be fined up to $10,000.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) admitted to CBS Miami that the state unemployment system was deliberately designed to frustrate people, making it so difficult for them to apply for benefits that they would give up and just not get paid.
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