Coronavirus US live: death toll nears 80,000 as Trump rages over Russia

This is from Paula Reid of CBS, a reporter who has challenged Donald Trump publicly recently and gained a certain amount of fame as a result:

Dr Anthony Fauci, 79, is the top US public health expert whose profile has risen steeply during the coronavirus crisis and who we learned last night will now enter a form of quarantine and work remotely due to exposure to a White House staffer who tested positive for Covid-19.

Drs Stephen Hahn and Robert Redfield, other senior health advisers, are also in isolation.

Ed Pilkington

Tony Blair has waded into the row over China’s role in exacerbating the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the country had “serious questions to answer” but urging Europe and the US to keep lines of cooperation open.

The former UK prime minister tells CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday that in what he calls the “new world order” forced by coronavirus, co-operation between nation states and regions of the world will be all the more important.

“The reflation of our own economies is obviously going to work better if there’s global concerted action around the economy,” Blair says.

Taking a starkly different line to Donald Trump, who has become increasingly belligerent towards China and has repeated unproven theories that the disease originated in a Chinese laboratory, Blair cautions against any attempt to break ties with Beijing.

“If you think of the big issues that we face today, whether it’s on the economy or on issues like climate or indeed dealing with this global pandemic, how do you deal with it unless you have some space for cooperation with China?”

Here’s the president’s Sunday morning coronavirus tweet, or one of them:

Suffice to say, whether or not the president is “getting great marks” for how the coronavirus outbreak has been handled rather depends on who is doing the judging, and Trump’s heralding of his restrictions (not outright ban) on travel from China relatively early in the outbreak is subject to all sorts of caveats.

The president’s Sunday morning tweet, or one of them:

Pulitzers were handed out for work on the Russia investigation. Washington Post editor Marty Baron, for one, is not the kind of chap you’d think would be inclined to give his back. Impeachment (which was all about Ukraine, as it happens) didn’t feature in this year’s list, though.

Anyway, here’s some context, if context is needed, for the president’s fixation with the Russia investigation – which ended last spring, remember, with the publication of the Mueller report.

On Thursday the justice department announced it was dropping its case against Michael Flynn, the retired general who was Trump’s first national security adviser, was fired for lying to the vice-president and then pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador and co-operated with special counsel Robert Mueller, before changing his mind, seeking to withdraw his plea and, it seems, avoiding sentencing thanks to attorney general William Barr.

Breath.

Here’s what Yahoo News said Barack Obama had to say about it all in a leaked tape recording:

The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed – about the justice department dropping charges against Michael Flynn.

“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury [in fact Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI] just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic – not just institutional norms – but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.

“And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”

…and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in the US, and of course the politics of and around it.

It’s a fine – if surprisingly cold – day in New York, still the epicenter of the outbreak in the US although as Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday, things are improving if still, of course, vastly concerning. Here are the Johns Hopkins figures:

• US cases: 1,309,373
• US deaths: 78,789
• New York cases: 333,122
• New York deaths: 26,612

Other states, of course, are hard-hit and some are being hit harder by the day. Some, many more than half the 50, are attempting various forms of economic reopening. Here’s southern bureau chief Oliver Laughland’s latest report from Biloxi, Mississippi:

At the White House, of course, Donald Trump continues to push such reopening moves, while not lashing out at political enemies.

Once again, there is no White House briefing, coronavirus task force or otherwise, on the schedule today. That might in part be because the task force is now committed to working remotely, because the virus has been spreading through the White House, very close to the president and his No2, Vice-President Mike Pence.

Trump last communicated with the public via an absolute box barrage of retweets about Russia, James Comey, Michael Flynn, Adam Schiff and Robert Mueller. So far, so much like the rest of the last three years. The president wants the country to move on – but does he?

Here’s something that might’ve contributed to the president’s mood, which has developed this morning.

More to come, of course. Here’s some more reading in the meantime, from our columnist Robert Reich and under one of the more stark headlines I’ve ever written: