A senior White House adviser to Donald Trump, Kevin Hassett, is being mercilessly ridiculed as a living parody of a box-ticking economist after he promoted an end to national lockdown measures in an interview with CNN by declaring: “Our human capital stock is ready to go back to work.”
Officials in Missouri have meanwhile criticised the “irresponsible and dangerous” scenes of revellers ignoring social distancing rules to gather at a crowded lake over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, a case emblematic of tensions across the US as the debate over reopening from the coronavirus shutdown continues.
The president himself has meanwhile mocked rival Joe Biden for wearing a face mask as he left his Delaware home for the first time in weeks on Monday to lay a wreath for fallen soldiers, despite Trump declining to wear one on a visit to Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He insisted yesterday he was “getting great reviews” for his response to the pandemic that has left nearly 100,000 Americans dead.
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Charlotte city councilman dismisses Trump’s lobbying for premature reopening
Larken Egelston has been speaking to Alisyn Camerota on CNN’s New Day this morning and not giving an inch on the president’s demands that North Carolina’s Democratic governor end his shutdown in time for August to accommodate the Republican National Convention.
Husband of woman at centre of Trump’s Joe Scarborough ‘murder’ conspiracy theory writes to Twitter CEO asking him to intervene
Timothy Klausutis – whose wife Lori died in Scarborough’s Capitol Hill office in 2001, when the TV host was a serving congressman and she his staffer, after falling and hitting her head in a tragic accident – has written a moving letter to Jack Dorsey imploring him to intervene to block the president’s lurid tweets about the matter.
Trump has repeatedly accused Scarborough of murder, based on nothing, in recent weeks as revenge for his critical coverage of the administration on his MSNBC show Morning Joe.
“The president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him – the memory of my dead wife – and perverted it for perceived political gain,” the widower writes.
Scarborough and his wife and co-host Mike Brzezinski have since picked up the torch themselves to support Klausutis.
Trump supporters take to the water in South Carolina to express support for embattled president
Charleston harbour played host to the latest “MAGA boat parade” on Memorial Day in which water-born Trumpsters hit the waves in speedboats to cheer the president, as their Florida counterparts did recently.
A Facebook page set up for the event had more than 700 people indicating they planned to attend.
Many that did brandished flags that read “Trump 2020” or cardboard cutouts of the man himself and at least one sign proclaimed, in reference to the shutdown: “If we followed rules, we’d still be British. Liberty is essential.”
Democratic congresswoman says she believes sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden but will vote for him anyway
Alrighty then, Minnesota progressive Ilhan Omar. Alrighty then.
Justin Vallejo has this report on her comments.
Pelosi and Schumer say Trump’s strategy for coronavirus testing is to ‘deny the truth’ about supply shortages
The Democratic leaders responded to the administration’s latest update to Congress on Sunday about the state of testing for Covid-19 in which it pledged to purchase 100m swabs by the end of the year to distribute among the states and reiterated that overseeing testing was a local and not a federal matter.
Having read it, the House speaker and Senate minority leader concluded the US government “still does not have a serious plan” to boost testing to prevent Covid-19 from spreading further.
“This disappointing report confirms that President Trump’s national testing strategy is to deny the truth that there aren’t enough tests and supplies, reject responsibility and dump the burden onto the states,” the statement read.
“In this document, the Trump administration again attempts to paint a rosy picture about testing while experts continue to warn the country is far short of what we need.”
They asked for more clarity on how the government proposes to reopen the country from its present state of national shutdown.
World Health Organisation drops hydroxychloroquine trials over safety concerns
The WHO is abandoning its clinical trial of the malaria drug recently taken by Trump and endorsed by right-wing figures from Fox News to Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
“The executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the Solidarity trial while the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board. The other arms of the trial are continuing,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online briefing on Monday.
Vincent Wood and Oliver O’Connell have more on this.
Kentucky governor Andy Beshear hanged in effigy by anti-lockdown protesters
As we’ve already seen, anti-shutdown sentiments continue to fester in America as citizens grow frustrated with stay-at-home orders and find themselves impatient to get back to work and return to normality.
Still, as understandable as that is, there’s absolutely no excuse for this.
A group of 100 “Take Back Kentucky” protesters besieged the state Capitol yesterday to protest after organising on Facebook, hanging an effigy of Democratic governor Andy Beshear outside with the Latin phrase “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants”) emblazoned on its chest, the same words John Wilkes Booth cried out as he shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington on 14 April 1865.
“Abort Beshear from office” and “My rights don’t end where your fear begins”, read demonstrators signs, while others chanted “Come out Andy” and “Resign Andy”.
“This is disgusting and I condemn it wholeheartedly,” Kentucky secretary of state Michael G Adams said of the effigy.
The state’s Democratic Party meanwhile issued a statement calling the symbol “beyond reprehensible” and calling it “the logical conclusion of hateful rhetoric”.
Here’s Gino Spocchia’s report.
Trump picks Memorial Day to attack Marine veteran congressman as ‘American fraud’
There was one other tweet from the president of particular significance yesterday.
Trump launched into an astonishing two-footed tackle on Pennsylvania congressman Conor Lamb, calling the Marine Corps veteran (!) ”an American fraud” and a “puppet for Crazy Nancy Pelosi” as he garbled the spelling of his name (“Connor Lamm”) in seeking to promote the cause of his Republican challenger, Sean Parnell.
Trump was also wrong to call Lamb a Pelosi stooge – he actually voted against her run for House speaker in 2017.
It was the timing of the president’s attack against a man he’s still bitter at for beating his own GOP candidate Rick Saccone to the seat that really got up Twitter users’ noses, with one withering respondent branding Trump “Cadet Bone Spurs” over his five draft deferrals from the Vietnam War with a minor medical complaint.
President tweets he’s ‘getting great reviews’ for pandemic response
Incredibly, Trump insisted yesterday he was attracting rave notices for his response to the pandemic that has left nearly 100,000 Americans dead.
While that was not only stunningly tone deaf and insensitive to the tens of thousands of American families that have lost loved ones to the disease, it didn’t even make sense. His first sentence contradicted his second as he griped that he “got no credit” for coming to the aid of state governors.
Also, take note of that the sneaky attempt to revive the racist “China Virus” branding again there.
He otherwise used his Twitter account yesterday to continue to try to disingenuously associate Biden with China – a line of attack that does not appear to have gained much traction so far – and to hound North Carolina’s Democratic governor Roy Cooper to ease shutdown measures in time to host the Republican National Convention in August.
He went on to angrily attack The New York Times for suggesting he wanted to restage the GOP gathering at his Miami Doral resort, accusing the newspaper of trying “to stir up trouble”.
Trump mocks Biden for wearing mask to lay Memorial Day wreath
The president himself has meanwhile mocked rival Joe Biden for wearing a face mask as he left his Delaware home for the first time in weeks on Monday to lay a wreath for fallen soldiers, despite Trump declining to wear one on a visit to Fort McHenry in Baltimore.
Trump retweeted this snide post from Fox pundit Brit Hume to make the point for him:
The president had begun his Memorial Day paying his respects to the nation’s military dead at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, kindly taking time out from a long weekend of golf and trolling.
Presidents customarily lay a wreath and speak at the hallowed burial ground but the coronavirus crisis made this year somewhat different. Many attendees arrived wearing masks but removed them for the outdoor ceremony in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Trump, maskless, gave no remarks. He simply approached a wreath already in place, touched it and saluted.
He then traveled to Baltimore’s Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, the site of a famous battle in 1814 when it successfully held off an assault from the British Navy approaching from the Chesapeake bay. The venue is also the subject of one of Trump’s most famous and baffling gaffes, his claim that the US army “took over the airports” there at the height of the revolutionary war.
Speaking at the great fort, the president promised his fellow countrymen: “Together we will vanquish the virus and America will rise from this crisis to new and even greater heights. No obstacle, no challenge and no threat is a match for the sheer determination of the American people.”
He also praised the tens of thousands of service members and National Guard personnel “on the front lines of our war against this terrible virus.”
The city’s mayor Bernard C “Jack” Young had objected to Trump’s visit in advance, saying it sends the wrong message about stay-at-home directives and the city could not afford the added cost of hosting him when it is losing $20m (£16.4m) a month because of the pandemic.
He cited the disproportionate effect the virus has had on his city and called on Trump to “set a positive example” by not traveling during the holiday weekend but the latter was not dissuaded.
His objections might also have something to do with the fact that Trump last summer described a local congressional district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”
Biden meanwhile chose Memorial Day to make his first public appearance in the two months since the pandemic closed down the nation. He emerged unannounced from his Wilmington home to lay a wreath at a nearby park, with no crowd gathered to greet him. It was a milestone in a presidential campaign that has largely been frozen.
“Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made,” he said afterwards. “Never, ever forget.”
The sight of Biden in a mask provoked ABC’s senior national correspondent Terry Moran to ask: “Do you think this is a good look for a President of the United States?” His tweet quickly went viral, but not in the manner in which he might have hoped.
Here’s Justin Vallejo on a day of contrasts.
Officials decry ‘dangerous’ holiday weekend crowds
Missouri officials have meanwhile criticised the “irresponsible and dangerous” scenes of revellers ignoring social distancing rules to gather at a crowded lake over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, a case emblematic of tensions across the US as the debate over reopening from the coronavirus shutdown continues.
The state’s Department of Health and Senior Services director Randall Williams released a statement on Monday reminding people that the coronavirus pandemic is not over.
“This Memorial Day, we caution that Covid-19 is still here, and social distancing needs to continue to prevent further spread of infections,” he said. “Close contact with others even if you are in the outdoors is still considered close contact and can lead to more infections as we still have new cases of Covid-19 being detected each day in Missouri.”
This was the scene at the Lake of the Ozarks, a video that quickly went viral:
St Louis mayor Lyda Krewson also condemned the crowds, calling their actions “irresponsible and dangerous.”
“Now, these folks will be coming home to St Louis and counties all over Missouri and the Midwest, raising concerns about the potential of more positive cases, hospitalisations, and tragically, deaths,” Krewson said in a statement. “It’s just deeply disturbing.”
The state has experienced at least 12,167 cases of coronavirus and at least 685 deaths, according to its own data, but Republican governor Mike Parson nevertheless allowed businesses to reopen on 4 May so long as social distancing guidelines were adhered to.
But Missouri was by no means alone in seeing such troubling scenes this weekend.
Here’s Alex Woodward with a broader look at the national picture.
Trump adviser ridiculed for calling people ‘human capital stock’
A senior White House adviser to Donald Trump, Kevin Hassett, is being mercilessly ridiculed as a living parody of a box-ticking economist after he promoted an end to national lockdown measures in an interview with CNN by declaring: “Our human capital stock is ready to go back to work.”
“Our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed, our human capital stock is ready to get back to work, and so there are lots of reasons to believe that we can get going way faster than we have in previous crises,” he said.
Aside from sounding like a heartless automaton, the aide offered a bleak immediate forecast for the country’s projected unemployment rate, saying that it will be higher in June than May before starting to trend down.
“I think that yes, unemployment will be something that moves back slower,” Hassett said. “You’re going to be starting at a number in the 20s and working your way down and so, of course, you could still not be back to full employment by September or October.”
He added that he would be “way more optimistic” about the future of US employment if there was a vaccine available by July (which seems unlikely at this point) and commented that the unemployment rate could still be in double digits in November.
A report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published on 22 May said that 43 out of the 50 states saw historic levels of unemployment in April.
Last week, the US weekly jobless claims hit 2.4m, bringing the nine-week total since the shutdown began to nearly 39m.
Andrew Naughtie has this report.
Hello and welcome to The Independent‘s rolling coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in the US and the Donald Trump administration’s response to it.
