Trump warns Democrats about 'bailout' for violent cities as red line in coronavirus relief talks

Donald Trump and senior members of his administration say talks about a fifth coronavirus recovery bill have yielded little progress.

"As of now, we're very far apart," Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Wednesday.

A day after Mr Trump called a Senate Republican Covid-19 relief measure "semi-irrelevant" since Democrats have a laundry list of their own demands, he and his treasury chief did little to raise hopes for another assistance bill.

"Well, we're looking at a deadline, obviously, of this Friday. The president very focused on evictions and unemployment," Mr Mnuchin said, seemingly endorsing the notion of a possible partial deal. "If we can't reach an agreement by then, the president wants to look at giving us more time to negotiate those."

The president appeared to risk putting any deal in jeopardy when he linked another relief bill to his push to deploy federal police officers to cities run by Democratic mayors that have seen increases in violence and protests. He is in a dispute with officials in Oregon over such a deployment to Portland, which he says is not ending but leaders there say soon will.

Mr Trump last week said and other administration officials said they would send federal law enforcement officers to Chicago, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Kansas City.

The president, who sometimes casts off such demands, painted a red line: he signalled he won't sign any coronavirus bill that includes "bailout" money for Democratic-run cities he deems too violent or poorly managed. But he also endorsed a smaller deal, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi has rejected such a "piecemeal" approach.

"We're focused on those two things," the president said of protecting people from being eviction and help for jobless Americans. "We want to take care of them now. The rest we can discuss later.

"They want big bailout money for Democrats that were in cities terribly. There cities are going down the tube," he added. "If you look at Portland, you look at what's going on in Seattle, Democrat run city, whether you like it or not, they're terribly run and they're always overtaxed. So they tax them too much and they run them poorly. And we don't like that. And what the Democrats want are bailout funds.

In a sign of continuing Republican bickering that could hold up a final bill, the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are split over including funding for a new FBI headquarters building.

Asked about Mr McConnell and other Republicans calling for that funding to be removed from any final bill, Mr Trump said this: "Then Republicans should go back to school and learn."

Mr Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows were slated to meet again on Wednesday afternoon with Ms Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer about a deal.

The two Democrats emerged from an unproductive Tuesday afternoon meeting and offered rather bizarre analogies how the state of the talks.

"It's like a giraffe and a flamingo," Ms Pelosi said. "They're both at a zoo. A dumb person may think they could mate for offspring. A smart person knows that's impossible. That's our bills. They're unable to mate."

And if that wasn't strange enough, Mr Schumer compared the two sides to dogs of very different sizes and breeds.

"A golden retriever can't mate with a Chihuahua," he claimed without providing evidence of the impossibility. "You have a Chihuahua. We have a beautiful lion."