Trump news: President tweets photo of himself wearing mask and calls Covid-19 ‘Invisible China virus’ after 140,000 Americans die
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Your support makes all the difference.As the coronavirus pandemic death toll grew to more than 140,000 people in the US, Donald Trump tweeted out a photo of himself wearing a mask and saying "many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can't socially distance. There is nobody more Patriotic than me".
The president said he would resume the White House's daily 5 pm EST briefings on coronavirus, which he has now taken to calling the "Invisible China Virus".
As violence continued in Portland, meanwhile, Trump confirmed reports that his administration planned on sending "law enforcement" to major cities across the country.
Two world wars, however, were described as "beautiful" during a Fox News interview as the president defended his resistance to renaming US military bases connected to Confederate generals.
Trump's attacks on Joe Biden mental fitness during the interview didn't poll well with voters, while many viewers questioned the president's own performance during the heated sit-down with host Chris Wallace.
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Homeland Security officials say no plans to pull back from Portland
Top Homeland Security officials said on Monday they had no intention of pulling back in Portland, Oregon, and defended the federal crackdown on anti-racism protests, including the use of unmarked cars and unidentified officers in camouflage.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent law enforcement units to Portland to back up the Federal Protective Service responsible for guarding US government facilities after receiving intelligence about planned attacks around 4 July, the DHS officials said.
“DHS is not going to back down from our responsibilities. We are not escalating, we are protecting,” Chad Wolf, acting secretary of Homeland Security, told Fox News.
Donald Trump condemned protests in Portland and violence in other “Democrat-run” cities on Sunday as his Republican administration moves to intervene in urban centres he says have lost control of demonstrations. Protests began across the country after the police killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May.
In Portland, federal officers last week started cracking down on crowds, using tear gas to disperse protesters and taking some into custody in unmarked cars.
Portland Police early on Monday provided details on another tense night between protesters and federal law enforcement in the city, saying federal agents used tear gas to disperse a crowd that had gathered outside a federal courthouse downtown.
Mr Wolf said federal law enforcement was doing its job.
“We're not going to apologise for it,” he said. “We're going to do it professionally and do it correctly.”
Reuters
Trump says coronavirus briefings will return
The president will once again hold coronavirus briefings beginning on Tuesday at 5pm EST.
Trump confirmed the news during a press opp today at the White House.
Story to come...
Trump says 'we're sending law enforcement' to major cities
The president said the administration was sending in law enforcement to major cities across the country:
Mothers form human barricades to protect activists from federal forces
Andrew Naughtie writes: A group of mothers in Portland has been intervening at demonstrations over the weekend to protect protesters from uniformed federal officers who have been sent to the city to impose “law and order”.
Standing in line with elbows linked, many of them wearing bicycle helmets, some of the mothers chanted “Feds stay clear! Moms are here!” as they blocked streets near the city’s federal courthouse, which has become a flashpoint of the conflict between protesters and the authorities.
The mothers’ protest was first organised as an event named “Wall of Moms”, started on Facebook by 35-year-old local mother Bev Barnum. Describing her experience of the groups’ first action, she explained what it was like to see the protests from the front line.
“We tried in earnest to give the kids a break by shifting the pervasive narrative that protestors are rioters ...
“To be clear, we moms weren’t armed, throwing rocks, throwing water...THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN."
ICYMI: Trump describes two world wars as ‘beautiful’ and threatens to veto bill renaming military bases
In a wide-ranging interview on Sunday with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, Donald Trump has once again refused to entertain the idea of renaming US military forts that currently bear the names of Confederate generals.
The latest:
‘They just started whaling on me’: Veteran speaks out after video of federal officers beating him at Portland protests goes viral
Danielle Zoellner writes: Christopher David, a 53-year-old disabled Navy veteran, was so angry at the sight of federal officers sweeping up protesters in the last few nights on the streets of Portland, Oregon, that he decided to go and talk to them about it.
The city resident, who served more than eight years with the US Navy, got on a public bus on Saturday and headed to a protest in front of the city courthouse in the hope he could ask them some questions.
“I was enraged simply because I did not think they were taking their oath of office seriously or they were compromising their oath of office,” Mr David told The Independent. “So I actually went down because I wanted to talk to them about it.”
His advances were rebuffed, however, and he was the victim of a brutal attack that was caught on video and went viral on Sunday.
In the video, first shared by a reporter from the Portland Tribune, Mr David is seen taking a series of baton blows from a federal agent, without reacting to any of them, before he is finally forced back by pepper spray to the face.
More: Trump to resume coronavirus briefings
Alex Woodward writes: Donald Trump will resume his White House coronavirus press briefings, which he stopped in April, as the nation's infections surge past 3.7 million and deaths top more than 140,000.
The president announced that a briefing is tentatively scheduled for 5pm on Tuesday, as he hailed the television ratings that he received for his previous ones.
"We had a lot of people watching ... in the history of cable television, there's never been anything like it," he said.
White House officials pulled the president from daily briefings after he had routinely contradicted health officials, including dangerously suggesting that Covid-19 patients should ingest disinfectants to combat the disease.
He also has complained that he was met with "hostile" questions from journalists at the freewheeling events.
Trump on sending law enforcement to cities across the country
Here's video of the president confirming during a pool spray earlier today he was sending "law enforcement" to cities facing protests across the country after violent scenes came out of Portland this weekend:
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