Trump news: White House denies intelligence on Russian bounty threat and Reddit bans supporters's forum as Twitch suspends president's account

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

Trump denies being briefed on Russian bounty killing plot

Donald Trump has insisted he was not briefed by intelligence officials over an alleged Russian plot to pay out bounties to Taliban hitmen in exchange for targeting American and British soldiers in Afghanistan to sow unrest, after the president was accused of sitting on the report by his domestic political rivals.

“Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” he tweeted over night. “Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”

I think he meant to tag in The New York Times’s main account there, not its poor book review team specifically, that message a response to the concerns of Republican senator Lindsey Graham, whom the president spent time with golfing in Sterling, Virginia, over the weekend.

The Trump administration is apparently set to brief “select members of Congress” on the matter today, according to the AP, after The NYT reported that Russia was making overtures to the Islamist militant group just as its elders were holding talks with the US to end the long-running war in Afghanistan.

While intelligence officials have indicated Trump was briefed on the matter earlier this year, he has now twice denied it.

Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden has said reports that Trump was aware of the Russian bounties would be a "truly shocking revelation" about the commander-in-chief and his failure to protect US troops in Afghanistan and stand up to Russia.

The Kremlin has, predictably, called the report "nonsense."

"This unsophisticated plant clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of the propagandists of American intelligence, who instead of inventing something more plausible have to make up this nonsense," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

A Taliban spokesman said the militants likewise "strongly reject this allegation" and are not "indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country."

John Bolton, the former US national security adviser who was forced out by Trump last September and has now written a tell-all book about his time at the White House, said on Sunday that "it is pretty remarkable the president's going out of his way to say he hasn't heard anything about it. One asks, why would he do something like that?"

Bolton told NBC's Meet the Press that he thinks the answer "may be precisely because active Russian aggression like that against the American service members is a very, very serious matter and nothing's been done about it, if it's true, for these past four or five months, so it may look like he was negligent. But, of course, he can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it."

House speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the few congressional leaders briefed on sensitive intelligence matters, told ABC's This Week yesterday that she had not been informed about the reported bounties and requested a report to Congress on the matter.

"This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed. Whether he is or not, his administration knows and our allies - some of our allies who work with us in Afghanistan had been briefed and accept this report," she said.

Here’s Griffin Connolly’s report.

States race to impose new lockdown measures as Covid-19 spreads

Several southern states are meanwhile racing to impose new lockdown restrictions on citizens after cases of the coronavirus surged following their reopening, with California governor Gavin Newsom joining his Texas and Florida counterparts in closing bars in Los Angeles and six other counties and the latter shutting its beaches.

Public health officials in California and throughout the United States have identified bars as the riskiest non-essential businesses currently open. Consuming alcohol reduces inhibitions, which leads to less mask-wearing and social distancing, health officials warn. Patrons in noisy bars often shout, which also spreads droplets more widely.

"Covid-19 has taken a very swift and very dangerous turn in Texas over just the past few weeks," said that state’s governor Greg Abbott, who allowed businesses to start reopening in early May but on Friday shut down bars and limited restaurant dining amid a spike in cases.

The surge in cases has been most pronounced in southern and western states that did not follow health officials' recommendations to wait for a steady decline in cases before reopening. More than 2.5 million people have tested positive for the new coronavirus in the United States and more than 125,000 have died, the most in the world.

For a third consecutive day on Saturday, the number of confirmed US cases leapt by more than 40,000, one of the world's largest surges. In many states, people under 35 accounted for a large percentage of new cases. More tests are also coming back positive, up to 25 per cent in some areas.

“Caution was thrown to the wind and so we are where we are,” Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis commented, blaming the surge on large gatherings of young people at the seaside.

Some beaches in Florida are also closing ahead of the 4 July Independence Day holiday weekend, which would have drawn large crowds.

In Arizona, cases have risen by 267 per cent this month and jumped by a record 3,857 on Sunday, the eighth record-breaking increase this month. Georgia reported a record increase of 2,225 cases on Sunday. Fifteen states, including California, Florida and Texas, saw record rises in cases last week.

Andrew Buncombe has this report on the president golfing while Rome burns.

Health secretary warns ‘window is closing’ to get pandemic under control

With the world now suffering 10m cases of Covid-19 and 500,000 deaths – and with the US accounting for a quarter of infections and almost a third of fatalities – health secretary Alex Azar warned on Sunday that “the window is closing” to get the pandemic back under control.

Also painting a bleak picture was Dr Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday there is “no doubt” the coronavirus “has the upper hand”.

“There’s no doubt we’re doing more testing, our hospitals are better prepared, but there’s also no doubt the virus has the upper hand,” he said.

“This virus is not going to go away on its own, we have to stop that, and only we can do that by working together. We’re all sick and tired of staying home but the virus is not tired of making us sick.”

Dr Frieden was also in no doubt that the sharp increases in cases we’ve seen were down to premature reopenings.

“If you open while cases are still increasing, as many states did, it’s like leaning into a left hook, you’re going to get hit hard,” he said.

“That’s why the three Ws are so important - wear a mask, wash your hands or use sanitiser and watch your distance.”

Mike Pence advises everyone to wear masks but attends choir performance

Trump's vice president - the nominal head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force - was forced to cancel events campaigning for Trump's re-election in Florida and Arizona on Saturday because of the outbreak.

On Sunday, he spoke to Face the Nation and joined DeSantis in blaming the spread of coronavirus among young people who considered themselves “invincible” to its effects.

His observation was not altogether without trace elements of hypocrisy...

After that, Pence travelled to Texas, where he told a news conference held with Greg Abbott and housing secretary Ben Carson that Americans should wear masks. 

"We encourage everyone to wear a mask in the affected areas," he said. "Where you can't maintain social distancing, wearing a mask is just a good idea, especially young people."

But the vice president subsequently attended a service at a church where a 100-member choir sang without masks. A video showed Pence, who has defended his boss’s refusal to ask all Americans to wear masks in public, in the audience wearing a face covering himself - but it all seemed like a case of too little, too late.

One man who has had enough of Pence's "hunky dory" outlook is Washington governor Jay Inslee, who said as much on Face the Nation.

Joe Biden says Trump has 'picked a side' after tweeting 'white power' video

The president sparked a fresh controversy (or distraction) by retweeting a video of his supporters in Florida in which one individual was heard to shout the white supremacist phrase “White power!”

Trump was subsequently forced to delete the video, with a spokesman indicating he had not carefully watched the clip before broadcasting it to his almost 83m Twitter followers.

Leading the condemnation was Biden, who had this to say:

Trump's only defender was Tim Scott, the one black Republican in the Senate, who has had a rough week, what with seeing his police reform bill quashed and now having to step out and take one for the team here.

Here’s Alex Woodward’s report.

Republican senator urges Trump to wear a mask

“If wearing masks is important - and all the health experts tell us that it is - in containing the disease in 2020, it would help if from time to time the president would wear one,” Tennessee's Lamar Alexander said yesterday, urging Trump to set an example.

He's right here, but if only Alexander himself had set an example in February by following through on his threat to join Mitt Romney's one-man rebellion to back Trump's impeachment, we might be looking at a much brighter world right now.

Speaker Pelosi meanwhile echoed Mike Pence's call for mandatory mask-wearing on This Week, describing the practice as "definitely long overdue".

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Mick Jagger to Trump: 'You can't always get what you want'

The Rolling Stones have demanded that the president stop using their 1969 hit at his rallies, following hot on the heels of the Tom Petty estate and many others in issuing a cease-and-desist order and threatening to sue.

If this continues, MAGA supporters will soon be forced to listen to copyright-free elevator muzak as they await this clapped-out president taking to the stage on his regional sympathy tours.

As far as I'm concerned, Trump is welcome to "You Can't Always Get What You Want" - I never cared for that children's choir at the beginning.

But if he'd come for "Tell Me", "Play with Fire", "Paint It Black", "Brown Sugar" or "Star Star" (unlikely), we'd have serious beef.

Florida beaches will close for Fourth of July weekend over coronavirus concerns

Back to the growing crisis that is the vengeful resurgence of coronavirus in the south.

Here's Gino Spocchia on Florida's belated tactical retreat from reopening.