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In his own words

September 10, 2020
Balance of Power
Bloomberg

Once again, Democrats may be betting that one of their strongest weapons against Donald Trump as the Nov. 3 election approaches will be the president's own words.

Trump confirmed yesterday that he told journalist Bob Woodward on Feb. 7 that the coronavirus was far more deadly than the flu and easily transmitted — at the same time as he was telling Americans not to worry.

The incident echoes an October 2016 crisis that nearly sank his campaign, when Trump was heard on tape disparaging women to a host from the television program "Access Hollywood."

As Josh Wingrove and Mario Parker write, it was yet another setback for the president's bid to focus his re-election campaign on anything but the pandemic as he trails Democratic nominee Joe Biden in national and battleground state polls.

It wasn't the only hit Trump took yesterday.

Democratic lawmakers released a whistle-blower complaint alleging that Trump administration appointees suppressed intelligence on Russian efforts to interfere in the upcoming election and on the threat from white supremacists.

It appears the president will get little succor from Congress. A months-long partisan battle over additional stimulus for the beleaguered U.S. economy rages anew today via a Senate vote on a Republican proposal that Democrats say is a non-starter.

Biden seized on Trump's remarks to Woodward, saying they showed the president "knowingly and willingly lied" to the public at the cost of "tens of thousands of lives and millions more of American livelihoods."

The question, though, is whether the latest revelations change people's minds about a candidate who once boasted he could stand in the middle of New York's Fifth Avenue and shoot someone without alienating his base.

As the 2016 tape shows, Trump can win even after voters listen to him saying things he never intended them to hear.

— Kathleen Hunter

Medical staff treat a patient wearing a ventilator in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston on July 28.

Photographer: Go Nakamura/Getty Images North America

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Global Headlines

On the bench? | Trump announced a new list of people he intends to consider for future vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court, a move aimed at firing up his conservative base ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were among the potential candidates.

Campaign 2020

There are 54 days until the election. Here's the latest on the race for control of the White House and Congress.

Biden is responding to Trump's campaign ads designed to inspire fear of protesters with a series of advertisements in key swing states that show positive messages of unity.

Other developments:

Sign up to receive daily election updates as a direct mobile notification on Twitter. Simply click on this link and like the tweet.

Dollar power | China has calibrated its response to sanctions by the Trump administration to limit the risk of escalation. It's also hindered by the U.S. dollar's dominance in international finance: The greenback accounted for almost 40% of all SWIFT transactions in July, versus less than 2% for the yuan, making it harder for multinational banks — including China's state-run lenders — to avoid compliance with U.S. sanctions.

  • Secretary of State Michael Pompeo called on Southeast Asian nations to review ties with Chinese state-owned enterprises.

  • The U.S. confirmed it had revoked the visas of more than a thousand Chinese students and researchers for national security reasons.

Brexit backlash | The European Union is studying possible legal action against the U.K. over Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plans to breach the agreement governing Britain's withdrawal from the bloc. Alberto Nardelli reports that an EU analysis says it may have a case to seek legal remedies under the divorce agreement even before controversial provisions in the U.K. internal-market bill are passed by Parliament.

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.K. can forget about congressional approval for a free-trade deal with the U.S. if Brexit imperils an agreement that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland.

A party in San Francisco's Alamo Square Park.

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

As Sarah Holder writes, the sun never quite rose over the Bay Area yesterday: The 350,000-acre August Complex fire and the nearly 900-acre Oak Fire shrouded San Francisco in a dense blanket of smoke and ash.

On a break | The luxury industry's biggest takeover is unraveling after France's LVMH moved to call off a $16 billion purchase of U.S. jeweller Tiffany's. It named the French government as the other party in the soured relationship, saying Paris had ordered it to delay the deal because of a U.S.-France trade dispute. Tiffany's countered with a lawsuit, accusing LVMH of trying to leverage the coronavirus pandemic and U.S. protests against police brutality to seek a lower price.

Changed climate | Russia's richest man, Vladimir Potanin, was publicly rebuked by President Vladimir Putin for damage caused in the Arctic by a giant diesel spill from a fuel tank owned by his mining operations in May. With the Arctic warming rapidly and the permafrost thawing, Potanin plays a paradoxical role in tackling climate change, Yuliya Fedorinova and Laura Millan Lombrana write. His Norilsk Nickel company's mines in the region produce enormous quantities of the minerals essential for batteries needed by electric vehicles.

What to Watch

  • Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono said he expects a general election in October, contradicting comments from Yoshihide Suga, the man expected to become the next prime minister.

  • The Chinese company ByteDance is increasingly likely to miss Trump's deadline for the sale of its TikTok U.S. operations after new regulations complicated negotiations with bidders Microsoft and Oracle.
  • EU efforts to sanction Belarus are on hold over an unrelated crisis, with Cyprus refusing to back the proposal unless member states also agree to clamp down on Turkey over drilling activities in the eastern Mediterranean, Nikos Chrysoloras reports. 

  • South Africa faces economic and political collapse by 2030 unless it implements job-intensive growth-friendly policies, according to the Johannesburg-based political and economic risk consultancy Eunomix.

And finally ... The live-action remake of the 1998 animated hit "Mulan" was supposed to be another $1 billion blockbuster for Walt Disney. Instead, Disney is facing heat from fans and U.S. politicians for filming in a region where Beijing has detained as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs, and then thanking Chinese authorities in the movie's credits. It's the latest U.S. business to be embroiled in political controversy involving China amid heightened economic tensions between Beijing and Washington.

An actress dressed as the title character from "Mulan" rides in a parade at Shanghai Disneyland in 2016.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

 
 

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