I'm treated worse than Lincoln, Trump complains at coronavirus town hall

Honestly, Abe had it easier

The subject of Fox News' virtual town hall event with President Donald Trump on Sunday night was supposed to be the challenges of getting America back to work.

That topic did come up during some of the two-hour broadcast, with Trump seated across from two Fox News anchors at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He fielded their questions and others sent in by video from viewers.

“We have to reopen our country,” Trump said. “We have to get it back open safely but as quickly as possible.” He acknowledged the terrible ordeal of the coronavirus pandemic but spoke of getting it behind us. "It is horrible to go through, but it is working out.” He listened to stories from people who had fallen through the cracks of coronavirus relief packages.

But Trump couldn't get through the event without veering off into false claims, such as a nonexistent apology letter from presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, or unrelated subjects such as allies' spending on NATO, or, above all, grievances. CNN's fact-checker caught nine falsehoods. 

A woman on one of the videos thanked him for his work, then asked why he avoids directly answering reporters' questions during coronavirus briefings and instead opts to "speak of past successes and generally ramble." Trump, glancing up at the statue of Abraham Lincoln, replied: "I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen … The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They always said Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse." (Here's a video clip.)

Trump predicted there will be a vaccine by the end of the year, a highly optimistic timeline. “The doctors would say, 'Well, you shouldn't say that.' I'll say what I think,” he said. Trump also returned to his advocacy for an unproven treatment with an antimalaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, and claimed his political foes are hyping negative findings about it.

“The Democrats — the radical left, whatever you want — would rather see people, I'm going to be very nice. I'm not going to say 'die.' I'm going to say, would rather see people not get well, because they think I'm going to get credit if, you know, hydroxychloroquine works,” he said.

Death estimate: 100,000+

Trump revised upward his estimate of how many Americans would die of COVID-19, saying that anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 people could die. He said last month it would be 60,000, but the count on Sunday passed 67,000.

He said that without the social distancing guidelines that expired on Friday, the death toll could have been in the millions. But he distanced himself from a comment last week by his senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, saying it was “too soon to say” the federal government had overseen a “success story.”

The White House coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, was more pessimistic than Trump. "Our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance,” Birx said on "Fox News Sunday."

Birx also took a harsher view of some of the protests against stay-at-home orders that have won sympathetic tweets from Trump, such as the armed group that stormed the state Capitol in Michigan last week, flouting guidelines for social distancing and masks.

“It’s devastatingly worrisome to me, personally, because if they go home and infect their grandmother or their grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or a very — or an unfortunate outcome, they will feel guilty for the rest of our lives,” she said. “So we need to protect each other at the same time we’re voicing our discontent.”

Janison: Trump's boy in Brazil

Trump's bond with Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is among his strongest with other right-wing heads of state, writes Newsday's Dan Janison. On coronavirus, Bolsonaro has taken Trump's attitude to extremes.

If Trump is faulted for showing insufficient empathy, Bolsonaro sees no need for any. Reporters asked him last week about the country’s confirmed coronavirus deaths, totaling more than 6,000 and spiking. “So what?” Bolsonaro said. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?"

Bolsonaro rejected his health ministry's social distancing recommendations. He has described the outbreak as "a fantasy" and "a little flu." On social media, he said in a since-deleted video: “What I have been hearing from people is that they want to work. Brazil cannot stop or we’ll turn into Venezuela." 

Brazil has reported about 80,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, but experts say the real number is much higher, potentially above 1 million, The Washington Post reports.

Poll: Dems favor Warren for veep

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the top choice of Democratic voters as a running mate for Biden, according to a CBS News poll.

Biden has committed himself to selecting a woman for the ticket.

In the poll asking Democrats who should be considered, 71% chose Warren, followed by 59% for Sen. Kamala Harris; Georgia politician Stacey Abrams, 50%; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 49%; Sen. Tammy Duckworth, 30%; and Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, 29% each.

Biden's decision on a vice presidential nominee could be the most consequential in decades, The New York Times reports, because the 77-year-old has not quashed speculation that he would only seek one term. “I view myself as a transition candidate,” he said during an online fundraiser last week.

One-way transparency

Trump foes on Twitter got busy after Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, told Fox News' Jeanine Pirro why Biden should open up his Senate records to answer a sexual assault accusation by a former Senate aide, Tara Reade.

“I would think if you were being accused of something and you were totally innocent, you would go to any length possible … to try and clear your name, including allowing people to open up files like that and make sure you’ve turned over every single leaf to prove your innocence," Lara Trump said on Saturday night.

The remark by Eric Trump's wife, a senior adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign, invited comparisons to the president's stonewalling of congressional investigations, refusal to disclose his tax returns and legal efforts to shut down women who accused him of sexual assault. 

Reade told The Associated Press on Friday that she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment in 1993. Biden denies sexually violating Reade.

The existence of a Senate report has become a key element of the accusations. Reade says she doesn’t have a copy of the report, and Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint. He has resisted releasing documents from his personal files housed at the University of Delaware, saying there are no personnel records there.

Trump pans Bush unity message

Who could take offense at a video message from former President George W. Bush calling for national unity in confronting the coronavirus crisis? Trump did.

In the video posted Saturday, the last Republican president said, “Let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat." Bush continued: “In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together and we are determined to rise.”

On Sunday morning, Trump lashed out on Twitter. He paraphrased "Fox & Friends" co-host Pete Hegseth by saying, “I appreciate the message from former President Bush, but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside?” Trump added his own comment: “He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!”

More coronavirus news

See a roundup of the latest pandemic developments from Long Island and beyond by Newsday's reporting staff, written by Vera Chinese and Lisa L. Colangelo. For a full list of Newsday's coronavirus stories, click here.

What else is happening:

• Trump's decision-making on the coronavirus crisis has been largely guided by his reelection prospects, The Washington Post reported. When epidemiological models in late March estimated that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die, Trump wanted more optimistic data, and his economic advisers obliged. Trump shifted his emphasis to reopening the economy and tuned out the reality. The virus and the body count didn't cooperate.
• The federal government has awarded about $64 billion in coronavirus aid to New York State and its local governments, an amount that could nearly double over time and with the potential passage of another $1 trillion-plus relief package, reports Newsday's Tom Brune. In many cases, state and local governments aren't sure what the U.S. Treasury Department will allow them to spend it on because of the rule that it must be used in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with apparent White House backing, is insisting on a law that would shield employers from liability if their workers contract coronavirus after businesses reopen, The Washington Post reported. Democratic leaders have declared they will oppose such blanket protections.
• White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday said the Trump administration was taking a “pause” on pushing Congress for additional coronavirus relief packages, reports Newsday's Laura Figueroa Hernandez and Scott Eidler. Trump's senior advisers await the economic impact of nearly $3 trillion in stimulus funds that have been approved by Congress so far.
• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that there's "enormous evidence" to support the theory that the coronavirus outbreak originated from an accident at a Wuhan, China, lab and not a nearby market. He didn't share any evidence.
• Kim Jong Un appears to be "alive and well," Pompeo said, based on recent images released by North Korea. As for the mystery of Kim's three-week absence amid rumors of illness, “I just can’t say anything about that,” Pompeo said.
• Trump tweeted a tout for Golf World magazine's ranking of his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, as No. 1 in Britain and Ireland. "So nice to see this great honor," he said, noting he hadn't played golf "in a long time." 
• Vice President Mike Pence, who joined Trump at the Fox town hall event, said he was wrong to have left his faced uncovered during a visit to the Mayo Clinic last week. "I should have worn a mask," he said.