White House surrogates and GOP lawmakers struggled Sunday to defend President Trump after he spent the Fourth of July holiday weekend denigrating the racial-justice movement galvanized by George Floyd’s killing and playing down a deadly pandemic by claiming that 99% of coronavirus cases are “completely harmless.” …
At a time when multiple opinion polls show the president trailing his presumptive Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, by double-digit margins, Trump is diverging ever more sharply from mainstream voters’ views on race, justice and history as well as how to cope with a raging pandemic.
Among those who work for Trump or hope to ride his election coattails, however, avoiding criticism of him even in the face of false or ahistorical statements remains a seemingly mandatory practice. CONT.
Laura King, Los Angeles Times