Trump news - live: President makes bizarre comments about his hair and lightbulbs in freewheeling White House speech

Hearing set for today on Trump's tax records

Oliver O'Connell writes: A week after losing a Supreme Court ruling, president Donald Trump’s lawyers said on Wednesday that they were considering challenging a subpoena for his tax records by criminal prosecutors.

According to a letter to a Manhattan federal judge, the challenge would be on grounds that it represented a fishing expedition or a form of harassment or retaliation against him by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr who is seeking eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax records.

Mr Vance is seeking the records in part for a criminal probe into payments that Mr Trump’s then-personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from airing their claims of extramarital affairs with Mr Trump. He has denied the affairs.

Mr Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to campaign finance and lying to Congress, among other crimes.

ICYMI: Trump administration demands hospitals bypass CDC 

Hospitals will be forced to bypass the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and send all data on patients infected with Covid-19 to the Trump administration under a new order beginning on Wednesday.

The federal government confirmed the change in policy amid the coronavirus pandemic, with Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo saying in a statement the new process would lead to “faster” reporting of hospital data across the country.

Instead of sending data on coronavirus patients to the National Health Care Safety Network Site, which has tracked the outbreak since it officially began in the US earlier this year, the nation’s 25,000 medical facilities will instead report to a singular database in Washington.

In order to gain access to that critical data on a daily basis, the administration has urged governors to call in the US National Guard, the Washington Post reported.

Infectious disease experts quickly spoke out against the developments, including Dr Thomas File, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, who said in a statement: “Placing medical data collection outside of the leadership of public health experts could severely weaken the quality and availability of data, add an additional burden to already overwhelmed hospitals and add a new challenge to the US pandemic response.”

CNN anchor slams Trump for 'hawking' beans brand amid pandemic

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo lambasted Donald Trump for posting a photo to social media promoting the food company Goya after its CEO praised the president, a move that triggered backlash and calls for a boycott.

Cuomo delivered the scathing remarks during his Wednesday night show, calling a photo the president posted to social media with several Goya products from behind the Resolute Desk “bull****” and insisting his criticism had nothing to do with politics. 

“Tell me how a president in the middle of a pandemic has got time for this bull****,” the anchor begins, pointing the photo of a smiling Mr Trump with two thumbs up, grinning behind cans of beans and coconut milk. “Are you kidding me? Hocking products? Goya, I don’t care who it is. Resolute Desk? This is what he’s resolute about?” 

Mr Trump posted the photo to his Instagram page after Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue received mounting criticism for comments he made in a press conference earlier this month, in which he said the country was “truly blessed” to have a leader like Mr Trump, calling the president a “builder” and adding: “That’s what my grandfather did, he came to this country to build, to grow, to prosper … and we pray, we pray for our leadership, our president, and we pray for our country.”

Cuomo slams Trump for 'hawking' beans brand from Oval Office amid pandemic

My latest:

Mary Trump speaks out on ABC

The author of the new book is discussing why she handed Trump's financial records to the New York Times in an explosive interview. We'll bring more as it comes in: "Certainly in that moment that I'm describing, I felt that I needed to do anything I could, not just to stop this, but also to make up for the fact that I hadn't done anything in the past."

‘Is Pence running for election or Trump?’: Pro-Trump ad only shows president for two seconds

James Crump writes: A group co-founded by Donald Trump’s campaign manager for the 2020 presidential election has released a new election ad that only features the president for a couple of seconds.

The new ad titled, America Back To Work, was published by non-profit organisation, America First Policies, on Wednesday and features vice president Mike Pence discussing the Trump administration’s job policies.

A speech Mr Pence gave at an event for the organisation’s Great American Comeback Tour is played over images of him meeting workers and detailing policies put in place by the administration.

Mr Trump is only shown in the ad once and is featured for two seconds - signing an updated free trade agreement with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The US president is also briefly mentioned by Mr Pence, who says: “We’ve all passed through very challenging times over the last several months. It’s because of what you’ve done, because of the leadership of the president provided – we are going back to work. We’re going back to worship.”

Ivanka Trump violated government ethics rules with Goya photo stunt, watchdog rules

John Bennett writes: A government watchdog organisation says Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and a White House adviser, likely violated federal ethics rules when she posed with a can of Goya beans after the company's CEO backed her father.

The picture was posted to Ms Trump's Instagram and Twitter accounts late Tuesday night, a few hours after Donald Trump turned the Rose Garden into a campaign rally venue to hammer former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Former White House officials who worked in other administrations quickly fired off tweets suggesting she had violated ethics rules. Walter Shaub, who oversaw the ethics office inside the Obama White House expanded his Twitter thoughts with a Washington Post op-ed that published Thursday morning.

"Ivanka Trump's posts violated an executive branch ethics regulation prohibiting employees from misusing their official positions to endorse commercial products," Mr Shaub wrote. "As a pictorial representation of the Trump administration's war on government ethics, both photos are perfectly clear. They scream 'the rules don't apply to us,' a central message of the Trump administration from the start.

Joe Biden quips about Twitter hack in call for donations

The former vice president took advantage of yesterday's Bitcoin Twitter hack in a pitch to voters for donations in order to "help make Donald Trump a one-term president" -

RNC to limit convention attendance 

It seems the president may not get his original wish for a convention without masks or social distancing. The Republican National Committee is limiting attendance on the first three nights of next month's convention in Jacksonville to 2,500 delegates in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus. 

Masks and hand sanitiser will be available on site, and many of the scheduled events, including Donald's Trump's speech on the fourth night, will take place outside.

Florida reports record number of Covid-19 deaths

The Miami Herald reports that Florida's Department of Health today confirmed 156 new deaths from the coronavirus in the state, bringing the total to 4,677.

This is the most deaths announced by the department in a day, but not all of the deaths may have occurred in the past 24 hours due to a lag in reporting fatalities.

A further 13,965 new cases of the virus were also recorded — the second highest daily figure since the beginning of the pandemic.

There have now been a total of 315,775 confirmed cases.