The suit, which Young posted on his website, states, “The Campaign has willfully ignored Plaintiff’s telling it not to play the songs and willfully proceeded to play the songs despite a lack of license.” It goes on to explain that Young “in good conscience cannot allow his music to be used as a ‘theme song’ for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate.”
Trump’s campaign has used various songs without the artists’ permission.
On August 4, 2020, a fire at the docks of Beirut, Lebanon ignited some 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate, a common compound used for fertilizer and explosives.
During a following press conference, Trump claimed that the explosion “looked like a terrible attack.” When asked to elaborate, Trump remarked,
Well, it would seem like it based on the explosion. I’ve met with some of our great generals and they just seem to feel that it was. This was not some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event. This was seems to be, according to them, they would know better than I would, but they seem to think it was a attack. It was a bomb of some kind. Yes.
Department of Defense officials rejected Trump’s claim, saying instead that there was yet no indication of any kind of attack.
August 4th ammonium nitrate disaster in Beirut. Sky News
Ammonium nitrate disasters have happened several times throughout history. The largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal, the MoAB (Mother of All Bombs) has a yield of 11 tons of TNT. The catastrophic explosion in Beirut was equivalent to approximately 1 kiloton of TNT.
In a July 19 interview on Fox News, Trump shrugged off over 150,000 American deaths from COVID-19 by saying, “it is what it is.”
WALLACE: But I can tell you, the death chart is a thousand cases a day.
TRUMP: Excuse me, it’s all too much, it shouldn’t be one case. It came from China. They should’ve never let it escape. They should’ve never let it out. But it is what it is. Take a look at Europe, take a look at the numbers in Europe. And by the way, they’re having cases.
WALLACE: I can tell you cases are 6,000 in the whole European Union.
Trump went on to claim that the reason why cases were lower in the European Union was because they didn’t adequately test.
Trump repeated the remark in another interview with Axios on August 3 when asked about the daily deaths across the country.
TRUMP: Yeah. Under the circumstances right now, I think it’s under control. I’ll tell you what-
SWAN: How? 1,000 Americans are dying a day.
TRUMP: They are dying. That’s true. And it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague that beset us.
During an August 3, 2020 interview with Axios, Trump defended his administration’s response to COVID-19 by using data showing deaths per confirmed cases. When the interviewer noted the deaths per capita instead, Trump replied, “you can’t do that,” and went on to say that he was “reporting it wrong.”
.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”
The difference in considering deaths per cases and deaths per capita is that the former reflects the quality of healthcare for the infected, while the latter reflects the presence of COVID-19 through the population.
At the time of the interview, the United States ranked 10th highest in the world for deaths per capita, and had a case fatality rate of approximately 3.3%. It totaled 4,863,916 confirmed cases and 158,928 deaths. Trump downplayed concerns over COVID-19 since it first began to spread in the United States.
During the same interview, Trump also avoided offering any praise for the late civil rights leader and US Representative John Lewis.
When asked how he viewed US Representative for Georgia and civil rights figure John Lewis’ legacy after his death, Trump remarked:
He didn’t come to my inauguration; he didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches—and that’s okay, that’s his right. Again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have.
John Lewis, a major figure in the US Civil Rights Movement, was among the main organizers of the March on Washington in which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Lewis died on July 17, 2020 of pancreatic cancer.
John Lewis (left) and Martin Luther King Jr. (right) march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. (Harry Benson / Contour / Getty)
In the same interview with Axios, Trump again dismissed ongoing concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic and record deaths in the United States.
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
The day for elections is established in the Constitution, so any such change requires new legislation. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution also specifically states that Presidential terms conclude on the following January 20th, Inauguration Day. No legislation is likely to be passed that would allow for any change.
The next person in order of succession is the speaker of the House. However, if there were no election, that seat would too be vacant, as the House has two-year terms that conclude on January 3 following the election. The next individual in line is president pro tempore of the Senate, who is the senior Senator of the majority party and presides over the Senate in the Vice President’s absence. The Senator who holds the title – Chuck Grassley of Iowa – is also up for reelection in 2020, and so his seat would similarly be vacant if no election were held. Because of the number of Senate seats up for re-election, if no election was held, Democrats would gain the majority in the chamber, and because the process of selecting the president pro tempore is informal, could choose any among them.
At the same time that Trump made the suggestion to postpone elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic, his administration pushed for a full re-opening of schools across the United States.
On July 13, 2020, Trump retweeted former game show host Chuck Woolery, who pushed to reopen schools amid record new cases of COVID-19. He alleged that scientific evidence pointed to the move, and that Democrats, Media, the CDC, and “our Doctors” had been lying about the disease.
Trump retweets former game show host Chuck Woolery, on the morning of Jul 13, 2020.
When asked if endorsing comments that doubted his own Center for Disease Control would be confusing to the public, Trump replied,
I didn’t make a comment. I reposted a tweet that a lot of people feel. But all I am doing is making a comment. I’m just putting somebody’s voice out there. There are many voices. There are many people that think we shouldn’t do this kind of testing, because all we do, it’s a trap.
Three days later, Woolery deleted his Twitter account upon learning that his son tested positive for COVID-19.
On the day of the retweet, the United States totaled 3,483,584 cases and 120,004 deaths.
On July 9, 2020, Goya CEO Robert Unanue appeared at the White House Rose Garden to praise Trump. Unanue likened Trump to his grandfather, who founded Goya, saying “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder. And that’s what my grandfather did.”
The remarks immediate sparked backlash against the company from critics of the administration. In response, Trump and his daughter Ivank posed with various Goya products, posting them on Instagram and Twitter.
The photos were met with another round of backlash, as they appeared to violate federal ethics rules about using one’s position for promotional purposes. Federal law outlining the standards of conduct for employees in the executive branch are directly prohibited from using the office for private gain:
§ 2635.702 Use of public office for private gain.
An employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity, including nonprofit organizations of which the employee is an officer or member, and persons with whom the employee has or seeks employment or business relations. The specific prohibitions set forth in paragraphs (a) through (d) of this section apply this general standard, but are not intended to be exclusive or to limit the application of this section.
In a July 21, 2020 press conference, Trump answered a question about Ghislaine Maxwell by saying,
I don’t know, I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.
The week prior, Maxwell was denied bail as she awaited trial for recruiting underage girls for billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein allegedly killed himself in prison after being charged with sex trafficking.
Trump and Melania with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, Feb. 12, 2000. Davidoff Studios / Getty Images
Trump again said he wished her well in an August 4 interview.
She’s now in jail. Yeah, I wish her well. I’d wish you well. I’d wish a lot of people well. Good luck. Let them prove somebody was guilty.
By contrast, Trump referred to NFL player Colin Kaepernick as a “son of a bitch” for taking a knee to protest police violence. He also based a great degree of his 2016 campaign on promising to lock up political opponent Hillary Clinton for alleged crimes, though he explained he didn’t mean it after winning the election.
