Donald Trump praises his “amazing” leadership as the US’s Coronavirus death toll passes 163,000.

Trump was asked in a Monday appearance, punctuated by the shooting of an armed man outside the White House, “160,000 people had died on President Obama’s watch. Do you think you would have called for his resignation?”

He responded, “I think it’s been amazing what we’ve been able to do.” Having denied the threat of the virus throughout the outbreak, Trump made up the claim, “If we didn’t close up our country, we would have had 1.5 or 2 million people already dead.”

He insisted that his Administration had done “an extraordinary job”.

The US death toll reached 163,462 on Monday, with another 524 fatalities. Confirmed cases are 5,094,338, an increase of 48,474 in 24 hours.

Spike in Under-19 Cases

Monday opened with the news of a spike in cases among US juveniles, with more than 97,000 testing positive in the last two weeks of July — more than a quarter of the total diagnosed since March.

Trump has dismissed cases in the young, falsely saying that they are often “no more than a sniffle”. The disinformation prompted Facebook to remove a Trump campaign post last week, and Twitter temporarily banned the campaign account.

While juveniles are far less likely than adults to fall seriously ill and die from the virus, there have been 86 fatalities since May. Even if those under 18 are asymptomatic, they can transmit the virus to adults, including the vulnerable.

But Trump, seeking re-election, is insisting on the full reopening of schools this month despite experts warning of the threat to students, staff, and parents. So he insisted on Monday:

They may have, as you would call it a case and maybe a case, but it’s also a case where there’s a tiny, it’s a tiny fraction of death, tiny fraction, and they get better very quickly. Yeah, they may have it for a short period of time. But as you know, the seriousness of it in terms of what it leads to is extraordinarily small, very, very much less than one percent.

The actual threat was highlighted over the weekend when nine staff and students tested positive at a Georgia high school that made national headlines. A sophomore’s photograph of packed hallways, with students not wearing masks, went viral — she was suspended for circulating the picture but later reinstated.

Trump: I Should Be on Mount Rushmore

Before his Monday briefing, Trump’s attention was on the report that he has asked to be the fifth US President commemorated on South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore.

Over the weekend, it was revealed that Trump said to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in 2018, “Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?”

A Republican party official source told The New York Times that a White House aide later approached Noem’s office, “What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore?”

Trump derided the story as “Fake News” but immediately added, “Sounds like a good idea to me!”

Trump Orders Sink Into Confusion

Meanwhile, Trump’s weekend executive orders — issued after the White House ended negotiations on a Coronavirus relief package — sank into confusion.

Trump’s order slashes the unemployment benefit for more than 20 million Americans, who have lost jobs because of the virus, from $600/week to $400/week.

However, even that amount will not be paid unless cash-strapped states provide the first $100/week — and the White House rejected any aid to states and cities in the compromise $2 trillion relief package proposed by leading Democratic legislators.

The order over evictions from Federal evictions turned out not to be a moratorium, but merely guidance to householders and tenants. The order to suspend payroll tax from July 1 has cut off the main revenue source for Social Security.

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to shift attention to Democratic negotiators House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: “I think there is a compromise if the Democrats are willing to be reasonable….If we can get a fair deal, we’ll do it this week.”

Mnuchin did not mention that he and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows rejected Friday’s Pelosi-Schumer compromise, between their initial $3.4 trillion proposal and a White House $1 trillion plan with the reduced unemployment benefit to $200/week and no money for states or for the US Postal Service to ensure provision of mail-in ballots in November’s elections.

He did not say when talks might resume.

Schumer said, “I hope saner voices in the Republican Party will prevail and say, “Sit down with Pelosi and sit down with Schumer”. We are not going to settle for some skimpy thing that doesn’t work.”

But Trump lied on Twitter that Schumer and Pelosi had not been in intensive talks with Meadows and Mnuchin for almost two weeks before the White House cut off negotiations, leading to his executive orders.

He added a jab at states whose budgets have been ravaged as they try to contain the pandemic: “Where have [Pelosi and Schumer] been for the last 4 weeks when they were ‘hardliners’, and only wanted BAILOUT MONEY for Democrat run states and cities that are failing badly?”