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Obama: Trump is "jealous of COVID's media coverage"

27 October 2020
 Dan Ackermann

Former President Barack Obama launched a blistering attack on President Trump while campaigning for Joe Biden in Orlando on Tuesday, criticizing Trump for complaining about the pandemic as cases soar and joking that he's "jealous of COVID's media coverage."

Driving the news: Trump has baselessly accused the news media of only focusing on covering the coronavirus pandemic — which has killed over 226,000 Americans so far and is surging across the country once again — as a way to deter people from voting on Election Day and distract from other issues.

What he's saying: "What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID. He said this at one of his rallies —'COVID, COVID, COVID,' he's complaining," Obama said.

  • "He's jealous of COVID's media coverage. If he had been focused on COVID from the beginning, cases wouldn't be reaching new record highs across the country this week."
  • "If we were focused on COVID now, the White House wouldn't be having its second outbreak in a month. ... He's turned the White House into a hot zone."

The big picture: Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, has been out campaigning for Biden in the final stretch of the election season. He urged Floridians on Tuesday to "reclaim" American values like democracy, science and tolerance by voting Trump out of office.

  • "Joe and Kamala, when they're in office, you're not going to have to think about them every single day," Obama said at one point.
  • "You're not going to have to worry about what crazy things they're going to say, what they're going to tweet. They're just going to be too busy doing the work."
  • "You'll be able to go about your lives knowing that the president's not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world."

The other side: Trump tweeted as Obama was speaking, "Now @FoxNews is playing Obama’s no crowd, fake speech for Biden, a man he could barely endorse because he couldn’t believe he won. Also, I PREPAID many Millions of Dollars in Taxes."

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.