Pelosi: Birx "enabled" Trump on coronavirus misinformation
03 August 2020
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN on Monday she does not have confidence in White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx because "she has enabled" President Trump to spread coronavirus misinformation.
What she's saying: "I don't have confidence in anyone who stands there while the president says, 'Swallow Lysol and it's going to cure your virus,'" Pelosi told host Jim Scuitto.
- "There has to be some responsibility. So, if the president is saying these things, who is advising him that this is okay and enabling that to happen while millions of people have died?" she added
- Worth noting: Roughly 155,000 people in the U.S. have died due to coronavirus while just under 700,000 have died worldwide, per Johns Hopkins data.
The big picture: Trump issued his first public criticism of Birx earlier Monday, tweeting that her response to Pelosi's criticism — which was first reported Friday by Politico — was "pathetic."
- The president was responding to comments from Birx over the weekend that the U.S. has shifted into a new phase of the coronavirus pandemic, as infections have spread further into rural areas.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly 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.