Trump says he'll accept nomination at White House or Gettysburg
10 August 2020
President Trump tweeted Monday that he'll deliver his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president at either the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania or at the White House.
The state of play: Republican National Convention planners are looking for a new venue for the president to deliver his acceptance speech after convention events were canceled in Jacksonville, Fla., due to coronavirus concerns.
The big picture: A number of Republicans — not to mention Democrats — have questioned both the optics and the legality of Trump delivering his acceptance speech from the White House, given that past presidents have usually drawn a firm line between the White House and their campaigns.
- Trump has long compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, telling Axios' Jonathan Swan that he "did more for the Black community than anybody with the possible exception of" the Civil War-era president.
- The president would likely love the optics of delivering a speech at the site of the Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous presidential speeches in history.
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.