02 October 2020
Over the last 29 days, President Trump has stared down a month of hell — a relentless barrage of reporting and developments that have seriously damaged his re-election hopes.
Why it matters: Polls already showed that Trump faced a difficult path to re-election before his middle-of-the-night revelation that he has coronavirus. And with just over a month until Election Day, there's no telling what the next 32 days could have in store for the president.
Sept. 3: The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story alleging that Trump called American soldiers who died in war "losers" and suckers."
- The story forced the president to go on camera to deny it: "To think that I would make statements negative to our military and our fallen heroes, when nobody's done what I've done ... It is a disgraceful situation by a magazine that's a terrible magazine — I don't read it."
- But he still refused to say whether he regretted calling the late Sen. John McCain, who was once a prisoner of war, a "loser" in 2015, adding that the two "never got along."
Sept. 9: The first excerpts from Bob Woodward's book "Rage," based on more than a dozen on-the-record interviews with Trump, leak to the press — revealing that Trump said he intentionally downplayed the coronavirus threat in the pandemic's early days.
- "It goes through the air. That's always tougher than the touch. You don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus," Trump told Woodward on Feb. 7.
Sept. 27: The New York Times published a bombshell report alleging that Trump only paid $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017.
- The report also said that the president has over $300 million in personal debt obligations coming due in the next four years.
- And it alleged Trump "has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund," which is now the subject of an IRS audit.
Sept. 29: Trump's bombastic, rowdy performance during the first presidential debate against Joe Biden was widely panned by critics — and his refusal to issue an outright condemnation of white supremacist groups, like the far-right Proud Boys, became the night's big story.
- He also telegraphed with clarity that there's unlikely to be a clean outcome to the Nov. 3 election: "We might not know for months, because these ballots are going to be all over. ... It's a fraud and it's a shame. ... It's a rigged election."
- Trump's performance was so disruptive that it forced the Commission on Presidential Debates to say that it plans to implement changes to rules for the remaining debates.
Oct. 2: Trump, who had for months talked and acted like he was medically invincible, tweeted in the wee hours of the morning that he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for coronavirus.
- Stock futures plunged after Trump tweeted the news. Market watchers warned of a potentially deep selloff, with an unknown extent of the spread at the top of the American government.
- Trump has pointedly flouted his own experts' advice about the coronavirus, and said at an Ohio rally just two weeks ago that it "affects virtually nobody" besides the elderly.
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.