Notable Quote of the Day

“President Donald Trump is running against himself.

With his cries to ‘Reopen our country!’ and his rebukes of the federal bureaucracy and health regulations amid the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has tried to tap into the same populist, anti-Washington anger he rode to victory in 2016. The difference: He is now, by definition, the face of government.

Positioning himself as the outsider despite being the incumbent, Trump has feuded with governors, pushed back against government restrictions and, this week, said he was taking an unproven anti-malarial drug against the coronavirus despite warnings from his own health experts. ….

But COVID-19 and its demands for management expertise have thrown a wrench into the campaign’s plans to fully paint Biden as an insider.

Trump’s scattered approach to the coronavirus pandemic largely followed his efforts to balance the incongruous roles of wartime president and insurgent populist.”

– Jonathan Lemire and Zeke Miller, Associated Press

Election Updates

• Joe Biden’s campaign raised $43.7 million in April and spent $12.9 million. Donald Trump’s campaign raised $16.9 million and spent $7.7 million. At the end of April, Trump’s campaign had $107.7 million in cash on hand, compared to Biden’s $57.1 million.

• Biden said of Trump during his virtual Wisconsin rally on Wednesday, “Why would anybody trust this man to bring back the economy now? He thinks he’s a builder, but he’s a destroyer of everything he touches.”

• United Steelworkers endorsed Biden, saying that he “understands what it’s like to work for a living. As the son of a working-class family from Pennsylvania’s coal country, he has never forgotten his roots.”

• Bernie Sanders’ campaign sent agreements that included a social media policy and code of conduct to certain delegates last week. The agreements said, “failure to [follow the guidelines] may result in disciplinary action, including but not limited to your removal from the delegation.”

• Trump will visit Ypsilanti, Michigan, today to tour a Ford plant that has been manufacturing ventilators and to meet with a group of black leaders. He will be joined by U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.

• Trump tweeted, “China is on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race so they can continue to rip-off the United States, as they have done for decades, until I came along!”

Flashback: May 21, 2016

Sanders said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, “We need a campaign, an election, coming up which does not have two candidates who are really very, very strongly disliked. I don’t want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils. … I want the American people to be voting for a vision of economic justice, of social justice, of environmental justice, of racial justice.”