On America’s birthday weekend, any other president would speak to the country’s better angels, encouraging the American people to overcome together multiple challenges of pandemic, economic distress and racial unrest.
Not President Donald Trump. Barely mentioning 130,000 dead (a number still rising) or the righteous pain of those marching against structural racism and for criminal justice reform, Trump stood before Mount Rushmore to accuse those calling America to account for its imperfect past of launching a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history.” Here, he conveniently lumped together those who demand a righteous reckoning with monuments to Confederate generals and their treasonous flag, on the one hand, and those who mistakenly call for statues of the Founding Fathers to be toppled on the other.
Trump then declared that “defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters” today was akin to the feats of “American heroes (who) defeated the Nazis, dethroned the fascists,” “toppled the communists” and fought terrorism.
Of course, he forgot about the Southern war to preserve slavery, the quintessential act of American treachery. On that front, Trump has threatened to veto a defence funding bill that removes Confederate names from military bases. On Monday, Trump tweeted his disgust with NASCAR for banning “the Flag” – the Confederate flag, earning his capital respect – from racetracks. And he assailed the Washington football team for finally reconsidering changing its name from a racist epithet.
Perhaps Trump could be convinced if the team chose to honour him. The Washington Demagogues has a nice ring to it. – Tribune News Service


Trump shuts out foreign students forced into online-only classes
President Donald Trump may rant and rail about trade deficits in a global economy that he says rips America off, but one market the US has cornered for decades, to the broader benefit of all Americans, is higher education. 
The world’s students – Asia’s especially – flock to America’s undergraduate and graduate schools in numbers unrivalled by any other nation, often paying top-dollar tuition to study in the US.
It may not stay that way for long, and Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will be to blame.
A healthy country would do everything possible to keep a million-plus foreign students coming, and not only because they contribute $45bn annually to America’s economy. Nearly one-quarter of US billion-dollar startup companies had a founder who first came the country as an international student, according to a 2018 study.
But because of the Covid-19 pandemic – which, in no small part due to failures by the Trump administration, will likely still be raging in late 2020 and possibly 2021 – many of America’s colleges and universities, including Harvard, Rutgers, Princeton, Georgetown, are being forced to move most classes online.
To which ICE now tells students who came thousands of miles to study here: tough luck. If their educations go from in-person to all-virtual in the fall, foreign students will have to leave.
Trump, who has insanely said “almost every student that comes over to this country (from China) is a spy,” may pretend he’s standing up for America. He’s actually punching all Americans in the face.  – Tribune News Service