Reuters U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 27, 2017.
President Trump has made clear the European Union won’t escape his ire over trade for long, Bloomberg News says. The president quickly brushed away an offer made just Thursday for zero tariffs on cars as “not enough” as he said the European Union was “almost as bad as China.”
Business Insider has another take from the president’s interview with Bloomberg — the comment he made that his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, was having a “nervous breakdown” over his behavior toward Sen. John McCain after the war hero’s death. Sanders reportedly stared at him after he refused to answer whether McCain would have been a better president than former President Barack Obama.
McCain was remembered Thursday at a memorial service. “While none of the friends, family members and fellow lawmakers who paid him tribute between song and scripture invoked the name of President Trump, who was not invited, they held up the political values of the man they honored to draw an unmistakable contrast,” The New York Times writes. USA Today has five quotes from the Arizona memorial, including from former Vice President Joe Biden. A CNN analysis piece concludes Trump has not learned the lessons from McCain’s life. “Leaving Washington to mourners, Trump flew west and unspooled the kind of brazen campaign trail performance -- tearing at the nation’s political and cultural divides and bashing institutions such as the Justice Department -- that McCain planned his final goodbye to repudiate,” said CNN’s Stephen Collinson, speaking of Trump’s rally in Evansville, Indiana.
The Wall Street Journal examines Trump’s decision to freeze federal pay wages. The House still could vote to accept the 1.9% pay raise the Senate has already voted on. Trump’s decision is not unprecedented — Obama froze federal worker pay in 2011, and Congress voted to hold pay steady in 2012 and 2013, the article says.
Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson just got a boost in his uphill race against Republican Gov. Rick Scott, Talking Points Memo argues. The victory of Andrew Gillum in the Democratic primary for governor means the “dynamic, proudly progressive” 39-year-old African American candidate “will drive the same sets of sought-after constituents to the polls in November.”
