Out of the Room: John Bolton’s tell-all book “The Room Where it Happened” hits the bookstands today, with few surprises left after pre-publication publicity.

  An aggrieved President Trump tweeted, “I gave John Bolton, who was incapable of being Senate confirmed because he was considered a wacko, and was not liked, a chance. I always like hearing differing points of view. He turned out to be grossly incompetent, and a liar. See judge’s opinion. CLASSIFIED INFORMATION!!!”

  Just an aside here … why did he appoint someone he knew could not be confirmed?

  It’s interesting that Trump has claimed the book contains made up stories and classified information. The President tweeted, “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” The most powerful man in the world feels harassed.

  Everyone has a complaint these days. Bolton has been denounced as a turncoat for revealing unflattering information about Trump. he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that, “You know, we’re in a political environment in this country where you’re either pro-Trump or anti-Trump. And anybody who says, ‘You know, life is a little more complicated than that’ is denounced by both sides– a position I currently find myself in.”

  He also said Trump is a “danger for the republic”

Mailing It In: One of the fear-mongering tactics of President Trump’s re-election campaign is to claim that mail-ballots in the time of coronavirus will be fraught with fraud. Trump tweeted without evidence that, “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”

  The President has been joined in this by Attorney Gen. Bill Barr, who told Fox host Maria Bartiromo, “Well, it absolutely opens the floodgates to fraud. Those things are delivered into mailboxes. They can be taken out. There’s questions about whether or not it even denies a secret ballot, because a lot of the states have you signing the outside of the envelope. So, the person who opens — person who opens the envelope will know how people voted.” 

  The Washington Post points out one of the scariest possibilities of millions of ballots cast by mail; it may take weeks or months to determine the winner.

Venmo Me: The CEO of Wirecard, a German digital payments company, has resigned after auditors were unable to find $2.1 billion in the company’s books that may never have existed. Even worse, the company lost $12.5 billion in stock value when news of the evident fraud was released.

Enough of That: Seattle’s Mayor says the police will soon reoccupy the precinct they abandoned in the face of protesters who have occupied several blocks of the city’s center. 

 Mayor Jenny Durkan has been under growing pressure, some of it from President Trump to crack down on the protest zone. The city center city zone was taken over by protesters on 8 June after police withdrew following violent clashes.

Viral News: To fight spread of the coronavirus, Saudi Arabia says it will limit attendance this year at the annual Hajj in Mecca.

  New cases in the U.S. account for 20 percent of new global infections. California has now surpassed New Jersey as the state with the second most cases with over 184,000. New York is still #1 with 388,488.

  Overall, US cases are up 32 percent over the past two weeks. 

  Brazil has taken the number two spot in the world for coronavirus cases with 1.1 million, less than half the US, which has had 2.3 million cases and, as of this morning, 120,402 deaths.  

  The majority of cases in the US are among people ages 18-44, but the vast majority of deaths is among people 55 and older. The highest death rate is among those 85 and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

  Columnist Michelle Goldberg writes for The NY Times that, “This is what American exceptionalism looks like under Donald Trump. It’s not just that the United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths of any country in the world. Republican political dysfunction has made a coherent campaign to fight the pandemic impossible.”

The Bulletin Board: Citing massive unemployment in the US, President Trump says he plans to sign an order banning work visas for as many as half a million people hoping to work in the US, and suspending the issuance of green cards for immigrants. — The FBI is investigating who left a noose in the racetrack garage of Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s prominent black driver who successfully pressed for banning display of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events. 

The Obit Page: Steve Bing, a wealthy Hollywood producer and philanthropist who fathered a child with model Elizabeth Hurley, jumped out of a 27^th floor window in Century City, an area of Los Angeles. The 55-year-old Bing was reported to have been depressed by social isolation.

Statuary of Limitations: A statue of President Andrew Jackson is still standing near the White House this morning after protesters tried to pull it down last night. Jackson was a slave owner who signed into law the Indian removal Act of 1830 expelling Indians living east of Mississippi River. 

  President Trump tweeted a threat of arrest and 10 years in prison for anyone damaging a federal monument. 

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