Viral News: Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington are still trying to hash out a second coronavirus bailout bill, even as Americans are starting to go hungry and face eviction from their homes.

  The Democrats propose a $3 trillion bill that continues the $600 weekly federal unemployment check and helps bail out states and cities that have lost billions in tax revenue during the economic shutdown.

  Republicans want a $1 trillion package that cuts the weekly check to $200 and does not extend the federal moratorium on evictions. They also want to limit the ability to sue for people who catch the virus at work and in public places like stores and restaurants. 

  The Democrats refuse, leading to the stalemate that means help is cut off until they compromise.

  President Trump said the Democrats just want to funnel money to cities and states badly run by Democrats. He said, “All they’re really interested in is bailout money to bail out radical left governors and radical left mayors like in Portland and places that are so badly run — Chicago, New York City.”

  This morning, the US has had 4,717,716 cases of the coronavirus and 155,471 deaths, more than 6,000 of them in the past seven days.

Lots of People are Saying: President Trump recently had an interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios. Here are two exchanges:

Coronavirus Testing:

Trump: “You know, there are those that say you can test too much. You do know that.”

Swan: “Who says that?”

Trump: “Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books.”

Swan: “Manuals? What manuals?”

Trump: “Read the books. Read the books.”

Swan: “What books?”

Trump: “What testing does-”

Swan: “No, I’m sorry, who says-”

Virus Deaths:

Trump: “The point is, because we are so much better at testing than any other country in the world, we show more cases.”

Swan: “The figure I look at is death. And death is going up now. It’s a thousand a day.”

Trump: “If you look at death – take a look at some of these charts. Here’s one. Well, right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world.”

Swan: “Lower than the world?”

Trump: “Lower than Europe.”

Swan: “In what? In what?”

Swan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea, et cetera.”

Trump: “You can’t – you can’t do that.”

Swan: “Why can’t I do that?”

Trump: “You have to go by, you have to go by – look. Here is the United States – you have to go by the cases. The cases of death.”

Swan: “Why not as a proportion of population?”

Trump: “What it says is when you have somebody, where there’s a case, the people that live from those cases.”

The Usual Suspect: The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested in a legal filing that it is investigating President Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader case than the prosecutors have admitted to previously. 

  Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. is still trying to get Trump to comply with a subpoena for eight years of his taxes, even though the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the prosecutor. One theory of the investigation is that Trump may have fraudulently inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to obtain loans and insurance.

Landfall: The storm Isaias, first a hurricane and then a tropical storm, made landfall as a hurricane once again overnight in the Carolinas. Isaias was a Category 1 with winds of 85 mph when it hit shore, but it’s already been downgraded once again to a tropical storm.

  Isaias is dropping inches of rain. It’s now on a track straight for Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, NY, and on up to Vermont and Maine.

The Bulletin Board: Three mariners stranded on a tiny Pacific Island were rescued after scratching a giant “SOS” in the sand. — Spain’s former king, Juan Carlos I, who steered the nation from dictatorship to democracy, has left the country amid an investigation of his shifty financial dealings. The 82-year-old retired monarch is suspected of accepting $100 million from Saudi Arabia involving a high speed rail project in Spain.

The Obit Page: William English, an engineer who helped create the computer mouse and worked to make computers accessible by normal people, has died at age 81. If you don’t remember computers before click technology, they were bewildering. In the age when everything had to be entered with punch cards and keyboards, English envisioned the future of movable images on the screen and click-through connections.

The Social Pages: You have to wonder what life is like in the Washington home of George and Kellyanne Conway when the two return from work. Kellyanne is one of one of President Trump’s most loyal defenders. George is one of his primary detractors who says the President cheats at everything from marriage to golf. 

  George wrote of his wife’s boss in The Washington Post  that “For the sake of our constitutional republic, he must lose, and lose badly. Yet that should be just a start: We should only honor former presidents who uphold and sustain our nation’s enduring democratic values. There should be no schools, bridges or statues devoted to Trump. His name should live in infamy, and he should be remembered, if at all, for precisely what he was — not a president, but a blundering cheat.”

  Well then, what’s for dinner?

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