President Donald Trump publicly scolded one of his top government health officials, contradicting him on the issue of a Covid-19 vaccine and the importance of wearing masks. CDC Director Robert Redfield in a Senate hearing on Wednesday had said that enough vaccines for the public would likely be available by the third quarter of 2021 and that until then masks were the most effective and important tool at keeping the virus at bay. This is how the New York Times described what happened Thursday: “In a remarkable display even for him, Mr. Trump publicly slapped down” Mr. Redfield during remarks to reporters. Trump also played down the death toll saying that 200,000 dead Americans wasn’t so bad. Trump also tried to claim that virus deaths were high in so-called blue states, not red states. The Washington Post pointed out that more recent virus infections and deaths are heavily tilted toward Red states. A reporter challenges Trump on why he doesn’t trust scientists. 

Trump also claimed during his remarks to reporters on Wednesday that, “Our biggest threat to this election is governors from opposing parties controlling ballots, millions of ballots.” He added, “To me, that’s a much bigger threat than foreign countries because much of the stuff coming out about foreign countries turned out to be untrue.” But Trump’s own FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress on Thursday about the seriousness of Russian-led efforts to undermine the election. He confirmed the various ways in which Russia has acted. Mr. Wray also confirmed during the hearing that white supremacists make up the largest share of racially motivated terrorists in the United States.

Thousands of pages of internal documents from the US Postal Service were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act this week and paint a disturbing picture of various ways in which the Trump administration has worked to undermine the agency’s effectiveness. The documents and correspondence were largely dated from March and April from this year and the Washington Post, which was able to access them, summarized that they “depict an agency in distress, as its deteriorating finances collided with a public-health emergency and a looming election that would be heavily reliant on absentee ballots.” Highlighting a potentially new conflict of interest, the documents also reveal that the Postal Service relied on the counsel of a Republican lawyer named Stefan Passantino who is now, “part of a new pro-Trump legal coalition preparing for the possibility of a contested election.” There was also information about an ambitious plan that the Postal Service was considering, to mail 5 face coverings per American to every household in the country to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That plan never transpired. Meanwhile the National Postal Mail Handlers Union denounced Trump’s crippling of the USPS and endorsed Joe...