Trump Needs To ‘Show Empathy’ And ‘Project Strength,’ Says Super PAC Chief

Donald Trump is in trouble this election unless he dramatically changes his message, warned the head of an influential super PAC supporting the president’s reelection.

The Trump campaign is “adrift,” Ed Rollins, chairman of the Great America PAC, told The Hill in an interview. Its tepid message is stuck in the past, he warned.

Trump’s “message is weak or nonexistent,” said Rollins, who was Ronald Reagan’s campaign director in 1984. “The rambling on about [Joe] Biden and [Nancy] Pelosi or [Hillary] Clinton and [Barack] Obama is old and tired. This needs to be about the future, not the past.”

Trump “needs to show empathy, which he hasn’t, and project strength by doing what Reagan, [Margaret] Thatcher and [Winston] Churchill did with strong speeches — not macho bullshit but thoughtful solutions to serious problems,” Rollins said. “Make people be concerned with what [Democrats] can do with total control of the government: House, Senate and the White House.”

Rollins’s suggestions come as Trump’s poll numbers continue to drop, in job approval, against Biden and even among Republicans.

He last weighed in after Trump’s lackluster rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, greeted by great swaths of empty seats at the BOK Center.

Rollins described Trump’s two-hour speech in Tulsa as “rambling.”

The event was a “disaster, and I think the reality is that it’s not a good way to start a general election campaign,” Rollins told The Daily Beast.

Ghanaian President Akufo-Addo Gets Party’s Nod for Re-Election

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Ghana’s ruling New Patriotic Party has formally announced President Nana Akufo-Addo as its candidate for December’s elections.

Akufo-Addo also announced Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia as his running mate, at an event in the capital, Accra, on Saturday.

Akufo-Addo will battle it out against his main opponent and his predecessor, John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress, for a third consecutive time. The two parties have dominated Ghanaian politics since 1992, with many previous ballots that have been close.

The NPP government, in power since the start of 2017, has cut the country’s forecast for 2020 economic growth to 1.5% due to the collapse in oil prices and the impact of the coronavirus. That would be the lowest rate in almost four decades. Ghana has registered 15,834 confirmed cases and 103 deaths since the first detection of the disease on March 12.

The election management body will commence the compilation of a new voter roll from the end of June.

UK death toll from confirmed COVID-19 cases up 100 to 43,514

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s death toll from confirmed cases of the new coronavirus has risen to 43,514, an increase of 100 from a day earlier, government figures showed on Saturday.

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg takes $7.2 billion hit over advertising boycotts on Facebook

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg took a $7.2 billion hit after several companies pulled their advertising from Facebook, citing the company’s failure to police hate speech and disinformation on its site.

The company’s shares fell 8.3 percent Friday, the most in three months after Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers said it would stop selling its products on Facebook, Bloomberg reported. The company joined other large firms such as Verizon Communications, Hershey Co. and Honda in pulling their ads from the social media giant. Coca Cola said it would suspend its advertising on all social media platforms for at least a month.

The share-price drop eliminated $56 billion from Facebook’s market value and pushed Zuckerberg’s own net worth down to $82.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The move left Facebook’s chief executive in fourth place on the list, overtaken by LVMH Moet Hennessy boss Bernard Arnault, who is now in third place behind billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

In a response to the ad boycotts, Zuckerberg said the company would label all voting-related posts with a link encouraging users to look at its new voter information hub. The company also announced that it would prohibit “claims that people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others.”

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European Economics Preview: Bundesbank Monthly Report Due

The June monthly report from Germany’s central bank is due on Monday, headlining a light day for the European economic news.

At 3.00 am ET, the Turkish Statistical Institute is set to release consumer confidence for June.

At 4.00 am ET, retail sales from Poland and foreign debt from the Czech Republic are due. Economists forecast retail sales to fall 12.9 percent on a yearly basis in May, following a 22.6 percent decrease in April.

At 6.00 am ET, Bundesbank releases its monthly report. The report outlines Germany’s economic outlook for 2020 to 2022 and features an article on the topic of cash withdrawals and payments in urban and rural areas.

In the meantime, the Confederation of British Industry publishes Industrial Trends survey data for June.