It had been perhaps America's grimmest day so far in the pandemic. Florida had just recorded its highest daily death toll, and Texas hit a new peak in case diagnoses. More than 136,000 Americans had now died of Covid-19, and officials were warning that the coming autumn and winter could be the "most difficult time" yet.
To say Trump failed to deliver the needed solace would be kind. His appearance, ostensibly planned to unveil new punishments for China over its expansion of powers in Hong Kong, went quickly off the rails -- and turned to a rambling rant mostly focused on his rival, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. On America's tragic day, here's a sample of what was on the President's mind.
On Biden's record
"So Biden was here for 47 years ... the last eight years, not long ago, as vice president. ... Well, we're doing a good job on highways, but why didn't he fix them three years ago? Why didn't he fix them? We have bridges that should have been fixed. Why didn't he fix them?"
"If we had listened to Joe Biden, hundreds of thousands of additional lives would have been lost, and if you look at the job he did on swine flu -- I looked at a poll .. .and they got very bad marks on the job they did on the swine flu. H1N1, he calls it N1H1. H1N1". (Actually, the Obama administration got better polling on H1N1 than Trump is getting for the coronavirus).
On climate change and eyesight
"So (Democrats) want to rejoin the Paris climate accord and they want to seek an even higher level of restraint. In other words, make it worse than it was. That basically means no windows, no nothing. It's very hard to do. I tell people when they want to go into some of these buildings, how are your eyes, because they won't be good in five years."
On his own popularity, the 2016 election and crustaceans
"You look at the lakes you see thousands of boats with Trump signs, American signs. You've got the Trump-Pence sign all over. You look at what's going on, you look at bikers, for miles and miles riding up highways proudly with their signs."
"We got in and we had 306 to I guess 223 (electoral votes), which was a tremendous margin of difference. You remember? They all said he cannot get to 270. I went to Maine a number of times, where we just freed up lobster fishing and fishing because they took away 5,000 square miles from Maine. I just opened it up."
And a familiar, false explanation of why some US states are being swamped by a new wave of coronavirus cases.
"Think of this, if we didn't do testing -- instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing we'd have half the cases. If we did another -- you cut that in half, we'd have yet again half of that."
A century-old crime scene
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, forensic archaeologists are digging in search of possible mass graves. A recent survey found unmarked burials and large man-made pits in the city's Oaklawn cemetery, which may hide the remains of Black Tulsans killed during a bloody race rio
