President Trump kicked off his Thanksgiving break from Mar-A-Lago by addressing LaVar Ball on Twitter. POTUS told the "poor man's version of Don King" that his son, UCLA basketball star LiAngelo Ball, would have remained in China for 5 to 10 years on a shoplifting charge without Trump's intervention.
Go deeper: How LaVar Ball used Trump's playbook to conquer sports media.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Subscribe to Mike Allen's Axios AM to follow our coronavirus coverage each morning from your inbox.
The number of novel coronavirus cases surpassed 1.2 million worldwide Saturday night, as Spain overtook Italy as the country with the most infections outside the U.S.
The big picture: About half the planet's population is now on lockdown and the global death toll was nearing 64,800, by Sunday morning, per Johns Hopkins data.
Recorded deaths from the novel coronavirus surpassed 8,500 in the U.S. early Sunday, per Johns Hopkins data. The death toll in the U.S. has risen over 1,000 every day for the past four days, since April 1.
The big picture: President Trump said Saturday America's is facing its "toughest" time "between this week and next week." Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said U.S. deaths are expected to continue to rise during this period.