Donald Trump stepped up his campaign with back-to-back events on Friday.
Washington, United States:
With just 39 days before the U.S. election, President Donald Trump has stepped up his campaign with back-to-back events on Friday in battlefield states – a breakneck pace that contrasts with the calmer approach of Democratic rival Joe Biden.
The 74-year-old president’s grueling schedule includes hosting events in three states as well as the capital Washington in a 12-hour slog that ends with a nighttime rally in Virginia.
Trump – who follows Biden in national polls and is narrowly behind in several swaying states deemed crucial to his re-election – is under pressure to make the most of the remaining weeks before the November 3 election.
During his swirling day, the president mocked his rival for a low-energy campaign, saying Biden “is staying again today.”
“This guy never goes out. It’s terrible, isn’t it?” he recounted a black economic empowerment event in Atlanta, where few people wore masks and social distancing was non-existent.
“If I lose to a man who isn’t campaigning … I don’t know,” he told the crowd, laughing.
Biden traveled from his home in Delaware to Washington on Friday to attend a ceremony at the United States Capitol while Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was there.
But there was no in-person campaign on the former vice president’s schedule.
In a bid to sack his base this weekend, the president will announce his choice to replace liberal icon Ginsburg, who died last week at 87, on Saturday.
Trump started the day in Florida with a roundtable discussion with Latin American voters, a crucial constituency in the swing state.
Biden was “very bad for Hispanics,” the president said at the event at his golf club in Doral, near Miami.
“I am a wall between the American dream and chaos.”
Trump then flew to neighboring Georgia, which voted Republican in the last six elections but is now seen as a draw, where he insisted that as president he had done ” even more than I promised ”for African Americans.
“I’ve done more for the black community in 47 months … than Joe Biden has done in 47 years,” he said, repeatedly sweeping Biden’s legislative record by co-sponsoring tough legislation against the crime of the 1990s which, according to many experts, produced high results. rate of incarceration of black Americans.
Trump has said he is unveiling a “platinum plan” that aims to increase the capital of African Americans, create three million new jobs for the black community and implement “the highest standards of policing.”
Trump then returns to Washington to reunite with supporters before flying off to a Make America Great Again nightly rally at an airport in Newport News, Virginia.
The state’s Democratic governor meanwhile announced that he and his wife had tested positive for Covid-19.
“As I have reminded Virginians throughout this crisis, Covid-19 is very real and very contagious,” Governor Ralph Northam said in a statement.
Trump appears to dismiss coronavirus concerns during his events, where he appears maskless and crowds often congregate – a scenario his own government experts have warned against.
Statements, not rallies
Biden’s campaign has been cautious since the pandemic forced several US states into extended lockdowns, with the US death toll now exceeding 200,000.
Biden, 77, spent months mostly squatting in his Delaware home. Although he has stepped up his campaigns in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, his events are tightly scripted with only occasional interaction with voters.
The Democratic candidate traveled to Florida last week to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, but the event did not have a large following.
His recent benchmark strategy to counter Trump appears to be to issue statements that address the president’s various campaign stops.
“Since President Trump’s last visit to Florida just two weeks ago, more than 40,000 additional Floridians have tested positive for the coronavirus and the state has scored 13,000 Covid-related deaths,” Biden said Thursday then that Trump was on his way to a Jacksonville rally.
“President Trump has no plan, but I, to defeat Covid-19, better rebuild our economy, and protect and develop the Affordable Care Act.
Trump’s storm comes as his recent refusal to clearly guarantee a peaceful transfer of power – “we’re going to have to see what happens,” he said Wednesday – has sparked outrage from Democrats.
Pressed on her remarks, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that “the president will accept the results of a free and fair election.”
