Joe Biden attacks Trump for COVID-19. (FILE)
Las Vegas / Durham:
U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden courted early voters in competitive states of Nevada and North Carolina on Sunday, as the final presidential debate looms later this week.
Some 27.7 million Americans have already voted by mail or in person before the Nov. 3 election, according to the University of Florida’s US Elections Project. This record high figure is in part due to concerns about crowds at voting sites on election day amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In North Carolina, a battleground where 1.4 million, or 20%, of the state’s registered voters had already voted on Sunday morning, Biden urged residents to vote as soon as possible.
“We have to keep up the incredible momentum, we can’t let go,” he said during a drive-in rally in Durham, as the participants in their cars honked their horns in approval. “Don’t wait – go vote today.”
Biden also slammed Trump for saying over the weekend that the United States had “turned the corner” in the coronavirus pandemic, noting that the rate of new cases across the country had reached its highest level in month.
“As my grandfather would say, ‘This guy’s gone around the corner if he thinks we’ve come around the corner,” Biden said. “Things are getting worse and he continues to lie to us about the circumstances.”
Biden’s choice for vice president Senator Kamala Harris canceled the events in person over the weekend as a precaution after an assistant tested positive for COVID-19. She will look back on the election campaign Monday with a visit to Florida to mark that state’s first day of in-person early voting.
Harris tested negative for the virus on Sunday, according to the campaign.
Trump, a Republican, was spending his Sunday in Nevada, a state he hopes to wrest from Democrats after narrowly losing him in 2016. Early in-person voting in the state began on Saturday.
The president, who rarely attends church but has remained popular among evangelical Christians for his opposition to abortion and for the appointment of conservative judges, started his day by attending a service at the International Church in Las Vegas .
Trump, who recently came down with his own COVID-19 fight, did not wear a mask for indoor service.
One of the church’s pastors, Denise Goulet, told Trump from the stage that God told him he would win the 2020 election. Trump put a handful of $ 20 bills in a bucket of offerings and bowed his head during a prayer.
Trump will campaign every day before Thursday’s debate in Florida, including stops in Arizona and North Carolina, campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said.
As Trump lags behind nationwide opinion polls and in many battlefield states, Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said over the weekend that the numbers nationals are misleading because the winning states are close.
“We can’t get complacent because the very burning truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows this thing is going to fall on the wire,” she wrote in a note to donors.
U.S. presidential elections are determined by electoral votes, allocated to U.S. states and territories largely based on their population, rather than a nationwide popular vote count.
Trump campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday, two battlefield states he narrowly won in the 2016 election.
In Muskegeon, Mich., He attacked Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, for placing restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus and shed light on a right-wing plot uncovered by the FBI to kidnap her.
“I hope you send her to pack her bags soon,” Trump said, prompting the crowd to shout “Lock her up!” several times.
Whitmer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that the president’s rhetoric was “incredibly disturbing” and “dangerous” to her and her family as well as to the other politicians he targets.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
