Trump Buoyed By Supreme Court Confirmation Days Of US Elections

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s re-election fight got a boost Monday with the confirmation of his latest Supreme Court nominee, tipping the highest body to the right and securing his judicial legacy in a historic victory for conservatives. Americans.

The Republican-controlled Senate elevated Amy Coney Barrett to the lifetime job on a 52-48 vote, culminating a swift and deeply contentious process that makes her the sixth conservative and third Trump-appointed in the nine-member court. .

“This is a momentous day for the United States, for the Constitution of the United States, and for a fair and impartial rule of law,” the president said, along with Barrett, before smiling at legislators and others who had gathered at the South Lawn of the White House.

Barrett, 48, ensures a strong conservative judicial legacy for Trump, who has also been able to appoint dozens of young right-wing judges to federal courts in his four years in office.

Democrats are furious at the process that upheld justice so close to a presidential election and warn that Barrett could vote to overturn the landmark 1973 decision protecting abortion rights, or to dismantle the provision of health care for millions of Americans.

But Barrett, who took the constitutional oath in a ceremony Monday night, said he would keep his personal beliefs and his judicial work separate.

“I will do my job without fear or favor, and … I will do it regardless of both political powers and my own preferences.”

GAME CHANGER?

With eight days left before the Nov. 3 election, the confirmation marks an undeniable victory for the president to promote as he sweeps the battlefield states in a final bid to regain ground against Democrat Joe Biden.

But it remains to be seen whether he can be a game changer for the Republican president, accused by his rival of abandoning the fight against Covid-19 with polls showing voters overwhelmingly disapproving of his response to the pandemic.

Trump denied any surrender early Monday when he landed in the changing state of Pennsylvania for a trio of demonstrations, insisting, despite a further surge in infections, that the pandemic is on the wane.

“We are absolutely turning the corner,” he said in Allentown.

But the president betrayed his frustration over the health crisis that dragged his hopes of re-election, with a tweet complaining about the media coverage of “COVID, COVID, COVID, until the elections.”

‘PESSIMISM’

While Barrett’s confirmation provided a happy distraction for Trump, the virus is ever present.

More than 225,000 Americans have died, cases are on the rise in several states, and hopes have dimmed that a trillion-dollar coronavirus aid package could pass Congress before Election Day.

Nervousness over the resurgence of the pandemic weighed on markets, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 2.3%, the worst session in weeks.

Trump kept up his game while touting his economic record, saying voters had “a choice between a super recovery from Trump and a depression from Biden.”

Complicating Trump’s argument that the United States has the upper hand against the virus, his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, admitted Sunday that “we are not going to control the pandemic” and that the focus is now on mitigation.

Meadows’ comments sparked a reprimand from World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who warned that it was “dangerous” to give up attempts to eradicate the virus.

Meanwhile, Biden, in a surprise campaign stop Monday at a polling station in Chester, Pennsylvania, took advantage of the “deadly admission” from the White House.

“The bottom line is that Donald Trump is the worst possible president, the worst possible person, to try to guide us through this pandemic,” Biden said.

Biden previously said that Trump was giving up “the white flag of defeat” and that he hoped the virus, which has set records for new cases in recent days, with nearly 90,000 on Saturday, would simply disappear.

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