Donald Trump said Joe Biden would destroy the country through more shutdowns. (ARCHIVE)
Miami:
United States President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden will rally voters just hours apart in the Florida city of Tampa on Thursday, and their campaign paths will cross for the first time as the United States fight. Rivals for the White House enter their frenzied final days.
Florida is a must-have award, and polls show candidates tied for the third-largest state in the United States, which has sided with the winner in every presidential election since 1964 with one exception.
The candidates’ events are sure to be a study in contrasts, with Trump supporters, largely unmasked and thickly packed, gathering in the afternoon, and Biden holding a socially estranged self-service meeting later in the evening.
A day earlier, Trump was stumbling around in Arizona, while Biden voted in his home state of Delaware and met with health experts, while fine-tuning his pandemic response plan, seeking to reassure voters that he would use science to fight. the contagion.
The virus has killed more than 2.27,000 people in the US and forced millions out of work in the world’s largest economy as a resurgent wave of cases reached record levels.
“I’m not running on a false promise that I can end this pandemic by flipping a switch,” said the 77-year-old former vice president, who has a strong lead in opinion polls.
“But what I can promise you is this: We will start Day 1 by doing the right thing. We will let science guide our decisions.”
On Saturday, Biden will gain some star power when he is joined on the stump in Michigan by Barack Obama, who he served as vice president.
It will be their first joint in-person appearance of the 2020 race, though Obama has been delivering strategically timed broadsides to Trump throughout.
Trump, by contrast, is ending his campaign in an extreme test of endurance, with one last attempt to catch up in both swing states as he also claims he won in 2016 but now has to defend.
After gathering supporters in three states on Tuesday, Trump, 74, spent the night in a room, Nevada, and then flew to Arizona for two more demonstrations.
On an airport runway in Bullhead City, Arizona, Trump all but ignored the Covid-19 crisis, and many supporters didn’t bother wearing masks as they cheered his defiant insistence on a landslide victory on November 3.
“It’s going to be a big red wave,” he exclaimed, referring to the Republican color.
“We love you! We love you!” yelled the enthusiastic crowd.
At another rally, in Goodyear, Arizona, Trump predicted he would repeat his 2016 surprise, saying, “We’re going to have an even bigger surprise in six days.”
-In the shadow of Covid
The pandemic has disrupted every aspect of American life and overshadowed the elections, and polls show it could well be the president’s undoing as cases hit record highs in the US.
With many Americans fearful of the risk of voting in crowded polling stations, a remarkable 74.7 million people have already cast their votes.
About 57.4 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s response to the coronavirus, while 39.8 percent approve of it, according to a survey average compiled by tracker FiveThirtyEight.com.
Biden has used that to build an impressive lead in the polls heading into the past week and is looking to expand his path to victory state-by-state.
On Tuesday, Biden visited Georgia, traditionally Republican territory, and said he will travel to Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan in the final days of the race.
These are all states where Trump won in 2016, but are at stake this year.
On Wednesday, Trump maintained his contempt for Biden’s focus on health security, saying the Democrat would destroy the country through more lockdowns.
“If you vote for Biden, it means there are no kids in school, no graduation, no Christmas, and no Fourth of July together. Other than that, you’ll have a wonderful life.”
But Trump’s own senior infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci warned Wednesday that even if a Covid-19 vaccine is released this year, it will take until “the end of 2021 and perhaps even next year” to achieve “some appearances. normality.. “
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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