Deprived of his beloved 10-day election campaign by Covid-19, President Donald Trump took center stage again Monday in Florida, promising he is in “great shape” with 22 days left to face Joe Biden in the elections.
“I went through it and now they say I’m immune,” Trump told a cheering crowd in Sanford, near Orlando, few of whom wore masks.
“I feel so powerful. I’ll go in there, kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women, I’ll just give you a big, fat kiss.”
Trump’s medical team announced that he had tested negative and was no longer contagious when he flew to Florida, the first of four battle states he plans to visit over the next four days. His claim of immunity is unproven.
Trump is trailing his Democratic rival by double digits in polls, and he is looking to rally his base in a bombardment of key states.
Rarely, just a week after his discharge from the hospital, Trump’s hour-long speech appealed to all the classics of his campaign: vicious attacks on “Crooked” Hillary “Clinton and the” corrupt “press, warnings alarmists against the “radical left” and the “Socialist Nightmare”.
Trump also mocked his opponent, whom he dubbed “Sleepy Joe,” saying “virtually no one showed up” to Biden’s campaign event.
Unlike Trump, Biden has been following public health guidelines during the pandemic, hosting socially estranged campaign events that stand in stark contrast to Trump’s packed extravagances, largely without masks, including a recent celebration at the White House described by the experts as a “super spreader”.
“Oh, I like Florida,” Trump told the crowd. The state could play a crucial role on November 3.
The president brushed off the poll numbers and said, “Four years ago we had the same thing. We’re going to lose Florida, they said four years ago.”
“Twenty-two days from now, we’re going to win this state, we’re going to win four more years in the White House!” added.
He also praised his candidate for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
The Republican-controlled Senate will open hearings for the 48-year-old judge, whose confirmation, about which there is little doubt, will shift the nation’s highest court firmly to the right, possibly for generations. “She is going to be a magistrate magistrate of the United States Supreme Court,” Trump said.
“Who would have thought we’re at number three, you know?” he asked, referring to the judges he has appointed to the court since he took office.
Before Trump, 74, left for Florida, his doctor Sean Conley said the president was now negative and no longer “contagious to others,” after consecutive rapid tests and taking into account other health metrics.
Patients are typically classified as negative only after taking the most sensitive PCR test, raising suspicions from experts on social media that Trump’s doctors had administered them but had not received the results they were looking for.
Meanwhile, Biden attacked the president before the rally for downplaying the threat from the virus early in the pandemic.
“Trump knew how dangerous the disease was, but he did nothing,” Biden said before the rally. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you warn us?”
“His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis has been inconceivable,” added Biden. “The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to become.”
Biden specifically attacked Trump’s planned visit to Florida, saying he was bringing nothing but “divisive rhetoric and propaganda of fear” to the Sunshine State.
“But, equally dangerous is what it does not bring: no plan to control this virus that has taken the lives of more than 15,000 Floridians,” Biden said.
The president will also visit Pennsylvania, Iowa and North Carolina this week as part of an effort to regain ground with Biden, who has a double-digit lead in national polls according to the RealClearPolitics website.
Trump won Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa and North Carolina, the four states he will visit this week, in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, but this time he trails Biden in all four, according to an average of state polls from RealClearPolitics.
Biden has very small leads in Iowa and North Carolina, according to RealClearPolitics, but leads by more substantial margins in Florida and Pennsylvania: 3.7 points and 7.1 points, respectively.
Early voting in person began Monday in another nearby state, Georgia, although images of hour-long lines that went viral on social media led to accusations of “voter suppression.”
More than 10 million Americans have already cast their votes in the US presidential race, a monitoring group said Monday night, a record pace three weeks before Election Day.
.
