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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP plans to step up an already dizzying travel program in the final full week of the presidential campaign, overlooking a surge in coronavirus cases in the US and a new outbreak in his own White House.
Trump is expected to reach nearly a dozen states in his latest effort to regain ground from Democrat Joe Biden, including Sunday’s trip to Maine and Tuesday’s trip to Nebraska.
Both states grant electoral votes by congressional district and could be crucial in a close election.
It will hold 11 rallies in the last 48 hours alone.
Biden also plans to resume his travel program, with the goal of reaching the six battlefield states the campaign considers key to its chances, some with socially distanced in-person events and others with virtual events.
Tomorrow the former vice president travels to Georgia, a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in more than a quarter of a century, but where polls show a close race.
The final week of the campaign collides with deepening concerns about a public health crisis in the United States.
Trump is eager for voters to focus on just about anything else, and worries about losing if the election turns into a referendum on his handling of the pandemic.
Biden is working to ensure the race is just that, bashing Trump on the virus and presenting himself as a safer and more stable alternative.
The stakes were clear this weekend as the White House became the site of a second outbreak of the virus in a month.
Several close associates of Vice President Mike Pence tested positive for the virus, including his chief of staff, Marc Short.
Mike Pence, however, insisted on maintaining his aggressive political calendar, despite being considered a “close contact” for his adviser, claiming the privileges of being an “essential employee.”
The latest outbreak has served as a powerful metaphor for the divergent approaches the Trump and Biden campaigns have taken to the virus.
Yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that “we are not going to control the pandemic” and that the focus must be on containment and treatment.
‘A normal life’
Trump aims to pack thousands of people, most without covering their faces, in some of the upper Midwest states that bear the brunt of the increase.
“We want normal life to resume,” Trump said yesterday. “We just want a normal life.”
Meadows, pressed to explain why the pandemic cannot be controlled, said: “Because it is a contagious virus like the flu.”
He told CNN’s State of the Union “that the government was focused on bringing effective therapies and vaccines to market.
Biden, in a statement, said the Meadows comments continued with the Trump administration waving “the white flag of defeat” in the face of the virus.
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Biden’s team argues that the coronavirus is likely to erase any other issues that may come up in the final days of the campaign, including Biden’s recent comment at the debate stage in which he claimed he would back away from oil, then backtracking. as a transition. away from federal subsidies.
That strategy appeared to pay off when the outbreak in Pence’s staff reoriented the national conversation once again on the pandemic.
Trump and his team, meanwhile, have struggled to establish a final message, with the undisciplined candidate increasingly trusting his instincts about his advisers.
He has clung to the filth of his Democratic rival and used apocalyptic terms to describe a Biden presidency, but so far Biden has proven to be more resistant to such attacks than Trump’s 2016 rival.
“You can certainly expect (Biden) to focus on Covid as it sadly continues to rise across the country,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in an interview.
“It’s disrupting people’s lives and people are looking for a leader to put plans in place to get it under control.”
With more than a third of the expected votes in the election already cast, it may be increasingly difficult for Trump and Biden to reshape the contours of the race.
Biden leads Trump in most national polls and has an advantage, albeit more limited, on many key battlefields.
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