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US President Donald Trump has told his supporters in Florida that the coronavirus pandemic will end soon and accused Democratic rival Joe Biden of exaggerating the health crisis to scare Americans into voting for him.
The pandemic, which has killed more than 224,000 people in the United States and cost millions more their jobs, has become the dominant theme of the campaign, with Trump on the defensive over his handling of the crisis. administration.
Biden said earlier that day that the president had given up on containing the virus and promised that if he wins the Nov.3 election he will ask Congress to pass a comprehensive Covid-19 bill that he will sign within the first 10 days after take office.
“He has given up on America. He just wants us to doze off, ”Biden said during a speech in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. “I am not going to shut down the economy. I will not close the country. I’m going to turn off the virus. “
‘Dark winter’
During two demonstrations in the battlefield state of Florida, Trump mocked Biden for saying in the presidential debate Thursday night that the United States was entering a “dark winter.”
“We’re going to end this pandemic quickly,” said Trump, who has downplayed the threat since it began, at The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in central Florida. Later, he told a large crowd in Pensacola that the election was a choice “between a boom and a lockdown.”
Researchers at the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation warned on Friday that the virus could kill more than half a million people in the United States by the end of February. About 130,000 lives could be saved if everyone wore masks, according to the study.
The campaign stops followed the second and final debate between the two contenders on Thursday night, when they discussed how to handle the pandemic.
US President Donald Trump greets at the end of a campaign rally at Pensacola International Airport in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday. Photograph: Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images.
The Trump campaign said Friday it had raised $ 26 million from the debate. The Biden campaign, which has beaten Trump in the race for money in recent months, did not disclose a fundraising figure for the debate, but sent out appeals saying they were outraged.
“Discussion days are often some of the best for fundraising, but we didn’t see the increase we expected,” the campaign said in a fundraising alert for supporters.
With 11 days to go, more than 53 million Americans have already voted, a record pace, according to the University of Florida Election Project.
Participation record
Michael McDonald, who manages the project, has said the election could set a record for modern turnout, surpassing the 60 percent turnout rate in recent presidential elections.
The rise in early voting points to both intense interest in the race and a population eager to avoid the risk of exposure in the election day crowds to Covid-19. The huge early voting total gives Trump less room to change his mind before the vote is over.
Opinion polls show him behind Biden nationally and, by a smaller margin, in various battlefield states that will decide who will sit in the White House on January 20.
Trump said those polls underestimated his support.
“I think we are leading in many states that you do not know,” he told reporters at the White House. – Reuters
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