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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is spending the final days of his re-election campaign criticizing public officials and medical professionals who are trying to combat the coronavirus pandemic even as it reappears in the United States.
Campaigning in the Midwest on Friday, Trump delivered a final message promising an economic revival and a vaccine to fight COVID-19, which is pushing hospitals to full capacity and killing up to 1,000 people in the United States each. day.
But he also led attacks beyond his rival in Tuesday’s election, Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump falsely said that doctors make more money when their patients die from the disease, based on his previous criticism of medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert.
The president criticized Democratic officials in Minnesota for enforcing social distancing rules that limited his rally to 250 people. “It’s a small thing, but a horrible thing,” he said.
Opinion polls show Trump following Biden nationally, but with closer competition in the most competitive states that will decide the election. Voters say the coronavirus is their main concern.
Biden, for his part, has accused Trump of giving up on the fight against the disease, which has killed nearly 229,000 people in the United States.
Biden’s campaign has limited crowd sizes at events or restricted fans to their cars.
On Saturday, Trump will travel to Pennsylvania, campaigning in the cities of Newtown, Reading and Butler.
The state has yet to see the dramatic increases in coronavirus cases that threaten hospital capacity in Wisconsin and other battle states. Still, nearly 8,700 people in the state have died from the disease this year.
Biden, 77, will campaign in Michigan, accompanied by former President Barack Obama, for whom he served as vice president.
Trump, 74, won both Pennsylvania and Michigan by narrow margins in his surprise victory in 2016. Opinion polls by Reuters / Ipsos show that Biden leads Trump by 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania and 9 points in Michigan.
(https://polling.reuters.com/)
ROTATION RECORD
Analysts expect a record turnout in the elections. At least 86 million Americans have already cast their votes in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida Elections Project, or 63% of the total 2016 turnout.
Trump has repeatedly asserted without evidence that vote-by-mail ballots are susceptible to fraud, and more recently has argued that only results available on election night should count. In a series of legal motions, his campaign has sought to restrict absentee voting.
Officials in several states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, say it could take several days to count all of those mail-in ballots, meaning there could be days of uncertainty if the outcome depends on those states.
Security agents are preparing for a range of potential threats, from spontaneous acts of violence to more organized and planned attacks. In downtown Washington, workers boarded up storefronts near the White House to protect against potential damage.
(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Mary Milliken, William Mallard, and Frances Kerry)
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