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In his first rally since his own fight with Covid-19, Trump painted a deeply dishonest picture of the nation’s battle against the disease, mocked former Vice President Joe Biden for social distancing, and promised victory on November 3 when he began a frantic drive towards elections. Day, marked by multiple rallies a day that could act as superpreader events.
“I feel so powerful that I will go into that hearing. I will go in there, I will kiss everyone in that hearing,” Trump said in Sanford, Florida, showing that his illness did not teach him to respect his own government’s policy. pandemic guidelines. “I will kiss the boys, the beautiful women and everyone. I will give them all a big, fat kiss.”
“(Biden) may be the worst presidential candidate ever and I have him,” Trump said, despite a series of recent polls showing him below double digits over the former vice president and behind in most undecided states.
Biden campaigned Monday in Ohio, a state once seen as a safe bet for Trump that Democrats believe is now up for grabs, and synchronized his message with colleagues on Capitol Hill using Barrett’s nomination to push the claims forward. that she would be a ship to finally kill. Obamacare, who faces his next appointment bound for the field a week before the elections.
“In the midst of this pandemic, why do Republicans have time to hold a Supreme Court hearing instead of meeting the significant economic need of localities?” Biden asked. “I’ll tell you why. It’s about finally getting his wish to end the Affordable Care Act.”
Biden also chided Trump for his “reckless” behavior since his diagnosis, saying, “The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to become.”
Trump says his crowds are ‘the real polls’
Taken in isolation, Trump’s rally resembled any other major campaign event three weeks before Election Day. While some fans wore masks behind him in the camera shot, many people in the large outdoor crowd did not.
And despite presiding over a failed response to a pandemic, Trump claimed that he had saved millions of lives. After turning his White House into a super-spreader that led to multiple infections, the president also criticized Biden for holding socially estranged events in which attendees sit in designated circles.
“They only have the circles because that’s the only way they can fill the room,” the president said, before looking at his own large and raucous crowd that contravened all government recommendations to fight the virus and saying, “These are the true centers. “
But medical experts expressed despair over Trump’s decision to gather large crowds during a worsening pandemic, ahead of a shift that Trump’s advisers said Monday would involve multiple rallies each day for the next several weeks.
“I promise you, the virus is there, whether it’s at an indoor event or outdoors at these big gatherings,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of health policy and preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Erin Burnett. OutFront “from CNN. who added that the images of Trump’s rally made him “cry.”
“Some of those people will get sick, they will spread it to others when they get home and they will get sick. These are accelerating events that promote the spread of the virus,” Schaffner said.
Trump’s mockery of his own administration’s recommendations – his rallies are almost the only mass turnout events taking place in the world right now – came amid increasingly dark warnings about the months ahead.
The government’s top infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that rallies like the one Trump held Monday night are “looking for trouble.”
“Because when you look at what’s happening in America, it’s really very troublesome,” Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Fauci later issued an even more dire warning about a pandemic that is seeing an increase in cases in 31 one of the states as a spike of decline, effectively being ignored by a negligent White House, begins to accelerate.
“I think we are facing a lot of problems,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, referring to coronavirus infections that have recently risen back to more than 50,000 a day.
“That’s a bad place to be when you’re entering the coldest fall weather and the coldest winter weather,” Fauci said.
The United States is worse than other nations in virus deaths
Trump’s claim to have saved millions of lives is based on the assumption that there would have been many more deaths had no countermeasures been taken against the disease, a scenario that no one was seriously defending.
Countries like South Korea, Japan, and Australia had fewer than five deaths per 100,000 people. If the US had death rates comparable to Australia’s since the start of the pandemic, it would have had 187,661 fewer deaths, according to the study by Alyssa Bilinski, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, and Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. , Vice Chancellor for Global Initiatives and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
If the United States had death rates comparable to Canada, it would have had 117,622 fewer deaths. And it would have registered 96,763 fewer deaths if it had had death rates comparable to France.
Republican alarm over Trump’s prospects
Trump hopes to use his return to the election campaign to present himself as a victor over Covid-19 and solidify his assurances to Americans that there is nothing to fear from the disease, despite its growing threat at the national level.
The president, who has rarely attempted to go beyond his political base, boasts a massive turnout not only from his 2016 supporters but also from new white working-class voters who culturally identify with him but have rarely cast a vote in the past. elections. Trump’s rally on Monday was, for example, peppered with comments about the “Panhandle,” the part of northern Florida where it performed especially strongly in 2016.
The president is looking forward to two or three events a day, which in the circumstances could turn into multiple super broadcast events, to revive the spirit of his drive until his shocking victory over Hillary Clinton four years ago.
But there are signs that the Republican hierarchy in Washington does not see the similarities to 2016, with some seeing Trump’s antics, including a rude performance in the first presidential debate, as a golden opportunity for Democrats to get so much hold of the White House. as well as the Senate.
McConnell issued his warning that Democrats were “on fire” in a call with lobbyists recently, according to someone familiar with the comments.
Senate Republicans who never expected to be seriously challenged – like Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and Joni Ernst in Iowa – are at serious risk. Graham, who as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee leads Barrett’s hearings, faces a challenger, Jaime Harrison, who just broke the single-quarter fundraising record for a Senate race with $ 57 million. .
And Trump’s schedule for later this week also indicates a campaign playing defense as he travels to Iowa, Pennsylvania and North Carolina – all states where he won four years ago and where he is in danger of losing now.