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(COMBO) This combination of images created on October 30, 2020 shows Democratic presidential candidate and former US Vice President Joe Biden gestures before delivering his remarks at a Drive-in event in Coconut Creek, Florida on October 29, 2020 and at the US President Donald Trump clenches his fist as he arrives at a campaign rally at Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin on October 30, 2020 (Photos by JIM WATSON and MANDEL NGAN / AFP)
Donald Trump, challenger Joe Biden and their top substitutes traversed crucial states in the industrial Midwest and the coastal southeast on Saturday, in a frantic race to mobilize voters as they presented their closing arguments with the US presidential election.
Using some of his most urgent terms yet, Trump warned of “chaos in our country” if a clear winner does not emerge quickly in the November 3 election, saying, without evidence, that it could take weeks to resolve an outcome and that ” very bad things ”could happen in the meantime.
Meanwhile, Biden told his backers it was “time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home.”
Underscoring the stakes, and the disturbing impact of the coronavirus pandemic, a record 90 million initial votes have already been cast, as the contest heads toward the highest turnout in at least a century.
The virus has killed nearly 230,000 Americans, devastated the world’s largest economy, and infected a record number of people across the United States.
Trump focused on the key state of Pennsylvania on Saturday, “the state where the history of American independence began,” he said in the small town of Newtown, the first of four stops in that state in the midst of a frantic final sprint.
Biden made his first joint campaign appearance with his former boss Barack Obama, arguably the nation’s most popular Democrat, in Flint, Michigan, as they fight to push for turnout in a state Trump led by a very narrow margin in 2016.
Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, was campaigning in tightly divided North Carolina, while Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, was in Florida, another vitally critical state.
Pennsylvania has become one of the top awards this year.
In his caravan on his way to rural Bucks County, the president passed hundreds of supporters holding up a forest of pro-Trump posters. The crowd then booed the journalists behind the vehicles.
Speaking at an event there, Trump lashed out at Biden, saying he would shut down the state’s fossil fuel industry.
The president took credit for creating the “greatest economy in the history of this country, the history of the world,” while “foreign nations are in free fall.”
Yet despite recent signs of recovery, millions are still out of work.
And the race has been overshadowed by the growing pandemic, which has even sickened Trump and many of his staff.
More than 94,000 new infections were recorded in the United States on Friday, another new record, and the total number of cases exceeded 9 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
In stark contrast to Trump, who has disparaged the wearing of masks by Biden and others, the Democrat has scrupulously followed the guidance of public health experts.
After Biden and Obama showed up Saturday before a drive-in movie in Flint, they made an unannounced stop in suburban Bloomfield Hills before later heading to Detroit to join superstar singer Stevie Wonder.
Biden leads the state by nearly seven points, according to an average of RealClearPolitics polls. The state’s 16 electoral votes could provide a significant jump to the 270 needed to win the White House.
Trump, in achieving his 2016 victory, took advantage of low turnout rates among blacks in Michigan. As Biden campaigns with the nation’s first black president, he clearly hopes to change that.
Obama struck few blows at Flint, saying 140,000 American lives would have been saved if the president had taken a Canadian-like approach to the pandemic. Trump, he added, was on track to be the first president in nearly a century to preside over a net loss of jobs.
Biden then took the stage to criticize Trump.
“We are done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the failure, the refusal to take any responsibility,” he said.
The election is taking place in a deeply divided country, with sentiments so stark that arms sales have increased in some areas. Businesses in some cities, including Washington, are shielding their windows with boards and police are bracing for the possibility of violence.
Biden’s campaign announced that he will address the nation on Election Night, after a vote that will no doubt leave millions bitterly disappointed, no matter who wins.
– Chasing every vote –
On Friday, the two candidates took their battle to the United States Midwest, laying waste to three central states each while chasing every last vote.
Trump, who has long said the virus will “go away,” stood defiantly at rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
He again downplayed the coronavirus threat, saying, “If you catch it, you will get better and then you will be immune.”
After a campaign largely silenced by the pandemic, Biden has taken the offensive, pushing Trump on the defensive in unexpected battlefields like Texas, a large traditionally conservative stronghold now seen as a disaster.
On Friday, the state reported that a staggering nine million residents had already voted, surpassing its 2016 total.
Harris visited Texas on Friday in an attempt to turn the state into a Democrat for the first time since 1976.
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