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OCALA, Florida: On Friday (October 16) President Donald Trump sought to push his position in the battlefield state of Florida by reaching out to older people, while his rival Joe Biden criticized Trump’s response to the pandemic of coronavirus on a Michigan state tour.
The two men are targeting their campaigns in the highly contested states that are expected to determine the winner of the November 3 election.
Trump, a Republican, is lagging in opinion polls and his latest campaign figures show he is also behind in fundraising as the race intensifies with 18 days to Election Day. Early voting is breaking records, with more than 22 million Americans already casting their votes.
Trump and the Republican National Committee raised about $ 247.8 million in September, his campaign manager said on Twitter, far behind the $ 383 million for Biden and the Democratic Party.
At an indoor event with a crowd of seniors in Fort Meyers, Florida, Trump expressed some unusual empathy for those who have lost family members to COVID-19.
“My heart breaks for every grieving family that has lost a loved one. I feel their anguish. I am sorry for their loss. I feel their pain,” Trump said.
Biden, a Democrat, has shown strength with high-level voters, many of whom have blamed Trump for his response to the health crisis. Biden has criticized Trump for downplaying the severity of the crisis and has criticized the administration for trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“If I have the honor of becoming your president, we will build on the Affordable Care Act, no matter what they do,” Biden said at an event in Michigan.
Trump again claimed that the country was “turning around” the outbreak, now in its eighth month, even as nine states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina, reported record one-day increases in new infections Thursday, according to a Reuters count.
“He will do anything to distract us from focusing on his failures to deal with this virus to protect the nation,” Biden said. “It’s not disappearing, it’s actually increasing again. It’s getting worse, as predicted.”
DEAD HEAT IN FLORIDA, OBAMA WILL HIT THE ROAD
A new Reuters / Ipsos poll showed Trump and Biden in a statistical tie in Florida, which is coveted for its 29 electoral votes.
Biden’s campaign said former President Barack Obama would travel to Philadelphia next week to campaign on behalf of his former vice president.
At a rally in Ocala, Florida, Trump played down Obama’s potential impact.
“Oh, I got an emergency call today. They say, ‘Sir, I’m sorry to tell you, but President Obama is going to start campaigning for Sleepy Joe.’ I said, ‘so what’s the problem with that’… I said, ‘you know, he ran a tougher campaign than Hillary last time, so why do we care?’ “Trump said.
Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
The president was to hold an event later Friday in Macon, Georgia.
Biden will attend an evening rally to vote in Detroit.
The Democrat tested negative for COVID-19 on Friday, his campaign said.
A record 22 million Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida’s US Elections Project, including 2.2 million in Florida. Approximately 136.6 million people in total voted in the 2016 elections.
Early voting began in Louisiana on Friday, following a record turnout this week in the competitive states of Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.
The candidates were back on track after the town hall duels replaced a presidential debate that was canceled after Trump’s recent run-in with the coronavirus.
A militant Trump, who was taking on moderator Savannah Guthrie on NBC, refused to condemn the QAnon conspiracy theory, reiterated his unsubstantiated claim that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, and again questioned whether the masks help combat the spread of COVID-19.
Biden delivered heavy policy responses and focused his attacks on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which has killed more than 217,000 people in the United States and hit the economy.
Biden won the television ratings battle between the two events, according to Nielsen ratings data.
Biden averaged 13.9 million viewers on Walt Disney Co’s ABC Thursday night, CNN said. Trump raised $ 13 million through Comcast Corp’s NBC and the company’s MSNBC and CNBC cable channels.
