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Donald Trump has claimed that he no longer has coronavirus and is now “immune” to Covid-19 as he prepares to return to the election campaign on Monday for a flurry of demonstrations in swing states in his quest for a second term in the White House.
Numerous opinion polls have continued to show that US President is behind his Democratic challenger Joe Biden by a significant margin nationally, adding urgency to Trump’s desire to return to the in-person appearances he believes to be. key to your success on Election Day November 3.
He will appear at a rally in Sanford, Florida, on Monday night and follow events in Pennsylvania and Iowa on Tuesday and Wednesday, all hotly contested states that he narrowly won in 2016 but now appears to be leaning towards Biden.
However, questions remain about the 74-year-old president’s health status following his infection with Covid-19 and a three-night stay at the Walter Reed military medical center in Maryland. He was discharged a week ago, but the White House and medical professionals have refused to reveal details about his lung scans or when he last tested negative for Covid-19.
In a comprehensive 30-minute interview on Fox News on Sunday, Trump insisted he was completely virus-free, without providing medical evidence, and further claimed, implausibly, that he was immune after receiving an experimental cocktail of antibodies, antiviral drugs. and steroids. during your hospital stay.
“For me it is a cure, it is much more than therapy,” Trump said. “Once you have recovered, you are immune. I’m immune … maybe for a short time, maybe for a long time. The president is in great shape, “Trump said, adding that the immunity gave him a” protective glow. “
However, there are some documented cases of patients who have recovered from coronavirus reinfection.
Later on Sunday, Twitter flagged a tweet in which Trump claimed he was immune to the coronavirus and said he violated the social media platform’s rules on misleading information related to the pandemic.
“A full and complete farewell to the White House doctors yesterday. That means I can’t get it (immune) and I can’t manage it. It’s very good to know, ”Trump said in the tweet.
“This Tweet violated Twitter’s Rules on Disseminating Misleading and Potentially Harmful Information Related to Covid-19,” read Twitter’s disclaimer.
A Twitter spokeswoman told Reuters that the tweet made “misleading health claims” about Covid-19 and that commitments to the post would be “significantly limited”, as is standard in such cases.
The White House doctor who oversaw Trump’s treatment at Walter Reed has only spoken in general terms about the president’s condition. In a memo released late on Saturday, Dr. Sean Conley authorized Trump to return to public events, saying he is “no longer considered a transmission risk.”
Like previous bulletins, it did not reveal whether Trump had tested negative for Covid-19, only that the medical team could find no evidence that the virus replicated in his body. There is no approved test to determine how long a person remains contagious after contracting the coronavirus.
On Saturday, Trump appeared in public for the first time since his hospitalization, delivering an 18-minute speech to hundreds of supporters from a White House balcony, on a vague topic around “law and order,” which he addressed. other electoral issues such as the economy and promotion. its handling of a pandemic that has killed more than 214,000 Americans and infected more than 7.7 million, far more than any other country.
He showed few outward signs of his encounter with the virus, other than sounding a bit hoarse. He also did not wear a mask during his speech, along with many in the crowd, who were huddled in front of the south lawn balcony in contravention of the government’s guidance on social distancing.
A spokesman for Biden’s campaign called Saturday’s event “incredibly reckless and irresponsible,” pointing to another meeting at the White House two weeks earlier when few were wearing masks or distancing themselves, and in which more than 20 key Trump advisers and Republican politicians, including two top senators, are believed to have contracted the virus.
Trump campaign officials have been keen to get the president back in front of supporters, believing his forced absence from audiences at least partially explains the drop in opinion poll numbers that see him behind. Biden’s score by up to 16 points in some national polls.
Democrats, meanwhile, remain cautious about their candidate’s advantage, aware that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than three million ballots in 2016, but lost the state White House in state contests for votes of the polling stations that determine the winner.
In many state races this year, including nearly every key battlefield state like Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Ohio that Trump must hold onto, Biden is winning in the polls, albeit by much smaller margins than at the national level.
On Monday, Biden will pitch to working families at his own event in Toledo, Ohio, where Trump trails his rival by just over half percent in the latest FiveThirtyEight analysis.
Democrats in general are very positive about Joe Biden, but they are extraordinarily negative about Donald Trump. So, in many ways, Trump is the Democrats’ biggest argument to get the vote, ”said Charles Franklin, poll director at Marquette Law School in Wisconsin, where Biden leads 46-41%.
Also on Monday, confirmation hearings begin in the United States Senate for Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s conservative choice for the supreme court to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last month at age 87.
Barrett’s controversial nomination has drawn criticism from Democrats, who fear his right-wing ideology will ensure a conservative bias in the nation’s highest court for a generation and threaten an established legal precedent such as affordable healthcare and abortion rights. .
They are also angry that the Republican majority in the Senate is trying to enforce Trump’s decision just weeks before the election. In 2016, Republicans successfully blocked Barack Obama’s supreme court election, Merrick Garland, arguing that it was wrong to place a supreme court judge in an election year.
Some Republican senators have compared Barrett’s upcoming confirmation battle to “a holy war,” believing that Democratic attacks on their Catholic beliefs could win them votes next month.
Dick Durbin, the whip of the Democratic minority in the Senate and a member of the Senate judicial committee that will explore Barrett’s candidacy, said the American people see it in much simpler terms.
“This makes a difference in their lives,” he said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Once Republican voters realize the reality and the strategy, many will say to their senators, ‘Listen, this is not what we expected, we can be conservative but we are not crazy. My family needs health insurance protections. “
Chris McGreal and Reuters contributed to this report.
