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In the final hours before Election Day, one of Donald Trump’s final messages to Americans is an exaggerated threat: that a Joe Biden presidency will result in a national Covid-19 lockdown.
Speaking in Iowa on Sunday, the president said the choice was a “choice between a deadly blockade by Biden … or a safe vaccine to end the pandemic.”
Coronavirus cases are on the rise in the US, and most battlefield states are particularly hard hit. On Friday, the total case count surpassed 9 million, while the daily count set a new world record, at around 100,000. 81,493 new cases were reported Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University, and 447 new deaths. Almost 231,000 people have died.
In Iowa, painting a dark and dystopian vision, Trump told a tight crowd of supporters, many of them without masks: “The Biden plan will turn America into a prison state by locking you in, while letting the rioters on the far left roam. freely to loot and burn. “
That came after he told a rally in Pennsylvania, another swing state, that “there would be no school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no Easter, no Fourth of July” under the administration. of Biden.
In an interview in August, Biden was asked whether he would shut down the United States if scientists said he should. Said, “I’d turn it off. I would listen to scientists. “Since then, Biden has clarified that he was referring to whether he would take advice, saying,” In my opinion, there will be no need to shut down the entire economy. “
In October, Biden said, “I don’t think it is necessary to close.”
If national and state battlefield polls turn out to be accurate and he wins Tuesday, Biden has pledged to unveil a “Beat Covid-19” plan that includes a national mask mandate, a $ 25 billion vaccine plan. which guarantees free access to all Americans, improved testing and -Track efforts and help schools and small businesses.
On Sunday, he said at a drive-in in Philadelphia: “The truth is, to beat the virus, we first have to beat Donald Trump – he is the virus!”
The former vice president added: “When the United States is listened to, I think the message will be clear: it is time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home. We are done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the hate. “
Trump has repeated his anti-blocking message on his social media accounts and campaign ads.
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On Twitter, he wrote: “Biden wants to BLOCK our country, maybe for years. Crazy! “A campaign ad, titled” Don’t Let Joe Biden Block Our Economy, “posts footage from the August interview when Biden said he would shut down if scientists advised along with news footage of the shutdowns in Europe and scenes from protest.
With very few voters still undecided, Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Trump’s approach was not about converting voters, but about “accelerating his base.”
“It depends on a tremendous turnout tomorrow, and I may get it,” Sabato told the Guardian. “The goal is to remind voters, or voters who remain, that Trump’s main card is the economy and that he is determined to restore it, even if it means, frankly, more infections and deaths.
“He has made a clear decision and Biden has chosen the other path, which is to do what Europe is doing, not necessarily a complete blockade, but a substantial blockade and a mask mandate, all the things that Trump and his supporters do not. they will like. He’s trying to speed them up. And they are accelerated. “
Citing recent incidents in Texas, where Trump supporters appeared to try to force a Biden campaign bus off the road, and in New York and New Jersey on Sunday, when hundreds of Trump-flagged cars blocked traffic, Sabato He said: “It’s shocking, really. We have never had anything like this … it only suggests what will happen if he [Trump] misses “.
At a midnight rally in Florida, Trump threatened to fire Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease expert. To chants of “fire Fauci,” he said, “Don’t tell anyone, but let me wait until a little after the election. I appreciate the advice. I appreciate.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, Fauci said the United States should prepare for “a lot of damage” and predicted a winter of more than 100,000 cases a day and more deaths.
“It is not a good situation,” he said. “All the stars are lined up in the wrong place as the fall and winter season progresses, with people gathering indoors at home. He couldn’t be in a worse position. “
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