More than 70 million Americans have cast ballots in the U.S. presidential election, more than half the total turnout of the 2016 election with one week to go until Election Day, according to a Tuesday tally from the U.S. Elections Project.

The tally, which shows a record-breaking pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in percentage terms in more than a century, is the latest sign of intense interest in the contest between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden. It also highlights voters’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to COVID-19 as the pandemic regathers strength heading into winter.

Democrats hold a significant advantage in early voting due to their embrace of mail balloting, which Republicans have historically cast in large numbers but have shunned amid repeated and unfounded attacks by Trump, who says the system is prone to widespread fraud.

Overall, Democrats hold roughly a two-to-one advantage in early voting numbers. However, Republicans in recent weeks have narrowed the gap in early, in-person voting, data shows.

The high level of early voting has led Michael McDonald, the University of Florida professor who administers the U.S. Elections Project, to predict a record U.S. voter turnout of about 150 million, representing 65% of those eligible to vote, the highest rate since 1908.

U.S. voters have already cast far more early votes during this presidential campaign than they did in all of 2016 when they passed the 47 million mark earlier this month, data shows.

(REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump will cast an early vote in the presidential election while he is visiting Florida this weekend, White House spokesman Judd Deere said on Thursday.

The Republican president plans to vote in West Palm Beach, Florida, where his Mar-a-Lago estate is situated, on Saturday, according to Deere.

This comes as he is preparing for the third and final presidential debate against his Democratic rival Joe Biden and also as he is trying to close a big gap in opinion polls before the Nov. 3 election.

Trump trails Biden significantly in national polls and needs to score some hits in the debate to steady his campaign that is struggling, in part because of his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to polls, there are relatively few voters who have yet to make up their minds as Americans have cast more than 47 million votes for the election.

That eclipses total early voting from the 2016 presidential election with 12 days to go, according to data compiled by the US Elections Project.

Nearly 47.095 million Americans have turned in ballots, almost eight times the number of early votes cast at around same point before the 2016 contest, and just over the 47.015 million early votes that were cast before Election Day in that year.

Source: Presstv

After the first presidential debate was panned so widely that organizers introduced a mute button, Thursday’s second and final debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden was far more civil, yet showed the same sharp divides on the key issues facing the United States.

Trump, the Republican incumbent, took a more restrained approach than he did during the chaotic first presidential debate in September, when he repeatedly interrupted Biden. He even praised the moderator, whom he’d repeatedly denigrated before the debate.

“So far, I respect very much the way you’re handling this,” Trump said to NBC’s Kristen Welker when she gave him time to respond to Biden at one point.

Still, Thursday’s clash featured plenty of personal attacks between two men who evince little respect for each other, and Trump kept fact-checkers busy by leveling unfounded corruption accusations at Biden and his family. He also brought back campaign tropes about immigrant “rapists” and “murderers”, hearkening back to the speech that kicked off his 2016 campaign and suggesting that his pitch to voters remains much the same.

The televised encounter in Nashville, Tennessee, represented one of Trump’s last remaining opportunities to reshape a campaign dominated by a pandemic that has killed more than 221,000 people in the United States. Trump has trailed Biden in opinion polls for months, though the contest is tighter in some battleground states likely to decide the election.

Here are the issues that dominated the two candidates’ final televised clash before the November 3 election.

Covid-19: ‘People are learning to die with it’

Trump’s difficulty articulating a defense of his handling of the coronavirus remains a drag on his campaign. The opening topic of the debate was entirely predictable — Trump has received variations of the same question in interviews and has rarely delivered a clear answer.

Asked to outline his plan for the future, Trump instead asserted his prior handling was without fault and yet again predicted a rosy reversal to the pandemic.

“We’re rounding the turn, we’re rounding the corner,” Trump claimed, even as cases spike again across the country. “It’s going away.”

Biden, who has sought to prosecute Trump’s handling of the virus in his closing pitch to voters, came prepared. “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America,” he said.

Biden added: “He says we’re, you know, we’re learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it.”

Trump asserted that a vaccine would be ready by the end of the year and potentially within “weeks”, but stopped short of claiming it would be ready before the election, as he earlier had. Most experts, including administration officials, have said a vaccine is unlikely to be widely available until mid-2021.

The debate came as several US states, including the election swing state of Ohio, reported record single-day increases in Covid-19 infections on Thursday, evidence the pandemic is accelerating anew.

Trump promises to ‘terminate’ Obamacare

Trump and Biden each sought to position himself as the defender of American’s health care, keenly aware that it ranked among the top issues for voters even before the coronavirus pandemic struck the nation.

But Trump’s efforts to repeal and undermine the Obama-era Affordable Care Act proved to be a liability, as Biden hammered his efforts to strip coverage from tens of millions of Americans and his lack of a plan to cover those with preexisting conditions.

Biden, by contrast, fended off Trump’s attack that his plan to reinforce the Obama-era law with a “public option” amounted to a step toward socialized medicine by relying on his well-established public persona — and his vanquishing of Democratic primary rivals who campaigned on a Medicare-for-All program.

“He thinks he’s running against somebody else,” Biden said. “I beat all those other people.”

‘The least racist person in this room’

With centuries of institutional racism coming to a head in 2020 with the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement, it’s been a bit of disconnect to see a 74-year-old white Republican and a 77-year-old white Democrat battle for the presidency. Trump and Biden did little to dispel that disconnect.

Welker offered both multiple opportunities to talk directly to Black Americans. Both men said they understood the challenges Black citizens face, but the segment amounted mostly to them blasting each other.

Trump blamed Biden as an almost singular force behind mass incarceration, especially of “young Black men”. Trump declared himself “the least racist person in this room” and repeated his claim that “nobody has done what I’ve done” for Black Americans “with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, possible exception”.

Trump and Biden spar over racism

Biden, incredulous, called Trump a “racist” who “pours fuel on every single racist fire”.

Polls suggest many young voters of color do not support Trump but aren’t particularly enthusiastic about Biden either. It’s unlikely their final debate altered that view.

Climate change

Trump and Biden faced off on global climate change in the first extensive discussion of the issue in a presidential debate in 20 years.

Biden beseeched the world to address a warming climate, as Trump took credit for pulling the US out of a major international accord to do just that. Trump asserted he was trying to save American jobs, while taking credit for some of the cleanest air and water the nation has seen in generations — some of it a holdover of regulations passed by his predecessor.

Trump also sought to blame other countries for their role in climate change, referring to “filthy” pollution in China, India and Russia. (China overtook the US as the world’s largest overall CO2 emitter in 2005, but US emissions per capita are still vastly higher.)

Biden, tapping into an issue of particular importance to his base, called for massive investment to create new environmentally friendly industries. “Our health and our jobs are at stake,” he said.

Biden also spoke of a transition from the oil industry, which Trump seized upon, asking voters in Texas and Pennsylvania if they were listening.

Foreign policy meets personal attacks

Biden also finally got a chance to talk a little foreign policy. But most discussion of other countries came as the two candidates attacked each other with allegations of foreign entanglements.

Trump repeatedly leveled unsupported allegations against Biden and his son Hunter in an attempt to cast his rival and his family as corrupt.

“I don’t make money from China, you do. I don’t make money from Ukraine, you do,” Trump said.

Trump offered no hard proof for his assertions, as has often been the case during his presidency. Biden meanwhile highlighted a recent New York Times report that the president has a Chinese bank account as well as the Times’ earlier reporting showing that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017.

When given the opportunity, the former vice president also hammered Trump’s cozy relationship with North Korea’s authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un. “His buddy, who’s a thug,” Biden said, arguing that Trump’s summit with Kim “legitimized” a US adversary and potential nuclear threat.

Trump defended his “different kind of relationship … a very good relationship” with Kim, prompting Biden to retort that nations “had a good relationship with Hitler before he, in fact, invaded the rest of Europe”.

Snap polls show Biden as debate winner

Despite the swipes, the moderator appeared relieved at the end the debate and thanked both candidates for a “robust, fantastic” discussion. Many on social media touted Welker as the debate’s winner, cheering her ability to keep the discussion on track.

Source: France 24

The final debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden will feature a mute button to allow each candidate to speak uninterrupted, organisers said on Monday, looking to avoid the disruptions that marred the first matchup.

The Trump campaign voiced objections to the change – made after the president repeatedly talked over both Biden and the moderator at last month’s debate in violation of its agreed-upon rules – but said the Republican would still take part in the Thursday night event, one of his last chances to reach a large prime-time audience before voting ends on Nov. 3.

The Presidential Commission on Debates said each candidate’s microphone at the debate in Nashville, Tennessee, would be silenced to allow the other to make two minutes of opening remarks at the beginning of each 15-minute segment of the debate. Both microphones will be turned on to allow a back-and-forth after that time.

“President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate,” campaign manager Bill Stepien said.

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than 30 million Americans have already cast their ballots, limiting Trump’s chances of reframing a contest that national and state opinion polls show him trailing.

Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden during a chaotic and ill-tempered debate on Sept. 29, at one point provoking Biden to snap: “Will you shut up, man?”

‘They cut you off’

Trump backed out of a second scheduled debate set for last Thursday over a disagreement about the virtual format following his Covid-19 infection. At that time, he raised concerns about having his microphone muted.

“You sit behind a computer and do a debate – it’s ridiculous, and then they cut you off whenever they want,” Trump said in an Oct. 8 interview on Fox Business.

Earlier on Monday, Trump’s campaign said it was unhappy with the announced set of topics for Thursday’s debate, arguing that it should focus more on foreign policy and asserting that the nonpartisan group was tilted toward Biden.

Biden’s campaign said both sides previously agreed to let moderators choose the subjects. It said Trump wanted to avoid discussing his stewardship of the coronavirus pandemic, which surveys show is the top issue for voters.

“As usual, the president is more concerned with the rules of a debate than he is getting a nation in crisis the help it needs,” Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo said.

The number of Americans who voted early reached 30.2 million on Monday, according to the University of Florida’s United States Elections Project. That number represents more than one-fifth of all the votes cast in the 2016 election.

Early voting is likely to ramp up this week as more states open up voting centers for those who want to avoid possible coronavirus exposure at crowded Election Day polling sites.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

President Donald Trump likes to make fun of his rival Joe Biden’s verbal lapses but on Saturday he made his own goof as he took a pot shot at French President Emmanuel Macron and effectively demoted him.

Trump’s error downgrading Macron to prime minister came as he spoke at a campaign rally in Michigan, one of a flurry of stops he is making in the final three weeks of the presidential race as he trails Democrat Biden in the polls.

Trump had been speaking about the old NAFTA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, which he called a bad deal for America and insisted on renegotiating, when he turned his attention to Macron and the Paris climate change accord.

Trump, who questions the science behind global warming, pulled the US out of that landmark global accord in 2017, saying it was costing American jobs.

“And you know what else I stopped? The Paris environmental accord,” Trump said.

“And I like Prime Minister Macron a lot. But I said ‘how’s it going over there? How is the accord doing?’ They’re not doing too good,” Trump said.

“I saved you trillions of dollars, nobody else would have done it. I said it was a disaster, they basically wanted to take our wealth.”

Trump used to enjoy a sort of bromance relationship with Macron but their ties have cooled over the years and featured a so-called handshake war — in which Macron mimicked the US president’s penchant for shaking hard and not letting go.

At a bilateral meeting in 2019 in France, Macron gripped Trump’s hand so long and firmly he left a white thumbprint on it.

Source: AFP

President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden squared off, in a way, Thursday night in dueling televised town halls that showcased striking differences in temperament, views on racial justice and approaches to a pandemic that has reshaped the nation.

Coming just two and a half weeks before Election Day, the night offered crystalizing contrasts and a national, if divided, audience. But it seemed unlikely to have produced a needed moment for a president running out of time or opportunities to appeal beyond his core base.

He was defensive about his administration’s handling of the coronavirus, which has claimed more than 215,000 American lives, and evasive when pressed about whether he took a required COVID-19 test before his first debate with Biden. Angry and combative, Trump refused to denounce the QAnon conspiracy group — and only testily did so regarding white supremacists.

The president also appeared to acknowledge revelations from a recent New York Times report that he was in debt and left open the possibility that some of it was owed to a foreign bank. But he insisted that he didn’t owe any money to Russia or any “sinister people” and suggested that $400 million in debt was a “very, very small percentage” compared to his overall assets.

Biden denounced the White House’s handling of the virus, declaring that it was at fault for closing a pandemic response office established by the Obama administration in which he served. Though vague at times, he suggested he will offer clarity on his position on expanding the Supreme Court if Trump’s nominee to the bench is seated before Election Day.

After Biden’s 90-minute town hall event formally concluded, the candidate spent another half hour taking questions from those in the audience who didn’t get an opportunity during the televised program.

Trump and Biden were supposed to spend Thursday night on the same debate stage in Miami. But that faceoff was scuttled after Trump’s coronavirus infection, which jolted the race and threatened the health of the American president.

Trump wouldn’t say whether he had tested negative on the day of his first debate with Biden on Sept. 29, allowing only “possibly I did, possibly I didn’t.” Debate rules required that each candidate, using the honor system, had tested negative prior to the Cleveland event, but Trump spoke in circles when asked when he last tested negative.

The presidential rivals took questions in different cities on different networks: Trump on NBC from Miami, Biden on ABC from Philadelphia. Trump backed out of plans for the presidential faceoff originally scheduled for the evening after debate organizers said it would be held virtually following his COVID-19 diagnosis.

The town halls offered a different format for the two candidates to present themselves to voters, after the pair held a chaotic and combative first debate late last month. The difference in the men’s tone was immediate and striking.

Trump was Trump. He was loud and argumentative, rebuking his FBI director, fighting with the host, Savannah Guthrie, complaining about the questioning — and eventually saying for the first time that he would honor the results of a fair election, but only after casting an extraordinary amount of doubt on the likeliness of fairness.

“And then they talk ‘Will you accept a peaceful transfer,’” Trump said. “And the answer is, ‘Yes, I will.’ But I want it to be an honest election, and so does everybody else.”

He again sought to minimize revelations from a New York Times investigation that he has more than $400 million in debt and suggested that reports are wrong that he paid little or no federal income taxes in most years over the past two decades.

Biden meanwhile, took a far different, softer, approach with audience questions. The former vice president, who struggled growing up with a stutter, stuttered slightly at the start of the program and at one point squeezed his eyes shut and slowed down his response to clearly enunciate his words. At times his answers droned on.

Holding a white cloth mask in one hand, the Democratic nominee also brought a small card of notes on stage and referred to it while promising to roll back tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. He said doing so would save, as he consulted his notes, “let me see… $92 billion.”

Biden vowed to say before Election Day whether he will support expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court if Democrats win the presidency, the Senate and hold the House after November.

He has for weeks refused to answer the question but went further Thursday night. He said, “I’m still not a fan” of expanding the court, but that his ultimate decision depended on how the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court “is handled” and “how much they rush this.”

Biden also blasted Trump’s foreign policy, declaring that “‘America first’ has made ‘America alone’” and “This president embraces all the thugs in the world.” He turned introspective when asked what it would say if he lost.

“It could say that I’m a lousy candidate, that I didn’t do a good job,” Biden said. “But I think, I hope that it doesn’t say that we’re as racially, ethnically and religiously at odds as it appears the president wants us to be.”

Biden said he plans to participate in next week’s debate but that he would ask Trump to take a COVID-19 test before arriving. “It’s just decency” for everyone around him, including non-candidates like camera operators, Biden said.

The two men are still scheduled to occupy the same space for a debate for a second and final time next week in Nashville.

Source: AP

Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden will participate in duelling town halls Thursday instead of clashing face-to-face in their second debate, as the US president seeks to jolt his struggling campaign 19 days before the election.

The split screen spectacle follows Trump’s three-day campaign tour of battleground states once doctors gave him the medical all-clear less than two weeks after he announced he contracted the coronavirus.

But even as Trump sought to mount a closing argument against Biden at a boisterous rally Wednesday in Iowa, promising an “incredible” third quarter for the struggling economy, the pandemic remained front and center.

Trump’s teenage son Barron contracted the coronavirus, First Lady Melania Trump revealed Wednesday in news that startled in part because it had been kept from the public for so long.

She said the 14-year-old, who goes to a private school near Washington, did not experience symptoms and has since tested negative.

“Barron Trump, you know, he had the Corona 19,” the president said in Des Moines. “He had it such a short period of time I don’t even think he knew he had it.”

The news, which had been kept under wraps despite global attention on Trump’s own health, thrust public attention firmly back on the pandemic and in particular on an outbreak within the supposedly highly secure White House over the last two weeks.

The issue plays a prominent part in Thursday’s simultaneous town hall events on major TV networks, as cases spike in several states and the US toll surpasses 216,000 dead.

The competing primetime appearances were organized after a head-to-head debate between Trump and Biden due to be held Thursday was scrapped in the aftermath of Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis.

Reality show experience

But while team Trump might be relieved that the president regains an opportunity to draw a contrast with his opponent, NBC faced criticism for letting the president bigfoot Biden in the same 8:00 time slot.

“Having dueling town halls is bad for democracy,” tweeted Katie Couric, a longtime host of NBC’s “Today” morning show.

“Voters should be able to watch both and I don’t think many will,” she said, adding the matchup will benefit Trump “because people like to watch his unpredictability.”

David Canon, chair of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed.

But he said Trump may have committed a “tactical error” by backing out of a virtual debate with Biden.

“He needed the debates more than Biden did,” Canon told AFP. “He’s the one that needs to change the momentum in the election.”

Trump negotiated to go on NBC at an outdoor setting in Miami after Biden had arranged his own event on ABC in Philadelphia.

Previously Trump has appeared uncomfortable in town hall settings where ordinary voters ask questions. But as a former reality TV star and a keen follower of viewing figures, the president will at least be eager to attract a bigger audience than Biden.

The rivals were meant to have met on stage for their second debate, also in a town hall format.

However, in an unprecedented decision, organizers said they wanted to switch to a virtual format for safety reasons after Trump contracted the coronavirus. Trump rejected the new conditions, and the debate was scrapped.

NBC said it received a statement from the clinical director at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci, saying there was “a high degree of confidence” that Trump is now “not shedding infectious virus.”

Trump and the NBC host will be socially distanced at the outdoor venue and audience members will wear masks, NBC added.

Biden has reported multiple negative coronavirus tests since Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis on October 1.

Shouting match      

The first of three scheduled presidential debates was widely criticized for descending into an angry shouting match as Trump attempted to inflict a late wound to Biden’s campaign.

In Iowa Trump renewed the fierce attacks.

“Joe is shot, OK?… Joe has lost it,” Trump said to laughter and cheers.

“If he wins, the radical left will be running the country. They’re addicted to power, and God help us if they get it.”

Furthering his long-running narrative that 77-year-old Biden is too frail for the presidency, Trump, 74, tweeted a crudely faked picture purporting to show Biden in a wheelchair.

Biden has stepped up his own courting of the important elderly vote, telling retirees in Florida on Tuesday that Trump has “never been focused on you.”

A RealClearPolitics average of national polls has Biden up by 9.2 points, with the Democrat leading in several key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

(AFP)

Joe Biden heads for Florida on Tuesday to court elderly Americans who helped elect Donald Trump four years ago but appear to be swinging to the Democratic candidate for the White House this time around amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden, at 77 the oldest Democratic nominee ever, is to “deliver his vision for older Americans” at an event in the city of Pembroke Pines, north of Miami, his campaign said.

The former vice president’s visit to Florida comes a day after Trump held a campaign rally in the Sunshine State, his first since his hospitalization for Covid-19.

Unlike Biden’s small, socially distanced gatherings, thousands of supporters packed an airport tarmac for the president’s return to the campaign trail.

Trump, 74, is to host another rally Tuesday night in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, followed by visits to Iowa and North Carolina this week as part of a push to make up ground on Biden, who has a double-digit lead in the national polls ahead of the November 3 vote.

Florida and its 29 votes in the Electoral College went to Trump in 2016, helping propel his upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Americans over the age of 65 favored Trump over Clinton by a margin of 53 percent to 45 percent, according to the Pew Research Center and exit polls.

But the latest polls show a dramatic shift away from Trump among seniors this time around, driven in large part by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic which has taken a disproportionate toll among the elderly.

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll had Biden leading Trump among seniors by 27 points — 62 percent to 35 percent — while a CNN/SSRS poll had him up by 21 points among Americans 65 and older — 60 percent to 39 percent.

A poll of likely Florida voters released on Tuesday by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) gave Biden a 51 percent to 47 percent lead in the state.

“Joe Biden continues to be competing better for senior voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and that could be the difference in Florida,” said Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at FAU.

Forty-four percent of those polled said Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis was good or excellent while 50 percent said it was poor or terrible.

‘Lower the heat’

Trump, who called seniors his “favorite people in the world” after his release from hospital and promised them “the same care I got,” brushed aside the polls at his Monday night rally.

“Twenty-two days from now, we are going to win this state, we are going to win four more years in the White House!” he said.

Trump also continued to try to depict Biden as being too old and unfit for office, pointing to a moment on Monday when he appeared unable to remember the name of Mitt Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, and mistakenly said he was running for Senate.

“Sleepy Joe Biden had a particularly bad day today,” Trump tweeted. “He couldn’t remember the name of Mitt Romney, said again he was running for the U.S. Senate, and forgot what State he was in.

“If I did any of this, it would be disqualifying. With him, he’s just Sleepy Joe!”

Romney, meanwhile, issued an appeal to both campaigns and the country at large to “lower the heat,” saying the “consequence of the crescendo of anger leads to a very bad place.”

Romney, the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump during his impeachment trial earlier this year, said he was “troubled by our politics.”

“It has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass that is unbecoming of any free nation — let alone the birthplace of modern democracy,” he said in a statement.

Romney condemned Trump for calling Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris a “monster” and for urging the “Justice Department to put the prior president in jail.”

“Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own — though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others,” he said.

“The world is watching America with abject horror,” Romney added. “It’s time to lower the heat. Leaders must tone it down.”

(AFP)

US President Donald Trump made his first public appearance since returning to the White House on Monday from a three-day stay in hospital for Covid-19, even as his aides remained silent on whether he is still contagious.

Trump spoke from the White House balcony at an event called ‘a peaceful protest for law & order,’ attended by a few hundred people standing on the lawn below. His appearance is seen as a first step toward resuming full campaigning next week.

Trump appeared maskless, declaring from the White House balcony: “I am feeling great.”

“I want you to know our nation is going to defeat this terrible China virus,” Trump told the cheering crowd, most wearing masks but with very little social distancing at the outdoor event.

“It’s going to disappear, it is disappearing,” the president said of the virus, which has killed more than 210,000 Americans and severely dented his chances of winning a second term on November 3.

The Republican president will travel on Monday to central Florida, a state crucial to his re-election hopes.

He will stage his first campaign rally since his coronavirus diagnosis at an airport in the town of Sanford. The campaign did not disclose if it would be held in a hangar with doors open, as it has in the past, or entirely outside.

As the president prepared to return to the trail, the body that oversees presidential debates said the match-up between Trump and Biden, the Democratic candidate, scheduled for October 15 had been formally canceled.

Trump refused to participate in what was supposed to be the second of three debates with Biden after the Commission on Presidential Debates switched it to a virtual contest in the wake of the president’s illness.

The final debate on October 22 is still set to take place.

‘Superspreader event’

Questions remain about whether Trump, who announced on October 2 he had the virus and spent three nights in a military hospital, is still contagious.

In an appearance on Fox News on Friday evening, Trump said he was tested again for the virus but did not disclose the result. He also said he had stopped taking medications to combat it. “I feel really strong,” Trump said.

The illness has kept him from holding public rallies and attending fundraisers at a critical juncture of the campaign. He trails Biden in opinion polls with just weeks to go before the election.

Attendees at the Florida rally will be given a temperature check, masks that they will be encouraged to wear and access to hand sanitizer, the campaign said.

Biden sharply criticized Trump’s decision to resume campaigning. “Good luck. I wouldn’t show up unless you have a mask and can distance,” he told reporters in Paradise, Nevada. Trump and his administration have faced criticism for their handling of the pandemic, as well as for a lax approach to mask-wearing and social distancing in the White House and – in recent days – confusing messages about how ill the president has been.

At least 11 people who attended a White House event on September 26 where Trump announced his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have since tested positive.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, on Friday called it a “superspreader event.”

“It was in a situation where people were crowded together, were not wearing masks. So the data speak for themselves,” Fauci told CBS Radio.

‘He wants to be out there’

Nine Covid-19 cases have also been linked to a Trump rally in Bemidji, Minnesota on September 18, the state’s health department said on Friday, according to local media.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said the president was eager to resume campaigning but would do so safely. “He wants to talk to the American people, and he wants to be out there,” she told Fox News.

“There are medical tests underway that will ensure that when the president is back out he will not be able to transmit the virus,” McEnany added.

With Trump’s management of the pandemic dominating the campaign, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Americans steadily losing confidence in how he has managed the health crisis – with his net approval on the issue hitting a new low.

McEnany is one of a string of Trump aides, including his campaign manager, who have tested positive in the last week as the virus spread within the White House and Trump campaign.

Biden has continued to campaign during Trump’s illness, spending the day in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At a drive-in rally where people attended in vehicles, Biden ripped Trump for careless behavior since being infected with the virus.

“His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis, the destabilizing effect it’s having on our government is unconscionable. He didn’t take the necessary precautions to protect himself or others. And the longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he gets,” said Biden, who gave the entire speech wearing a surgical mask and his signature aviator sunglasses.

The attendees honked horns to sound their approval.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

US Vice-President Mike Pence and Democratic running mate Kamala Harris have clashed fiercely over the coronavirus pandemic in a TV debate.

Ms Harris accused President Donald Trump of “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country”.

Mr Pence said Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s pandemic plan was “plagiarism” of the current White House’s.

Mr Biden leads Mr Trump with 27 days to go to the vote.

In Wednesday night’s 90-minute debate at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Ms Harris was asked whether she would take an approved Covid-19 vaccine distributed ahead of the election.

The 55-year-old California senator said she would not take a vaccine touted by Mr Trump without the approval of medical professionals.

Mr Pence – a mild mannered former Indiana governor known for his steadfast loyalty to Mr Trump – retorted: “The fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine if the vaccine emerges during the Trump administration I think is unconscionable.

“And, senator, I just ask you, stop playing politics with people’s lives.”

The plexiglass barriers separating the two debaters seated 12ft (3.6m) apart was a vivid reminder of the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans.

The president – who is himself recovering from the virus – returned to the White House on Monday evening after three nights in hospital, with his opinion poll numbers drooping.

On Wednesday he declared that catching the disease was a “blessing from God” that exposed to him to experimental treatments he vowed would become free for all Americans.

Source: BBC