Biden promises to tackle COVID-19 as Trump pushes 'super-recovery'
28 October, 2020
Joe Biden flayed US President Donald Trump on Tuesday (Oct 27) accusing his rival of surrendering to a surging pandemic, as the Democrat took his campaign to the Republican stronghold of Georgia seven days prior to the US election.
As the former vice president continued electoral offence, wanting to expand the campaign map and his state-by-state way to victory on Nov 3, Trump barnstormed the Midwest in a last-gasp bid to shore up states that voted for him in 2016 but which polls show are tilting Biden's way.
And with the campaign narrowing down to its final days, Biden tapped one of his top surrogates, popular former president Barack Obama, to provide a closing argument for Democrats in Florida, a must-win swing state for Trump if he is to defy the chances and earn reelection.
Biden, buoyed by poll numbers that show him leading the incumbent, drilled in on Trump's handling of the coronavirus, reminding voters that Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows conceded at the weekend that "we're not going to control the pandemic".
Biden, speaking in Warm Springs, Georgia, branded the response "a capitulation" by a White House that "hardly ever really tried" to prevent a pandemic which includes now killed a lot more than 226,000 Americans.
Rather than acting as a wartime president to fight COVID-19 as he promised, Trump "shrugged, he swaggered and he surrendered", Biden said.
"I'm here to let you know: We can and we will control this virus," he added.
"If you give me the honour of serving as your president, clear the decks for action," he said. "For we will act ... on the first day of my presidency to get COVID in order."
'WORKING MY ASS OFF'
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by five points in Georgia in 2016 but polls have the 74-year-old running neck-in-neck with Biden in the Peach State.
Georgia last voted for a Democrat for president practically three decades ago - Bill Clinton in 1992 - but the Biden campaign has high hopes of flipping the state, and in addition winning its two US Senate seats which are up for grabs.
Biden, 77, held a socially distanced drive-in rally later in Atlanta, Georgia's largest city, where he repeated a few of the same attacks on Trump but also urged voters to recognise how essential the state suddenly is to winning the White House.
"We win Georgia, we win everything!" Biden said, his voice rising. "They are the ultimate days, so keep that sense of empowerment with you, that sense of optimism."
Trump meanwhile maintained his hectic campaign pace, holding an open-air rally in Michigan accompanied by two events in Wisconsin.
Both are Midwestern battlegrounds which he won by razor thin margins four years back, but Trump insisted "we're leading almost everywhere" because of his frantic campaign schedule.
"I've surely got to say I'm working my ass off here!" he boomed in Lansing, Michigan, eliciting a huge cheer.
Trump also said his pandemic policies and monetary chops would serve the nation better than Biden.
"This election is a choice between a Trump super-recovery or Biden depression," he said.
But with COVID-19 cases rising in a number of states no agreement yet on a pandemic rescue package in Congress, US stocks mostly slid Tuesday for a third straight session.
Later in Wisconsin, Trump warned Americans that they shouldn't "let this radical socialist group take over" with Biden as president.
"You're going to visit a giant red wave on Tuesday," he said.
'BRING IT HOME'
Election tracking website RealClearPolitics has Biden up 7.4 points within an average of national polls - a slight drop from just days ago.
He also leads Trump by nine points in Michigan, and in Wisconsin is up by typically 5.5 points.
With Biden maintaining a far more constrained campaign schedule rather than hosting what he called Trump's "super-spreader" events, he dispatched Obama to Florida, where in fact the race is on a knife edge.
"One week until the most important election in our lifetimes," Obama told a crowd honking from their cars at a drive-in rally in Orlando.
He delivered a searing indictment of Trump, accusing him of incompetence, repeated lies, embracing dictators and ignoring the pandemic.
But he also offered a blunt assessment of how apathy in 2016 may have cost Democrats the election and he urged them to make a plan and vote early.
"We were complacent last time. Folks got just a little lazy, folks took things for granted, and look what happened," Obama said.
"Not this time around," he said. "Let's bring it home."
With Trump in the Midwest, First Lady Melania Trump hit the hustings for the very first time this year.
"Donald is a fighter," she told Trump supporters in Pennsylvania, before embracing her husband's rabid Twitter use.
"I do not always agree with the way he says things," she said, for some laughter. "But it is important to him that he speaks right to the persons he serves."
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com