Obama says Trump failed to take pandemic, presidency seriously

Calling Joe Biden his “brother,” Barack Obama on Saturday accused Donald Trump of failing woefully to take the coronavirus pandemic and the presidency seriously as Democrats leaned on America's first Black president to energize Black voters in battleground Michigan on the final weekend of the 2020 campaign.

Obama, the 44th president, and Biden, his vice president who would like to be the 46th, held drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit, predominantly Black cities where strong turnout will be necessary to swing the longtime Democratic state to Biden's column after Trump won it in 2016.

“Three days until the main election of our lifetime - and which includes mine, which was pretty important,” said Obama, urging Democrats to access the polls.

The memories of Trump's win in Michigan and all of those other Upper Midwest are still searing in the minds of several Democrats during this closing stretch before Tuesday's election. That leaves Biden in the positioning of holding a constant lead in the national polls and an advantage in most battlegrounds, including Michigan, but still facing anxiety it might all slip away.

As of Saturday, practically 92 million voters had already cast ballots nationwide, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Tens of millions more will vote by the time polls close on Tuesday night.

The former president hammered on Trump's continued concentrate on how big is his campaign crowds.

“Did nobody come to his birthday party when he was a youngster? Was he traumatized?” Obama said in a mocking tone. “The country’s going through a pandemic. That’s not what you’re supposed to be worrying about."

During the day, Trump and Biden, both septuagenarians, threw stinging barbs at one another that at moments verged into schoolyard taunt territory.

Speaking in Flint, Biden joked of Trump, “When you were in senior high school, wouldn’t you have liked to take a shot?” He also mocked the president as a “macho man."

Trump, too, on Saturday suggested he could take down Biden if given the chance and suggested the former vice president wears sunglasses to cover up “surgery on the eyes.”

“He’s not a huge guy,” Trump said of Biden. “Hook slap, you wouldn’t need to close your fist.”

Later in Detroit, Biden ridiculed Trump for calling himself a “perfect specimen," called him Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “puppy,” and joked in regards to a NY Times report that showed Trump had spent $70,000 on hair care.

As Biden campaigned in Michigan, Trump made an aggressive play for pivotal Pennsylvania, focusing largely on his white, working-class base.

At an evening rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump announced that he had issued a memorandum that calls on government agencies to determine fracking’s effect on the economy and trade and the costs of banning the coal and oil extraction through fracking.

The president has repeatedly charged that Biden will end fracking - a big industry in Pennsylvania and other states - even as the former vice president has said that he does not support a ban on fracking.

“Basically, if among these maniacs arrive plus they say we’re gonna end fracking, we’re gonna destroy the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," Trump said in announcing his memorandum. “You can say, sorry about that."

Early in the day in a tiny town in Bucks County on the eastern edge of the state, Trump raised baseless concerns about election fraud, pointing particularly at Philadelphia, a city whose large African American population is paramount to Biden's fate in the state.

“They say you need to be very, careful - what goes on in Philadelphia," Trump charged. “Everybody has to watch.”

Republicans are betting that Trump can win a second term by driving up turnout among his strongest supporters - white, noncollege-educated men and rural voters - while limiting Biden's advantage with Blacks and Latinos. Democrats in several swing states worry that voters of color might not be excited enough about Biden showing up in the numbers they want.

In Michigan, Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat who represents the Flint area, said he previously been pressing for a couple of months for Biden or Obama to go to almost all Black city where a water crisis that commenced in 2014 sickened the city’s residents, exposing stark racial inequities.

“Turning up matters,” Kildee said. “The message is important, no question about any of it. But there’s a note implicit in turning up, especially in Flint.”

Biden's campaign announced it had been sending Obama to Florida and Georgia on Monday. He's the campaign’s most effective asset to greatly help energize the nonwhite voters Democrats so badly have to defeat Trump. “Joe Biden is my buddy. I love Joe Biden, and he'll be considered a great president," Obama said Saturday.

The press for Michigan’s Black voters comes after voting was down roughly 15% in Flint and Detroit four years ago - a combined 48,000-plus votes in circumstances Trump carried by about 10,700 votes. Overall, the Black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in twenty years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% four years earlier, in line with the Pew Research Center.

Trump isn't ceding Michigan to Biden. He visited Waterford Township, near Detroit, on Friday and held a rally in the state capital, Lansing, earlier this week, although surging coronavirus cases are clouding his presidency.

The worst week of the entire year, regarding new infections, arrived with Election Day looming. A lot more than 99,000 Americans reported new infections on Friday, a record high, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Trump told Pennsylvania voters that his administration has done “an unbelievable job” dealing with the pandemic. He promised that the mass distribution of a vaccine was “just weeks away.” He's been saying that since August,

Biden has focused almost exclusively on Trump’s inability to control the pandemic. “We’re gonna beat this virus and get it in order and the first rung on the ladder to doing that's beating Donald Trump," Biden said.

With the campaign right down to the ultimate days, Trump’s closing sprint includes, as well as the four stops in Pennsylvania, almost twelve events in the ultimate 48 hours across states he carried in 2016.

Biden will close out his campaign on Monday in Pennsylvania, the state where he was born and the main one he’s visited more than any other. The Biden team announced that the candidate, his wife, Jill, running mate Kamala Harris, and the senator's husband, Doug Emhoff, intend to “fan out across all four corners of the state.”