Biden news: Ex-VP ‘getting Covid test today’ as Trump diagnosis throws election into chaos
Read back our blog of the aftermath of Trump’s positive coronavirus test
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Your support makes all the difference.Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will get tested for coronavirus later today after sharing the stage with President Donald Trump during the presidential debate on Tuesday.
It comes just hours after the US president announced he and his wife, Melania Trump, have tested positive for coronavirus and are in quarantine.
Mr Trump’s diagnosis also comes during a crucial period before the November elections, with both his and Mr Biden’s campaigns thrown into a tailspin.
Questions have been raised over whether the former vice-president should suspend his campaign while his rival remains in quarantine for the next 15 days.
But the development settles the focus of the campaign right where Mr Biden has put his emphasis for months: on Trump's response to a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the US. And for the short term, it's grounded Mr Trump in isolation, denying him the large public rallies that fuel his campaign.
“From now until we get to the election, attention is going to be back where it should be: on Covid, the president's response and the impact — and on health care,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, a Biden supporter. “This proves our candidate was right all along.”
Karen Finney, another Democratic consultant and top adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, said the immediate focus should be on the Trumps' health. But she added the development proves that not even Mr Trump, no matter his talents for dictating headlines and framing events, can control a pandemic.
“It's a reminder that the American presidency is bigger than any one person, given the reach and depth this news has,” she said, noting that a health scare for a president not only dominates headlines but can rattle financial markets.
Trump tweeted Friday that he'd begin quarantining and recovery. He's cancelled his weekend itinerary in Wisconsin, one of the three Great Lakes states that he won by less than one percentage point in 2016 on his way to the presidency.
Americans have already begun voting in several states, meanwhile, and tens of millions will receive absentee mail-in ballots or be eligible for in-person early voting in the coming weeks.
Additional reporting by AP
Trump’s Supreme Court pick could ultimately boost Biden
President Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court has energized his conservative supporters, but public opinion on abortion, healthcare and other hot-button issues the court may face could work against him in the November election, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
Trailing Democrat Joe Biden in national opinion polls, the Republican Trump hopes to build enthusiasm for his re-election among undecided and independent voters, especially in U.S. battleground states that decide presidential elections.
But those voters are more likely to align with Democratic positions favoring abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act(ACA), a healthcare law popularly known as Obamacare, and may be turned off by the appointment of a conservative judge at odds with their views, according to the polling conducted in September and released this week.
Among both independent and undecided voters, those who want abortion to remain legal outnumber those who do not by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, according to the Reuters/Ipsos polling. The polls also show that 56 percent of suburban women, a demographic that Trump has been courting, support abortion rights.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Obamacare, which Trump has vowed to scrap, is backed by six of 10 registered independent and undecided voters. It also is relatively popular among groups that Trump usually relies on for support, such as whites without a college degree, half of whom say the law should be retained.
Reuters
BREAKING: Joe Biden will get tested for coronavirus this morning following President Donald Trump’s positive result for the virus, according to CNN journalist Jim Sciutto.
The two shared a debate stage earlier this week at an event in which Mr Trump’s family failed to wear masks, including Melania Trump, who has also tested positive.
Fox News has speculated that Joe Biden may provide some sort of address in response to Donal Trump’s positive test for coronavirus.
The former vice-president has yet to publicly comment on the news.
Vice-president Mike Pence has tested negative for coronavirus this morning, vice-presidential spokesperson Devin O’Malley has tweeted.
Sanders returns to in-person campaigning on behalf of Biden
Bernie Sanders is returning to in-person campaigning for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March, heading to the battleground states of New Hampshire and Michigan to promote Joe Biden and sooth any lingering tensions between the Democratic Party's progressive and centrist wings.
Spokesman Mike Casca says the Vermont senator will hold a socially distanced, outdoor rally Saturday in Lebanon, New Hampshire which will be capped to keep crowds from growing too large.
On Monday, Mr Sanders will host a drive-in rally in Macomb County, Michigan — a Detroit suburb that voted Republican in 2016 and was instrumental in clinching the White House for President Donald Trump.
Mr Sanders ended his presidential primary campaign in April and endorsed Mr Biden just days later, as both candidates worked to promote party unity that largely eluded Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Some of Mr Sanders' top advisers and supporters later formed joint task forces with their counterparts from Mr Biden's camp to hammer out agreements on major policy issues that were reflected in the Democratic Party platform.
Also, high ranking Sanders campaign leaders have formed two Super PACs to promote Mr Biden — despite Mr Sanders personally opposing outside money in politics.
AP
Chris Wallace told Fox News this morning that the Trump family refused to wear masks at Tuesday’s debate, in which he was the moderator. This despite the fact doctors had said everyone bar Mr Wallace, Donald Trump and Joe Biden had to wear them.
He said members of Mr Biden’s entourage, including his wife Jill Biden, all wore masks and kept them on during the debate.
“On the Trump side of the hall, Mrs Trump came in wearing a mask but took it off when she sat down. I didn’t see when they came in, but all the other members of the first family that I saw there … when they sat down they weren’t wearing masks," Mr Wallace said.
He added the family “waved away” a doctor who had offered them masks.
Joe Biden has commented for the first time about Donald Trump’s positive test for coronavirus.
Jill and I send our thoughts to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for a swift recovery. We will continue to pray for the health and safety of the president and his family," the former vice-president just tweeted.
Biden campaign officials have told NBC News correspondent Mike Memoli that the Trump campaign has made no formal contact with them over Donald Trump contracting coronavirus.
Joe Biden will get tested the virus today, having shared a debate stage with Mr Trump on Tuesday.
In Wisconsin, some Latinos feel ignored by Biden
Cesar Hernandez says he has made thousands of phone calls since June urging Latinos in the battleground state of Wisconsin to support Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
It's a tough sell, admits Hernandez, especially where he lives on the South Side of Milwaukee, the heart of Wisconsin's Latino community. He said Biden's Spanish-language ads on Hulu and Facebook aren't connecting with the neighborhood's voters, many of whom would prefer a more personal touch.
“Latinos have seen almost nothing from Biden here,” said Hernandez, 25, who works for the Progressive Turnout Project, a national group working to mobilize Democratic voters. “There is very little enthusiasm for him.”
As the race to the Nov. 3 election enters the home stretch, appeals to Latino voters have taken on new urgency for Biden and incumbent Republican President Donald Trump. Both campaigns are pouring resources into the battleground states of Florida and Arizona, as well as increasingly competitive Nevada, whose large Latino populations could determine the outcome in those states.
Even in Wisconsin, where 87% of the population is white, the state's 230,000 eligible Latino voters could prove critical. Trump won the state by just 22,000 votes in 2016.
Reuters
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