Trump adds Covid denial to his emerging homestretch re-election message

Donald Trump returned to the White House in dramatic fashion, vowing to return to the campaign trail and previewing a final re-election message built on several main issues. Despite contracting the coronavirus, a key part of his homestretch sales pitch will be to downplay a sickness that has killed at least 210,000 Americans.

The president reportedly wants to return to the Oval Office, a tighter space than many realise despite experts saying he would remain contagious on what is the fifth full day of being Covid-positive, at some point on Tuesday. He might be back on the campaign trail faster than some anticipate as he is eager to project strength while trying to close ground on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“The Fake News Media refuses to discuss how good the Economy and Stock Market, including JOBS under the Trump Administration, are doing. We will soon be in RECORD TERRITORY,” he wrote. “All they want to discuss is COVID 19, where they won’t say it, but we beat the Dems all day long, also!!!”

The president and top aides have, since he checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre on Friday evening then checked himself out on Monday night, offered peaks inside his October sales pitch.

Covid denial

The president insisted on getting back to the White House on Monday, and promptly removed his mask despite likely spraying infectious particles in his wake. He kept the mask off as he entered the executive mansion into a room with several staffers.

About an hour later, his aides posted a video in which he downplayed a virus that forced him to take a cocktail of powerful-but-experimental drugs and two rounds of supplemental oxygen when his vitals suddenly dipped two times on Friday and Saturday.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it. We have the best medical equipment. We have the best medicines, all developed recently,” he said in the video message

“Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. And I know there’s a risk, there’s a danger, but that’s OK,” the president added. “And now I’m better and maybe I’m immune – I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful.”

A longtime adviser and friend the next morning echoed the president.

“Covid is very dangerous, but so are a lot of illnesses,” Rudy Guiliani, a personal attorney, told Fox News on Monday. “There are ways to deal with it. … There are things that put it in a category that … 98 per cent of people are going to survive.”

The economy

Mr Trump was reportedly studying polling data and discussing his re-election bid while at Walter Reed.

As he prepared to fly back to the White House on Marine One, the economy was on his mind.

“STOCK MARKET UP BIG, 466 Points!  28,149. Great News for America. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!” he tweeted on Monday afternoon.

Mr Guiliani the next morning showed how the Trump campaign intends to link the president’s Covid downplaying and boasts about his economic stewardship.

“Democrats want to paralyse us. I think, in part, because they want a bad economy,” the former New York City mayor said. “They’re not getting it. Trump is building this economy back, it’s way ahead of any of the experts.”But Mr Trump caused a stock market drop on Tuesday afternoon when he announced on Twitter he had pulled the plug on his team’s talks with Speaker Nancy Pelosi about a new coronavirus stimulus deal. US markets tumbled at one point by around 500 points.

Extreme Joe

Even while heavily medicated, the president continues efforts to link the former vice president to the most liberal members of the Democratic Party. On Tuesday morning, he tried to use the hot-button abortion issue to do so.

“Biden and Democrats just clarified the fact that they are fully in favor of (very) LATE TERM ABORTION, right up until the time of birth, and beyond - which would be execution. Biden even endorsed the Governor of Virginia, who stated this clearly for all to hear,” Mr Trump wrote before adding: “GET OUT & VOTE!!!”

The president appeared to be slamming Mr Biden for a comment he made during a town hall with voters that aired on Monday night on NBC when Mr Biden said he would, should Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett be seated and help conservatives overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, try to make Roe  “the law of the land”.

“Wow. Joe Biden just took a more Liberal position on Roe v. Wade than Elizabeth Warren at her highest,” he tweeted. “He also wants to PACK our great United States Supreme Court. This is what the Dems will do. Remember as they try changing positions before elections end. GET OUT AND VOTE!”

Law and order

This one has faded since the president fell ill and needed supplemental oxygen and a three-day hospital stay.

But it was the centrepiece of his pre-Walter Reed message, meaning it’s merely on the back burner while the president tries to get first back in the Oval Office then on the campaign trail.

During a blitz of all-capital-letters tweets on Monday morning before sunrise, the president wrote: “LAW & ORDER. VOTE!”