Trump news: President plays down record Covid spike as Obama mocks him for ending 60 Minutes interview
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Your support makes all the difference.The campaign heated up on Saturday with multiple events scheduled for both the Trump and Biden campaign, as Election Day draws closer with just 10 days left.
Mr Trump started his day by voting early in West Palm Beach, Florida. After he voted, the president claimed going to the polls was “much more secure” than mail-in voting. He’s used this rhetoric in the last couple of months to discourage Americans from choosing mail-in voting over going to the polls in person amid the coronavirus pandemic, claiming the method encourages fraud.
Then Mr Trump stopped in the battleground state of North Carolina for an afternoon rally in Lumberton. During the rally, the president claimed he won the last presidential debate by 91 per cent to 9 per cent without citing a specific pollster. Polls by CNN, Politico, and YouGov all have Democratic challenger Joe Biden as the winner of the debate.
After North Carolina, Mr Trump continued his tour of battleground states by stopping in Circleville, Ohio. He is scheduled to also speak in Wisconsin later this evening.
All three of these states are currently hotspot locations for the coronavirus with cases and hospitalisations increasing.
On Friday, the US hit the grim milestone of the most new coronavirus cases in a single day since the start of the pandemic. Mr Trump belittled the milestone by claiming both at his rallies and in tweets that only cases were increasing, but hospitalisations are also on the rise in at least 33 states. Experts warn the mortality rate could soon follow.
Mr Biden was also on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania on Saturday. He held two rallies, and they involved him accusing the president of lying about the severity of the novel virus.
The former vice president’s campaign got an added boost with President Barack Obama campaigning for him in Miami, Florida, and singer Jon Bon Jovi campaigning for him in Pennsylvania.
Obama mocks Trump for ending the 60 Minutes interview ahead of time
Obama is laughing as he discusses the infamous 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl, that Donald Trump walked out of after 38 minutes, not wanting to finish the rest of her questions.
"If he can’t answer a tough question like: ‘What would you like to do in your second term?’ then it is our job to make sure he doesn’t get a second term."
Phil Thomas writes:
Obama mocks Trump for walking out of 60 Minutes interview during Miami rally
Former president says his successor doesn’t deserve a second term if he can’t tell Americans what he would do with it
Obama: “You have to have a plan”
The former president is on stage in Miami, laying into his successor for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
"We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook that showed them how to respond to a virus before it reached our shores.
"It must be lost, along with the Republican healthcare plan. We can’t find it.
"Donald Trump isn’t going to protect us. He can’t even take steps to protect himself.
"Just this week he was complaining that the pandemic was making him go back to work. If he had been working in the first place, we wouldn’t have seen the pandemic get this bad.
"This pandemic would have been tough for any president. We haven’t seen anything like it in 100 years.
“But the idea that this White House has done anything other than screw this thing up is nonsense.”
He praises South Korea and Canada for their handling of the virus, saying “we can compare directly what happens when a government is paying attention, and when a government is not.”
Obama continues: "Earlier this week, asked if he would do anything differently, he says not much. Not much? Maybe we should have not pretended like it didn’t exist. Maybe we shouldn’t have had the president on television say things like, if you put some bleach in you it might clean something out.
"The mismanagement might be comical and ridiculous if it didn’t cost lives.
“I bet you can think of some things you’d like to see done differently. Just a baseline is that Joe and Kamala would take this seriously.”
He says Biden is not going to “screw up testing, call scientists idiots, host a super-spreader event at the White House like this president did.”
Obama: “I’m proud to pay my taxes”
Campaigning in Miami, the former president laughs off Donald Trump’s economic record.
He attacks him for his tax avoidance, and says the only people who have got wealthier in the last four years are the “billionaires who got his tax cuts”.Obama
Obama turns to healthcare
He says the Republicans have been promising for four years to come up with a healthcare plan, but “they don’t have one, and they never have.”
He says: “Instead of just ‘fessing up that they don’t want people to have health insurance, they do everything they can to get rid of it.”
Obama points out that right now the Supreme Court is considering outlawing Medicare, Obama’s legacy.
“Miami, Joe and Kamala will protect your healthcare. That’s what they stand for, and that’s why you have to get out there and vote.”
Obama: “Joe Biden would never call the men and women of our forces suckers and losers”
Biden, Obama says, will be a safe pair of hands for the country.
"When a hurricane devastates Puerto Rico, we want a president that does more than just toss toilet paper.
“But it could have been worse. He once asked if he could nuke a hurricane. A nuclear hurricane would be bad.”
He added: "Some of the stuff said down here is nonsense. Listen to the Republicans and you’d think Joe is more communist than the Castros.
"I think people would know by now if Joe was a secret socialist.
"What is true is that he will promote human rights in Cuba and around the world, and he won’t coddle dictators like our current president will.
"Joe Biden is tough. Which you can’t really say about our current president. He likes scowling and being mean - but if you have to walk out of a 60 Minutes interview, you’re never going to stand up to a dictator.
“If you spend all your time complaining about how mean reporters are, you’ll never stand up to Putin.”
Obama onto a winner here….
He says that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “might go a day without tweeting something crazy”.
He says that they will be “normal” presidents, and you might even go a day without shaking your head at their latest tweet.
They might even go a day without appearing on television.
"You’ll be able to go on with your lives without being told to inject bleach. Or being told that the Navy Seals didn’t kill bin Laden.
"We won’t have a president who threatens to put people in jail just for disagreeing with them.
"You wouldn’t tolerate it from a relative, from a co-worker.
"Florida Man wouldn’t even do it. Why are we accepting it from the president of the United States?
"It emboldens others to be mean, and divisive, and racist.
"When you have a president who cannot call out, or even criticise, white supremacists - that’s a problem. That is divisive. It affects all our lives, how our families get along.
“It reflects badly on America.”
Obama: Fired up, ready to go
"People ask me how you can put up with watching your successor do all this.
“I say it can be depressing, but I don’t watch a lot of tv.”
He says that he has been uplifted by people protesting for human rights and the environment, “amazing healthcare workers, people who contribute and volunteer”.
He says: "I know this has been a tough and discouraging time, but I’m here to report to you: America is a good and decent place.
"There are a lot of good people here. There are a lot of folks who share the values of looking out for one another, and doing right for each other.
"Miami, I am asking you to vote for what America can be.
"We can’t abandon the Americans who are hurting right now. The kids who aren’t getting the education they need. The protesters on the streets this summer.
"We have to vote like never before, and leave no doubt. Don’t stop with Joe and Kamala, vote all the way down the ticket.
“We will elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We will leave no doubt at what this country we love stands for.”
He concludes: “Honk if you’re fired up! Honk if you’re ready to go! Let’s make this happen.”
Donald Trump predicts “a red wave”
The president has just landed in Ohio.
He’s predicting “a red wave”.
He laughs at Obama’s recently concluded rally, saying “they couldn’t get anyone to go, where as we have 20,000 people.”
Asked about Covid: “The fact is, we are doing very well. Nobody tests like us. The good news is we know where we might be, but the bad news is you have more cases.”
They are now off to Circleville, just outside Columbus, Ohio.
Jon Bon Jovi on stage in Pennsylvania
Bon Jovi is in Dallas, Pennsylvania, to campaign for Joe Biden.
“We have to remember that under the great Stars and Stripes, we are all one America,” he tells the crowd, urging them to vote for Biden.
He then breaks into a folksy song called You Do What You Can.
It’s apparently a reckoning of life during Covid.
You can sing along:
Tonight they're shutting down the borders
And they boarded up the schools
Small towns are rolling up their sidewalks
One last paycheck coming through
I know you're feeling kind of nervous
We're all a little bit confused
Nothing's the same, this ain't a game
We got to make it through
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