WILMINGTON, Oct 16 — President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden plan to hit the campaign trail again today with visits to three battleground states, after displaying their sharply contrasting styles in duelling televised town halls.
Trump is lagging in opinion polls and latest figures from his campaign showed he is also behind in fundraising in the final weeks before the November 3 election.
Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee raised some US$247.8 million (RM1 billion) in September, his campaign manager said on Twitter, well behind the US$383 million haul of Biden and the Democratic Party.
Last night’s split-screen events replaced a presidential debate that was cancelled after Trump’s bout with coronavirus.
A combative Trump, sparring with moderator Savannah Guthrie on NBC, refused to condemn the bizarre conspiracy theory QAnon, reiterated his unsubstantiated assertion that the 2020 election is rife with fraud and questioned whether masks can help combat the spread of Covid-19.
Biden delivered policy-heavy answers and focused his attacks on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which has killed 216,000 people in the United States and hammered the economy.
National opinion polls have shown Biden ahead for months and it was not clear whether Trump’s aggressive posture would alter what has been a stable race despite a whirlwind of news.
More than 18.6 million Americans have already cast ballots, far more than at a similar juncture in 2016, according to a tracker at the US Elections Project at the University of Florida.
Louisiana will begin early voting today, following record turnout in competitive states Georgia, Texas and North Carolina this week.
Trump will travel to Florida and Georgia, two states that are seen as crucial to his chances of victory, while Biden will visit two cities in Michigan, another battleground state.
The second presidential debate had been scheduled for yesterday, but Trump pulled out after organisers said it would be virtual to lessen the risk of infection. The president, who spent several days at a military hospital after contracting the virus two weeks ago, has since returned to headlining campaign rallies.
In yesterday’s town hall event in Miami, he denounced white supremacists two weeks after failing to do so forcefully at the first presidential debate. But he would not do the same about QAnon, a fringe movement whose adherents believe Democrats are part of a global paedophilia ring.
“I do know they are against paedophilia, they fight it very hard,” Trump said, before saying he knew nothing about the conspiracy theory when pressed by Guthrie.
He also questioned whether masks are effective at stopping the spread of coronavirus, contradicting the consensus among public health experts, including those in his own administration.
Biden policies
In Philadelphia on the ABC network, Biden outlined his plans to combat the pandemic and revive the economy by prioritising testing, funding local and state governments and hiking taxes dramatically on corporations and the wealthy.
He again deferred when asked whether he supports adding justices to the Supreme Court, which some Democrats favour as a response to Republicans’ tactics in pushing for quick confirmation of Trump’s latest nominee to the court, Amy Coney Barrett. But he said he would announce his position before the election.
Coronavirus dominated the proceedings, as it has loomed over the last seven months of the campaign.
Trump, who has played down the crisis, said again yesterday that the country has “rounded the corner,” despite surges in cases in many states.
Biden’s campaign said yesterday that three people who recently travelled with him or his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, had tested positive. Neither candidate had close contact with the infected individuals, the campaign said, but Harris cancelled her in-person events through Sunday as a precaution. — Reuters
