As US struggles with virus, Trump heads to Mt Rushmore for July 4

Washington, July 3: Under fire for his silence in the face of America’s spiralling Coronavirus caseload, President Donald Trump heads to Mount Rushmore on Friday for a night of fireworks that he hopes will soothe a nation he has struggled to unite.

On the eve of the country’s Independence Day, the Republican leader will speak in the shadow of four of his notable predecessors: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, whose heads are carved into the granite in South Dakota.

The billionaire real estate mogul-turned-president, who has seemingly turned a blind eye to the shocking increase in the number of virus cases in many US states, has been openly exuberant about the Rushmore event.

Some 7,500 people are expected to attend -- and social distancing is not on the agenda. “We’re going to have a tremendous evening. It’s going to be a fireworks display like few people have seen. It’s going to be very exciting,” he said on Thursday.

Will Trump speak about the pandemic that has claimed nearly 1,30,000 American lives, and the resurgence of cases in the country’s south and west?

The nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, has said the uptick “puts the entire country at risk.” So will Trump wear a face mask, setting an example for the nation after resisting for months, as many politicians and others, even in his own camp, have asked him to do?

The Republican president is in a political predicament,

badly trailing his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the polls with four months to go before the presidential election.

For now, he is sticking with one tried-and-true message, that he conveyed on Thursday: the coronavirus crisis is being “handled,” the US economy is “roaring back,” and 2021 is going to be a “phenomenal” year.

But in contrast with Europe, infection rates and daily case totals are increasing in the United States, and some states are beating their own grim records nearly every day.

— AFP