Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
YUK! Days after virus battle, Trump offers to give all his supporters a ‘big fat kiss’ BIZARRE SPEECH AT FLORIDA RALLY
Donald Trump’s Covid denial tour is back on the road, and as he desperately tries to convince voters he is invincible after beating the virus, he struts, unmasked, to the podium in Florida and declares: “I’ll kiss everyone in that audience.”
A terrifying thought even though White House physician Sean Conley announced that Trump had tested negative for Covid-19 moments before the President touched down at Orlando Sanford International Airport.
The doors to Air Force One open, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats hit Memory blares out, and Trump’s Covid diagnosis seems all but forgotten to the thousands packed into thi s election rally more tightly than a rugby scrum.
As I stand in line, I take a count of the 100 or so people snaking around the barriers in front of me and spot only five wearing masks.
The secret service agent who checks me at security is not wearing one either, and these are the people in regular contact with White House staff.
As I do my best to social distance, I draw looks of disdain for wearing a mask. People approach me, thinking a man in a suit must be in the Presidential team. One man in a MAGA cap, asks: “Does Mr Trump know his team are going against him? Wearing a mask is a sign of weakness for him. You’re not weak are you?” He then walks away, laughing. So when Trump makes his way to the stage hurling packs of face masks into the crowd, while not wearing one himself, he was wasting his time. Most had rejected masks being handed out at the entrance. As he takes to the microphone on the outdoor stage, Trump sounds at times hoarse and strained as he repeats his claim to be fully recovered. He says: “I feel so powerful, I ’ ll walk into that
audience. I’ll walk in there. I’ll kiss the wouldn’t be where I am today – guys and the beautiful women ... retired. Because of what he has done everybody. I’ll just give ya a big fat kiss. with the US economy, my money has
“I went through it and now they say skyrocketed. He’s also strong on law I’m immune.” and order and gun rights.
He then claims, with no evidence at “If Biden wins I’ ll be looking for all, that his rival for the Oval Office, another country to live in. America Democrat Joe Biden, would delay a will fall apart. It will be terrible.” vaccine and “prolong the pandemic”. When I ask about Trump’s handling
After his four days in hospital with of Covid, the former nurse, who is not Covid-19, Trump was wearing a mask, says: keen to appear fit and “I ’v e seen how th e healthy in Florida, common flu takes which he must win on people’s lives. It’s not November 3 to stand a Trump’s fault. It’s just chance of re-election. God’s way of controlling
Covid, which under the population. It the President has killed cannot be stopped.” more than 212,000 Asked why she and
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Americans, is viewed by friend, Kathy Liver, 73, many here as the biggest are not in masks, they threat to his hopes of a say that despite being second term. But to his among hundreds of supporters, his woeful handling of the other people “they are not fearful of pandemic is irrelevant. Covid” and are taking “the necessary
Scarlett Ray, 55, voted for Trump precautions”. Local wedding DJ Zach four years ago and is even more confiScott, 51, shares a similar view, dent of him now than back in 2016. although he says he feels safe as he
She says: “If it weren’t for Trump, I had the virus in June. He adds: “It’s up to the individual what they do, but being around so many people I feel safe as I have had it myself. Although it’s not been proven you cannot get it twice, the evidence seems to suggest not.”
Just hours after I speak to Scott, scientists reveal a 25-year-old had been infected twice earlier this year, the first in the US to be re-infected.
During Trump’s 65-minute address, shorter than his usual appearances but longer than his 18-minute speech on Saturday at the White House, he takes pot shots, not just at Biden but at his predecessor Barack Obama too.
He claims, falsely, that Obama spied on the 2016 Trump campaign, saying, “We’ll take care of it after the election.”
Trump also makes fun of questions about whether he will agree to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.
With three weeks to go before election day, the President is fighting to turn around a deficit in national and battleground state polling.
In Florida, seen as critical to his re-election chances, Trump narrowly beat his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, by
THROWAWAY LINE Trump tosses face masks into the crowd
just over 112,000 votes. Some polls suggest a close race in the Sunshine State in 2020, others have put Biden ahead. Trump’s Sanford rally was his first stop in a busy week that will include events in Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin as he tries to make up ground lost to Biden.
As aides see worrying signs that Trump’s base has been rattled, behind the scenes, several senior Republicans have begun sounding the alarm as they fear the White House is on the verge of being lost to the Democrats.
Some have even appeared to put their heads above the parapet.
They include Arizona Senator Martha Mcsally, known as a “Trump sycophant”, who has recently begun to avoid answering direct questions on her support for the President. Instead, she simply repeats she is “proud to be fighting for Arizona”.
According to latest polls, Biden has pulled further ahead in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, building momentum in two states that Trump carried in 2016.
And as Trump returned to the campaign, Biden was in Ohio, where he was once considered an outsider.
Speaking to union car workers in Toledo, he said he and his former boss Obama played a crucial role in keeping the US auto industry afloat during the financial crisis a decade ago. He said: “Barack and I bet on you and the American worker, and it paid off.”
It was Biden’s second campaign trip in as many weeks to Ohio. It was once thought out of reach, but polls now show Biden is in a competitive race, a point Trump knows only too well.
So, back in Florida, it comes as no surprise when the President openly mocks the small, socially distanced events Biden is hosting, while lauding his own campaign f or the “big crowds”, calling them “the real polls”, to the wild applause of his supporters.
Amid Trump’s usual falsehoods, the only thing to match the excitement in the air were the droplets his barefaced fans shared among themselves.
Any one of them was welcome to my Trump Covid kiss.