Trump, Biden out on the trail
Each present differing visions at events in key battleground states
LANCASTER, Pa. — A presidential campaign that has largely been frozen for several months because of the coronavirus took on a degree of normalcy on Thursday when President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden swung through critical battleground states presenting starkly different visions for a post-pandemic America.
Touring a shipyard in Marinette, Wisconsin, Trump insisted the economy is “coming back at a level nobody ever imagined possible.” But in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Biden warned that “no miracles are coming” and slammed Trump’s handling of the virus.
After long campaigning virtually from his Delaware home, Biden has in recent weeks begun visiting Pennsylvania, allowing him to target a swing state without venturing far.
Lancaster is about an hour and 15 minutes by car from Biden’s house, and yet it is the farthest he’s traveled lately, aside from a trip to Houston to meet with the family of George Floyd, whose death in police custody sparked protests around the nation.
Trump, by contrast, staged a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last weekend and spoke at an Arizona megachurch on Tuesday. On Thursday, he visited a rural Wisconsin shipyard and taped a town hall to be broadcast by Fox News Channel from an airport in Green Bay. Vice President Mike Pence also hit another key state, Ohio.
Biden’s team has organized small events and enforced social distancing. Trump has refused to wear a mask in public, and his campaign says Biden is using a cautious approach to hide the fact that he can’t draw large, enthusiastic crowds.
Biden donned his mask while meeting in an outdoor courtyard with three mothers and two children who told of benefiting from the health care law. Beyond the police cordon, a group of Trump supporters could be heard chanting “four more years” and “USA.”
Biden scoffed at Trump’s suggestion during last weekend’s rally that he’d asked officials to slow down testing for the coronavirus because it was uncovering more cases.
Trump countered during his Wisconsin stop: “If we didn’t test, we wouldn’t have cases.”
Polls in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania show Biden ahead, but nearly every poll had Trump trailing in
2016 before his base came together in the final weeks of the campaign.
Trump went maskless for an event at Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard that was outside. Hundreds attended.
Trump toured vessels under construction, then took credit for a new contract won in April to build Navy frigates at the facility. Trump said it injected economic growth to the community and saved the plant from closure.