Trump is back on the trail
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump burst back onto the campaign trail Monday night, delivering an energetic and combative hourlong speech in Central Florida meant to demonstrate his recovery from COVID-19 and resuscitate his faltering reelection campaign.
Trump portrayed his illness and three days in the hospital this month as a political badge of honor, one that may have given him antibodies to fend off a recurrence.
“The nice part, I went through it,” Trump told a boisterous and tightly packed crowd of hundreds of supporters at the airport in Sanford, Florida, with Air Force One parked beside his platform.
“Now, they say I’m immune, I feel so powerful I’ll walk into that audience ... I’ll kiss everyone in that audience.”
Evidence is inconclusive on the duration of immunity for people who have had COVID-19. But Trump was not eager to debate the specifics of the disease, which has killed about 215,000 Americans this year, or its drag on the economy and schools.
Giddy to be back on the road for the first time since he was taken to the hospital Oct. 2, Trump handed out masks to some supporters, promised that a vaccine would soon be available, and briefly mourned the lost lives.
But Trump mostly tried to move past the pandemic. He urged a return to “normal life,” calling on governors to lift health restrictions on businesses even as cases are again surging in many states.
Nine states set seven-day records for coronavirus cases last week, with 45,000 new cases reported each day across the country. New cases also emerged from the White House outbreak, with more than 30 people who either work at the White House or recently visited there testing positive for the coronavirus.
Trump’s doctor, Dr. Sean P. Conley, said Monday that Trump had tested negative for COVID-19 two days in a row. Conley did not say when Trump took the tests or when he last tested negative before he was hospitalized on Oct. 2.
Joe Biden, campaigning hours earlier in Republican territory in Ohio, denounced Trump’s handling of the pandemic – including his infection – as the two launched a three-week sprint to the Nov. 3 election.
“His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis has been unconscionable,” Biden said at a drive-in rally at an autoworkers’ union hall in Toledo. “The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to get.”