CAMPAIGNS HEAT UP AS FINAL STRETCH NEARS
President to speak at White House event today; status of coronavirus infection unclear
President Donald Trump is planning to hold his first public event since testing positive for the coronavirus, speaking at a gathering today at the White House in a show of defiance that has become a central theme of his re-election campaign.
The event — scheduled to feature Trump speaking from a balcony to a crowd of supporters on the South Lawn — has already caused concern among some officials in the White House, which has been rocked by an outbreak of the deadly disease, according to administration officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans.
But Trump has brushed aside his advisers’ calls for caution, instead embracing a strategy built on playing down the virus and using his own battle with it to argue that the nation has already overcome the pandemic.
“People are going to get immediately better like I did. I mean, I feel better now than I did two weeks ago. It’s crazy,” Trump told Rush Limbaugh on his talk radio show Friday. “And I recovered immediately, almost immediately. I might not have recovered at all from COVID.”
Isolated in the White House for a fifth straight day as his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, campaigned in Nevada, Trump spent several hours Friday talking to friendly media hosts and planning his swift return to the campaign trail even as the status of his coronavirus infection remained unclear.
Trump’s campaign announced that he would lead a rally in Florida on Monday at an airport hangar, similar to the events he had been doing before his diagnosis. There was no indication that extra safety precautions would be in place or
that social distancing would be encouraged.
“All attendees will be given a temperature check, masks which they are encouraged to wear and access to hand sanitizer,” the campaign said, using language similar to previous announcements before events where few attendees wore masks.
While Trump’s doctor said Thursday that he expected the president to be able to resume his public engagements as early as today, the White House did not provide evidence Friday that Trump had received a negative test for the coronavirus.
That did not stop Trump from saying he had been cured and working as normal from the Oval Office, where an official said he spent Friday afternoon. Trump has been eager to escape the confines of the White House and return to his campaign rallies with the election just over three weeks away.
In the week since he was transported to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with serious symptoms of COVID-19, the president has claimed to be immune, called his infection with the virus a “blessing from God” and said that a cure exists for a disease that continues to kill thousands of Americans each week. His campaign has continued to hold large indoor events with surrogates, shunning social distancing. It has made little effort to engage in contact tracing after dozens of White House officials and campaign surrogates contracted the disease.
Trump’s event today is scheduled to take place not far from the location of a Sept. 26 celebration now considered a superspreader event by public health officials after several attendees tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump will speak to a group organized by conservative activist Candace Owens, focusing his remarks on “law and order,” according to an official.
It’s not clear how strictly the White House will enforce safety measures to ensure that participants at the event avoid virus-spreading behavior. Attendees must bring a mask and will be instructed to wear it while at the White House, according to a person familiar with the group’s planning.
“All attendees must submit to a COVID-19 screening tomorrow morning. This will consist of a temperature check and a brief questionnaire,” the person said.
Trump’s rally Monday in Sanford, Fla., is expected to kick off a string of events across the country in front of large crowds. Campaign aides and White House officials said Trump will be barnstorming the nation as soon as it’s known that he has tested negative for the coronavirus and is no longer infectious.
Trump originally was supposed to travel to Miami for a second presidential debate Thursday against Biden. Uncertainty over Trump’s coronavirus infection led the Commission on Presidential Debates to change the format to a virtual event, after which the president pulled out.
On Friday, the commission officially canceled the town hall debate, citing the fact that both Trump and Biden had made other plans for that evening, according to a knowledgeable source. The two candidates have agreed to appear in Nashville, Tenn., for a debate on Oct. 22, which will be a traditional debate and not a town hall meeting.
The continued jockeying over the debate calendar came as Biden finished up a Western swing, completing one of his busiest weeks on the road.
Campaigning in Las Vegas on Friday, Biden spoke to a group of about 20 Latino leaders, all wearing masks, who stood inside white circles the campaign had taped on the ground to help them remain socially distant. Behind Biden were several “Biden-Harris” and “Vote Early Nevada” signs, as well as a mariachi band, whose members were also socially distanced and wearing masks.
Biden rattled off some sobering recent statistics regarding the Latino community — 40,000 Latinos dead of the coronavirus nationwide, 3 million who have lost their jobs, 1 in 3 Latino businesses that have closed — and blamed the “incompetence” of the Trump administration.
The president is hoping that his return to the campaign trail will help him make up a steep polling deficit against Biden in the race’s final days, according to aides. He has been encouraged to prosecute the case against Biden by drawing a contrast with the former vice president on issues including taxes, fracking and environmental regulations.
But his call-in to Limbaugh’s radio show Friday was a freewheeling conversation in which he laced into figures from the media and Hillary Clinton to Attorney General William Barr. The conversation stretched for two hours and ended only when the radio host cut Trump off with music and declared, “I know you’ve got a jam-packed day left on your schedule.”
Later Friday, Trump compelled the State Department to commit to releasing at least some of Clinton’s emails before the Nov. 3 election, resurrecting a 4-yearold issue in hopes that it would prove as helpful to his political prospects as it was when he defeated her in 2016.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he would make public the emails even as reports surfaced that Barr had told congressional Republicans that the Justice Department’s review of the origins of the Russia investigation would not come out before the election.
While Barr defied the president’s desire for preelection action, Pompeo bowed to Trump’s wishes a day after he publicly chastised the secretary of state for not cooperating. Pompeo told Fox News that he would release at least some of Clinton’s emails from when she was secretary of state and using a private server.
“We’ve got the emails,” Pompeo said. “We’re getting them out. We’re going to get all this information out so the American people can see it.”
Neither Trump nor Pompeo explained why they would release the emails now, in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, given that they could have done so at any point in the past four years. Nor did they explain why they would seek to prove that Clinton was too casual with emails containing classified information by releasing emails containing classified information.