Covid crisis shows Trump sees older voters as 'expendable', says Biden
Joe Biden has said Donald Trump views older voters as “expendable” and “forgettable” as the Democratic presidential candidate sought to win fresh support in the battleground state of Florida.
Biden’s visit on Tuesday came a day after the president’s own trip to Florida – his first outside Washington since his Covid-19 diagnosis.
Speaking to about 50 people at a socially distanced event in Broward County in South Florida, Biden said Trump had recklessly dismissed the threat that the virus had posed to their at-risk population.
“To Donald Trump, you’re expendable. You’re forgettable. You’re virtually nobody. That’s how he sees seniors. That’s how he sees you,” Biden said.
He added said he was disappointed that Trump’s bout with the virus had not left him more chastened about his approach to the pandemic. “The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to get,” Biden said. “Thank God we only have three weeks left to go.”
A Biden win in Florida would seriously jeopardise the president’s chances of re-election, and most recent opinion polls show the Democrat ahead with key demographic groups in the state, particularly seniors. Trump won Florida in 2016 by 1.2 percentage points.
An Opinium Research and Guardian opinion poll shows Biden’s lead over Trump surging to a record 17 points. Some 57% of likely voters said they intended to vote for Biden, while just 40% say they would vote for the incumbent president. The 17-point gap is even bigger than than 57%-41% margin found by CNN earlier this month.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday showed Biden with a seven-percentage-point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, with a majority of voters saying Biden would do a better job of handling the pandemic.
Early voting ahead of election day on 3 November is breaking records across the US, with more than 11.8m ballots cast so far, including more than 1.6m in Florida, according to the Elections Project at the University of Florida.
Biden, 77, has accused Trump, 74, of wanting to gut the social security benefit program for retirees, an allegation that Trump’s campaign denied again on Tuesday, saying Biden was trying “to scare seniors for political reasons”.
Biden later staged an outdoor, drive-in event in nearby Miramar, Florida, with dozens of cars attending, honking their horns along to his speech.
Trump visited Johnstown, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, arguably the most important state on the electoral map, speaking in his second rally since contracting coronavirus for more than an hour to thousands packed in tightly and mostly maskless.
He told the crowd he felt extra pressure to win because Biden was the worst presidential candidate of all time. He also tweeted an image superimposing Biden’s face on that of a care home resident, in a move unlikely to appeal to older voters. Trump made a local pitch, hammering home the false claim that a Biden administration would limit fracking in areas where the economy is heavily dependent on energy. Biden’s proposal would only bar new leases on federal land, a fraction of US fracking operations.
Touting his elimination of a federal rule that would have brought more lowincome housing to the suburbs, Trump zeroed in on groups whose support he has struggled to retain, including female voters turned off by his rhetoric.
“So I ask you to do me a favour. Suburban women: Will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighbourhood, OK?” Trump said. “The other thing: I don’t have that much time to be that nice. You know, I can do it, but I gotta go quickly.”
Trump plans rallies in Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida later this week as he tours crucial states just weeks ahead of the November election.
The president’s schedule, however, also sends him to areas friendly to him, suggesting that his campaign is concerned with mobilising his conservative base rather than reaching out to undecided voters, many of whom live in the nation’s suburbs.
The president returned to the campaign trail on Monday night in Florida for the first time since disclosing he had the coronavirus, throwing out protective masks to supporters but not wearing one himself as he talked about his recovery.
“I went through it now. They say I’m immune. I feel so powerful,” Trump told the crowd, who stood shoulder to shoulder, with most not wearing face coverings. “I will kiss everyone in that audience, I will kiss the guys and the beautiful women, I will give you a big fat kiss.”
The rally came hours after the White House said Trump had tested negative for Covid-19 on consecutive days and was not infectious to others. In a memo, White House physician Dr. Sean Conley did not say when the tests were conducted.
Biden has been critical of Trump’s management of the pandemic. Trump has worked for months to shift public attention away from the coronavirus, which has infected more than 7.8 million people in the US, killing more than 214,000 people and putting millions out of work.