Superman or superspreader? Trump claims Covid immunity
Welcome to today’s US election briefing for Australia.
Every political campaign produces visual images that stick in your mind, but so far one of the starkest for me is one that didn’t actually happen.
Last week Trump reportedly floated the idea of leaving hospital appearing frail and wearing a business shirt, only to tear it open to reveal a Superman shirt underneath. He didn’t go through with the Willy Wonka-esque stunt, which was reported by the New York Times, but the story has nonetheless gifted us the cursed mental image for life.
The story tells us so much – not just about Trump’s commitment to pantomime politics (or the fact that he thinks he has a rig like Henry Cavill?) – but about his determination to reframe America’s worsening Covid catastrophe as the story of his own personal triumph. Case numbers continue to rise in the US and more than 214,000 people have died, but Trump is using his own experience to bat away the severity of the coronavirus and effectively say “Mission Accomplished”.
His latest move has been to suggest he not only doesn’t have the virus anymore (though neither he nor his doctors will say whether he has tested negative), but to claim he is “immune”. He has also continued to tout the experimental cocktail of drugs and antibodies he has been treated with as a “cure”. It comes as he plans a return to the campaign trail this week, with rallies planned in key swing states. Even if his dreams of being a superman were thwarted last week, the possibility he could be a superspreader endures. The big stories
Dr Fauci criticised Trump’s reelection campaign for using his words out of context in a new ad to make it appear as if he was praising the administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s supreme court nominee, are going ahead this week. Her opening statement, where she says she will approach cases based on law,
not her personal views, was leaked to the press over the weekend.
The hearings come amid new revelations Barrett was a member of a “right to life” group as recently as 2016, adding to evidence she has advocated against abortion rights and publicly supported reversal of the crucial Roe v Wade decision.
The Democrats have a difficult needle to thread in questioning Barrett on issues such as abortion – appearing hostile to her religiousness itself could help mobilise conservative Republican voters.
Democrats’ hopes of winning back control of the Senate rely on picking up several key swing states. South Carolina is one that could be in contention – Democratic candidate Jamie Harrison just set a fundraising record.
Quote of the day
The chief executive of Regeneron, the pharmaceutical company that produced the antibody cocktail that Trump received, waters down claims their drug is a Covid cure.
Election views Donald Trump once bragged he could shoot someone “in the middle of Fifth Avenue” and he wouldn’t lose votes. The fact that his supporters have stuck with him even as the Covid death toll spirals is proof that’s true,writes Robert Reich. “Trump’s Fifth Avenue principle has kept him in power for almost four years of death and mayhem that would have doomed the presidencies of anyone else.”
Republican senator Lindsay Graham is in the dogfight of his life trying to fend off Jamie Harrison in South Carolina (see the above story about fundraising). In this longread, former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal charts his rise and potential impending fall in Washington, looking at how a politician once regarded as the “genial star of the comedy club … has become an object of ridicule.”
Podcast of the day
Guardian US investigative journalist Stephanie Kirchgaessner has been looking at the career and personal life of Amy Coney Barett, including membership to the secretive Catholic group People of Praise. In this podcast she discusses what her appointment would mean for the US.
Around the web
Many religious Latino voters feel “politically homeless” at this election, this interesting NYT piece shows, torn between their anger at Trump’s nativist immigration rhetoric but uncomfortable with the Democrats’ liberal position on issues like abortion.
Democrats argue Trump poses an existential threat to America but fail to use their power to really oppose him, the Atlantic argues. “Liberalism in the Trump era has thus become a kind of strange pantomime act in which elite politicians deploy the rhetoric of imminent threats and national emergency only to behave like hapless passengers trapped aboard a sinking ship.”
LeBron James and the LA Lakers just clinched the NBA title. Ok, it’s not election news but it probably will be soon. Trump had a spray at James – an outspoken critic of the president – over the weekend. I expect he’ll have more to say tomorrow.
What the numbers say:12 million The amount, in US dollars, that 60 customers with interests at stake before the Trump administration allegedly brought his family business in the first two years of his presidency, according to a major new investigation from the NYT.
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