Trump tends to electoral map, Biden prepping for big debate
US president and his challenger gear up for the final presidential debate in Tennessee
US President Donald Trump is hopping from one must-win stop on the electoral map to the next in the lead-up to a final presidential debate that may be his last and best chance to alter the trajectory of the 2020 campaign.
Democrat Joe Biden has been taking the opposite approach, holing up for debate prep in advance of Thursday night’s (Friday morning in India) face-off in Nashville, Tennessee. Trump, trailing in polls in most battleground states, stopped in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and was bound for North Carolina on Wednesday as he delivers what his campaign sees as his closing message.
“This is an election between a Trump super recovery and a Biden depression,” he said in Erie, Pennsylvania. “You will have a depression the likes of which you have never seen. If you want depression, doom and despair, vote for sleepy Joe. And boredom.”
But Trump’s pitch that he should lead the rebuilding of an economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic has been overshadowed by a series of fights.
Before leaving the White House for Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Trump taped part of an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that apparently ended acrimoniously. On Twitter, Trump declared his interview with Lesley Stahl to be “fake and biased,” and he threatened to release a White House edit of it before its Sunday airtime.
Trailing in fund-raising for campaign ads, Trump is increasingly relying on his signature campaign rallies to maximise turnout among his GOP base.
Biden, who taped his own interview with 60 Minutes on Monday at a theatre near his home, had no public events , and wasn’t scheduled to travel except to the debate - on Thursday. His running mate, California
Senator Kamala Harris, was out campaigning, and he was expected to receive a late boost from former president Barack Obama, who was to host an event on Wednesday in Philadelphia.
Biden is now tested about every two days for the coronavirus and has never been found to be positive. He suggested before last week’s planned second debate in Miami that the proceedings shouldn’t happen if Trump was still testing positive for Covid-19 after contracting the virus earlier in the month.
The candidates instead held duelling town halls on separate networks after the commission said the debate should occur virtually, citing safety concerns, and Trump rejected the idea.