Trump blames docs for Covid toll, Biden slams him
Trump says doctors getting paid more to attribute deaths to Covid-19 pandemic
Joe Biden on Friday called out President Donald Trump for putting the blame on doctors for the rise in Covid-19 numbers, with the US smashing records on daily cases.
The country reported a a global single-day record of 100,233 new cases, a Reuters tally showed, and has more than 9 million total infections, with more than 230,000 fatalities.
“Did you hear what he said again today?” Biden said on Friday, referring to remarks by the president earlier at a rally. “He said that our doctors who are putting their lives on the line busting their necks, are making up deaths from Covid because they ’get more money’”.
“Doctors and nurses go to work every day to save lives — they do their jobs.”
Trump had alleged that doctors were getting paid more to attribute deaths to Covid-19 as opposed to other causes as the reason for the high toll in the US, seeking to shift the blame for it from his administration’s shoddy handling of the crisis.
Deprived of big, raucous crowds, Trump delivered on Friday the shortest stump speech yet this cycle, around 21 minutes, to an audience of merely 250 people in Rochester, Minnesota.
And he was not happy about it. “Your far-left Democrat attorney general, Keith Ellison, and your Democrat governor (Tim Walz) tried to shut down our rally, silence the people of Minnesota, and take away your freedom of assembly,” Trump told supporters. “They thought we would cancel—but I will never abandon Minnesota!”
Trump lost Minnesota in the last election, but so narrowly that he has been tempted to seek a win there to offset vulnerabilities and potential reverses in his 2016 pathway to victory.
But just four days from the close of polling on Tuesday, Trump is trailing Biden in the state by a wide margin of 8.1 percentage points at this time, in the Five Thirty Eight weighted average of polls and by 4.7 points in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.
Trump is behind Biden countrywide, by 8.9 percentage points in the Five Thirty Eight weighted average of polls and by 7.9 points in the aggregated average of Real Clear Politics, which also has the former vicepresident in the lead by 3.2 points in the top battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona.
Trump and Biden will be crisscrossing battleground states over the remaining four days, with more than 87 million Americans having voted already in person or by mail in what is proving to be an unprecedented turnout in early voting allowed in the wake of Covid-19.
On Saturday, Biden will address a rally in Michigan along with his former boss and most popular surrogate, former president Barack Obama.
Twitter unfreezes New York Post account
Twitter has lifted a freeze on the account of the New York Post after the newspaper published articles about Biden’s son Hunter. The Post can now send tweets again, the social media platform said on Friday. On October 14, Twitter had said the stories violated its hacked materials policy. Earlier this week, Twitter’s chief Jack Dorsey drew fire from Republican lawmakers, who accused the company of selective censorship against conservatives.
Russia hackers targeted Dems in 2 states
Russian hackers accused of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election earlier this year targeted the email accounts of Democratic state parties in California and Indiana, and influential think tanks in Washington and New York, Reuters reported citing people aware of the matter. The attempted intrusions, many of which were internally flagged by Microsoft over the summer, were carried out by a group often nicknamed “Fancy Bear”.
The hackers’ activity provides insight into how Russian intelligence is targeting the US election. The targets include the Center for American Progress, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On Friday, US officials said Iranian hackers behind a wave of threatening emails to thousands of Americans earlier this month had successfully accessed voter data.