Trump seeks turnaround
TUCSON, Ariz. — On the third day of a western campaign swing, President Donald Trump was facing intense pressure to turn around his campaign, hoping for the type of last-minute surge that gave him a come-from-behind victory four years ago. But his inconsistent message, the newly rising virus cases and his attacks on experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci could undermine his final efforts to appeal to voters outside his most loyal base.
“I’m not running scared,” Trump told reporters shortly after shortly after taking off for Tucson, Arizona, for his fifth rally in three days. “I think I’m running angry.” He later said he was also running “happy” and “very content.”
His aggressive travel comes as Trump plays defense in states he won four years ago, though the president insisted he was confident as he executed a packed schedule despite the pandemic.
“We’re going to win,” he told campaign staff on a morning conference call from Las Vegas. He went on to acknowledge: “I wouldn’t have told you that maybe two or three weeks ago,” referring to the days when he was hospitalized with COVID-19.
At a rally in Prescott, Arizona, Trump assailed former vice president Joe Biden for pledging to heed the advice of scientific experts.
Trump also ramped up his attacks on the news media, singling out NBC’s Kristen Welker, the moderator of the next presidential debate, as well as CNN for aggressively covering a pandemic that is now infecting tens of thousands of Americans every day.
Biden was off the campaign trail on Monday ahead of Thursday’s second and final debate.
Monday’s professed confidence in victory stood in contrast to some of Trump’s other public comments in recent days reflecting on the prospect that he could lose.
“Could you imagine if I lose my whole life? What am I going to do?” he asked a rally crowd in Macon, Georgia. “I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country. I don’t know.”
In Janesville, Wisconsin over the weekend, he said wasn’t “even conceivable” that he could lose to a man he labeled “the worst candidate … in the history of presidential politics.”
Trump has also expressed confusion about polling data that shows him trailing or closely matched with Biden in key states.
“How the hell can we be tied?” he said at a rally in Carson City, Nevada, where polls actually show Biden ahead. “What’s going on? … We get these massive crowds. He gets nobody. And then they say we’re tied. … It doesn’t make sense.”
Biden, meanwhile, was in Delaware for several days of preparation ahead of Thursday’s final presidential debate. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, was returning to the campaign trail after several days in Washington after a close adviser tested positive for the coronavirus.