Trump Says Pandemic Will End Soon after Biden Blasts His Handling of Crisis

On Friday in Florida, US President Donald Trump promised supporters that the coronavirus pandemic would soon end and accused Democratic rival Joe Biden of overstating the health crisis to scare Americans into voting for him.

The pandemic, which has killed more than 224,000 U.S. citizens and cost millions more of their jobs, has become the biggest topic of the campaign, with Trump on the defensive in coping with the crisis in his administration, reports Reuters.

Earlier in the day, Biden said Trump had given up on suppressing the virus and vowed he would ask Congress to pass a comprehensive Covid-19 bill if he wins the election on November 3, which he would sign within the first 10 days of taking office.

“He’s quit on America. He just wants us to grow numb,” Biden said during a speech in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware. 

“I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m going to shut down the virus.”

Trump ridiculed Biden at two rallies in the battleground state of Florida for claiming in the presidential debate on Thursday night that the United States was entering a "grim winter."

He said that by overstating the virus threat, the former vice president and his Democratic allies were attempting to scare people.

“We’re going to quickly end this pandemic,” Trump, who has played down the threat since it started, said in The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in central Florida.

Later, Trump told a big crowd in Pensacola that the election was a choice “between a boom and a lockdown.”

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation warned on Friday the virus could kill more than half a million people in the United States by the end of February 2021. 

Roughly, 130,000 lives could be saved if everybody wore masks, according to the study.

The campaign stops followed on Thursday night, when Biden and Trump sparred about how to tackle the pandemic, the second and final debate between the two candidates.

On Friday, Trump's campaign said it had raised $26 million for the debate. Biden's campaign, which in recent months has trounced Trump in the money race, did not release from the debate a fundraising figure, but sent out appeals saying they were outraged.

“Debate days are usually some of our best for fundraising, but we didn’t see the surge we expected,” the campaign said in a fundraising alert to supporters.

More than 53 million Americans have already voted with 11 days left before the election, a record-setting rate, according to the University of Florida's Elections Initiative. The election could set a modern turnout record, surpassing the 60 percent participation rate of recent presidential elections, said Michael McDonald, who runs the project.

In the Election Day crowds of Covid-19, the increase of early voting points to both strong interest in the race and a populace willing to avoid risking publicity. Until voting ends, the huge early vote total allows Trump less leeway to alter minds.

Opinion polls show him in many swing states that will determine who sits in the White House on January 20, 2021, trailing Biden both nationally and, by a narrower margin.

Trump said those polls underestimated his support.

“I think we’re leading in a lot of states you don’t know about,” he told reporters at the White House.

Both candidates have paid attention to Florida, a must-win state for Trump where, after being in a statistical tie a week ago, a Reuters / Ipsos poll this week showed Biden moving into a slight lead.

On Saturday in Florida, former President Barack Obama, with whom Biden served as vice president for eight years, will be campaigning.

Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said the race was tightening in Minnesota and said the campaign would buy more television advertising there. Opinion polls show Biden leading in the state.

As election officials count tens of millions of mail-in votes, Americans will have to wait days or weeks to know who won.

On Thursday, the final meeting with Biden gave Trump an opportunity to reverse his fortunes, but analysts said it was impossible to change the race in any fundamental way.

Preliminary estimates showed that fewer people watched the debate than their first debate in September.

Speaking to thousands of people gathered in The Villages on a grassy plain, Trump said he planned to stage up to five rallies a day throughout the last leg of the race.

According to TargetSmart, a Democratic analytics company, Democrats have cast approximately 5 million more votes than Republicans so far, although their margin has narrowed in recent days.

Democratic analysts say they are cheered by those numbers but caution that they expect a late surge of Republican votes on Election Day. Republican strategists say strong in-person turnout in Florida, North Carolina and Iowa gives them hope that Trump can win those battleground states again this year.

“It’s really, really hard to compare this to anything,” Democratic strategist Steve Schale told reporters. 

“Everything’s up from 2016.”