President Donald Trump likes to make fun of his rival Joe Biden’s verbal lapses but on Saturday he made his own goof as he took a pot shot at French President Emmanuel Macron and effectively demoted him.

Trump’s error downgrading Macron to prime minister came as he spoke at a campaign rally in Michigan, one of a flurry of stops he is making in the final three weeks of the presidential race as he trails Democrat Biden in the polls.

Trump had been speaking about the old NAFTA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, which he called a bad deal for America and insisted on renegotiating, when he turned his attention to Macron and the Paris climate change accord.

Trump, who questions the science behind global warming, pulled the US out of that landmark global accord in 2017, saying it was costing American jobs.

“And you know what else I stopped? The Paris environmental accord,” Trump said.

“And I like Prime Minister Macron a lot. But I said ‘how’s it going over there? How is the accord doing?’ They’re not doing too good,” Trump said.

“I saved you trillions of dollars, nobody else would have done it. I said it was a disaster, they basically wanted to take our wealth.”

Trump used to enjoy a sort of bromance relationship with Macron but their ties have cooled over the years and featured a so-called handshake war — in which Macron mimicked the US president’s penchant for shaking hard and not letting go.

At a bilateral meeting in 2019 in France, Macron gripped Trump’s hand so long and firmly he left a white thumbprint on it.

Source: AFP

President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden squared off, in a way, Thursday night in dueling televised town halls that showcased striking differences in temperament, views on racial justice and approaches to a pandemic that has reshaped the nation.

Coming just two and a half weeks before Election Day, the night offered crystalizing contrasts and a national, if divided, audience. But it seemed unlikely to have produced a needed moment for a president running out of time or opportunities to appeal beyond his core base.

He was defensive about his administration’s handling of the coronavirus, which has claimed more than 215,000 American lives, and evasive when pressed about whether he took a required COVID-19 test before his first debate with Biden. Angry and combative, Trump refused to denounce the QAnon conspiracy group — and only testily did so regarding white supremacists.

The president also appeared to acknowledge revelations from a recent New York Times report that he was in debt and left open the possibility that some of it was owed to a foreign bank. But he insisted that he didn’t owe any money to Russia or any “sinister people” and suggested that $400 million in debt was a “very, very small percentage” compared to his overall assets.

Biden denounced the White House’s handling of the virus, declaring that it was at fault for closing a pandemic response office established by the Obama administration in which he served. Though vague at times, he suggested he will offer clarity on his position on expanding the Supreme Court if Trump’s nominee to the bench is seated before Election Day.

After Biden’s 90-minute town hall event formally concluded, the candidate spent another half hour taking questions from those in the audience who didn’t get an opportunity during the televised program.

Trump and Biden were supposed to spend Thursday night on the same debate stage in Miami. But that faceoff was scuttled after Trump’s coronavirus infection, which jolted the race and threatened the health of the American president.

Trump wouldn’t say whether he had tested negative on the day of his first debate with Biden on Sept. 29, allowing only “possibly I did, possibly I didn’t.” Debate rules required that each candidate, using the honor system, had tested negative prior to the Cleveland event, but Trump spoke in circles when asked when he last tested negative.

The presidential rivals took questions in different cities on different networks: Trump on NBC from Miami, Biden on ABC from Philadelphia. Trump backed out of plans for the presidential faceoff originally scheduled for the evening after debate organizers said it would be held virtually following his COVID-19 diagnosis.

The town halls offered a different format for the two candidates to present themselves to voters, after the pair held a chaotic and combative first debate late last month. The difference in the men’s tone was immediate and striking.

Trump was Trump. He was loud and argumentative, rebuking his FBI director, fighting with the host, Savannah Guthrie, complaining about the questioning — and eventually saying for the first time that he would honor the results of a fair election, but only after casting an extraordinary amount of doubt on the likeliness of fairness.

“And then they talk ‘Will you accept a peaceful transfer,’” Trump said. “And the answer is, ‘Yes, I will.’ But I want it to be an honest election, and so does everybody else.”

He again sought to minimize revelations from a New York Times investigation that he has more than $400 million in debt and suggested that reports are wrong that he paid little or no federal income taxes in most years over the past two decades.

Biden meanwhile, took a far different, softer, approach with audience questions. The former vice president, who struggled growing up with a stutter, stuttered slightly at the start of the program and at one point squeezed his eyes shut and slowed down his response to clearly enunciate his words. At times his answers droned on.

Holding a white cloth mask in one hand, the Democratic nominee also brought a small card of notes on stage and referred to it while promising to roll back tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. He said doing so would save, as he consulted his notes, “let me see… $92 billion.”

Biden vowed to say before Election Day whether he will support expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court if Democrats win the presidency, the Senate and hold the House after November.

He has for weeks refused to answer the question but went further Thursday night. He said, “I’m still not a fan” of expanding the court, but that his ultimate decision depended on how the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court “is handled” and “how much they rush this.”

Biden also blasted Trump’s foreign policy, declaring that “‘America first’ has made ‘America alone’” and “This president embraces all the thugs in the world.” He turned introspective when asked what it would say if he lost.

“It could say that I’m a lousy candidate, that I didn’t do a good job,” Biden said. “But I think, I hope that it doesn’t say that we’re as racially, ethnically and religiously at odds as it appears the president wants us to be.”

Biden said he plans to participate in next week’s debate but that he would ask Trump to take a COVID-19 test before arriving. “It’s just decency” for everyone around him, including non-candidates like camera operators, Biden said.

The two men are still scheduled to occupy the same space for a debate for a second and final time next week in Nashville.

Source: AP

Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden will participate in duelling town halls Thursday instead of clashing face-to-face in their second debate, as the US president seeks to jolt his struggling campaign 19 days before the election.

The split screen spectacle follows Trump’s three-day campaign tour of battleground states once doctors gave him the medical all-clear less than two weeks after he announced he contracted the coronavirus.

But even as Trump sought to mount a closing argument against Biden at a boisterous rally Wednesday in Iowa, promising an “incredible” third quarter for the struggling economy, the pandemic remained front and center.

Trump’s teenage son Barron contracted the coronavirus, First Lady Melania Trump revealed Wednesday in news that startled in part because it had been kept from the public for so long.

She said the 14-year-old, who goes to a private school near Washington, did not experience symptoms and has since tested negative.

“Barron Trump, you know, he had the Corona 19,” the president said in Des Moines. “He had it such a short period of time I don’t even think he knew he had it.”

The news, which had been kept under wraps despite global attention on Trump’s own health, thrust public attention firmly back on the pandemic and in particular on an outbreak within the supposedly highly secure White House over the last two weeks.

The issue plays a prominent part in Thursday’s simultaneous town hall events on major TV networks, as cases spike in several states and the US toll surpasses 216,000 dead.

The competing primetime appearances were organized after a head-to-head debate between Trump and Biden due to be held Thursday was scrapped in the aftermath of Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis.

Reality show experience

But while team Trump might be relieved that the president regains an opportunity to draw a contrast with his opponent, NBC faced criticism for letting the president bigfoot Biden in the same 8:00 time slot.

“Having dueling town halls is bad for democracy,” tweeted Katie Couric, a longtime host of NBC’s “Today” morning show.

“Voters should be able to watch both and I don’t think many will,” she said, adding the matchup will benefit Trump “because people like to watch his unpredictability.”

David Canon, chair of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed.

But he said Trump may have committed a “tactical error” by backing out of a virtual debate with Biden.

“He needed the debates more than Biden did,” Canon told AFP. “He’s the one that needs to change the momentum in the election.”

Trump negotiated to go on NBC at an outdoor setting in Miami after Biden had arranged his own event on ABC in Philadelphia.

Previously Trump has appeared uncomfortable in town hall settings where ordinary voters ask questions. But as a former reality TV star and a keen follower of viewing figures, the president will at least be eager to attract a bigger audience than Biden.

The rivals were meant to have met on stage for their second debate, also in a town hall format.

However, in an unprecedented decision, organizers said they wanted to switch to a virtual format for safety reasons after Trump contracted the coronavirus. Trump rejected the new conditions, and the debate was scrapped.

NBC said it received a statement from the clinical director at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci, saying there was “a high degree of confidence” that Trump is now “not shedding infectious virus.”

Trump and the NBC host will be socially distanced at the outdoor venue and audience members will wear masks, NBC added.

Biden has reported multiple negative coronavirus tests since Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis on October 1.

Shouting match      

The first of three scheduled presidential debates was widely criticized for descending into an angry shouting match as Trump attempted to inflict a late wound to Biden’s campaign.

In Iowa Trump renewed the fierce attacks.

“Joe is shot, OK?… Joe has lost it,” Trump said to laughter and cheers.

“If he wins, the radical left will be running the country. They’re addicted to power, and God help us if they get it.”

Furthering his long-running narrative that 77-year-old Biden is too frail for the presidency, Trump, 74, tweeted a crudely faked picture purporting to show Biden in a wheelchair.

Biden has stepped up his own courting of the important elderly vote, telling retirees in Florida on Tuesday that Trump has “never been focused on you.”

A RealClearPolitics average of national polls has Biden up by 9.2 points, with the Democrat leading in several key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

(AFP)

Joe Biden heads for Florida on Tuesday to court elderly Americans who helped elect Donald Trump four years ago but appear to be swinging to the Democratic candidate for the White House this time around amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden, at 77 the oldest Democratic nominee ever, is to “deliver his vision for older Americans” at an event in the city of Pembroke Pines, north of Miami, his campaign said.

The former vice president’s visit to Florida comes a day after Trump held a campaign rally in the Sunshine State, his first since his hospitalization for Covid-19.

Unlike Biden’s small, socially distanced gatherings, thousands of supporters packed an airport tarmac for the president’s return to the campaign trail.

Trump, 74, is to host another rally Tuesday night in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, followed by visits to Iowa and North Carolina this week as part of a push to make up ground on Biden, who has a double-digit lead in the national polls ahead of the November 3 vote.

Florida and its 29 votes in the Electoral College went to Trump in 2016, helping propel his upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Americans over the age of 65 favored Trump over Clinton by a margin of 53 percent to 45 percent, according to the Pew Research Center and exit polls.

But the latest polls show a dramatic shift away from Trump among seniors this time around, driven in large part by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic which has taken a disproportionate toll among the elderly.

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll had Biden leading Trump among seniors by 27 points — 62 percent to 35 percent — while a CNN/SSRS poll had him up by 21 points among Americans 65 and older — 60 percent to 39 percent.

A poll of likely Florida voters released on Tuesday by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) gave Biden a 51 percent to 47 percent lead in the state.

“Joe Biden continues to be competing better for senior voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and that could be the difference in Florida,” said Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at FAU.

Forty-four percent of those polled said Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis was good or excellent while 50 percent said it was poor or terrible.

‘Lower the heat’

Trump, who called seniors his “favorite people in the world” after his release from hospital and promised them “the same care I got,” brushed aside the polls at his Monday night rally.

“Twenty-two days from now, we are going to win this state, we are going to win four more years in the White House!” he said.

Trump also continued to try to depict Biden as being too old and unfit for office, pointing to a moment on Monday when he appeared unable to remember the name of Mitt Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, and mistakenly said he was running for Senate.

“Sleepy Joe Biden had a particularly bad day today,” Trump tweeted. “He couldn’t remember the name of Mitt Romney, said again he was running for the U.S. Senate, and forgot what State he was in.

“If I did any of this, it would be disqualifying. With him, he’s just Sleepy Joe!”

Romney, meanwhile, issued an appeal to both campaigns and the country at large to “lower the heat,” saying the “consequence of the crescendo of anger leads to a very bad place.”

Romney, the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump during his impeachment trial earlier this year, said he was “troubled by our politics.”

“It has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass that is unbecoming of any free nation — let alone the birthplace of modern democracy,” he said in a statement.

Romney condemned Trump for calling Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris a “monster” and for urging the “Justice Department to put the prior president in jail.”

“Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own — though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others,” he said.

“The world is watching America with abject horror,” Romney added. “It’s time to lower the heat. Leaders must tone it down.”

(AFP)