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)

US President Donald Trump made his first public appearance since returning to the White House on Monday from a three-day stay in hospital for Covid-19, even as his aides remained silent on whether he is still contagious.

Trump spoke from the White House balcony at an event called ‘a peaceful protest for law & order,’ attended by a few hundred people standing on the lawn below. His appearance is seen as a first step toward resuming full campaigning next week.

Trump appeared maskless, declaring from the White House balcony: “I am feeling great.”

“I want you to know our nation is going to defeat this terrible China virus,” Trump told the cheering crowd, most wearing masks but with very little social distancing at the outdoor event.

“It’s going to disappear, it is disappearing,” the president said of the virus, which has killed more than 210,000 Americans and severely dented his chances of winning a second term on November 3.

The Republican president will travel on Monday to central Florida, a state crucial to his re-election hopes.

He will stage his first campaign rally since his coronavirus diagnosis at an airport in the town of Sanford. The campaign did not disclose if it would be held in a hangar with doors open, as it has in the past, or entirely outside.

As the president prepared to return to the trail, the body that oversees presidential debates said the match-up between Trump and Biden, the Democratic candidate, scheduled for October 15 had been formally canceled.

Trump refused to participate in what was supposed to be the second of three debates with Biden after the Commission on Presidential Debates switched it to a virtual contest in the wake of the president’s illness.

The final debate on October 22 is still set to take place.

‘Superspreader event’

Questions remain about whether Trump, who announced on October 2 he had the virus and spent three nights in a military hospital, is still contagious.

In an appearance on Fox News on Friday evening, Trump said he was tested again for the virus but did not disclose the result. He also said he had stopped taking medications to combat it. “I feel really strong,” Trump said.

The illness has kept him from holding public rallies and attending fundraisers at a critical juncture of the campaign. He trails Biden in opinion polls with just weeks to go before the election.

Attendees at the Florida rally will be given a temperature check, masks that they will be encouraged to wear and access to hand sanitizer, the campaign said.

Biden sharply criticized Trump’s decision to resume campaigning. “Good luck. I wouldn’t show up unless you have a mask and can distance,” he told reporters in Paradise, Nevada. Trump and his administration have faced criticism for their handling of the pandemic, as well as for a lax approach to mask-wearing and social distancing in the White House and – in recent days – confusing messages about how ill the president has been.

At least 11 people who attended a White House event on September 26 where Trump announced his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have since tested positive.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, on Friday called it a “superspreader event.”

“It was in a situation where people were crowded together, were not wearing masks. So the data speak for themselves,” Fauci told CBS Radio.

‘He wants to be out there’

Nine Covid-19 cases have also been linked to a Trump rally in Bemidji, Minnesota on September 18, the state’s health department said on Friday, according to local media.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said the president was eager to resume campaigning but would do so safely. “He wants to talk to the American people, and he wants to be out there,” she told Fox News.

“There are medical tests underway that will ensure that when the president is back out he will not be able to transmit the virus,” McEnany added.

With Trump’s management of the pandemic dominating the campaign, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Americans steadily losing confidence in how he has managed the health crisis – with his net approval on the issue hitting a new low.

McEnany is one of a string of Trump aides, including his campaign manager, who have tested positive in the last week as the virus spread within the White House and Trump campaign.

Biden has continued to campaign during Trump’s illness, spending the day in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At a drive-in rally where people attended in vehicles, Biden ripped Trump for careless behavior since being infected with the virus.

“His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis, the destabilizing effect it’s having on our government is unconscionable. He didn’t take the necessary precautions to protect himself or others. And the longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he gets,” said Biden, who gave the entire speech wearing a surgical mask and his signature aviator sunglasses.

The attendees honked horns to sound their approval.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

US Vice-President Mike Pence and Democratic running mate Kamala Harris have clashed fiercely over the coronavirus pandemic in a TV debate.

Ms Harris accused President Donald Trump of “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country”.

Mr Pence said Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s pandemic plan was “plagiarism” of the current White House’s.

Mr Biden leads Mr Trump with 27 days to go to the vote.

In Wednesday night’s 90-minute debate at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Ms Harris was asked whether she would take an approved Covid-19 vaccine distributed ahead of the election.

The 55-year-old California senator said she would not take a vaccine touted by Mr Trump without the approval of medical professionals.

Mr Pence – a mild mannered former Indiana governor known for his steadfast loyalty to Mr Trump – retorted: “The fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine if the vaccine emerges during the Trump administration I think is unconscionable.

“And, senator, I just ask you, stop playing politics with people’s lives.”

The plexiglass barriers separating the two debaters seated 12ft (3.6m) apart was a vivid reminder of the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans.

The president – who is himself recovering from the virus – returned to the White House on Monday evening after three nights in hospital, with his opinion poll numbers drooping.

On Wednesday he declared that catching the disease was a “blessing from God” that exposed to him to experimental treatments he vowed would become free for all Americans.

Source: BBC

Given the age of the two White House contenders, and President Donald Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, Wednesday’s debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic challenger Kamala Harris is being billed as a critical test in an increasingly acrimonious election campaign.

The televised clash in Salt Lake City, Utah, comes at a precarious moment for the incumbents, less than a week after the president announced he had contracted Covid-19 amid a White House outbreak that has infected numerous high-profile Republicans.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, is ahead of Trump in national polls, enjoying a lead of 12 percentage points in the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey of likely voters, with less than four weeks until the November 3 election.

The traditional view among analysts is that presidential debates are unlikely to dramatically alter the dynamics of a presidential contest – and vice-presidential debates even less so.

Four years ago, only 37 million people tuned in for the debate between Pence and Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine, less than half the number of viewers recorded for the first Trump-Clinton face-off.

Source: France 24

President Donald Trump’s positive coronavirus test has undermined his repeated claims that the US is “rounding the turn” in its handling of the pandemic, with just one month to go before the November 3 election.

Trump announced on Friday that he and his wife, Melania, had tested positive for Covid-19, and were going to quarantine at the White House.

Trump is 74 years old, putting him at higher risk of serious complications from the virus.

His physician has said the president is “well” and will continue to perform his duties “without disruption”.

However, even if the president remains asymptomatic, he will likely have to halt in-person campaigning for an unspecified amount of time while he quarantines at the White House.

“It is unclear exactly what that means for a president of the United States, especially for this one who has spent months not wanting to wear a face mask, not wanting to take physical distancing seriously,”

“The White House published a schedule for tomorrow, with various events that he will presumably not be fulfilling. It does beg the question: will he seat a campaign virtually, as his rival Joe Biden has been doing a lot?” Smith added. “Presumably, if Trump is feeling well enough, he would be able to do that.”

Whatever form Trump’s campaign takes in the coming days and weeks, his diagnosis has seriously undermined his attempts to downplay the pandemic and refocus the race on other issues.

In the past, Trump has wrongfully predicted that the coronavirus “is going to disappear”, and even questioned scientists who contradicted his assertions in public.

‘This could be a really significant blow’

Trump has also largely ignored his own government’s public health guidelines, refusing to wear a mask or observe social distancing.

At the first presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio, earlier this week, Trump even mocked his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, for the size of his mask.

“Every time you see him, he’s got a mask,” Trump said of his opponent. “He could be speaking 200 feet away… And he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

With a number of polls showing that a majority of Americans disapprove Trump’s handling of the pandemic — which has claimed at least 207,000 lives in the United States — his diagnosis will likely only compound this opinion.

“This was a day many people feared, many people saw coming, many people thought may well happen, because he was continuing to hold campaign rallies, a couple of them indoors. He was defying often his own public health guidelines on the coronavirus,” Smith said.

Trump’s positive test result certainly complicates his ability to effectively campaign against Biden, who is currently leading in the polls.

“We’ve seen Trump really thrives off the energy of crowds, of holding big events. It gives him a sense of momentum,” Smith said. “This could be a really significant blow to a presidential campaign that is already struggling with Joe Biden well ahead in the polls.”

It is also unclear how Trump’s positive test will affect arrangements for the second presidential debate, which is scheduled for October 15 in Miami, Florida.

Source: France 24

The presidential debate commission says it will soon adopt changes to its format to avoid a repeat of the disjointed first meeting between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.

The commission said Wednesday the debate “made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”

One possibility being discussed is to give the moderator the ability to cut off the microphone of one of the debate participants while his opponent is talking, according to a person familiar with the deliberations who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The next presidential debate is a town hall format scheduled for Oct. 15 in Miami.

Moderator Chris Wallace struggled to gain control of the 90-minute debate in Cleveland because of frequent interruptions, primarily by Trump.

Wallace, of Fox News, pleaded for a more orderly debate, at one point looking at Trump and saying, “the country would be better served if we allowed both people to speak with fewer interruptions. I’m appealing to you, sir, to do that.”

“Ask him, too,” Trump said.

“Well, frankly, you’ve been doing more interrupting than he has,” Wallace said.

 Biden on Wednesday called the debate “a national embarrassment.” But despite some suggestions that the final two presidential encounters be canceled, both campaigns said they expected their candidate to attend.

ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, who moderated one of the three debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, said Wallace was put in nearly an impossible situation. Faced with the same behavior, she said she might have called a full stop to the debate for a moment to recalibrate.

She never had the option, technically, to cut off the microphone of a candidate four years ago, she said. It also wasn’t in the rules that were agreed to in advance by the candidates and commission.

“To say, ‘he’s not going to follow the rules so we aren’t, either?’ It’s an unprecedented situation,” Raddatz said. “That was so out of control.”

Twitter was ablaze with criticism for Wallace early in the debate for losing control of the proceedings. That was illustrated by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who tweeted “what is Chris Wallace doing? He has no control over the debate. He asks a question and let’s Trump continue yelling. This is a disgrace.”

By the time he was on “Morning Joe” the next morning, Scarborough had cooled off. He called on the debate commission to act.

“While it was extraordinarily frustrating, I think all of us need to walk a mile in his shoes before saying the morning after, ‘he could have done this, he could have done that,’” Scarborough said.

Some of the president’s supporters felt that Wallace was too hard on their candidate. Trump himself suggested he was also debating Wallace, “but that’s no surprise.”

Wallace even got some criticism from opinion personalities on his own network. “Trump is debating the moderator and Biden,” prime-time host Laura Ingraham tweeted during the debate.

Another Fox colleague, Geraldo Rivera, expressed more sympathy.

“The guy signed up to moderate a debate and he ended up trying to referee a knife fight,” he said.

Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday,” was not immediately made available for comment by Fox.

Wallace is the only presidential debate moderator this cycle with prior experience, after receiving praise for handling the final Clinton-Trump debate in 2016. The other two moderators are Steve Scully of C-SPAN and Kristen Welker of NBC News.

Scully moderates the Miami debate, which will be a town hall format where citizens get to ask questions. That format may make interruptions more difficult.

“Having prepared for these, the town hall is a completely different event in the debate Olympics,” tweeted David Plouffe, an adviser to former President Barack Obama. “If Trump brings the same nastiness to Florida, it will be doubly painful to watch but it will be doubly painful for him politically.”

The Nielsen company’s estimate on how many people watched Tuesday’s debate was expected later Wednesday.

(AP)

The first debate between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was an “embarrassment” to the United States, says Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications chief.

Their 90-minute debate, the first of three debates ahead of the 2020 presidential election in November, was held in a venue in Cleveland, Ohio. The other two debates are scheduled on Oct. 15 and Oct. 22. 

During the debate, the two politicians kept interrupting each other and trading insults, with the moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, struggling to maintain control over the debate proceedings.

“I don’t think anybody won. That debate, you know, was a little bit of an embarrassment to the country, frankly,” Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Wednesday.

“I didn’t like it, I think most people didn’t like that debate,” he said, noting that there must be a better system to control how upcoming debates are held.

Although US stock futures fell following the debate, Scaramucci said what the markets thought of the debate will only become clearer the next morning.

“I just think it’s a little fickle right now,” said the former White House communications director fired by Trump in 2017 less than two weeks into the job.

“We all saw the debate, it was a nasty debate, it was an interrupting match if you will,” he added. “I don’t think the polls are going to move that much and if the markets have moved because of the debate, it will settle out over the next open if you will.”

Scaramucci, who has previously thrown his support behind Biden, told CNBC that he still believes the former vice president will win the race for the White House.

He said he did not think that Americans are better off in comparison to four years ago when Trump was first elected due to the health and economic crises that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic.

He went on to say that even though Trump cannot be blamed for the pandemic, “you can blame him for the way he’s handled it.”

Scaramucci also described Biden a more likeable figure compared to Trump. “The vice president has the momentum and he’s less polarizing than Donald Trump,” said Scaramucci. “I think the vice president’s gonna beat him.”

Source: Presstv

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans on Thursday repudiated President Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, assuring American voters the lawmakers would accept the outcome of November’s election.

Trump declined on Wednesday to embrace a peaceful transfer in response to a reporter’s question and said he expected his election battle with Democrat Joe Biden to be settled by the Supreme Court.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump said he did not know that an “honest” election could be held on Nov. 3 “with this whole situation, unsolicited ballots.”

The Republican president’s rhetoric on Wednesday, which largely referred to voting by mail, set off a fury that prompted several Republicans in Congress to distance themselves from Trump.

Despite four years of incendiary statements by Trump, members of his own party have been loath to criticise him, as many feared political retribution.

“The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th. There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792,” McConnell wrote in a morning tweet.

Like other Republicans, McConnell did not directly criticize Trump.

By midday, with the controversy raging, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told a news briefing: “The president will accept the results of a free and fair election.”

But for months, Trump has cast November’s election as being rigged and repeatedly attacked Democrats for promoting widespread use of mail-in ballots for voters who do not want to risk contracting the deadly COVID-19 virus by casting their ballots at potentially crowded polling centers.

In an interview on Fox News Radio, Trump called mail-in ballots “a horror show,” despite studies showing no significant problems with that method of voting over the years.

Michael Waldman, president of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said voting arrangements were steadily advancing. In an interview with Reuters Television, he added: “The system is not broken. States are actually improving their voting rules day by day.”

Democrats accused Trump of threatening American democracy and further politicising his upcoming choice to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by suggesting the yet-to-be named nominee would have a role in the election’s outcome.

Some of McConnell’s fellow Republicans joined the effort to quell election fears, including Senators Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who told reporters: “It will be a smooth transition regardless of the outcome.”

Trump, who trails Biden in national opinion polls, has long sought to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, asserting without evidence that mail-in voting would be rife with fraud.

“President Trump, you are not a dictator and America will not permit you to be one,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, calling him “the gravest threat” to U.S. democracy.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who lost to Biden in the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating race, called for an independent commission to oversee the upcoming election.

Democratic House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi cautioned against panicking over the remarks of a president who she said admires autocratic leaders. At a news conference, she urged Americans to cast their ballots and admonished Trump: “You are not in North Korea, you are not in Turkey, you are not in Russia.”

Court challenges

If November’s election is close, Trump could contest the results in federal courts in hopes of being awarded enough Electoral College votes to retain the White House, according to political analysts.

Only one U.S. presidential election, the 2000 contest between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, has had its outcome determined by the Supreme Court.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who will play a significant role in whether Trump’s upcoming Supreme Court nominee will be confirmed, said there could be litigation over the presidential election. “The (Supreme) Court will decide and if the Republicans lose, we will accept that result,” Graham told Fox News. “But we need a full court.”

If Trump nominates a conservative to serve on the Supreme Court, as expected, and the Republican-controlled Senate confirms the nominee, it will have six justices considered to be conservative and three viewed as liberals.

(REUTERS)

Joe Biden branded President Donald Trump a “climate arsonist” on Monday for refusing to acknowledge global warming’s role in deadly wildfires sweeping the western United States, while Trump blamed lax forestry and declared, “I don’t think science knows.”

Dozens of conflagrations have raged with unprecedented scope across some 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) in Oregon, California and Washington state since August, laying waste to several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 36 people.

The fires also have filled the region’s air with harmful levels of smoke and soot, bathing skies in eerie tones of orange and sepia while adding to a public health crisis already posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Ten deaths have been confirmed during the past week in Oregon, the latest flashpoint in a larger summer outbreak of fires accompanied by catastrophic lightning storms, record-breaking heat waves and bouts of extreme winds.

Those incendiary conditions gave way over the weekend to cooler, moister weather and calmer winds, enabling weary firefighters to gain ground in efforts to outflank blazes that had burned largely unchecked last week.

Fire managers cautioned that the battle was hardly over. Thunderstorms forecast for later in the week could bring much-needed rain but also more lightning. Officials also braced for a rise in the death toll.

As disaster teams scoured the ruins of dwellings engulfed by flames amid chaotic evacuations last week, Oregon’s emergency management authorities said they had yet to account for 22 people reported missing in the fires.

At least 25 people have perished in California wildfires since mid-August, and one fatality has been confirmed in Washington state. More than 6,200 homes and other structures have been lost, according to figures from all three states.

Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee slammed by Republicans for not visiting disaster areas, spoke from his home state of Delaware on the threat of increasingly frequent weather extremes that scientists have pointed to as evidence that climate change is supercharging the fires.

Trump, who trails Biden in national polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election, met with firefighters and officials in California after Democrats blasted the Republican president for remaining mostly silent on the wildfires.

“I think this is more of a management situation,” Trump answered, when asked by a reporter if climate change was a factor behind the fires. Without mentioning large wildfires that have raged elsewhere around the world in recent years – from southern Europe to Australia and Siberia – Trump asserted that other countries “don’t have this problem.”

“They have more explosive trees, meaning they catch fire much easier,” he said. “But they don’t have problems like this.”

The president and his administration have long sought to pin the blame for large wildfires on state officials, saying fuel-choked forests and scrub need to be thinned, more firebreaks should be cut and flammable debris cleared from forest floors.

Trump said improved forest management was something that could be tackled quickly, whereas climate change would take more time and require international cooperation that he said was lacking.

“When you get into climate change, well is India going to change its ways? And is China going to change its ways? And Russia? Is Russia going to change its ways?” he said after landing in McLellan Park, California.

‘I don’t think science knows’

Trump has referred to climate change as a “hoax,” and in 2017 pulled the United States out of the Paris accords laying out an international approach to global warming. Biden, the former vice president, has included climate change on his list of major crises facing the United States.

Calling Trump a “climate arsonist,” Biden said: “If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned by wildfires? How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out?”

California Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged more needs to be done to better manage forests to reduce fire risks, citing more than a century of aggressive fire suppression has allowed fuels to build up.

But he countered that global warming was nevertheless a driving factor in newly extreme wildfire behavior, and he reminded Trump that 57% of forest land in California is under federal ownership.

“We come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident: that climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this,” the Democratic governor said during a meeting with the president.

Trump, who has authorized federal disaster aid for both California and Oregon, questioned that science.

“It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch,” he said. “I don’t think science knows.”

Tens of thousands of displaced residents across the Pacific Northwest continued to adjust to life as evacuees. Around the devastated southwestern Oregon towns of Phoenix and Talent, some people set up food stations in parking lots. Others defied evacuation orders to guard their own homes from looters.

Reinforcing local law enforcement resources strained by the disaster, Oregon is deploying as many as 1,000 National Guard troops to fire-stricken communities.

Two men were arrested in Oregon, one on Friday and another on Monday, on arson charges stemming from a handful of relatively small fires.

But police have cautioned against fake social media reports blaming wildfires on left-wing anti-fascists or right-wing Proud Boy activists.

Source: REUTERS