Online
\nJOHNSTOWN
\nPresident Donald Trump told a Pennsylvania crowd Tuesday that he\u2019s fighting \u201cMarxists\u201d and \u201clunatics\u201d while his Democratic challenger Joe Biden accused him in Florida, another key electoral state, of having treated Americans as \u201cexpendable\u201d during the Covid-19 pandemic.
\nWith only 21 days until the November 3 election and badly down in the polls, Trump fired every lurid exaggeration about the Democrats and insult about Biden\u2019s mental state that he has in his arsenal.
\nHe said Biden was \u201cchoking like a dog\u201d during their televised debate, called him mentally \u201cshot,\u201d and claimed the Democratic frontrunner was the pawn of communists.
\n\u201cHe is handing control to the socialists and Marxists and left-wing extremists,\u201d Trump told the large, raucous crowd in Johnstown. \u201cHe can\u2019t stand up to the lunatics running his party.\u201d
\nGoing even further on 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, surrounded by elderly wheelchair-bound people in a room.
\n\u201cBiden for president,\u201d the caption said, with \u201cp\u201d struck out to change the word to \u201cresident.\u201d
\nThe mocking presentation of the infirm elderly was somewhat surprising given the president\u2019s apparently growing problems in retaining the loyalty of seniors, an important electoral force.
\nIn Johnstown, Trump reprised the outsider image that he developed for his surprise 2016 victory, telling the crowd that he was combating a \u201cselfish and corrupt political class\u201d back in Washington.
\nBut even as he delighted the crowd with his greatest rhetorical hits, Trump once more showed that despite his poor poll showing he has no intention of trying to reach across to Democrats in a deeply divided nation.
\n\u201cThis will end up being a large-scale version of Venezuela if they get in,\u201d he said, painting a nightmarish anti-immigrant vision of a country where Democrats give free hospital care to \u201cillegal aliens\u201d while \u201cdecimating Medicare and destroying your Social Security.\u201d
\nThe coronavirus, which has claimed more than 215,000 lives in America, was largely an afterthought, even if Trump himself was hospitalized for three nights after testing positive at the start of October.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re going to crush the virus very quickly. It\u2019s happening already,\u201d Trump said, despite a swath of the United States now reporting large increases in infections.
\n\u201cSoon it\u2019s going to be perfecto,\u201d he said.
\nHours earlier, Biden was in Florida holding one of the much smaller events typical of his low-key campaign, zooming in on Trump\u2019s handling of the pandemic.
\nArguably even more important on election day than Pennsylvania, Florida is a battleground state that Trump won in 2016 but where polls currently show Biden ahead.
\nBiden courted the elderly, telling an event at a retirement center in Pembroke Pines, north of Miami, that Trump has \u201cnever been focused on you.\u201d
\n\u201cHis handling of this pandemic has been erratic, just like his presidency has been,\u201d he said.
\nBiden recalled that Trump once remarked that the virus — which has taken a particularly brutal toll among the elderly — \u201cinfects virtually nobody.\u201d
\n\u201cYou are expendable, you are forgettable, you are virtually nobody. That\u2019s how he sees this,\u201d said Biden, who, unlike Trump, wore a face mask throughout his remarks.
\nTrump was also in Florida on Monday night for his first rally since recovering from his bout with Covid-19. This week he will be heading out to Iowa and North Carolina, then back to Florida and Georgia.
\nIowa and Georgia were two states which Trump won handily in 2016 but polls show tight races in both three weeks ahead of the November 3 election.
\nAnd a poll of likely Florida voters released on Tuesday by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) gave Biden a 51 percent to 47 percent lead there.
\n\u201cJoe Biden continues to be competing better for senior voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and that could be the difference in Florida,\u201d said Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at FAU.
\nForty-four percent of those polled said Trump\u2019s handling of the coronavirus crisis was good or excellent while 50 percent said it was poor or terrible.
\nTrump has brushed aside the polls, calling them \u201cfake.\u201d
\nTexas, meanwhile, became the latest state to start early voting, which has been taking place at a record pace so far in the states that allow it, according to Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who tracks early voting.
\nAccording to McDonald\u2019s US Elections Project, voters have cast 11.86 million ballots so far in the states that report early voting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Online JOHNSTOWN President Donald Trump told a Pennsylvania crowd Tuesday that he\u2019s fighting \u201cMarxists\u201d and \u201clunatics\u201d while his Democratic challenger Joe Biden accused him in Florida, another key electoral state, of having treated Americans as \u201cexpendable\u201d during the Covid-19 pandemic. With only 21 days until the November 3 election and badly down in the polls, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n