US President Donald Trump on Tuesday cast the US election as a choice between a “super recovery” or a “depression,” while his Democratic opponent, former US vice president Joe Biden, said that Trump had surrendered to COVID-19.
Trump maintained his hectic campaign pace, holding an open-air rally in Michigan followed by a similar one in Wisconsin and then Nebraska.
“I’ve got to say, I’m working my ass off here,” Trump said in Lansing, Michigan, eliciting a huge cheer.
Photo: AFP
Trump said that his pandemic policies and economic chops would serve the nation better than Biden.
“This election is a choice between a Trump super-recovery or Biden depression,” he said.
Later in Wisconsin, Trump warned Americans that they should not “let this radical socialist group take over” with Biden as president.
Photo: AFP
“We didn’t come this far and fight this hard to surrender our country back to the corrupt Washington swamp,” he said at his final rally of the day in Omaha, Nebraska.
With the campaign narrowing down to its final days, Biden tapped one of his top surrogates, former US president Barack Obama, to deliver a closing argument in Florida.
Speaking in Warm Springs, Georgia, Biden drilled in on Trump’s pandemic response, branding it as “a capitulation” by a White House that “never really tried” to halt the virus.
Instead of acting as a wartime president to battle COVID-19 as he promised, Trump “shrugged, he swaggered and he surrendered,” Biden said.
“I’m here to tell you: We can and we will control this virus,” he said.
Election tracking Web site RealClearPolitics had Biden up 7.4 points in an average of national polls — a drop from a few days earlier.
Near Orlando, Obama told a crowd at a drive-in rally that it was “one week until the most important election in our lifetimes.”
He accused Trump of incompetence, lies, embracing dictators and ignoring the pandemic.
However, he also said that apathy in 2016 might have cost Democrats that election and urged them to vote early.
“We were complacent last time. Folks got a little lazy, folks took things for granted, and look what happened,” Obama said.
“Not this time,” he said. “Let’s bring it home.”
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