US President Donald Trump, his Democratic challenger, former US vice president Joe Biden, and their top surrogates on Saturday barreled through crucial states in the industrial Midwest and coastal southeast, pressing closing arguments in a frantic sprint days ahead of tomorrow’s US presidential election.
Using some of his most urgent language yet, Trump warned of “bedlam in our country” if no clear winner emerges quickly, saying, without evidence, that it could take weeks to sort out a result and that “very bad things” could happen in the interim.
Meanwhile, Biden told backers that it was “time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home.”
Photo: Reuters
Underscoring the high stakes — and the disruptive effect of the COVID-19 pandemic — a record 90 million early votes have already been cast, as the bruising contest heads toward the biggest turnout in at least a century.
In the US, the virus has killed more than 230,000 people, ravaged the economy and is infecting record numbers.
On Saturday, Trump was focusing on the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, “the state where the story of American independence began,” he said in the small city of Newtown, the first of four stops in Pennsylvania amid a frenetic final sprint.
Photo: Reuters
Biden made his first joint appearance of the campaign with former US president Barack Obama — probably the most popular Democrat in the country — in Flint, Michigan, as the party scrambles to boost turnout in the state, which Trump carried by a razor-thin margin in 2016.
In remarks at an event in Bucks County, Trump lashed out at Biden, saying that he would shut down the state’s fossil-fuel industry.
The president claimed credit for creating the “greatest economy in the history of this country — the history of the world” — while “foreign nations are in free fall.”
However, despite recent signs of recovery from the COVID-19-induced economic pain, millions remain jobless in the US.
After Biden and Obama appeared before a socially distanced drive-in rally in Flint, they made an unannounced stop in suburban Bloomfield Hills before heading to Detroit, where they were joined by superstar singer Stevie Wonder.
Obama pulled few punches in Flint and Detroit, saying that 140,000 American lives would have been saved if Trump had taken an approach to the pandemic similar to Canada’s.
“This is not a contest of just calling each other names,” Obama said. “This isn’t a sporting event. This is life or death.”
Biden said “we’re done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the failure, the refusal to take any responsibility.”
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