Headlines
Trump, Biden Lock Horns in Battleground States 21 Days from Election
President Donald Trump told a Pennsylvania crowd Tuesday that he’s fighting “Marxists” and “lunatics” while his Democratic challenger Joe Biden accused him in Florida, another key electoral state, of having treated Americans as “expendable” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
With 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’s mental state that he has in his arsenal.
He said Biden was “choking like a dog” during their televised debate, called him mentally “shot,” and claimed the Democratic frontrunner was the pawn of communists.
“He is handing control to the socialists and Marxists and left-wing extremists,” Trump told the large, raucous crowd in Johnstown. “He can’t stand up to the lunatics running his party.”
Going 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.
“Biden for president,” the caption said, with “p” struck out to change the word to “resident.”
The mocking presentation of the infirm elderly was somewhat surprising given the president’s apparently growing problems in retaining the loyalty of seniors, an important electoral force.
– ‘Crush the virus’ –
In Johnstown, Trump reprised the outsider image that he developed for his surprise 2016 victory, telling the crowd that he was combating a “selfish and corrupt political class” back in Washington.
But 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.
“This will end up being a large-scale version of Venezuela if they get in,” he said, painting a nightmarish anti-immigrant vision of a country where Democrats give free hospital care to “illegal aliens” while “decimating Medicare and destroying your Social Security.”
The 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.
“We’re going to crush the virus very quickly. It’s happening already,” Trump said, despite a swath of the United States now reporting large increases in infections.
“Soon it’s going to be perfecto,” he said.
– ‘Erratic’ president –
Hours earlier, Biden was in Florida holding one of the much smaller events typical of his low-key campaign, zooming in on Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
Arguably 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.
Biden courted the elderly, telling an event at a retirement center in Pembroke Pines, north of Miami, that Trump has “never been focused on you.”
“His handling of this pandemic has been erratic, just like his presidency has been,” he said.
Biden recalled that Trump once remarked that the virus — which has taken a particularly brutal toll among the elderly — “infects virtually nobody.”
“You are expendable, you are forgettable, you are virtually nobody. That’s how he sees this,” said Biden, who, unlike Trump, wore a face mask throughout his remarks.
Trump 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.
– Swing states –
Iowa 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.
And a poll of likely Florida voters released on Tuesday by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) gave Biden a 51 percent to 47 percent lead there.
“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.
Trump has brushed aside the polls, calling them “fake.”
Texas, 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.
According to McDonald’s US Elections Project, voters have cast 11.86 million ballots so far in the states that report early voting.
(AFP)
The first hostages freed from Gaza under a long-awaited ceasefire agreement are back in Israel. The news sparked jubilant scenes in Tel Aviv where large crowds gathered ahead of their release.
The three freed Israeli hostages – the first of 33 to be released over the next six weeks – are Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari. They are said to be in good health and are receiving treatment at a medical center in Tel Aviv.
In exchange, 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees are set to be released by Israel from Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military withdrew from several locations in southern and northern Gaza after the truce began earlier on Sunday, an Israeli military official told CNN.
Displaced Gazans have started returning to their homes, while the aid trucks laden with much-needed supplies have crossed into Gaza. Here’s what we know about how the ceasefire deal will work.
Hamas, despite suffering devastating losses, is framing the Gaza ceasefire agreement as a victory for itself, and a failure for Israel.
One of Hamas’ main goals for taking some 250 people during its brazen October 7, 2023, attack on Israel was to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. As Israel pounded Gaza in response, Hamas vowed not to return the hostages until Israel withdrew its forces from the enclave, permanently ended the war, and allowed for rebuilding.
Source: CNN
The leader of UK’s Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has said she doesn’t want Britain to be like Nigeria that is plagued by “terrible governments.”
Speaking on Thursday at an event organised by Onward, a British think tank producing research on economic and social issues, Badenoch expressed fears that Britain may become like Nigeria if the system is not reformed.
“And why does this matter so much to me? It’s because I know what it is like to have something and then to lose it,” Badenoch told the audience.
“I don’t want Britain to lose what it has.
“I grew up in a poor country and watched my relatively wealthy family become poorer and poorer, despite working harder and harder as their money disappeared with inflation.
“I came back to the UK aged 16 with my father’s last £100 in the hope of a better life.
“So I have lived with the consequences of terrible governments that destroy lives, and I never, ever want it to happen here.”
Badenoch has been in the news of late after she dissociated herself from Nigeria, saying she has nothing to do with the Islamic northern region.
She also accused the Nigeria Police of robbing citizens instead of protecting them.
She said: “My experience with the Nigeria Police was very negative. Coming to the UK, my experience with the British Police was very positive.
“The police in Nigeria will rob us (laughter). When people say I have this bad experience with the police because I’m black, I say well…I remember the police stole my brother’s shoe and his watch.”
